So. To honor a hijacked plane they’ll hijack property.
That’s what America is about these days—if you build your cause up to be noble enough, you think you have the right to demand that others sacrifice for it or that you can demand anything for it. People have lost all sense of proportion.
But when people want a field in the middle of nowhere made into a memorial to national heroes, it's "Bush seizing land."
Go to hell, media hacks.
What’s interesting is when it comes to estate valuation for tax purposes, the real estate is valued often not as it is currently being used but as it might be used. Thus, farmers who haven’t chosen the farm valuation option with its restrictions might have the land valued at subdivision values. Yet when it comes to valuing land for eminent domain purposes, the government low-balls it. For the government it’s win-win and for the public it’s lose-lose everytime.
The owner should set up some kind of memorial at the site and allow access to it, at a price at least enough to maintain the marker and roads to it and whatever else the market would bear. If the families believe the memorial is insufficient, they have a choice to set up another memorial somewhere nearby on public lands or purchase the property at the price that includes its new value as a historic crash site.
While I honor the bravery and sacrifice of the Flight 93 men and women, I can’t condone the heavy hand of government forcing the landowners to dedicate their land to a memorial or a “cemetery”. What has made this country what it is is the ability to move beyond tragedy to victory, beyond tradition to progress. Americans have little patience with those who believe they have the right to freeze their progress to mourn the past year after year after year, and to expect others to accede to their wishes. I don’t want this nation to become a museum for the past as Europe is becoming. We build, tear down, remember, then move on.
As long as it has Islamic symbolism, forget about it.
Really a small marker is all that is needed. Forget about the gift shop and all the frills.
From later in the article:
“The effort to build a permanent memorial began with legislation signed by Bush
in September 2002, leading to plans for a 2,200-acre national park site...”
- - -
Can anyone explain why they need TWENTY-TWO-HUNDRED ACRES of land for this?
And we can memorialize them anywhere.
Like many federal bureaucracies, the Park Service I believe has been largely taken over by the Left.
So the problem is likely either
- typical bureaucratic bungling (brought about by un-fireable Dim federal hirees)
- or perhaps something more sinister (pun intended) perpetrated by Leftists in the Park Service.
Either way, I don't see this as a bad landowner, but a bad bureaucracy.
I hope President Bush WILL resolve it -but NOT through a "taking." He'd better act soon before Obama steps in and "saves" the day by royally seizing the land.
Arlington National Cemetery contains only 624 acres
and it is the final resting place of more than 290,000 people.
The Flight 93 memorial would be three times that size.
...Svonavec argued that negotiations on the 275 acres at the heart of the proposed memorial, including ground zero where 40 innocent passengers and crew were killed, have not taken place for the past four months.In March, the park service retained Utah-based LECG to independently appraise the property. For reasons that remain unclear, the government’s Appraisal Services Directorate later rejected LECG’s report.
Svonavec officials say that they have been unable to obtain a copy of that appraisal, and The Tribune-Democrat also was denied access.
Three years earlier, another independent appraisal was done and later rejected.
The park service has said its own appraisers established a value of $250,000 for the land, or less than $1,000 an acre....
How stupid can these people be?
1400 acres ?!?!?!?! This is completely insane. And $56 million, with nearly half to come from taxpayers? And then how much would it cost EVERY year for the Park Service to "manage" this preposterous establishment? I really doubt that the heroes of Flight 93 would support this. They didn't give their lives in order to create another expensive government program.
Use 10-15 acres where the bulk of the remains are believed to be, and build a reasonable memorial. The landowner would probably be happy to just donate that much land.
What kind of people are these? Something does stink here.