Is This Shopping Center Blighted? [Eminent Domain Abuse]

The Village of Arlington Heights, Illinois is voting to seize the International Plaza Shopping Center, by eminent domain, in order to transfer ownership to a private developer who plans to build a SuperTarget. This will significantly hurt and, in many instances, put out of business over 70 tenants in the shopping center.

How can they do this? The only legal way is to declare the property "blighted," which they have done. Despite the fact that the center was 98% leased when declared "blighted," and is one of the more attractive shopping centers in Arlington Heights, they have declared it "blighted" so that they can attract a tenant (Target) who will bring in more tax revenue.

In Your vote, indicate where you live, and whether or not you have seen this property

It's really hard for me to say that a Supreme Court decision is "incorrect". I can think of only a few examples when the Supreme Court very deliberately ruled against the plain text of the Constitution, and all of those cases were post-Civil War cases in which the Supreme Court persistently and perversely sought a way to foreclose the plain meaning and intent of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and the laws that immediately flowed from them, from being enforced.
The purpose of those Amendments and laws was not JUST to prohibit the states (and specifically the recently recaptured Southern states) from imposing ANY legal barrier on the rights of the newly freed blacks. They were citizens now, period, and any subterfuge was unconstitutional. Further, blacks were to have direct recourse against any state or local government, OR INDIVIDUAL, in Federal Court, if their full equal rights were not respected. That was the intent of the Amendments and the laws, and that is what the language meant when it was enacted, and means today. It's important to realize how radical the post-Civil War Amendments were, because it sharply defines the historical point I was making, which was that BEFORE the Civil War and its Amendments, the Bill of Rights did NOT apply to the states - and nobody thought it did - but AFTER the Civil War, the Constitution was explicitly amended three times to remove from the states any discretion whatever to suppress the full and untrammelled equality of former blackls slaves with their former masters. What's more, the individual right of free contract, which is itself a constitutional right, was limited by the 14th Amendment. It was a violation of the Constitution and of the Federal Laws enacted to enforce the newly amended Constitution, for PRIVATE individuals in PRIVATE business deals and contracts, to discriminate against blacks. In other words, the right of contract was abridged by the 14th Amendment to specifically prohibit all of the sort of discriminatory crap that went on under Jim Crow in the South, and the law TODAY, that it is a Federal Crime to discriminate against blacks in PRIVATE business dealings and accomodations, was what the CONSTITUTION ITSELF was amended to say and mean in the 1860s with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. That was the INTENT, it is what the "privileges and immunities" language meant, and it was what the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1873 explicitly said. The private right of contract in the Constitution was AMENDED to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on former slave status.

Southerners HATED that. They HATED it. They intended to hold blacks down, and Nhad no intention WHATEVER of treating them as legal equals, social equals or business equals. The Constitution and Federal law said they HAD to, now, hut almost immediately the Federal courts began to intervene to carve away the plain language of the law and the universally understood intent of the Reconstruction Amendment. First, the federal right of action against PRIVATE discrimination was ruled out of line. Then, the federal right of action against PUBLIC discrimination was ruled out of line. And finally, with Plessy, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were completely overruled by the Supreme Court, and the whole project of Reconstruction was undone until it was reinstated, first with Brown v. Board of Ed., and finally with the Voting Rights Amendment of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. None of the 20th Century stuff SHOULD have been necessary. It had all been done, and in the Constitution itself, in the 1860s. But the Supreme Court of the late 19th Century intentionally turned a blind eye to the words and intent of the Constitution, and mangled the meaning beyond recogiition, specifically because tyhey were racists and had absolutely no intention whatever of allowing Federal law to be used as a club to COMPEL racial equality.

So we had to do it in our time instead, and unfortunately to undo the treacxhery of the activist, racist 19th Century Supreme Court, we had to have a similarly activist 20th Century Supreme Court.

The issue of the black race is the only case I can think of where the Supreme Court clearly, intetionally and with full knowledge and intensve malice, read the Constitution to read what every one of them knew damned well it did NOT say.

I can't think of any other cases. In the case of Roe, they knew they were reading something into it, and were certainly activists, but they did not have the malice aforethought to know they were intentionally frustrating three Constitutional Amendments. With Kelo, they did an economic analysis. One may not like the result, but they weren't motivated by evil.

The racists of the 19th Century were motivated by malice and evil. The point had been lost, and the Constitution was amended thrice, but they had the power to ignore it, and did. That's the only case of that I can think of.

If that is blighted then there are hundreds and maybe thousands of blighted stip malls in this country

Of the dozens of strip malls within a mile of this mal, this International Plaza is by far the cleanest looking one. Part of the good looks is the graceful, yet clean lines of the architecture. It is not a cookie-cutter mall.

Accross Arlington Hts Rd the Jewel Supermarket mall 1,000 ft to the West is a very dirty looking mall. Accross Golf Rd the businesses are more cluttered with no harmony in frontage, signage, roof-line, etc.

This is a prosperous suburb. If "blight" did exist, the free market would quickly remove it due to the value of the location. But all of that is irrelevant. The constitution, and even Kelo, have no special clause for blight.

The new wave is SMART GROWTH which, as far as I can tell, is a megalomaniac empowerment policy.

If I were accused of a crime, if I were innocent, I would MUCH prefer to be tried in France. It is extremely unlikely that the case would ever get to trial at all. American prosecutors are elected politicians with enormous discretion. French prosecutors are judges, with very little discretion.

If I were guilty, I would prefer to be tried in America, because maybe I could get a Johnny Cochran type who would be able to razzle-dazzle the jury and get me off, guilty or not.

The American jury system is the REASON for casino justice, and lies at the heart of the most glaring absurdities and injustices in the American system.

"Innocent until proven guilty"...what do you think the French system is? Seriously, what do you think it is?
I could explain the way it works, and why there is so much greater protection of the individual from being convicted and jailed for a crime he did not commit than in America, or be found negligent and be fined millions of dollars for serving hot coffee to a klutz.

One way of judging the relative acceptability of a legal system is to poll people and talk to them about their own views of their legal system. Americans will complain about huge, random settlements, and travesties of justice in politically charged trials (Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson leap to mind, because they were showpiece trials of American justice for all the world to see. So has been FitzGerald's jihad against Scotter Libby. Political prosecutions, political juries, etc.). The French complain chiefly that the courts take too long, but the French are compaining about delays of a few months to a year. American cases drag on for years and years and years.

Still, I want to drill in on what you think the French justice system IS and how you think it operates. There is not a jury trial, except for murder, and it's not like an American jury. But "presumption of innocence"? Whaty do you think is lacking in the French system?

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