I’ve come to believe that the root cause of much of the Eminent Domain abuse is property taxes.
Yes, property taxes.
By being able to tax private property the Government (Local, state and Federal), have a legitimate point in that the property you might think you own is actually the property of the government and what we call property taxes can be thought of as ‘Rent’.
We are all tenants on our own property and the Government owns everything.
I agree completely and have been called an idiot for pointing this out to people. Hope you continue to inform people of the fact property taxes mean we do not own our land.
Here in Arkansas some years back there was a movement to eliminate property taxes and replace the lost revenue with sales taxes. The State government resisted strongly. Eventually, the Arkansas supreme court ruled against it with what I thought was a very weakly reasoned ruling. Conclusion: Government wants property taxes even if their elimination results in no loss of revenue. Why? To control us!