Camp-Out at the Halper Farm to Stop Eminent Domain

J

Justin Time

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URGENT PLEA TO AMERICA FOR HELP


Saturday, July 8 to Monday July 10, 2006

Camp-Out at the Halper Farm to Stop Eminent Domain

On Monday, July 10, 2006 at 3 pm armed agents of the government of Piscataway, New Jersey will arrive on the property of Clara & Larry Halper. The police will remove the Halpers and their four children from their home and farm. This land has been in the Halper family for over 80 years. Don't be surprised if a few years later we see shopping malls or condos built on the Halper's property. There is nothing to prevent the Piscataway government from changing their use of the land after they grab it.

We plan to have a camp-out starting Saturday and lasting until the eviction. We need YOU to be there. If ever there was a time to take a stand, it is NOW. If ever there was a place to take a stand, it is HERE. Take your excuse for not being there and throw it in the trash. When Paul Revere signaled the alarm the early Americans didn't respond with excuses they responded with action. People who believed in freedom dropped what they were doing and showed up to confront their oppressors.

We need YOU to drive your RV, pitch your tents, and take a stand against eminent domain abuse by camping out at the Halper Farm until the moment of eviction. We hope it will be like Valley Forge without the frostbite and Woodstock without the mud.

Date: Starts Saturday, July 8, 2006, but most people will show up on Sunday. The eviction is Monday, July 10 at 3pm

Location: Farm of Larry and Clara Halper
4 Bella Drive, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854
(photo: Clara, Larry and their four children)

map and satellite photos

Activities: There will be traditional camping activities, plus on Sunday afternoon several musical groups will perform (rock, classical and whoever else shows up). If you want to attend you do not need to make a reservation, just show up. There is plenty of space and the Halpers welcome you to camp on their land. However, we'd like to keep a count so we encourage you to RSVP here. Check back to this website before you drive to get up-to-the-minute information.

STORY

On Monday July 10 at 3:00 the government of Piscataway, New Jersey will evict a family from their farm using eminent domain. While the U.S. Constitution should have protected their home now it is up to YOU. Some people plan to form "Human Constitution" around their home when the police arrive to take it.

The Halper family has farmed their land for over 80 years. Now the government of Piscataway, New Jersey will take their 75 acres using eminent domain. The government claims it wants to take the farm to preserve "open spaces." It's a farm. It is already an open space. Don't be surprised if shopping malls and condos are built on the Halper land in a few years. There is nothing to prevent the government from changing their use of the land after they grab it.

Furthermore, the family has turned down offers to develop it and even tried to sell the development rights to the State of New Jersey so they can be left alone. A representative of a Democratic campaign committee demanded a "contribution" in exchange for giving the Halpers a good price for the development rights. This request for a bribe was caught on tape by the FBI and lead to the resignation of Governor McGreevy.

With the "open space" argument shown to be absurd, the government next accused the farm of being a "toxic waste dump" althought they have failed to provide any proof of this. The only chemicals found were pesticides against mosquitos that the city itself was caught spraying on the farm in the middle of the winter.

The government of Piscataway has taken over the property of many other people in the area using all sorts of rationale (senior housing, open spaces, etc.) most of it has been sold to developers for high-density housing. Many people believe the Halper farm will also be sold by the city to well-connected developers.

The government of Piscataway, New Jersey has been harassing the Halper family for years by sending over police officers on bogus code infractions, driving by and shining bright lights in their windows and even arresting Larry Halper on superficial charges. When Freestar went to a public fair to interview Mayor Brian Wahler (and offer an award from Vladimir Lenin) we were surrounded by police and chased away. A government like this should not exist in America.

You can help draw a line in the sand in the battle over eminent domain. Take a stand at the Halper Farm. Don't assume others will preserve your freedom for you. We need YOU to join us. In addition to helping stop eminent domain abuse you can help the Halpers by purchasing a ornamental pear tree or shrub . They have spent a fortune on legal bills to try to fend off this land-grab by the government. Buy a plant, don't let the government steal it.

http://www.freestarmedia.com/halper.html
 
I am so sick of hearing about these local governments taking away people's property. It's always the ederly it seems. If they would just wait until the person died and the children inherited it and sold it off they would get what they wanted anyway. Most subdivisions today used to be farms. Farmer dies, kids get the land, sell it to a builder, End of story. What's the point of owning property if it can be taken away.

One time a government will try this and it will get bloody. Unfortunately that may be what it takes. If you get 100 people on a farm armed with various arms a local law enforement agency isn't going to be able to take them out. It will take the governor of that state calling in the Gaurd. Most people still belive in private property rights. I would not fire upon a property owner or his improptu milita or forcibly remove him.

You can say I'm not doing my duty but hopefully you would say that I am doing my duty by him.
 
