Archive for November 10th, 2006
Ever since the Supreme Court validated the taking of private property (eminent domain) for private development, no homes are safe. There was a time when being a home owner allowed you to feel a sense of security. No more! The government can now force you to sell your property, possibly even at an under-market values.
A number of states have passed laws limiting this practice, but not ending it. The key word is limited. Politicians seeking to increase the tax base or help their connected friends still have ways to circumvent the state laws. New York State has not passed any laws limiting this abusive practice.
Property theft in America
By John Stossel
Do you live in a blighted home in a blighted neighborhood? You might without even knowing it.
But don’t worry, your local politicians will be happy to tell you — as soon as some land developer decides your neighborhood would be a great place to build swankier homes or shops.
Don’t want to leave your home? Tough luck. Once the politicians, in their superior wisdom, decide that the development project will produce more tax revenue or jobs than you and your neighbors do, you’ll have to go. Oh, they’ll pay you something for your home, maybe less than it’s worth — but you’ll have no right to say no and stay where you are.
That’s called progress, and it’s how things go in America today. The working class is under threat of expropriation for the benefit of the well off.
Shockingly, last year, the U.S. Supreme Court said that was just fine. (Eminent domain is permitted by the Constitution for “public” uses, such as roads or post offices. Using it for private development is a fairly new practice.) After the public backlash against that ruling, over 20 states restricted the use of eminent domain for private economic development. But the protection of homeowners is less than perfect. There’s always an exception for “blighted” neighborhoods.
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In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.
— Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philisophique [1764]
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Will the Democrats Become Part of the Problem?
It only took six years for Americans to comprehend George Bush and the Republican Party and to realize that the Republicans were not leading America in any promising directions.
Exit polls and interviews with voters across the country by CNN political analyst Bill Schneider show that the November 2006 election was a vote against both Bush and the war in Iraq. Schneider reports that voters did not even know the name of the Democrats for whom they voted. Voters said: “I am going to vote Democrat, because I don’t like Bush, I don’t like the war. I want to make a statement.”
I believe that voters recognized that the peril of one-party rule is that political accountability exists nowhere except at the ballot box. With the Republican-built and -programmed electronic voting machines, even accountability at the ballot box was disappearing. Americans realized that they had made a serious mistake giving power to one party, and they rectified it.
With Republican control of the legislative branch ended, Pentagon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was immediately swept from power. With the troops, generals, and the service newspapers calling for Rumsfeld’s head, only the delusional warmonger, Vice President Richard Cheney, wanted to keep Rumsfeld in power.
It was a battle that Cheney lost. Cheney’s defeat is an indication that reality has elbowed its way back into Republican consciousness, pushing hubris and delusion away from the control they have exercised over political power.
The lust for unbridled power proved to be too strong a temptation for normally cautious Republicans. The Republicans waved the flag and shouted “terrorist sympathizer” at every civil libertarian who attempted to defend the US Constitution, the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions’ proscriptions against torture, and America’s reputation from a nazified US Dept of Justice (sic) and a president who behaved – with the approval of Republicans – as if he were above the law. In violation of his oath of office, Bush used signing statements to negate laws passed by Congress, not with a veto, but with his personal opinion. Bush, thus, elevated himself above the rule of law that has protected America from becoming a tyranny and made a mockery of the separation of powers that are a foundation of American liberty.
Americans may not have understood this as clearly as the Founding Fathers did, but the people recognized, however dimly, a problem and exercised corrective action. The question now is: what will the Democrats do?
Read the rest.
A Town of 50,000 in Brussels started removing their traffic lights 7 years ago. Currently there are 3 left out of 15 and those are slated to be removed soon.
The town used to average a traffic fatality every 3 years but there have been none since the removal project started.
One of the intersections handles 22,000 cars per day without a traffic light. A roundabout was put in place and is working very well.
The conclusions drawn from this study are that pedestrians and drivers have less accidents with the lights removed. People are forced to be more cautious and look out for themselves rather than relying on government installed solutions.
“It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk.
As a side benefit, the removed traffic lights can be adaptively reused and turned into sculptures.
