At least Kelo didn’t steal the lenders money - it paid any unpaid loans, then a fair market value - this does not even come close to doing that
Which, pursuant to a real Tenth Amendment, it was. It is suicide for California to do this. The State will abuse that power and capital will flee to States more protective of private property. Let them do it so that all can see what abuse of eminent domain looks like.
I say that as a fourth generation Californian sitting in the cross-hairs of the green thugs as the juiciest target (in terms of biodiversity) they have ever seen. I'll bet there are idiots among them that truly believe our property is too important for me to keep. The problem for them is: I created and maintain that biodiversity. Without me the land dies in just a few years. So here we sit, an embarrassment to every academic and government "restoration ecology" program they have ever foisted on a taxpayer unaware of what pathetic results they produce. This is the power of Natural Law Competition, imposing discipline on government without any centralized authority to determine and enforce what a "just level" of eminent domain might be.
I support California's right as a State to fail utterly, just as I support a city's right to declare bankruptcy. This primacy of contracts for public employees, negotiated in secret, and established without recourse, is a terrible feature of law without some mitigating form of discipline. To accept that model is to allow one administration of crooked politicians to enshrine for decades a horrific outcome with the only penalty being thrown out of office to a waiting job. Without failure, they'll keep pooling the scale of enforced uniformity, dragging the whole world down with them.