Free Republic

Austin County residents get their chance Monday to comment on a massive “superhighway” that could be coming through their county. And if the public meeting in Bellville is anything like those already held by the Texas Department of Transportation, it will include hundreds of angry property owners lining up for a chance to lambast the proposed project, called the Trans Texas Corridor. Gov. Rick Perry first proposed the TTC six years ago. If completed as much as 50 years from now, it would roughly parallel interstate highways with up to a quarter-mile-wide stretch of toll roads, rail lines, pipelines and...

Hundreds showed up to a town hall meeting Thursday night in Lufkin, many with questions for Texas Department of Transportation officials about the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor that could run through or around Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Huntsville and other East Texas towns. As it's drawn up, I-69/TTC would include toll roads, high-speed freight and commuter rail, water lines, oil and gas pipelines, electric transmission lines and telecommunications infrastructure in one corridor running north/south through Texas. One primary purpose of the corridor would be to help with the state's projected traffic congestion. Although TxDOT directors assured everyone that nothing is set in stone and...

CARTHAGE — James Mason doesn't want a new highway cutting him off from his property. James Boggs wants to keep American jobs here. They were just a sample of about 140 residents who asked, commented and listened during a public forum with state transportation leaders Wednesday night in Carthage. It was the second of several forums scheduled along the Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, a proposed superhighway that likely will parallel U.S. 59 from Texarkana to the Mexican border. "We haven't done a very good job of (communicating) in the past," said Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of Texas Department of Transportation....

During this year's legislative session, Texas had an "oh, wait, hold on, don't do that" moment on privately funded tollways. Fair enough, but now it's time to figure out what the state should do, including how to pay for what the state's highway czar calls a $100 billion shortfall in money needed for essential highway projects. Ric Williamson, the Weatherford businessman who is chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, says "the entire future of the state transportation system" depends on potential revenue from private toll road investors. Without it, staffers with the Texas Department of Transportation told commission members at...

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson said Monday that while Osama bin Laden needs to be caught and killed, the terrorist mastermind would get the due process of law.

LUBBOCK, Texas — One Central Texas farmer said Monday he was "dumbfounded" by Gov. Rick Perry's veto of an eminent domain bill designed to protect landowners when the state wants to take their property. Robert Fleming is not alone in an area worried about the massive Trans Texas Corridor proposal. The planned route cuts through Fleming's Bell County farms. He's bewildered by Perry's veto. "We were so close to getting something done," Fleming said. "We've worked hard trying to get private property rights." Perry vetoed the bill, and 48 others, Friday. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo...

AUSTIN – A property rights bill that went awry and a mandate for the Trans-Texas Corridor to follow the state's existing highway system were among the 49 bills that fell victim to Gov. Rick Perry's veto pen on Friday. Mr. Perry targeted at least two bills that he believed would open the courthouse doors to more litigation, including a bill that would have provided a greater balance in eminent domain proceedings. The bill spelled out what public land uses were acceptable in order to take private land and provided more recourse for land owners. But a provision tacked onto the...

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin FranklinThe response was predictable. After sending our alert last Thursday regarding the passing of the Military Commissions Act, we received a flood of email. Many were supportive, but others took exception: "Don't you care that terrorists want to kill us?" "Olbermann's obviously a left-wing nut who wants conservatives out of power." "The act isn't that bad..." It is bemusing to watch certain conservatives -- conservatives who once screamed that Bill Clinton was going to suspend the Constitution, establish martial law,...

For 3 1/2 years, Long Branch residents fighting to keep their homes out of the city's oceanfront redevelopment plan mostly battled alone. That changed yesterday. The state public advocate and a national constitutional rights advocacy group will lend their legal muscle to the residents of MTOTSA -- Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue -- as they appeal a ruling allowing their oceanside homes to be given to a private developer though eminent domain. "As of today, this neighborhood is ground zero in the fight against eminent domain abuse, not only in New Jersey but across the nation," said Chip...

Gov. Rick Perry's ceremonial signing of the eminent domain bill Monday in Waco didn't get a positive reaction from his rival for his 2006 reelection, Republican Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, or from Richmond resident and private property rights activist Jack Myska. Strayhorn accused Perry of grandstanding and said the bill is filled with loopholes, and Myska concurred. "I agree with her wholeheartedly," Myska said Tuesday morning, adding he has not yet read the bill thoroughly. Perry officially signed the law into effect on Sept. 1, but the ceremonial signing was postponed due to hurricanes Rita and Katrina. He said Monday...

