Tag: private property

Incremental Socialism

Imagine you own an apartment building and need to sell it. The mortgage comes due, insurance premiums keep climbing, repairs cannot wait, and you have found a willing buyer. You have negotiated a price and are ready to close. Then New York City tells you to wait.

Your financial obligations do not wait. Your buyer may not wait. But under New York City’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, the government can insert a lengthy process between you and the sale of your own property. What should be a private transaction becomes subject to a timetable designed to give selected organizations an opportunity to purchase the building first.

This is the kind of incremental change worth examining. Socialism does not always announce its arrival with bullets and revolution. Sometimes it arrives as a statute that sounds reasonable, addresses a genuine concern, and changes the rules one transaction at a time.

On October 22, the New York City Council passed COPA by a vote of 38 to 9, with two members abstaining. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed the measure. The revised bill is narrower than earlier proposals and is expected to cover roughly 2,100 multifamily buildings meeting specified conditions involving serious housing violations, city enforcement programs, or affordability restrictions. Qualifying owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units are exempt. The law is scheduled to take effect one year after enactment.

Under COPA, owners of covered properties are mandated by to inform the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development when they intend to sell. Qualified nonprofit organizations have 20 days to express interest and another 70 days to submit an initial offer. Additional procedures can give a qualified organization the right to match an outside buyer’s offer. A legal analysis by Cullen and Dykman estimates that the process can delay a transaction by approximately 130 days when the applicable stages are triggered. The final timetable depends on the transaction and the rights exercised. Owners may apply for an exemption based on undue financial hardship, but that exception does not eliminate the underlying process.

For an owner facing mounting expenses, those delays are not abstractions. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs continue regardless of what the city requires. A willing buyer may move on. A deal that could have helped an owner meet financial obligations may disappear while the government process runs its course. Ann Korchak, president of Small Property Owners of New York, has warned that COPA could contribute to the extinction of small property owners. Her concern deserves attention. A policy intended to preserve affordable housing can impose new costs and risks on the people responsible for maintaining the buildings in the first place.

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UN Plotting to Lock Up 30 Percent of the Planet for “Biodiversity”

Inside the conference centers of this ancient capital, officials from nearly 200 governments, United Nations bureaucrats, environmental NGOs, and selected “stakeholders” are meeting to lock up 30 percent of the world’s land and water — as a starting point. That, they say, is merely a downpayment on eventually putting half of the surface of the globe under international influence and control.

The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) official theme is “taking action for nature.” But the real agenda goes far beyond protecting nature. The true goal: furthering the expansion of international influence over land, water, and even genetic resources, with national governments and private owners expected to comply.

Nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface is the immediate target of the assembled forces here in the Armenian capital. But sweeping additional measures have already been sketched out for what comes next: UN-backed “biodiversity” schemes embedded across every policy area. The implications for private property, economic freedom, and national sovereignty are hard to overstate.

Target 3 and the 30×30 Framework

The gathering’s centerpiece is the first formal global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022. That agreement contains 23 targets for 2030, each of which is ostensibly aimed at protecting nature from the supposed perils of human activity, liberty, and self-government.

Target 3 is the most far-reaching: It calls for at least 30 percent of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, and marine areas to be “effectively conserved and managed” through the creation of government-controlled “protected areas” and other measures. Advocates label the goal 30×30. Critics, including American agricultural officials who have examined parallel domestic efforts under the Biden administration, have described it as a vehicle for locking up productive land and restricting the people who own and work it.

The biodiversity framework is embedded in the UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which former UN officials have described as the “masterplan for humanity” and the “declaration of interdependence.” Biodiversity targets are designed to mesh with climate goals, land-use planning, subsidy reform, and financing rules.

What the UN calls “National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans” serve as the delivery mechanism for injecting the UN-backed policies into every jurisdiction. Governments — including authoritarian regimes and kleptocracies — are expected to revise them, report progress, and face a “stocktake” that identifies who is lagging.

Full Integration of Biodiversity

Even governments that never ratified the CBD, the United States among them, face soft pressure through subnational governments, financial institutions, corporate standards, lobbying by taxpayer-funded “Non-Governmental Organizations,” and the cumulative weight of coordinated international policymaking. Resisting gradually becomes more and more difficult.

