Posted on 02/04/2014 10:45:46 AM PST by mgist
‘Kelo’ Revisited Properties were seized and a neighborhood razed in the name of ‘economic development’ that never came
"See that pole with the transformer hanging from it?” Michael Cristofaro asked me. “That was where my family’s home was.”
MICHAEL CRISTOFARO STANDING IN WHAT ONCE WAS HIS YARD IN NEW LONDON, CONN.
TIM COOK / THE DAY
I looked up at a line of high telephone poles marching diagonally against a blanched winter sky across a vast, empty field; that was entirely uninhabited and looked as though it had always been that way. New London, population 27,000, a rundown onetime whaling port on the Atlantic coast that never recovered after the whaling industry died at the end of the 19th century, is a desolate-looking city. Cristofaro, a 52-year-old New London-born computer network engineer, and I were in its most desolate neighborhood actually, ex-neighborhood, for there was not a residential property left standing on the entire tract. Just below us lay the mouth of Connecticut’s Thames River (unlike in London, “Thames” rhymes with “James,” and the “th” is pronounced as in “thumb”) where it joins the northerly end of the Long Island Sound. An icy New England January wind cold enough to freeze the ink in my ballpoint pen into a gray, spidery scrawl as I scribbled notes ripped across the only signs of life, actually former life, on the deserted incline: waist-high dead weeds, probably the remains of the goldenrod, yarrow, pokeweed, and high grass that grow everywhere during warm months on the North Atlantic coast.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Gov't officials need to be swinging from the yardarms.
This was done for Pfizer. Joe Leiberman’s wife was an Executive there.
This still strikes me as one of the greatest injustices perpetrated against citizens by their government. The Kelo decision is an abomination. Private property is one of the foundation stones of liberty.
This was Souter’s finest hour.
Pictures of the Wasteland should be sent to SCOTUS annually on the anniversary of their "opinion". 'Tards.
eminent domain needs to be fixed. no land should be taken from private landowners and transferred for use by another private entity.
furthermore, either the land is used for it’s stated purpose within a certain time frame (i say five years) or it is returned to the origio0nal owners, along with rent covering the time when the owners left till the expiration date.
SCOTUS micturated on the US Constitution.
That is as much “news” as the weather.
Private Property is just SO inconvenient...
Too bad Souter’s semi-rural Homestead was not appropriated and turned into the Freedom Lodge as some proposed.
There are so many outrages these days, it’s difficult to remember them all. Kelo, however, is one of the biggies. If a government can seize someone’s property and give it someone else based on the possibility of increased government tax revenue, no one’s property is safe.
Public use means exactly that—use by the public as in a school or road. The SCOTUS perverted the clear intent of the US Constitution as they tend to do whenever it suits the government’s purposes, but public “use” is simply not the same as public “purpose” no matter how much one tries to obfuscate the situation.
If there is ever any doubt on any part of the US Constitution, that doubt must be decided first in favor of We the People, then the States, and finally the federal government in that order. The US Constitution was clearly intended to constrain government to a small number of enumerated powers. Everything else was reserved to the States or We the People, and any justice who claims otherwise should be impeached for violating their oath of office.
It's SO much fun to ride down the slippery slope....
and restoration of any removed/modified structure or outbuildings.
Not just them. And not just Souter. That whole HW admin and halo of allied GOPe types was worse than a waste. Sununu père was Rove before Rove was Rove. Warren Rudman should be dug up, hanged as a traitor, and buried again for foisting Souter on the nation as any kind of a conservative.
yes. if they end up not needing the property the owners should be made whole.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.