Contracts? We Don’t Need No Stinking Contracts!

J.J. Jackson* | December 5, 2006

The Constitution of the United States strictly prohibits states from interfering with the rights of individuals to contract among themselves for legal activities. It also prevents the taking of property without just compensation and ONLY then for valid public uses such as post roads, etc.

But that is not stopping Florida from flexing it’s socialist muscles!

A public agency desperate for land and a coal company struggling to break into Jacksonville clashed Monday in an eminent domain case that might be one of the last of its kind in the state.
The Jacksonville Port Authority hopes to condemn about 65 acres owned by Keystone Coal Co., a Fort Myers-based coal company, to lease to other private companies that would develop port facilities.

Attorneys for Keystone, which entered a contract to buy the land in September 2005, say the authority’s primary prospect for the land is actually one of Keystone’s competitors, The Drummond Co., a Birmingham, Ala.-based company that claims to have shipped more than 29 million tons of coal in 2005.

Drummond has signed a letter of intent and drafted a lease with the Port Authority to rent land for at least $12 million a year, according to court testimony.

Keystone has already begun to use and develop the land and has shipments of coal on the way. But when bureaucrats get involved in the affairs of men the outcome is a nanny state mentality where they think they know what is best. Screw the time, money and other investments already put into this project. They want the land and they will fight tooth and nail for it. So they can pass it on to others who will help line their pockets of course.

The only question at this point is how much more of the Constitution will Florida’s government shred in pursuit of its own power?

Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws

(Book)

Authors:Andrew P. Napolitano
Manufacturer:Nelson Current
Released:07 February, 2006

The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land

(Book)

Authors:Andrew P. Napolitano
Manufacturer:Nelson Current
Released:18 April, 2006

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