Posted on 01/05/2007 10:48:25 AM PST by jmc813
You never answered. What is the NAU transportation plan?
The terms "public use," and "private use," are not debatable in this context . . . they are legal terms-of-art. If you wish to debate that a road (tollway or not) is "private use," then you need to ask yourself these questions:
Question: who holds title to the land and the improvements thereupon?The second question is what trips most people up, because they associate "public" with "free," not understanding that public use-fees are a fact of life. Take Burnham Harbor in Chicago, for example. It is funded by taxpayers, and operated (on paper, at least) by the Chicago Park District. The Park District also charges yearly slip-fees in the thousands of dollars, and the waiting-list for slips is rather long. One cannot appear there and claim, "I'm a taxpayer, park my boat." Nor can one claim that the Park District's refusal or inability to provide accomodation is evidence that the facility is not "public."
Question: who is being excluded from the land?
It is the inability to make the above distinction(s) that sends people into mental vapor-lock when discussing Kelo.
Sheesh! Something new here, folks. Ficklin needs a spokesperson.
Good question. But not nearly as definitive practically as you might conjecture. Since the promoters have been fudging the relevance...or practical meaning... of legal concerns...it is almost touching that they suddenly assert what must seem to them a quaint notion: title interest. An interest that is now conveniently waived with the stroke of a government's pen...declaring a general "public use" that in fact is slanted for a distinctly special interest.
One notable beneficiary, clearly, is an accommodating foreign interest, the Spanish toll-road operation which will have the franchise to collect the tolls. But that is tangential to the larger intentions behind the promised "public" use.
More centrally, I was explicitly questioning the purported "Public use" broadly-speaking. At the policy claim level of the promoters. Who is it burdening, and who it is benefiting. That is where the apologists for the TTC go into mental vapor-lock.
Note also, those same TTC promoters have gone way out of their way to prevent the actual public from having a say, or a vote on this matter, in Texas or anywhere else it appears to be heading...
So it would appear to not be a "public" use that the promoters wish to risk public opinion being put to the test.
Question: who is being excluded from the land?
How are the burdened land-holders "included" in the decision-making of the takings? How are they benefitted? How are the General taxpayers, and the Public as a whole? How is the Particular case of the U.S. tax-paying competitors...domestic manufacturers...compared to the duty-free Importers "benefitted"? Also the relative burdening effects of having Mexican cartage firms, and their truckers suddenly erupting into U.S. territory [another "qaint notion"?]...running up to Canada, where they can then head back with another full load of imports to the U.S. instead of dead-heading as the U.S. cartage firms are forced to do.
[One almost might think it was a scheme to destroy them...must not be regarded as "stake-holders" LOL!]
Clearly, there are welfare-effects...redistributions... here, a taxpayer financed subsidy to the Importers, that "are not debatable in this context."
And you need a dictionary. "Spokeperson," being a compound noun, is beyond your reach.
Just add a "s" where it belongs. I figure that most get my drift, but you might not.
How about dams? powerplants?
Dams and powerplants are okay, as long as they aren't connected to a yucky foreign country.
Internet publishing is great. It has already changed the world for the better, but I stand by what I said. No silly internet forum fight has ever changed anything that really matters. :)
Shouldn't you have said, add AN 's', not a 's'. Correct an error with another error. For a second there I thought you fixed spokes for a living.
I've had my say, asked my questions, and provided my links. Sufficient for the day.
You never answered my question. What is the NAU transportation plan? Maybe you have a link?
I certainly respect your views and I could lean all the way if in all cases that's all there is, the fight.
But at least there's communication sometimes narrowing until a crucial difference is defined. Then the contumely yields to substance.
True, it ain't no Rathergate but IMO we learn something.
Apparently, even the alphabet is beyond your reach. "S" is a consonant, not a vowel.
That's the problem when you start speaking in generalities. There is no difference between taking land under eminent domain for a foreign-operated wastewater plant, a foreign-operated airport, or a foreign-operated tollroad (all are "public uses," by the way). That's where your analysis breaks down, and I still see no reason to debate the meaning of the term itself instead of whether it applies to the examples above.
And pointing-out the difference between a sale and a lease is not "splitting hairs," since I've observed others confusing the two countless times in the past. In fact, one shouldn't even dare discussing a Supreme Court ruling of any kind without understanding that words have meanings apart from one's own opinion of what they should mean.
Finally, I will emphasize that a road is a "public use," even under a pre-Kelo standard. Even if the Kelo ruling did not exist, the State of Texas would still have the legal (and Constitutional) authority to "take" land in order to build the TTC, regardless of the national origin of who or what ultimately operates it. A sad fact, maybe . . . and we should be wary of how eminent domain powers are excercised. But one cannot expect to appear on a thread yelping Kelo, or "Kelso," without others wondering if he or she has bothered to read the opinion, or even has a basic understanding of eminent domain in the first place.
The NAU "transportation plan," as can be surmised from some of the links provided on this thread, appears to be revolve around those FEMA "cattle-cars" shipping us to concentration camps south of the border, and returning with loads of illegal Mexican aliens. It's just a matter of when W. declares martial law.
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