Posted on 03/20/2014 4:37:10 AM PDT by Mean Daddy
Don't know if it was the first - it was the first I'd ever heard about. And that is what was so stunningly horrific about it. By that standard, Eminent Domain could be used to take almost any property from anyone.
What I found so outrageous about it, is that it opens up an avenue whereby the government can simply take your property, to increase their own wealth and power, by claiming that their having more wealth and power is GOOD for the public at large.
That's some sick and twisted thinking right there.
Played that stupid game; got all the stupid prizes.
Fight the Free Sh☭t Nation
Pfizer should be paying the estates of all the lawful landowners for their loss of this property for the next 100 years. Too bad Eric The Red Holder isn’t into private property rights or he would shake it out of them.
“I remember being horrified by this decision. The one liberty essential to the American idea is property rights. Prior to America any king could take your property.”
In the 1960s the government seized the properties of the residents of Doodletown NY (along the Hudson River, south of West Point), allegedly to build a ski center for the adjoining Bear Mountain State Park. The ski center was never built, and their properties were simply added to the park (with no improvements - just the demolition of their homes, school, and church, and the barricading of the roads). Some of those families had been there when we DID have a king (they pre-dated the American Revolution); in the end a diffferent “king” took their land anyway...
Same thing happened in my town. Probably 6 or so little rectangular mill houses, 1000 - 1200 square feet, built off the ground, and hence, as easy to move as any house would ever be were on a piece of property the city claimed under eminent domain for future development. City came in with a front-end loader and demolished the houses. Now it’s just an empty lot grown over with trees now. Before I could make an offer to buy and move the houses, the city had torn them down.
“The developer should be fined daily until their great grandchildren are slaves to the Kelo evictees.”
It ain’t the developer’s fault. It is the city that abbrogated its duty to its own citizens. The city was supposed to protect the people of New London - rather it violated their property rights (morally, if not under the bizzare case law of the SCOTUS). The developer was only doing what developers will do - and in a perfect world they would have had to offer Ms. Kelo and the others sufficient compensation to get them to agree to sell their land. The city decided to screw its own citizens to fill full the Greedy Hand of Government with precious tax revenue lucre! The developer did not owe a duty to the citizens of New London, the city government did!
scotus.. add an R, what do ya got?
Urban renewal for New London, CT: use eminent domain to seize all private property in town, bulldoze all buildings, and pave over everything to make a king size municipal parking lot. Yup, that will be a great money maker for the town politicians.
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