Id like to see some info about this from an UNBIASED source.

WildbutheyitsthenetAlaska
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Whose land is it, anyway?
Posted: February 20, 2001
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

Larry Halper is the last farmer in Piscataway, N.J., And he's learning that's not an enviable role.

Halper grows pumpkins on a 75-acre plot in the nation's most densely populated state.

He's been offered, he says, up to $20 million by developers who would like to turn his little farm into an industrial park or a housing development.

He turned them down flat. He's a third-generation farmer and he doesn't want to sell the farm out from under his 79-year-old mother and 80-year-old aunt.

You might think government officials, so concerned with preserving open spaces and greenbelts, would be pleased with his decision. They're not.

In fact, local officials are trying to force Halper, through eminent domain, to sell his land to them for less than a fifth of what private developers offered.

That's what the idea of "property rights" has come to mean in 2001. Your property really doesn't belong to you -- it's kind of on loan from the government, which can call in that loan at its price any time it damn well pleases.

Let me tell you something, folks. If Larry Halper doesn't own his property and doesn't have the right to do with it as he pleases, none of us do. You don't have any rights over your home, your car, your children or even your ideas. They are all just on loan from the government.

Larry Halper's plight is by no means an isolated one. He's facing the same predicament as thousands of others across the country who are coming to learn that "life, liberty and pursuit of property" just doesn't mean the same thing it once meant in America.

I've been trying to wake up Americans to the threat they face since 1996, when I wrote "This Land Is Our Land," with Rep. Richard Pombo of California.

My main thought with that work was to show people that property rights isn't just a concern of farmers and ranchers or big landowners out West. Property rights are the essential freedoms upon which all of our individual liberties are based.

Did you know that the founding fathers believed that freedom of speech and freedom of the press descended from the concept of property rights?

That's right. It is because we own our ideas and our conscience that we have the right to use them. The state no more controls our land -- at least it's not supposed to -- than it may control our thoughts. Once we as a people yield our God-given property rights to government, or accept that they are actually privileges and not birthrights -- then we have not a leg to stand on in defending our free speech rights.

"But, Farah," you say, "we have a First Amendment that protects freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. How could they be attacked by government?"

Well, my friends, you might note we also have a Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures of their property, as well. Yet, that is happening -- every day in America today. We also, you might note, have a Second Amendment to the Constitution, which, unequivocally protects our right -- nay, our duty -- as citizens to bear arms. How many laws do we have on the books in Washington today that infringe upon that God-given unalienable right?

But it's hardly just Washington that is attacking property rights. The states are doing it. Local communities are doing it. And these attacks must be addressed by freedom-loving people before the masses accept the idea that government, at whatever level, is in control of everything.

Too many Americans are fat and lazy and ready to roll over any time a government agency tells them to do so. They've become conditioned to believe that government is there to be their helper, their nanny, their parent.

Government, instead, my friends, is the gravest threat to your freedom. It always has been and it always will be. It's the only force on Earth that can legally steal everything from you -- your home, your property, your kids.

It's time to take government back -- get it under control, force it to live under strict limits of authority and preserve freedom for future generations.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21777
 
Judge gives family extension on farm

Eviction was slated due to eminent domain
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 05/26/06

BY DEBORAH LYNN BLUMBERG
GANNETT NEW JERSEY
PISCATAWAY — The Halper family got another 90-day reprieve from being evicted from their 75-acre farm Thursday, the same day they were to vacate the property.

Though Superior Court Judge James Hurley, sitting in New Brunswick, denied on Monday the family's application to extend their residency, the Halpers received word Thursday that Appellate Division Judge Susan L. Reisner had granted a stay of eviction.

The dispute over the Halper farm began in 1999 when Piscataway officials moved to condemn the land on Metlars Lane and South Washington Avenue. The Halper family has owned the property since 1922. Officials feared development on the site and wanted to preserve it as open space.

In court decisions issued over the last seven years, the township won the right to take possession of the property, but the family has disputed the amount of money it should be paid. In 1999, the Halpers were given close to $4.4 million, which township officials estimated was the land's value then. The Halpers said they were due at least $12.9 million, the amount of an appraisal announced last year.

The state Supreme Court ruled the money must be left in the bank untouched pending an appeal with the township on the value of the farm.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060526/NEWS03/605260392/1007/rss03

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Township in the wrong on seizing family's farm: A Home News Tribune editorial

November 26, 2002

To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@thnt.com

The Halpers of Piscataway have fought the good fight in trying to save their family's dairy farm from condemnation by the township, even putting up a family member this fall to run for the governing body. Unfortunately for them, that race was lost. Worse for the family, the next salvo in their long-running stand against the township looks like a long shot at best.

