"Eminent domain, no one likes it"

That's Auburn, New York Mayor Michael Quill talking to Fox News, where he defended his city's shameful threat to use eminent domain against private property on behalf of a hotel conference center. "We have a responsibility to the entire community," Quill told Fox, "we do not want to hurt an individual property owner or business owner, but we have to look at the long range for the entire community." Think of the community! Fox also turned to Quill's potential future victims for their thoughts:

"This is abuse, it's one case of eminent domain abuse," says Renee Smith-Ward, owner of a dog grooming salon, Wag'In Tail, that could be plowed down for the hotel's parking lot. "I don't believe it's right to take someone's property away from them for a hotel, for a private developer."  

"These people just want to come in and steal it from you," says property owner Michael Kazanivsky, who says he has dreams to build a family amusement center on what is now a grass and rubble filled lot. "They're trying to take if from me," he says bitterly, "it's not right."

He told Fox News that he put his "heart and soul into it," and now "someone just comes and says 'I want that, give it to me or that's it!.. it's hell."   The plan would put an $11 million, 88 room hotel on what is now a mixture of an abandoned building, and two businesses.

Read the whole thing here.

Comments

[hmm]

This hurts me more than it does you.

*snaps rubber glove*

god I hope that was a rubber glove

[Aresen]

Yes, it certainly sounds a lot like “Don’t make me do this.”

[Flex Nasty B.I.G.]

Doctor, I do not understand. How is it that you can be giving me this prostate exam when both of your hands are resting on my shoulders?

[The Libertarian Guy]

There’s a hand on each shoulder!

[J sub D]

Obligatory “FUCK YOU” to John Paul Stevens goes here.

[robc]

Dont forget David Souter.

[LIng Macrodite]

LOL, everyone “rents” the property they “own” from the state anyways LOL

Lou
http://www.anonymity.vze.com

[hmm]

Anon bot is now trolling. That’s freakin’ awesome.

[Aresen]

MNG and Chad may be put out of work by automation.

[wylie]

Liberals lose their jeorbs to Artificial Intelligence, tonight at ’11.

[MNG]

Governments do create systems of private property. They should: these provide powerful incentives that make society overall better off. These incentives would work much less if the rights created were some type renting, so I’d be against that.

[wylie]

Please to be explaining property taxes oh sage of sages (no offense to Sage.)

[cynical]

Society creates systems of private property. They turn to government as an effective means of enforcing these rules. Generally, any system of “property” imposed from the top down rather than growing from the bottom up tends to be corrupt as all fuck, especially at the outset.

[West Texas Boy]

Anon-bot has already distilled your usual property-ignorant argument to its logical conclusion, MNG. You’re officially obsolete.

[Libertymike]

The language of the 5th amendment does not specifically grant the state the power to take, by force, the proptery of the “holdout,” who has not consented to the taking of his property.

If one is a friend of liberty, one does not buy the notion that “powers” are implied in a constitution drafted by men who favored chaining the ambitions of those who would use the state to impose their will. Absent a direct, unambiguous, unequivocal command that the state has the power to physically confiscate the property of another without the other’s consent, the proposition that such a power is implied is downright absurd. If the framers had intended to empower the state to physically confiscate the land of a holdout to some Lincolnian “internal improvement,”
they would have so ordained. They chose not to grant this power.

In construing the words of a constitution written by men who risked their lives, their families and their fortunes so that they could secede from a regime were the state was indulged with arbitrary and capricious power, and who intended to create a new order that recognized that peace and prosperity and stability could only be achieved by keeping the rent seeker and the power broker and the do gooder and the law and order types under the foot of each and every individual, one would have to be a troubador of totalitarianism or a SPLC crackpot or just a few fries short of a happy meal to opine that the framers wanted judges to hold that the state had “implied” powers and that the exercise of such powers are presumed to be constitutional.

[MNG]

A clause that says essentially “you have to give compensation when you take” most certainly acknowledges a power to take.

[MNG]

You think they were placing a condition on a non-existent power? WTF?

[wylie]

Lets just ignore the fact that the power to take was granted for “public uses”. rather “The property need not actually be used by the public; rather, it must be used or disposed of in such a manner as to benefit the public welfare or public interest.”

Which of course is served by redistributing property to more lucrative tenants.

[James Allen]

Yup, the phrase “The property need not actually be used by the public; rather, it must be used or disposed of in such a manner as to benefit the public welfare or public interest,” is so goddamn broad it can apply to almost anything that would raise the value of the property.

Such lame rationale bamboozled our great outgoing justice John Paul Stevens who wrote in Kelo: “the city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue.” Oh yay! Hooray for the central planners! And it was so carefully formulated that the developement project fell apart:

“The well-laid plans of redevelopers, however, did not pan out. The land where Suzette Kelo’s little pink house once stood remains undeveloped. The proposed hotel-retail-condo “urban village” has not been built. And earlier this month [November, 2009], Pfizer Inc. announced that it is closing the $350 million research center in New London that was the anchor for the New London redevelopment plan, and will be relocating some 1,500 jobs.”- SF Chronicle (11-28-09)

I know I’m recapilulating this for most of you but this all bears much repeating.

[J sub D]

“Eminent domain, no one likes it”

Apparently you and the developer who wants to put up the hotel do, you lying piece of shit.

[Paul]

What more can even be said about this shit?

[P Brooks]

Blight never sleeps.

[Robert]

What I don’t understand is why, when so few lots are involved and the space taken up by them is so small, eminent domain is even necessary. It would seem the developer could easily alter the plans as to location or size to accommodate such land as could be acquired.

BTW, I’ve been to Auburn twice, but both times were in the 1990s, so I don’t know what it’s like now.

[wylie]

Everyone has their price. It’s not like they have to overpay to an entire neighborhood, just a few residents.

But hey, it’ll be worth it after all the court costs and Blight Assesments.

[Ben P.]

What I love is that if you read the comments on the Fox article to which this links, there’s a long argument as to the conservative vs liberal nature of eminent domain abuse. People are fighting to point the fingers, calling this Obamarxism, and the like.

And yet if you read the actual article, the freakin’ mayor proposing and/or defending this particular abuse of eminent domain is described as an ex-Marine and a Palin fan. So everyone’s pointing fingers at the liberal wing of SCOTUS for ‘allowing’ this, but at least 9 pages into the comments, not one person has pointed out that if the Mayor was a ‘True Conservative’, he’d never abuse this awesome power the liberals want people to have.

So, in a nutshell, power corrupts no matter who wields it? Wow, I couldn’t have foreseen *that*.

[The Libertarian Guy]

Just goes to show, Ben… there are traitors in both major political parties.

[Bruce Ratner]

“Eminent domain, no one likes it”

Hey, hey, there, big fella, let’s just slow down! “No one” is a pretty broad statement – you may want to moderate that a bit.

See you all at Atlantic Yards! Bye for now!

[Lyle]

It used to be that developers would just buy people out. My god, what the hell is the world coming to. Kim Jung Il that’s what.

[Barack Obama]

Workin’ towards that, Lyle, but it might take two terms to complete My plans.

[Michael Ejercito]

Where are the people who threatened murder against Comedy Central to compel them to censor an episode of South Park ?

Is not eminent domain abuse much more important than some silly cartoon?

[JB]

If Michael Quill cared about the community, he would commit suicide.

Do it you cowardly fuck and show you care.