Presented at the
Tenth Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights
Property Rights Foundation of America, Inc.
Albany, N. Y. - October 14, 2006

Welcome to our Tenth Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights. A special welcome to you who have traveled to hear our speakers and reunite with friends in the cause of freedom, you who have traveled from Canada, Washington, D.C., Virginia, New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and from all over New York State. During the day, I’d like urge all of you to be sure to meet the individuals in the audience, as well as the speakers, because many local leaders and nationally recognized figures are sitting quietly in the audience. It is inspiring to be in the presence of all of you.

We have reached a milestone—ten annual national conferences on private property rights, and I wish to humbly thank you all. Your devotion to the defense of private property rights—your creativity, your brilliance, your clear moral stance, your vision, your steady tenacity, your generosity, your kindness, and your sacrifice—have made this day possible.

Our day would not have been possible without our steadfast supporters. I’d like to publicly thank our generous official conference co-sponsors: Building and Realty Institute of Westchester & the Mid-Hudson Region, Civil Property Rights Associates, Communities for a Great Northwest, Homeowners Against Rent Kontrols (HARK), The National Center for Public Policy Research, New York Farm Bureau, SUA News.com, and The JM Foundation.

Our theme today, “Private Property Rights—The Record and the Vision” will be explored by prominent experts and leaders in the arenas of property rights policy, western battles to protect ranching, defense against abuse of eminent domain, drawing the line against federal property rights infringements, exposing surreptitious federal land use control and related financial corruption, and confronting international efforts to reduce property rights. You will see within every speech, whether it is Fred Grau looking at the threat posed by invasive species regulation or Prof. Gideon Kanner looking at eminent domain, that we’ll have unique opportunities to look at where we are, we’ve been, where we should be going, to quote the title of Prof. Kanner’s speech.

I’d like to take “A Look Over the Wall” as I welcome you today.

Last Wednesday, The Wall Journal had some intriguing articles about predicting the future. Warren Buffet got even wealthier by investing big in reinsurance before the hurricane season. As you know, insurance rates went up as a result of the risk demonstrated by the devastating hurricane seasons our country has experienced during recent years. Most people do not know that the large insurance companies that carry their homeowners’ insurance shift a large proportion of their risk to international companies that reinsure the risks of the ordinary insurance companies. So Warren Buffet took a look into the future, and invested heavily in reinsurance, and at the end of the hurricane season the payouts for hurricane devastation were nil.

We are operating under a different principle than Mr. Buffet, in that we are actually trying to influence the future, rather than statistically analyzing our chances of winning. So here we are, observing and experiencing to our detriment the infringements on property rights:

• Wetlands restrictions that make it impossible to use our land, but without compensation as with eminent domain.
• Preservation zoning that strips us of our property rights, causing us to lose our investment or blocking us from succeeding in business, again without compensation.
• State and federal agencies stripping our businesses bare with impenetrable environmental regulation, so that the business is driven into the ground.
• Cities and villages abusing eminent domain to destroy our homes and businesses and transfer the property to wealthy developers.
• Urban regulators infringing on the private property rights of landlords, extracting their deserved profits, favored investors unfairly competing by using tax subsidies, and the system driving landlords out of business,
• Federal and state government designating our land as special environmental or historic corridors, districts, or reserves, funding countless agencies that work to strip us of our rights, as well as establishing countless long trails under surreptitious or overt federal auspices. Riverfront land is especially being withdrawn from the private sector.
• Land trusts and overtly radical environmental organizations working in concert with each other and local, state and federal government to make our land worthless or destroy our businesses.
• Environmental groups and state agencies working over decades—through regulation, land acquisition, and eradication of culture and its evidence—to destroy local economies and cultures so as to force rural people off their ancestral lands, while an elite, often idle, population takes over. The federal government owns one-third of the land in the United States. New York State owns upwards of four million acres, in fee simple and conservation easements.
• And illustrative of these infringements and the many other areas where our private property rights are eroded, even our abstract rights to the products of our mental creativity, our copyrights and patents protected under the Constitution are the object of skillful socialists and unobstructed greed.

To look over the wall, I asked where we should be when and if our vision of the restoration of private property right were to be fulfilled. The vision is simple, because much of the future that I hope for existed in my own memory.