Target 1 reinforces the approach by calling for “participatory spatial planning across all areas” to reduce biodiversity loss. In practice, that language has repeatedly been used to justify burdensome controls limiting what private landowners may do with their own property. Such schemes are being implemented worldwide.

Target 14 goes further. It directs governments to ensure the “full integration of biodiversity and its multiple values into policies, regulations, planning and development processes.” It also requires that public and private financial flows — mostly costs born by taxpayers and consumers — be aligned with the UN framework’s goals.

The agenda is not limited to parks or endangered species. It contemplates the insertion of UN-aligned environmental priorities into virtually every aspect of government policy, economic development, and financial decision-making — from farming and housing to infrastructure and investment. Direct UN enforcement is unnecessary when national regulators, banks, and corporations can carry out the program for the globalist organizations.

Hostility to Private Property

Earlier UN documents were more explicit. The Vancouver Declaration, adopted at the 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), stated that “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals” and that “Private land ownership is … a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable.”

That view stands in contrast to traditional American legal understandings of property. As recently as 2000, the Washington Supreme Court, citing longstanding principles, defined property as follows:

Property in a thing consists not merely in its ownership and possession but in the unrestricted right of use, enjoyment and disposal. Anything which destroys any of these elements of property, to that extent destroys property itself. The substantial value of property lies in its use. If the right of use be denied, the value of the property is annihilated, and ownership is rendered a barren right.

Obviously, the UN (and Marxist) view of private land ownership is incompatible with genuine private property rights and a free society. Considering the fact that food, clothing, energy, materials, water, and more come from the land, there is extreme danger in handing over control of that land and its resources to governments and international organizations — especially those with demonstrated hostility to liberty and prosperity.

In any case, more government control over economies and resources is strongly correlated with more environmental damage. The inverse is also true: Societies with the freest economies and strongest protections for private property tend to have the cleanest environments.

Contemporary biodiversity language is more polished than the Vancouver Declaration. But the operational effect — expanded government control and international influence over land use — remains consistent to this day. The goals are still the same, even if they are not trumpeted quite as clearly.

American ranchers and farmers who opposed the Biden-era 30×30 executive order understood the stakes, as the resulting national outcry demonstrated. Formal rescission of that order has not eliminated the international template or the domestic constituencies still advancing related measures through state policies, corporate ESG commitments, and federal agency guidance.

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NYC to force landlords to offer buildings for sale to non-profits first

The New York City Council has passed a bill that will force some property owners to give nonprofits first dibs on buying their distressed properties if the bill becomes law. The bill has headed to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s desk for his signature.

The “Community Opportunity for Purchase Act,” or COPA, will force some landlords to offer up their properties to “community land trusts” and nonprofits for 90 days so that they can have first dibs on the properties. Although a similar proposal has been floated before that would have applied to a much larger number of properties, this one is not as extreme. The original COPA bill was vetoed by former Mayor Eric Adams right before he stepped out of office.

The bill will impact 2,100 NYC buildings that are mostly managed by the Housing Preservation Department in the Big Apple. The previous bill would have covered around 10,000 buildings in the city. The bill was brought by Brooklyn lawmaker Sandy Nurse, who claimed that the bill last year was “legally sound” but that changes were made for government agencies.

“It was more that there was a number of different points that could be sued over, so it wasn’t that there was anything unconstitutional; it was just that they wanted an opportunity to re-strengthen now that they’ve had a third review of it,” she said.

Ann Korchak, the board president of the Small Property Owners of New York, slammed the bill. “COPA, in any form, is a destructive housing policy for renters, owners, and affordable housing. COPA will devalue buildings, forcing small, often immigrant and multigenerational, owners to sell their buildings for pennies on the dollar,” she said.

“Giving the right-of-first-refusal to nonprofits shuts out conventional buyers who have the financial wherewithal to immediately improve and rehabilitate a failing building,” she added, per the New York Post.

