Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 06/25/2008 6:56:21 AM PDT by bamahead
In her two great works--The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities—Jane Jacobs explained that effective economic development and urban renewal arise from the bottom up as the product of thousands of enterprises and people working on their own without a master plan, rather than from the top down, as planned by politicians or bureaucrats. The vibrancy and diversity of city markets and neighborhoods lie in “the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework of public action,” she observed.
This week, it is exactly three years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo decision, which endorsed a very different view of how local economic progress occurs. In that decision, the court said that it was okay for government to condemn and take private property and use it for new economic development if officials believed that the seizures would "provide appreciable benefits to the community, including…new jobs and increased tax revenue." The court’s decision expanded the so-called “takings” clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which previously had been interpreted to mean that government could only take private property to create a public “good,” such as construction of a needed new highway or water pipeline.
Indeed, the very redevelopment project that sparked the Kelo lawsuit, an effort by the town of New London, Ct., to turn its Fort Trumbull waterfront into a haven for high-priced homes and 21st century jobs, has sputtered. The ground where Susette Kelo’s home stood is now barren, because the townhouses that the city-sponsored developer was supposed to build there have never gone up. Interest in the area isn’t very great and the developer hasn’t been able to get financing.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Ordinary citizens are losing their property rights.
Criminals are being exported to the suburbs -- along with the families who are trying to escape them.
Neighborhoods are being destroyed, rather than enhanced.
And behind this corrupt, misguided movement lies the heavy hand of government. And the courts.
One hesitates to speculate whether we've ever ventured so far from "government of the people, by the people, for the people".
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Ahh, the irony. My condolences to Kelo.
Jane Jacobs explained that effective economic development and urban renewal arise from the bottom up as the product of thousands of enterprises and people working on their own without a master plan,
Rarely heard truth on the topic.
Anyway...They wrote of this before. It's called the vampire economy. It is where there is the appearance of free enterprise but it actually is state capitalism. It is the advancement of socialism under the guise of the greater good.
Phil Valentine, a local radio host who was very active in the TN tax revolt (protesting the proposed income tax) has vowed to make it a fight. his website is his name plus dot com.
bttt
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