Posted on 06/23/2005 11:54:19 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The point is this:
So many have sat by and done nothing as our constituionally protected rights have been slowly eroded away.
What might be next?
Yes, and yes. I want my country back.
Heaven help you if your septic system ever overflows.
Isn't that 'Mr. Libertarian Pure Conservative' Ron Paul's district? Interested to see if he will have any meaningful response and take action to prevent this.
This time was prophesied to unfold. There still remains many good and decent people who are holding the very fabric of the universe together. Freerepublic has a large percentage of these people as members.
Having faith in the ultimate benevolence of the Creator is very difficult in the face of real evil, but it is vital to our wellbeing.
They are condemning property that belongs to two businesses to give to a "private marina?" That*s not right. This is exactly what all of us could face at any given time that someone wants our property. I hope Congress will pass an amendment to override this decision!
We'll be here all week - don't forget to tip your waitress on the way out.
We already have the Amendment. What we need now is a revolution.
(I didn't post the story below as a free standing thread. Go ahead if you want to.)
Freeport moves to seize 3 properties
FREEPORT - With Thursday's Supreme Court decision, Freeport officials instructed attorneys to begin preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property along the Old Brazos River from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina.
he court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that cities may bulldoze people's homes or businesses to make way for shopping malls or other private development. The decision gives local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.
"This is the last little piece of the puzzle to put the project together," Freeport Mayor Jim Phillips said of the project designed to inject new life in the Brazoria County city's depressed downtown area.
Over the years, Freeport's lack of commercial and retail businesses has meant many of its 13,500 residents travel to neighboring Lake Jackson, which started as a planned community in 1943, to spend money. But the city is hopeful the marina will spawn new economic growth.
"This will be the engine that will drive redevelopment in the city," City Manager Ron Bottoms said.
Lee Cameron, director of the city's Economic Development Corp., said the marina is expected to attract $60 million worth of hotels, restaurants and retail establishments to the city's downtown area and create 150 to 250 jobs. He said three hotels, two of which have "high interest," have contacted the city about building near the marina.
"It's all dependent on the marina," Cameron said. "Without the marina, (the hotels) aren't interested. With the marina, (the hotels) think it's a home run."
Since September 2003, the city has been locked in a legal battle to acquire a 300-by-60-foot tract of land along the Old Brazos River near the Pine Street bridge as well as a 200-foot tract and 100-foot tract along the river through eminent domain from Western Seafood Co. and Trico Seafood Co.
Eminent domain is the right of a government to take private property for public use upon payment of the fair market value.
The tracts of land would be used for a planned 800- to 900-slip marina to be built by Freeport Marina, a group that that includes Dallas developer Hiram Walker Royall. He would buy the property from the city and receive a $6 million loan from the city to develop the project.
Freeport Marina would then invest $1 million in the project and contribute a 1,100-foot tract of land, valued at $750,000, to it before receiving the loan.
Western Seafood spokesman Wright Gore III said the wholesale shrimp company was disappointed with the Supreme Court decision, but believes the ruling does not apply to the city's eminent domain proceedings.
He said there is a provision in state law that allows residents of a city to a circulate a petition to call a vote on whether the city can take property using eminent domain.
"(This) is far, far from over," Gore said. "(We) would have liked to have seen a victory on the federal level, but it is by no means a settled issue."
Gore said Western Seafood's 30,000-square-foot processing facility, which sits on the 300-by-60-foot tract, would be forced to close if the land were seized.
That facility earns about $40 million annually, and Western Seafood has been in business in Freeport since 1946, he said.
City officials, however, have said the marina will still allow Western Seafood and Trico Seafood, which did not return telephone calls or e-mail Thursday, to operate their facilities.
In August, U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent ruled against a lawsuit filed by Western Seafood seeking to stop the city's eminent domain proceedings. The seafood company then appealed its case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, a request that initially was denied.
The appeals court then decided it would take the case, but not rule on it until after the Supreme Court made a ruling on the New London, Conn., case.
Chronicle reporter Richard Stewart contributed to this report.
citydesk@chron.com
richard.stewart@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3239024
The City of San Diego is gonna have a field day with this ruling. Proposed airport expansion...no problem. More waterfront hotels and casinos...no problem. Just push the businesses out that have been there forever. They (National City) already forced my father to sell his property so that the indians can build a waterfront casino on it. Wouldn't let him sell it to anyone else. This ruling just opens the floodgates to something that has already been happening.
Look at the bright side ... New York can now move to do something about that blight at Turtle Bay.
Yep! That*s beginning to look like the only answer.
Yeah, until the breeze shifts. I'm sure the doctors, lawyers, and drug runners in all those fancy boats won't mind being downwind from the shrimp factory.
And when they are no longer in office will their followers adhere to this statement? Questionable at best. Best to go with the amendment.
James Madison:
"We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties."
"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights."
"The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."
John Adams:
"Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty."
George Washington:
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
Patrick Henry:
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
Alexis de Tocqueville:
"In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned."
Thomas Jefferson:
"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
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