I'm so glad that, in this country, we have property rights, so that we don't have to worry about having our lives trampled on by private industry or the government. Oh wait a second, that was until the Supreme Court decided today that building "a riverfront hotel, health club and offices" ... "in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn." ... "served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights."
Why would anyone want to vacation or work in a community that doesn't support the rights of its own residents?
3 comments:
What the crap!?! Those bastards! What the hell ...
What's going on in the world? We can lose our houses to stripmalls and our confidential credit card info can be sold to theives by the very people taking our outsourced jobs?
That's it, babe. I know we just moved. But I think it's time we started to colonize the moon.
At least the entertainment center won't weigh so much up there.
Yeah, this one freaked me out when I read it yesterday. Anytime I agree with the dissenting votes of Clarence Thomas, William Renquist, and Antonin Scalia... something's wrong in this world. But, then again, we can start all filing eminent domain claims against people we don't like as long as we can make up some token benefit to the community.
But really, this is one of the most upsetting things because it means that buying and owning land is meaningless as soon as a private developer wants your spot. It reminds me of that bullying scenario where a bully walks up to a kid and says "Excuse me, but I believe you're sitting in my seat." Impishly, the kid replies "Oh, but nobody was sitting here and I've been here for the last..." "I said, I believe you're sitting in my seat!"
In a parallel outrage, here in Burbank there was a parcel of land that just had a public building demolished, the land re-leveled, and the sight prepped for sale by the City of Burbank (city land). The cost of all that was 9 million dollars. They then sold it, before putting it up for sale publicly to the largest realestate company in Burbank for the princely sum of 100 dollars. As someone who can't afford to buy a house in Burbank, it causes mild rage that I could have afforded to buy this choice piece of land in Downtown Burbank across from City Hall for the same amount I pay on my electricity bill each month. I mention this because the shady backroom stuff that went into making the 100 dollar deal here is the same power and greasing of the wheels that will go into future occasions where instead of buying land from the city for 100 dollars, they instead pull an eminent domain act on private property. It's all part of the same corruption and it drives me nuts.
Oh... and the latest chapter in the 100-dollar-fiasco: The same realestate company wants to buy the next most valuable piece of empty land in downtown burbank: The lot across from the AMC movie megaplex. The price their willing to pay? -2,000,000.00. Yup, you read that right. They're offer says that the land is worth NEGATIVE TWO MILLION DOLLARS because it needs to be landscaped before development could begin. So if the city of Burbank pays them 2 million, they'll take it off our hands for us. Shameless.
Wow, the $100 thing is common, but -$2m is disgusting. You should out-bid them.. go to City Hall and suggest that you'll take the land, and the city only has to pay you $1.5m. How 'bout dem apples?
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