[1rudeboy]

A position that is debatable.

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?
Question: who is being excluded from the land?

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."

It is the inability to make the above distinction(s) that sends people into mental vapor-lock when discussing Kelo.

[Paul Ross]

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?

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."