On Dec. 2, the Halpers will ask Superior Court Judge Robert A. Longhi to decide whether Piscataway can legally wield its power of eminent domain to seize the family's 75-acre homestead, the only large tract of open space remaining in the township and the very reason it is so prized by the municipal government.

It seems unlikely the Halper's will get the ruling they want, municipalities' broad powers of eminent domain being what they are. Nevertheless, that sweeping ability to condemn private property over the objection of a land owner does not always make the deployment of eminent domain a sound or morally above-board practice, especially when a negotiated settlement is possible and therefore preferable.

Piscataway's head-long rush to grab the Halpers' land is one of those instances.

Elected officials say they they want to prevent any development of the Halper farm, but their argument holds less weight because there is no plan by the family to sell or develop the property.

The township's is solely a pre-emptive strike. Plus there are options for both sides. The township, for example, could agree to a right of first refusal, enabling it to match any development offer the Halpers get, if ever one is tendered. The family has offered that much already. Of course, a development offer would likely drive the price of compensation due the Halpers higher, more than the township wants to pay.

So rationalizing officials instead play their heavy-handed strategy -- a scheme that should concern anyone who is a land owner in the township and wants to remain so.

This page has always stressed that government should condemn private property only as a last resort and only when the land in question will serve a legitimate public purpose. Preservation of the Halper acreage certainly would accrue to the public good, but officials still have not proved condemnation is the only way to achieve that end. That is the shame and error in Piscataway's strong-arm ways.

The negotiating table is the better route. And might is not always right -- or smart.

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/township_in_the_wrong_on_seizing.htm
 
A pier in southflorida near where I'm going is being confiscated by the city in order to be sold to condo developers. It's valued at 40 million.

Owners get nothing.

This has been going on for years, just under "land use change" or some similar term.
 
No the point is if Piscataway gives him what HE thinks its worth, rather than what it ACTUALL is worth, then apparently there is no problem :)

WildthequestioniswhatitsworthAlaska
 
People who believed in freedom dropped what they were doing and showed up to confront their oppressors.
Click to expand...
take a stand against eminent domain abuse by camping out at the Halper Farm until the moment of eviction.
Click to expand...
Hardly the same thing
I mean aren't y'all even gonna go limp and make them carry you out or something
 
wildalaska said:
No the point is if Piscataway gives him what HE thinks its worth, rather than what it ACTUALL is worth, then apparently there is no problem
Click to expand...

No the dam point is that it is the Halpers property and they should be able to get whatever price they think their land is worth!!! Last I checked the seller gets to name the price of what he is selling not the buyer!:rolleyes:
 
There is a line of thought that everything belongs to the almighty Government and that we just pay rent on it. Possibly under that, they would be the ones who decide what it is worth. ;)
 
Alaska, the market decides the price? I thought is suggests a price which the seller then can accept or reject depending on how well it suits him?

Cheers,
Wolfe.
 
The landowner should be able to decide on the price of his property. The market will decide if this price is fair.

Perhaps the landowner put an unreasonable price on the property because he doesn't want to sell it. Perhaps the township is putting a lowball price on the property so as to maximize someones future profit.

As far as I'm concerned, if they don't want the farm for a school, a road, or some other public work, then they have no reason to use Eminent Domain. Not one condo, house or mall, or gas station should ever be built on land siezed through E.D.

There are too many crooked politicians, and developers have too much money to be allowed free reign in this area.
 
Kelo raised the publics awareness of the magnitude of the ED problem. A problem, I might add, that's been going on for decades. The result is that many politicians have raised their voices and have promised to write legislation to curb the states power.

Sounds so good when you read the above... However, it's been a year since the ruling. The publics attention has wondered elsewhere and the politicos have quietly dropped the ball (I don't think they ever really intended to do anything worthwhile anyway). Five states have passed legislation. If you look at the legislation, you will see that the "new" laws don't do much of anything. Many states, like Idaho, had several bills that just kinda fizzled out... But these legiscritters can go back home and say that they "honestly" tried to get something passed... They will be reelected.

Look up the difference between Fee Simple and Allodial Title. That alone will tell you the ED is not going to go away. Perhaps the best that can be had, is a change in state laws that actually address when ED can and cannot be used... But as we've seen, such a change will be difficult to affect.

You want effective and limiting change? Get with your local or state property rights groups and work with them. (a side effect is that you may turn a few of them that are against guns - there are many - to our way of thinking)
 
wildcheckyourinfoalaska said:
No actually the market does that
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Actually the market reflects a price that is comparable to other like propertys. If you want to buy something bad enough the market price means diddly!
 
what pricetag do you put on your property?


"Perhaps the landowner put an unreasonable price on the property because he doesn't want to sell it. Perhaps the township is putting a lowball price on the property so as to maximize someones future profit"...therefor maximizing their own profit as well.does anyone believe they do this for free?


come on..
 
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