Imminent Domain
A tale of two towers.
Of all the cases the Supreme Court handled in the last session "KELO ET AL. v. CITY OF NEW LONDON ET AL.(pdf)
is the one that has rumbled in the belly of the zeitgeist the most.
This is the case where the court did not overturn an eminent domain
taking in New London, which the city thought would accomplish the
greatest good for the greatest number. Most issues these days lead
toward a distinct political mitosis. This one just seems a writing mass
of mitochondrion. A writhing nonetheless which believes it looks over a
divide. The Constitution in exile crowd, who were the ones who had
piloted this ship into the harbor were dissappointed bitter even, but
hardly stunned. They knew most of all at the radical and revolutionary
nature of their position. But a large groundswell began to grow of
outraged libertarians and stunned conservatives, and the politicians are
noticing
Candidates in New Jersey Agree on Eminent Domain - New York Times.
No lawyer I, so it wasn't until I noticed the cartoons seemed
to be having a hard time finding their feet on this that I thought of
writing anything. Compare Tom the Dancing Bug and Prickly City
on this. Prickly City was on this theme all week so you can tick back
and look at the others as well. I tried the usually reliable Wikipedia:
Eminent domain-Wikpedia
which has servicable but somewhat thin coverage, weighted towards
recent events and lacking full development of this principle, which has
the result of making this outcome seem starker than it actually is. The
law and planning community professionals and journalists I saw on TV or
read in the immediate wake of the decsison pointed you have to be
fairly ignorant of the law and have little or no history in you to not
realize this has been the law for 40 or more years. I saw little horror
or confusion among these people concerning this. Virtually all of the
interstate system within metropolitan areas were built on land obtained
this way. 40 years of urban renewal, or as one commentator acidically
termed it a few weeks ago "negro removal". Well yes. That's what they
used to call it. In nearly every American city this went on for years.
Now that I think about it I'm not surprised that many of those who have
thrown themselves into high dungeon over this did not realize it was
the way of law and American progress. This and who it had been used
against are far far beneath the radar of this crowd.
My father loves to tell a story about a Massachusetts
political figure, a state attorney general I think who had a man show
up on his door step and stick him with a knife. The politician got what
was coming to him my father felt. The man's house had been bulldozed to build a
highway. My Dad has been indignant at the political process since FDR
was in office. He loves the highways; though, every last
asphalted inch of them. Yet when they wanted to put a successor to
Logan airport outside of Boston (where we lived) He sent me around to
the neighbors with a petition against it. Fair value is only what
the state can afford to make a project happen, he knew this. I 95 was
originally routed to plunge into the center of Washington right over
significant neighborhoods of North East, and Takoma Park. Takoma Park!
Not in their back yard. The spur never got built, I 95 stops short of
the city a few miles from my apartment and routes meekly into the
beltway for a circumspect drive south.
The outraged right's position requires them to leap over the
developer who really initiates projects these days, and to whom the
great avalance of profit descends upon, and fix instead their outrage
on the red herring issues of how developers sell their projects to what
city councilmen or town selectors they need to. The tax revenue wrinkle
was a minor extension that did not deviate from established principle
of the law. To try to rope this matter into an argument against
the courts or government has an absurdity to it right from the start. I
suppose if a developer takes your property for their price without
involving the government, this lot would simply run naked and homeless
down the street clutching their penny-brite and cheering capitalism.
Good for them.
I recall reading a columnist of a conservative stripe, this
was in the years following the 11 Sept 2001 attacks, after the last set
of multi state electric grid failures and the shut-down of the Space
Shuttle program, trying to see a broader picture. America has lost its
will the argument ran. The power companies had told this person that
they would build power plants and power lines to deliver every last erg
of power America needs, but people-power by granola-crunchers stop
them, and wishy washy politicians won't lead past them. Similarly we
allow a handful of casualties, no more than who are killed every week
in car crashes in any city shut down the entire space program. In the
days of exploration whole ships would routinly sail off the edge of the
earth and yet the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English would
just send another one out right after it. As well our enemies have
learned that we lack the fortitude to suffer casulties in war, if they
shoot down a single helicopter we run home. If Nimby is the acronym to
name the former then Nwimcyd (not with my child you don't) covers the
latter. America may not be suffering from a failure to be great, so
much as it no longer has enough poor neighborhoods to build power
plants and refineries in, or poor neighbors to send off to our wars.
A tale of two towers. In Washington DC there are two
communications towers. One, the Georgia Avenue tower
Google Maps - washington DC geoave tower I can see from my bike ride to
work in College Park even though it is six or so miles away. It is
several hundred feet tall. The Wisconsin avenue tower
Google Maps - washington DC wiscave tower, you can not
really see until you come into Tenley town, this is west of Rock Creek
Park. It is not much more than a hundred feet. It would be higher, I'm
told, but it was unsuitable for the neighborhood. Lawsuits have
stopped its construction.
11:39:40 PM  ;;
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