Even before the US supreme court 'legislated' their opinion that our constitution allows government entities to take property from one citizen and profit on the 'exchange' of that property to another private individual or group, our own Texas leaders (some elected and many non-elected-TxDOT personnel) have been working overtime to assure that toll roads and the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) are forced on Texans before too many of us become aware, stand up, and protest. Probably due to many groups protesting the TTC and toll projects allowed by law in 2003 with HB 3388, our Texas leaders came up with...

A Supreme Property Rights Disaster In The Making More Kelo on the SCOTUS horizon?... [James S. Burling] 8/15/05 After a term marked by the Supreme Court’s utter contempt for property rights, those of us who happen to think there is something special about allowing old widows to keep their homes were not prepared for an even more bitter defeat. Yet, that is what President Bush handed us with the nomination of John Roberts. The battle over property rights is not a conservative versus liberal thing. It’s more a struggle between those who believe in the power of the state to...

The five-four decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Susette Kelo et al v City of New London, Connecticut et al (June 23, 2005) well could trigger the terrifying risk to private property which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor envisions in her Dissent (joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas): " . . . Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner . . . who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the...

Surprise Bill Disempowers Communities and Privatizes Surplus Public Lands. With less than 24 hours before a scheduled vote, a radically different bill for disposing of state surplus land was unveiled yesterday. According to Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities (MCHC) board member Nat Fortune "The Legislative leadership is using summer vacation and a last-minute release to get the bill passed before there can be a public response. Considering what’s in this bill, it’s no surprise its proponents were keeping it under the radar.” Jill Stein, MCHC president noted, “This bill takes disempowerment of communities to a new extreme. Like the other...

Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain. In Texas and California, legislators have proposed constitutional amendments to bar government from taking private property for economic development. Politicians in Alabama, South Dakota and Virginia likewise hope to curtail government's ability to condemn land. Even in states like Illinois - one of at least eight that already forbid eminent domain for economic development unless the purpose is to eliminate blight...

By KATE MORAN Day Staff Writer, New London Published on 7/19/2005 New London — However improbable their chance for success, attorneys at the Institute for Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to reconsider the decision in the Kelo v. New London case that allows the city to take private property in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood to make way for a huge new development. In the three weeks since the court handed down its decision, the Institute for Justice has pressed local and state leaders to conserve the dozen houses and single apartment building the city has planned to...

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Woman settles with Hesperia, gives up land By KATHLEEN STINSON Staff Writer HESPERIA — The case between the school teacher who owned land in Hesperia and the city that tried to foreclose on her was settled Monday. Ellen Zunino owned a 10-acre parcel of land in what is referred to as the "Golden Triangle" area of Hesperia that increased dramatically in assessed valuation, but she said she was unable to pay the assessment. ..... Before the city established an improvement district in the area — west of Interstate 15 and south of Avenal Street — Zunino's...

With Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gone from the Supreme Court, choosing her successor is NOT the most important task before us. More critical is reducing the damage a clueless and arrogant Court can do. Thankfully, there are signs that America is moving toward a new declaration of independence. The Court unleashed its latest shocker on June 23. In a 5-4 decision called Kelo vs. New London, the Court declared that it's okay for the government to seize your house just for the purpose of giving it to someone else. [snip] Only Congress is authorized to make laws or spend money....

The New York Times welcomed the Supreme Court's recent endorsement of virtually unfettered eminent domain powers as "a setback to the 'property rights' movement." The fact that the Times not only celebrated a defeat for property rights but felt a need to put the phrase in scare quotes speaks volumes about the left-liberal misconceptions that have been brought to the fore by the Court's decision in Kelo v. New London. According to the Court, the Fifth Amendment, which allows the government to take property "for public use" provided it pays "just compensation," is a license to transfer any parcel of...

Throughout the course of history, the overriding tendency of those in power is to manipulate that power to their own benefit. Regardless of any noble premises on which governments might be founded, over time they nonetheless degenerate into self-serving conclaves, whose ultimate purpose is the betterment of their own lot through the implementation of their own agenda. In the end, those at the apex of power assume dictatorial control, while the rights of the common person are obliterated. The latest rash of outrageous Supreme Court decisions demonstrates that this nation’s governing institutions are already well on their way down that...