Kelo v. New London, Still the Worst SCOTUS Decision EVER!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Rat, what good impression could you possibly get?  It's armed robbery.  The fact that it's the local government doing it changes nothing.

Well, I dunno... half the time I think I know something and you all show me fifty different points of view I hadn't considered before. Since Imminent Domain was tangently related to the death of a guy I considered a personal hero... I figured maybe my view was skewed.

Nice to know that you agree with me

"Eminent" domain. Imminant domain would be real estate hanging menacingly over your head.


</fucking pedant>

Immanentize  the Mortgage?

*stands corrected on the spelling

[Iason Ouabache]

I never got the concept of Imminent Domain. The first time I heard of it, I was about 2 years out of high school and the city told my mentor (a retired engineer) that they were taking his property and he had to move. Wayne had three garages, multiple semi trailers and a humse and basement full of ... stuff. I say stuff because I'm not sure how you quantify studio equipment, broadcasting equipment for radio and/or tv from three different decades, one of the swords from the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie and lasers.

Anyway, they gave him 60 days and he found a piece of property about 2 miles away... then they found him dead, apparently dying while getting ready to disassemble the 80 ft tower we'd put up. Not their fault, but I think I got a bad imprint on the whole concept.

I think the first time I heard about eminent domain was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  "What do you mean, why's it got to be built? It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses."  

And honestly, I don't have a problem with eminent domain when it comes to actual public works like roads, railways, etc as long as there is over market-price compensation and ample warning given. Its when they go down the slippery slope of taking away residential property to hand it over to a developers in order to "raise tax revenue" that it really pisses me off. Then you are just asking for widespread corruption.

It pisses me off even more when the developers take the land, sit on it for 4 years and do absolutely nothing with it.  

[AFK]

Oy, eminent domain was something that came up a lot when I was studying Environmental Policy.  It is often used for development but sometimes it is used for ecological development, or more accurately, restoration projects. 

[Requia ☣]

I think the first time I heard about eminent domain was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  "What do you mean, why's it got to be built? It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses."  

And honestly, I don't have a problem with eminent domain when it comes to actual public works like roads, railways, etc as long as there is over market-price compensation and ample warning given. Its when they go down the slippery slope of taking away residential property to hand it over to a developers in order to "raise tax revenue" that it really pisses me off. Then you are just asking for widespread corruption.

It pisses me off even more when the developers take the land, sit on it for 4 years and do absolutely nothing with it.  

Market compensation is another kicker, people almost inevitably have to sue in order to get fair price on their property.

[Golden Applesauce]

Sorry to hear about your friend Dr. RB.

If there is a lesson from Connecticut's misfortune, it is that economic development that relies on the strong arm of government will never be the kind to create sustainable growth.

I have some serious problems with this conclusion.  It's completely non sequitur, but I suppose it's fitting for the WSJ, as this eminent domain is suddenly a right wing talking point.

It's absurd to draw such a conclusion from the failure of this one instance.  Economic development that relies on the strong arm of the government can and does work on countless occasions.  Has this author never heard of the military industrial complex?  Moreover, there certainly wasn't going to be any kind of economic development in that property when it was an old residential neighborhood.

Eminent domain might be a question of right and wrong, but there is no question as to whether or not  Urban renewal does work, and eminent domain is an effective means of accomplishing it.  If there is a problem it's not with the government's ability to take property, which is a vital power of the government and a Constitutional one.  It's a problem with the kickbacks given to government officials to grease the wheels.  Eminent domain isn't the problem, it's corruption in government, and apparently in the WSJ too.

I read the WSJ's statement as meaning that if the proposed development really was going become a sustainable profit-making machine, the developers could have afforded to pay better than current market value for the property, since the current market value was based on its status as a residential property (and a well-developed, sustainably profitable property would be worth much more.)  The fact that the developers couldn't find enough investors to just buy the property is an indication that they weren't going to be as profitable as they said.

I'm not sure how you consider the military-industrial complex to be sustainable - it requires continuous, low-level warfare just to remain functioning, turning the lives and security of soldiers and anybody who gets in their way into a literal resource, literal blood to oil the figurative machine.

And what do you mean by "urban renewal?"  It sounds disturbingly like "kicking people we don't like of their land so people of the right racial and economic status can use it."