"Peace Through Service"
"Peace Through Service" is the 2012 - 2013 Rotary International theme.
Welcoming the Merger of ESDCAR, NSDCAR and PSAR
Dear North San Diego County REALTORS:
I am writing in favor of welcoming the members of the East County Association of REALTORS and the Pacific Southwest Association of REALTORS into a merger with our association.
North County, East County, and Pacific Southwest all have had the option of passively allowing themselves to be merged with the San Diego Association of REALTORS, and have rejected that option. North County all too recently rejected a merger with the San Diego Association of REALTORS by a slim margin of 356 votes out of 2,896 votes cast. In other words, a change of 179 votes from “no” to “yes” out of 2,896 votes cast in our recent election could have changed the voting outcome.
East County and Pacific Southwest are smaller than North County, but they share our “member service” attitude. They are our friends in the world of organized real estate and they have reached out to us in the spirit of friendship for our help in preserving the culture that is common to all three of our associations. They were each also very supportive of our “SaveNSDCAR” efforts in the latest merger exercise.
As described in an August 2011 blog posting by R. Alan Smith, the Executive Officer of East San Diego County, North San Diego County was once 7 smaller associations that merged to become the model REALTOR Association that North San Diego County now is. Alan's blog also includes our District Map and speaks favorably of NSDCAR's established District system which, for more than twenty years, "has given [our] constituent groups all the advantages of a larger association while preserving local identity."
Adding East County and Pacific Southwest to North County’s model is not a loss; it is a gain to each association, and to all of the members of the merged associations. Should a merger of North County, East County and Pacific Southwest be approved by the members of all three associations, the resulting merged association will be unified, stronger, and better able to preserve the member and customer service attitude in San Diego County that we all so strongly believe in.
I encourage you to welcome East County and Pacific Southwest into partnership with us in continuing to work toward our common goal of member and association excellence.
Kevin Forrester,
2003 & 2005 NSDCAR President
"The EPA Had a Bad Day at the Supreme Court"
“'For 75 years, the courts have interpreted statutes with an eye toward permitting judicial review, not the opposite,' said Justice Stephen G. Breyer."
Read more on Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency from Damon W. Root of Reason Magazine here.
"Alan Gura's Expensive Lesson"
"When he took on Dick Heller's case, it likely seemed like a lost cause. A good cause, perhaps, but an uphill fight the whole way. Up the steepest hill you can find. The steepest hill that never ends. Yet Alan Gura took it on, and because he did, the Supreme Court reversed its view of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, restoring it to a fundamental right, in District of Columbia v. Heller.
For his efforts, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan smacked him."
Continue reading at Simple Justice.
Douglas E Noll Selected as President of the California Dispute Resolution Council
"'The CDRC monitors legislation affecting mediation, arbitration, and collaborative law, and assists Californians to resolve disputes in ways they choose, rather than have limited choices by the desires of special interests,' Noll explains."
"Redevelopment is Dead in California"
"After a run of more than 50 years, redevelopment and tax increment financing for development in California have come to an end."
(See Sheppard Mullin's "Update On Redevelopment Law: The Supreme Court Makes it Official - Redevelopment Is Dead In California".
"Liberty and Federalism"
“'The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.'”
Justice Robert Jackson quoted in Timothy Sandefur's comment on "Liberty and federalism in the Individual Mandate cases".
We are Americans
Let's remember on September 11, 2011, this historic message of President John F. Kennedy's January 20, 1961, inaugural address:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge – and more.
Remember, today and every day, that we are Americans.
Property is a Human Right (the video version)
Learn Liberty.org has released this excellent video of Timothy Sandefur discussing "Property Rights in 21st Century America" or, in other words, property rights as human rights.
Debating the Constitution
Thanks go to Gerald J. Russello, editor of The University Bookman, for this excellent review of Constitutional Originalism: A Debate, by Robert W. Bennett and Lawrence B. Solum, in which Messrs. Bennett and Solum present what Mr. Russello describes as "state-of-the-art cases for the two main schools of constitutional interpretation" - originalism and "living constitutionalism."
