Free Republic

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual shareholder letter Tuesday that the government may need to seize private property to advance clean energy initiatives. Dimon discussed the need to quickly begin investing in solar projects and other green initiatives and suggested that the government should use eminent domain to seize property for those projects. “At the same time, permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way. We may even need to evoke [sic] eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar,...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his stance in favor of eminent domain — a view not shared by many in his party.   "Eminent domain, when it comes to jobs, roads, the public good, I think it's a wonderful thing," Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier.    ADVERTISEMENT “You're not taking property. … You're paying a fortune for that property,” he said of the process, adding that homeowners can be paid “four, five, six, ten times” their property’s value.   Trump, a real estate mogul, noted that he’s dealt with eminent domain a lot in building developments...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says a program that lets the government take raisins away from farmers to help reduce supply and boost market prices is unconstitutional. The justice said Monday that forcing raisin growers to give up part of their annual crop without full payment is an illegal confiscation of private property.

Many political experts will not take Donald Trump's quest for the Republican presidential nomination seriously, possibly for good reason. Trump, most notable for his vast real estate empire, wealth, bankruptcies, reality TV show, high profile divorces, and of late, his brash political statements, professes to be a Christian. As The Christian Post reported Tuesday, he even claims he would be "the greatest jobs president God ever created." While Trump might not be popular with a large segment of the Republican Party, many voters no longer feel connected to Washington or what they see as a professional and entrenched political class....

Gov. Rick Perry's political stock has soared in recent months as he has traveled the country touting a decade of fiscal restraint in Texas under his leadership. Last month, Perry made Texas history by signing a two-year state budget that cuts overall spending for the first time in over 40 years. Perry has long promoted the state's fiscal record as a model for the country and a key to why Texas has weathered the recession better than most other states. He has opposed new taxes and been vehemently anti-Washington, and his message is drawing interest among Republican primary voters nationwide....

As he weighs whether to jump into the 2012 Republican presidential race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been dialing GOP establishment bigwigs across the country. In phone calls that sometimes stretch more than a half hour, Perry asks the same questions: Is the door open for a new candidate? And how wide is it open? Perry is finding that a vast reservoir of the Republican Party establishment — broadly defined to include elected officials, donors, strategists and activists whose support fuels presidential campaigns — is so far untapped, according to interviews conducted Monday and Tuesday with 19 major donors, strategists...

Rick Perry has started calling Iowa Republicans and a former RNC finance chairman is helping to convene a meeting of national donors later this month in Austin to discuss financing a potential 2012 campaign — signs that the Texas governor and his allies are stepping up their exploratory efforts. The developments come as Perry is being watched by a string of donors, early-state voters and elites who say they're disenchanted, and in search of a stronger candidate. Continue Reading Republican activist Joni Scotter told POLITICO she got a surprise phone call this afternoon from Perry, asking about the political landscape...

And, now, the group Americans for Rick Perry reports it has raised a fair amount of money in a short amount of time. Bob Schuman, a senior strategist for Americans for Rick Perry, said Thursday that the group is expanding its fundraising operation outside of Texas to include Miami, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The group can accept unlimited donations but, under federal law, can't strategize with Perry himself.

SAN DIEGO, CA -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry told a Boy Scouts ceremony on Wednesday that the federal government is rudderless, kicking off a trip to California that has stoked speculation that he will enter the Republican contest for president. Perry fondly recalled his boyhood as a Scout in Texas, including his first visit to Washington, and applauded the group for promoting values such as fellowship, self-reliance, dedication and perseverance. "I really wish we saw more of that sort of courage throughout our society, yep, including in Washington, D.C.," he said. Perry didn't mention President Barack Obama or any politician...

NEW ORLEANS — Four years after George W. Bush left the White House, some US Republicans are pinning their hopes on his successor as Texas governor to triumph over President Barack Obama in the 2012 election. Governor Rick Perry, who has openly flirted with running and said he will decide soon whether to throw his hat in the ring, was due Saturday to address delegates to an influential Republican Party gathering in this party city. Perry isn't on the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll ballot, but some of the delegates here say they like what they have seen so...

Weeds, glass, bricks, pieces of pipe and shingle splinters have replaced the knot of aging homes at the site of the nation's most notorious eminent domain project. But what of the promised building boom that was supposed to come wrapped and ribboned with up to 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues? They are noticeably missing.

How the Sotomayor nomination revived the debate over eminent domain abuse Property rights were probably the last thing on President Barack Obama's mind when he selected Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. But that hasn't stopped Sotomayor's nomination from reigniting the long-simmering national debate over the use and abuse of eminent domain. The controversy centers on Sotomayor's vote in a 2006 eminent domain case, Didden v. Village of Port Chester. New York entrepreneur Bart Didden says Port Chester condemned his land after he refused to pay $800,000 (or grant a 50 percent stake in his...

Local toll road activist Terri Hall, the Spring Branch home schooling mom who's campaign against toll roads made her WOAI's San Antonian of the Year for 2007,. is taking her populist campaign nationwide. Hall is among the speakers for Saturday's 'Freedom March,' in Washington DC, organized by supporters of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and designed to keep alive his message of smaller government and vigilance against encroaching government power. "They wanted someone to speak about the Trans Texas Corridor, and what's happening here, and the eminent domain abuses, and how all these toll roads are tied to corporate...

ERIE, Mich. - Beyond the shade trees draped over Madge Ausmus' back porch, soybeans grow in fields that have belonged to her family for generations. On either side of her Erie Township home live relatives whose houses were built over the years on lots split off from the original Burgard homestead along Erie Road. "This property was ours before Michigan became a state," Mrs. Ausmus said. Beyond those soybeans lie three railroad tracks, the closest one belonging to the Canadian National Railway. The presence of that CN track is a key to a conflicting - and controversial - vision for...

HARRISBURG -- A city agency violated the separation of church and state when it seized a woman's home to help a religious group build a private school in a blighted Philadelphia neighborhood, a state appeals court ruled yesterday. In a 4-3 ruling, Commonwealth Court said the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority should not have condemned Mary Smith's property in North Philadelphia in 2003 so that the Hope Partnership for Education could build a middle school. The court said the seizure by eminent domain ran afoul of a clause in the U.S. Constitution that keeps Congress from establishing religion or preventing its free...

The city of St. Pete Beach, Fla., has filed suit against five residents who say they are opposed to a redevelopment plan officials claim will increase population and tax bases. In what appears to be another case of eminent domain, with the city claiming an unchallengeable right to redevelop the quiet beachfront community, officials say they retained legal services after the rebellious residents collected signatures on a petition demanding the issue be put to a vote, WTSP-TV in Tampa-St. Petersburg reported yesterday.

Arlington, Va. — BB&T, the nation’s ninth largest financial holdings company with $109.2 billion in assets, announced today that it “will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.” In a press release issued today by the bank, BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison, said, “The idea that a citizen’s property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it’s just plain wrong. One of the most basic rights of every...

The 2006 Index of Economic Freedom measures 161 countries against a list of 50 independent variables divided into 10 broad factors of economic freedom. Low scores are more desirable. The higher the score on a factor, the greater the level of government interference in the economy and the less economic freedom a country enjoys.

Eminent Domain abuses. Call to action for residents of Daytona Beach Florida, Collier County, Florida and North Adams, Massachusetts. If you are from or know anyone from these areas, let them know of these abuses of power.

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...