If the measure goes into effect, it will slow down property deals for those buildings that are impacted by it. The previous version of the bill was lauded by socialist New York City Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who said in a policy proposal that NYC should “pass COPA to give CLTs [Community land trusts] and non-profits the right of first refusal when landlords sell.”

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The New York City Council Quietly Passed Measure to Aid Government-Seizure of Private Property

The New York City Council has passed a measure that’s clearly laying the groundwork for the eventual government seizure of private property. The “Community Opportunity for Purchase Act” (COPA) requires some property owners to delay putting their properties on the open market for 90 days so “community land trusts” and nonprofits have an exclusive shot at buying them first.

But the new legislation, which was recycled by progressive Brooklyn lawmaker Sandy Nurse earlier this year, is a watered-down version of a prior proposal that included a much larger number of properties.

Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) called the bill’s initial proposal an “attack on private real-estate ownership” in the five boroughs.

“We’re sliding headfirst into a communist dystopia where the government and their apparatchik developers own all the property, and the rest of us get forced into perpetual rentorship, and this legislation is helping to get us there even quicker,” Ariola said at the time.

The tweaks brought some real estate groups on board with the legislation.

It’s absolutely an attack on private real estate ownership. As of right now, this legislation impacts about 2,100 New York City buildings, down from 10,000 under the previous version of the bill. Former Mayor Eric Adams vetoed similar legislation before leaving office.

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Is Banning a Church From Building on Its Property’s Just “A Mere Inconvenience”? The Supreme Court Will Decide

The Supreme Court just agreed to take up a case that could reshape how every church in America is treated when it tries to build. Last week, the Court granted certiorari in Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist v. Frederic to define what counts as a “substantial burden” on religious exercise under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

A Catholic religious organization in Park Hills, Kentucky, wanted to build a small chapel on land next to its church. The construction would be about the size of a backyard swimming pool. The city’s board approved the permit, but neighbors sued, and the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled against the church.

The court’s reasoning was alarming. It said that being barred from building a chapel was “a mere inconvenience” because the church could build a smaller one somewhere else. It also called the burden self-imposed because the church knew about the ordinance before it applied.

Under that logic, a complete ban on a religious use of your own property isn’t a substantial burden as long as a judge thinks you could worship some other way. Judges, not believers, would decide what matters to the faith.

The ACLJ filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take this case. We told the Justices that lower courts have been eroding RLUIPA’s protections by adding qualifiers Congress never wrote. Congress passed this law to stop local governments from treating churches as second-class property owners, and it told courts to read the statute in favor of broad protection of religious exercise.

The grant confirms that RLUIPA’s land-use protections have gone too long without guidance from the Supreme Court. Now that the Court has taken the case, the ACLJ will file an amicus brief on the merits, standing with houses of worship across the country as the Justices decide this question.

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Maine Democrat Troy Jackson Channels Zohran Mamdani – Backs Government Seizure of Private Property

Troy Jackson is the far left Democrat who replaced Graham Platner, after his campaign imploded due to credible allegations of rape.

In terms of ideology, Jackson appears to be aligned with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He apparently agrees with the idea of using the government to seize private property.

It’s hard to believe that rugged Mainers would support this.

FOX News reports, via AOL:

Government land-grab agenda hits key Senate race as Dem backs property takeovers echoing Mamdani

Graham Platner’s replacement in the Maine Senate race suggested the government should be able to take over private property when necessary, appearing to echo socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing agenda.

Troy Jackson, a Democrat running for the Senate, came under fire for suggesting the government should be able to take over private property when necessary. The comments drew fresh scrutiny to a candidate the Pine Tree State’s GOP chair previously dubbed “Maine’s Mamdani” to Fox News Digital, as debates over government intervention in housing and private ownership gain new attention.

“It’s a major issue. The greed that’s happening right now in this country that people in mobile home parks are feeling is like something I’ve never seen,” Jackson told a small crowd of residents at Blueberry Ridge Mobile Village, one of several Maine trailer parks where concerns about costs, quality-of-life and ownership arose.

“The other thing that I do hear a lot about, too, is how [landlords] won’t do anything for services. And that is completely unfair and not right. And we have to make that change. I feel strongly that if needed, the state should be able to come in [and] take these places over. Some people will say that that’s insane,” Jackson told the residents in Wells, the town next to the politically-notable Kennebunkport.

