A Stitch in Haste

What a sad, but all too familiar, state of affairs:

A bill that would allow restaurant goers to eat with their dogs has run into a snag at City Hall in St. Louis, Mo., with some worried about health risks.

[S]everal others said they just did not think dogs should be allowed in dining areas, the St. Louis Dispatch reported Friday.
...
[The] proposal was not met well at the Board of Aldermen's Public Safety Committee[.]

One possible amendment to the bill would be to allow restaurants to decide for themselves whether dogs were allowed or not.

Here we go again: a preposterous conflict between two false "rights," with property rights ignored except as a matter of political expediency.

In this case: the (fictitious) "right to bring your dog" and the (equally fictitious) "right to eat without dogs around." And the only true right — the right of restaurant owners to decide for themselves based on market forces — scarcely registers, except as a footnote, a split-the-baby compromise, a doggie bag.

Just as with smoking in private bars, trans fats in private restaurants, guns in private parking lots, flag restrictions in private homeowner associations, etc., so too is the question of "dogs in restaurants" an utterly false conflict. There is no "right to bring your dog;" there is no "right to keep the other guy's dog out." There is only the right to run a restaurant, the right to eat there and the right to eat elsewhere.

(Via Fark.)

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Meanwhile:

The state at the center of a national property rights battle moved to limit the use of eminent domain, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that governments may seize property for private development projects.

Unlike other states, however, the Connecticut measure does not expressly ban using eminent domain for economic development. Instead, it prohibits property from being taken solely to boost property taxes.

Whatever. As with so many of these nominal eminent domain curbs enacted since the abhorrent decision in Kelo v. New London, all an activist legislator has to do is say — usually disingenuously — the words "blight" or "master plan" and the bulldozers can roll in.

More:

Democratic Rep. Ernest Hewett, who voted against the bill, said he doesn't believe changes to the existing eminent domain laws are needed.

"Every court, from the trial court to the Connecticut Supreme Court and the U.S Supreme Court, found that the city did it right and that Connecticut's law is constitutional," Hewett said.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Sad to see a legislator oblivious to the simple fact that Supreme Court holdings regarding the Bill of Rights represent floors, not ceilings, and that states are always permitted (and, one would hope, eager) to confer more expansive interpretations of those rights than the bare minimums as determined by the Supreme Court.

So for this hack politician to say that "every court" upheld Kelo doesn't mean that the State of Connecticut can't now say that perhaps property owners indeed deserve better under the Fifth Amendment than all those courts held. Just because the courts scandalously turned a blind eye to the plain language of the Fifth Amendment doesn't mean everyone else should too.

But, of course, expanding (i.e., properly recognizing) full property rights impedes the agendas of central planners and activist legislators. No wonder so many are reluctant to embrace reform, or to pass faux reform as a distraction.