• Government could not regulate wetlands. If the wetland were deemed worthy of preservation, the government would make an offer and buy or condemn it for a park.
• Non-voluntary zoning would be declared illegal. Therefore preservation zoning would have to be voluntary on the part of every participating property owner. The Columbia River Gorge Commission, Adirondack Park Agency, Long Island Pine Barrens Commission, Lake Tahoe Regional Planning Authority, New Jersey Pine Barrens Commission, New York State Greenway Communities Council and like regional planning and zoning agencies would be eliminated.
• State and federal environmental regulation would be vastly simplified, securely brought under control with time-restricted application processes, and every step of the way of regulations subjected to professional cost-benefit evaluation, focusing primarily on public health and clear parameters such as air and water pollution. The failed endangered species law would be repealed and voluntary conservation geared to species recovery substituted. Environment government would be reduced to less than one-tenth its current size. In addition, audits of personal assets of powerful government officials would ferret out complex trails of income so that environmental regulation would not be a tool to eliminate competitors. .
• Eminent domain would be prohibited for any but true public purposes such as highways, schools, parks, and the like, and for government-sanctioned utilities. No exceptions for any definition of “blight” would be allowed for condemnation of private property for the intention of transferring the property to private parties or for building public housing.
• Urban landlords would be freed from rent control and many tenant protections, except those related to normal contract relations and health and safety. Urban life would be enhanced by the flourishing of residential construction within a free market. Government would not subsidize housing. State and federal stings would clean up the bribe system, which would also significantly lower rental and homeowner construction costs.
• The federal and state government would cease designating historic sites, stop designating and funding heritage corridors and would stop establishing long trails and converting rails to trails. Government biking and hiking trails would be confined to parks. Eminent domain would not be used for trails.
• Real estate tax benefits and IRS policies that benefit land trusts would be eliminated. Where government funds are accepted their books would be entirely subject to freedom of information law. Government would cease to bestow grants on land trusts or private non-profit organizations. Government would not contract environmental services selectively to non-profit organizations. All government-contracted environmental services would instead be openly and competitively bid. Government agencies would advertise all meetings with environmental groups and open them to the public. Restrictions would be enforced on the revolving door between the environmental non-profits and government agencies.
• Federal and state government would not acquire land from the private sector for preservation. No new national parks and like administrative units of the National Park Service would be acquired. Private sector valuations of resources on federal and state lands would be invited and, with the exception of certain lands such as certain parks, lands would be subjected to resource-based industry and sustainable forestry. Existing inholders in federal parks would be protected as private owners, and the federal government would lose its power of eminent domain to build parks. Much federally owned and state-owned land would be sold to the private sector. The prejudicial designation of government-owned land for select recreation would be reformed, so that not only hiking, skiing and canoeing, but also four-wheel drive, ATV and snowmobile use would be provided with special trails, and ordinary families and non-athletic people would be able to access natural lands by four-wheel drive pickups, cars and small campers. Rural communities would be restored as roads closed by the state and federal government were opened, state and federal land privatized, preservation zoning eliminated, endangered species regulations repealed. Cemeteries and cultural sites on remaining government-owned lands would be marked and protected, and access made easy.
• The U. S. Attorney General’s Office would routinely enforce valid patents and copyrights using criminal law, protecting parties with limited financial resources. U. S. representatives on international organizations and trade groups would protect the interests of copyright and patent holders.

This vision will become reality when and if people rise from their sheltered individual worlds and take government in hand, when great masses of people rationally, morally, and consistently participate in the process of government. This day will come when times change. Now, for every thirty to forty people who e-mail or telephone the Property Rights Foundation of America, perhaps a single one will telephone or write the appropriate member of the legislature. Few of these will continue on the trail of the legislator until a satisfactory denouement is reached to the infringement being suffered.

Our conference today brings to the forefront the directions that must be taken. In this room are many people who have been instrumental in great victories for private property rights. Some of these changes took place through litigation. Some of us have brought about changes on the local, state and federal government level by educating, lobbying and organizing, also with both small and major results. We in this room are experts in reaching the public, organizing, lobbying, and litigating. But this speech is not about how to get from here to there. After looking over the wall, my conclusion is that, the way things are now, only if the people of the United States join us will our movement see the bets that we are placing reap dividends in our lifetimes. If the people do join us, then property rights will flourish. We will have a peaceful revolution. Then our vision will be glorious.

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