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To: Behind the Blue Wall
When stupid decisions infringe upon Constitutional rights, it is the responsibility of the Feds and the Supreme Court to intervene if the decision comes before them. The condemnation of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood by the City was a stupid decision, but it also infringed upon the 5th Amendment rights of the homeowners, which have been incorporated into the states for over 100 years. I'm not asking the Feds to intervene in Bloomberg's ban on Big Gulps, or to stop the City of Austin from instituting a prohibition on plastic shopping bags. This is matter of life, liberty, and property, the cornerstone of the Republic, and yes, a "big deal."

The Court had a responsibility to stop a municipality from wrongfully seizing someone's land for public use when it was clearly not public use. We know that the seizure was wrong after the fact because the development was never real. It was dodgy that Pfizer was ever going to follow through on the development, and the development plans were a joke. The Fort Trumbull neighborhood is now a vacant field that is home to nothing but feral raccoons.

In no way could this have been a 'correct' decision, either practically, philosophically or Constitutionally, since we know that Stevens justification for siding with the New London was his misunderstanding of prior Eminent Domain decisions.

I don't know how you're arriving at these erroneous conclusions, but now you've drifted into incoherence by saying that the state and localities legislative responses, which were defensive in nature, somehow confirmed the accuracy of the Court. It was a reactive response to an incorrect decision, not a confirmation of it. That's like saying that because we were able to develop the atomic bomb and by extension nuclear energy, that proves that bombing Pearl Harbor was the correct thing to do.

Your statement is also nonsensical since you earlier said that you would've sided with the minority on the Court, and then said the majority was correct. Your statements are incoherent nonsense.

293 posted on 10/08/2015 12:53:39 PM PDT by GunRunner
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To: GunRunner

So if violating someone’s constitutional rights is smart from the standpoint of public policy, then it would be OK? Of course not, so the fact that it was a stupid decision from a policy standpoint is clearly irrelevant. There was a public use. The city decision-makers found that they needed economic development and this particular parcel was key to their plans. Economic development has for over a century been recognized as a legitimate government function.


294 posted on 10/08/2015 1:01:07 PM PDT by Behind the Blue Wall
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