[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.

[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.

[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".

[tang-soo]

I lived in Ft. Worth Texas during the early '80s. I remember a story where the city school district made the 'hard decision' to close 4 or 5 elementary schools as part of a budget and consolidation plan. The district repeated over and over that the decisions were soundly backed by data and no politics and that the decisions were firm. Then a curious thing happend - somebody did a little research on one of the properties and found that the land had beed deeded over to the school district with the stipulation that if it ever was used for anything other than a school, the property would return to the estate of the original owner. Well, all of of sudden, those firm decisions - based on firm data just had to be 'reviewed'. the end result? Another school was substituted - but I guess you already knew that by now. Sure! I know you did.