“But until the people get the chance to start a co-op or whatever, there should be a way to hold these, so that you don’t see private-equity coming in and making the killing on these parks.”

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Indiana Man Charged with HOMICIDE After Shooting ‘Suspicious’ Man Trying to Break into His Home – Police Let Would-Be Burglar Go Minutes Before Incident

An Indiana man has been busted for killing a ‘suspicious’ person in what he argues was self-defense. At the same time, evidence also shows police let the perpetrator walk minutes before the incident occurred.

As WANE reported on Tuesday, 30-year-old Fort Wayne resident Martell Pickens was home on May 7 when someone reported a suspicious person in his neighborhood. The individual, later identified as 25-year-old Khadolphee Taylor, was seen on video allegedly trying to break into various vehicles.

Taylor then attempted to break into Pickens’s home. Pickens armed himself and went outside to confront Taylor.

Pickens demanded to know what Taylor was doing and then told him to “back up.” But Taylor ignored Pickens and continued to advance toward him.

Pickens then shot him once in the chest.

When Fort Wayne police officers arrived on the scene, Taylor was bleeding from the gunshot wound.

He was then rushed to a nearby hospital and was later pronounced dead.

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Radical Maine Democrat Senate Nominee Wants the State to Seize Private Property from Mainers: “The State Should Be Able to Come In and Take These Places Over”

Far-left Maine U.S. Senate nominee Troy Jackson just told a crowd of mobile-home park residents that the government should be able to take private property when he doesn’t like who owns it.

At a Labor Day weekend campaign stop Saturday at Blueberry Ridge Mobile Village in Wells, Jackson said the state should step in and take over parks owned by out-of-state companies and private equity firms.

“I feel strongly that, if needed, the state should be able to come in, to take these places over,” Jackson told residents gathered in a backyard, according to the Portland Press Herald.

He added that the state should hold the sites until residents can take them over “so you don’t see these private equity (firms) coming in and making a killing on these parks.”

Video of Jackson’s remarks was circulated by RNC Research.

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Arizona Rancher Tells Trump That Dem Gov Katie Hobbs Wants to Evict Him From Family Land to Build Foreign Company’s Solar Energy Plant

An Arizona rancher told President Trump on Friday that Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs would have taken his land away and given it to a foreign renewable energy company if the Trump administration had not intervened. 

Casey Murph, a fifth-generation Arizona rancher who leases land from the state for his H-Y Cattle Company in Navajo County, said that Hobbs wants to take away his land for a Danish energy company, Ørsted, to develop.

According to American Stewarts of Liberty, Murph’s family has used the roughly 4,000 acres of land in Northern Arizona since the 1870s, decades before Arizona even became a state in 1912.

In 2022, Murph began receiving notices from the state that foreign developers wanted his land for a renewable-energy project. In 2025, Hobbs signed an executive order granting large-scale energy infrastructure manufacturers priority access to state lands and easing restrictions on the so-called green energy projects.

“Her task force created a map of all the state lands throughout the state and color-coded those lands according to solar favorability,” Murph previously said, noting that his land was designated as less suitable for agriculture than renewable energy.

During an executive order signing ceremony on Friday, Murph revealed to the President that Hobbs wants to kick him off his family’s land of over a century to build a solar energy plant.

“It’s been in my family for over 100 years. Katie Hobbs has offered those lands up to solar development companies,” Murph said.

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Toronto homeowner charged after opening fire during potential car theft

The case has raised the issue of how Canadians can protect themselves, their families and their property when faced with a potential break-in or theft.

Earlier this year in Vaughan, a homeowner got his gun out to protect himself and his family during a home invasion. York Regional Police did not press charges in that case.

The Toronto case has also renewed attention on “Castle Law” protections in Canada. The idea has gained support from some Canadians who believe people should be able to defend themselves and their property when police cannot respond immediately.

Police response times can be 10 to 12 minutes, and an armed attacker can do significant harm during that time.

The broader concern raised was that Canadians defending themselves, their families, homes and businesses can face criminal charges while dealing with people who have entered their property.

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