Kiss your house goodbye

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, September 16, 2003 | Neal Boortz

[JohnHuang2]

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Quote of the Day by auntdot

[Pro-Bush]

Who determnes what "fair market value" is?

I can understand if widening the street or something, but for a freakin' auto-mall?..Good frief!

[WaterDragon]

The article is absolutely true. The first thing Stalin did was kill the kulaks (landowners) because they did not want to hand over their property to the State. Stalin knew anyone hanging onto their property would always undermine his power. So, he emptied the prisons (American liberals want the prisons emptied, too) and created from these thugs the first communist police force, the Cheka. The military refused to kill citizens for him but he knew criminals would be more than willing.

State, county and city officials are increasingly using this condemnation of private property to seize it for the state. It is not getting enough attention. You are doing a good thing, JH, by posting these articles. People better wake up. Private property ownership is the very underpinning of every other freedom we enjoy. When that goes, we're enslaved.

[birdsman]

Acctually, this isn't just happening in 1 Texas town. It's heppening throughout the country. They just throw out numbers and say how much more the city could do for the children with the extra tax dollars.

[John Valentine]

This is nothing new. It has been going on for YEARS. I know of a case where several small businesses were forced to move or close when the property where they were located was declared to be a flood plain.

Six months later it was disclosed that the land was destined to be included in a large regional mall, and the whole "flood plain" story was hogwash calculated to get the land cheaper than the developers could have bought it for themselves.

This was part of the services rendered to the developer to get them to locate the regional mall in that particular part of the county as opposed to anouther where the pot could not be sweetnened quite that much.

Of course the taxpayers carried some pat of the can for this, but it was the business owners that were forced out that had to pay the highest price.

[merry10]

Right next to me, a three story apartment complex is going to be built. In the dead of night, the city council decided to rezone the area from industrial to residential. Now a 250 unit complex will go up, adding 500 cars to an already busy street next to an overcrowded school.

[Pro-Bush]

I know it is nothing new, but I hate it none-the-less..corruption amongst developers & city planners must be exposed!

Time for change.

[spodefly]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked, like Boortz has done here, you may want to review an email from Kent Cagle to a poster on this forum from a previous thread on this very subject. Not to downplay the abuses of imminent domain that are occurring around the country, but there is more info to this story that Boortz is telling:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/981262/posts?page=69#69

[fella]

"Ya cann't fight city hall."

[countrydummy]

Excellent Excellent Post!!!!

[nathanbedford]

Many decades ago as a student, when liberal arts colleges still bothered to make a pretense of objectivity, I was involved in a seminar with equal number of professors and students.

Somehow I ended up trying to defend the proposition that property rights were very nearly as important to a free society as were first amendment rights. I will never forget the reaction: Scorn.

In the forty years that followed, all my experience and study has confirmed what were, after all, only the instincts of a callow youth, to be well founded.

The reaction of the PHDs around the semininar table told me volumes about how the left thinks. So one kid, at least, got a lessson that day which endured.

[Swordmaker]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked, like Boortz has done here, you may want to review an email from Kent Cagle to a poster on this forum from a previous thread on this very subject.

The only explanation that Cagle is really offering here is a defense of the misquotation attributed to him... but it still misses the point that siezing private property for PUBLIC use should be limited to PUBLIC use, not for the property to be seized and converted to some other PRIVATE use.

[RippleFire]

bump

[jim_trent]

This is NOT new.

Right or wrong, this has been the rule since the beginning of recorded history. Originally, it was the based on the devine right of kings -- they "owned" all property and just let others live on it in return for payments (taxes). After kings were deposed, it was continued in all other political systems that I know of. From an old Law Book: "The government and its grants are the true source of title to all lands in this country."

BTW, I have never heard the opposite of this being condemned by any of the people who post here. "Squatter rights", "adverse possession", etc. is the exact opposite of condemnation, whereby people can get ownership of land by occupying it without buying it.

[Final Authority]

It happens all the time but it is not only for tax revenue. Politicians become such to use their position of power to convert that to riches. In MA and recently in NH it is about pushing a development through to get a kick-back. This could be cash (dangerous) or cheap vacation property with some cash slipped in as well (much better). I never figured out how an alderman or a city councilor making about $40K can afford a condo at Killington VT and a time share in the Bahamas. Kick-backs by doing the "right thing".

[Cboldt]

See "Poletown" for a bigger example. GM wanted to build a plant, the local government authorities condemned many homes and business, and eventually, the planned development did NOT occur.

No heads rolled, AFAIK.

[RipSawyer]

We are merely less repressed than many other nations, to my knowledge there is no truly free country on the Earth and probably there never has been or will be.

[coloradan]

Read about Iceland in the middle ages: it was quite a bit closer than anything now, including America. David Friedman talks about it in The Machinery Of Freedom. There were many nice features of the society; among other things, one interesting aspect was that being adjudicated the victim of a crime was property, in that if a poor person was wronged by a rich one, the poor one can sue the rich, but can't exactly go out and collect. However, the poor person could sell his claim to a different rich person, disclaiming any future interest in the case, and then the other rich one could collect from the first rich guy; there were no government agents to seize your house, it was all done privately. Another interesting aspect was that one officer of the government would go to a hearing every so often, about once a year or every other year, and recite from memory the entire set of laws. If he missed something, you could object and there was some sanction that I don't recall, but if he missed something and no one objected, the missed law was stricken from the books! Basically, it was a demonstration that one person could know every law they were expected to abide by.

(Eventually, the crime rate rose "so much" that they asked a king to take over. That crime rate was quite a bit less than what is in America today.)

[hopespringseternal]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked, like Boortz has done here, you may want to review an email from Kent Cagle to a poster on this forum from a previous thread on this very subject. Not to downplay the abuses of imminent domain that are occurring around the country, but there is more info to this story that Boortz is telling:

The problem here is that Cagle and all who agree with him are quibbling over irrelevant details. Deborah Hodges may be mind numbingly stupid and greedy, but that doesn't change the fact that Cagle wants to seize her property and give it to another private party. Eminent domain was never meant for that and it is an abuse of power.

Just because the aristocrats are making nice offers today when stealing your property does not guarantee that they will make good offers tomorrow.

[spodefly]

I offered the reply from Cagle as an addition to Boortz's info. It does add some necessary detail. Nonetheless, even from Cagle's email, it is apparent that the road and parking lot aspects of this seizure are a done deal, and all they are left trying to resolve are the aspects related to her giving up her land for Costco, lest she have a 4 lane highway 12 feet from her front door.