Stumble This | You should also watch “ReasonTV - Redevelopment: A Tale Of Two Cities” |
Reason.tv host Drew Carey visits National City, California, where the local government is taking eminent domain abuse to new lows.
Eminent domain is the constitutionally sanctioned practice of taking land for legitimate public uses. Traditionally, that's meant things like roads and schools. Over the past several decades, however, governments have gone hog wild with eminent domain, routinely condemning property and turning it over to well-connected private developers as a way of subsidizing economic development and increasing tax revenues (never mind that it doesn't always work out that way).
Officials in National City, a predominantly Hispanic community near San Diego, have pushed to bulldoze a popular athletic center for struggling kids to pave the way for private developers to build new luxury condos.
As tragic and absurd as this may sound, such outrageous affronts to property rights are an almost daily occurrence. Episode 3 of The Drew Carey Project chronicles the devastating impact of eminent domain abuse on the lives of people whose property the government can threaten to take, not for public use, but for the benefit of wealthy developers.
(11:20 minutes)
Eminent domain is the constitutionally sanctioned practice of taking land for legitimate public uses. Traditionally, that's meant things like roads and schools. Over the past several decades, however, governments have gone hog wild with eminent domain, routinely condemning property and turning it over to well-connected private developers as a way of subsidizing economic development and increasing tax revenues (never mind that it doesn't always work out that way).
Officials in National City, a predominantly Hispanic community near San Diego, have pushed to bulldoze a popular athletic center for struggling kids to pave the way for private developers to build new luxury condos.
As tragic and absurd as this may sound, such outrageous affronts to property rights are an almost daily occurrence. Episode 3 of The Drew Carey Project chronicles the devastating impact of eminent domain abuse on the lives of people whose property the government can threaten to take, not for public use, but for the benefit of wealthy developers.
(11:20 minutes)
https://videosift.com/video/ReasonTV-Redevelopment-A-Tale-Of-Two-Cities
ReasonTV's Drew Carey compares Los Angeles's heavy handed approach by using eminent domain to give private land to private developers and Anaheim efforts to work cooperatively with the property owners without the threat of land seizure.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Cato-Instutite-Debate-Property-Rights21st-Century-America
An 86-minutes Cato Institute debate about the June 2005 Supreme Court decision essentially allowing eminent domain to be used to take land from private owners and give it to other private owners instead of solely for public use.
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