Cdn-Firearms Digest Tuesday, December 30 2008 Volume 12 : Number 912 In this issue: Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V12 #903 [Flight 93 Families ask...]... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:40:08 -0600 From: Joe Gingrich Subject: Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V12 #903 [Flight 93 Families ask...]... There is another instance in one of the east coast states where a developer wished to buy up homes so he could build a shopping center. As far as I know the courts agreed it was for the" public good" , and he won. If I have the newspaper article I will post it on here. ed/on - ---------------------------------------------------------------- [excerpts from Wikipedia] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain Eminent domain (United States), compulsory purchase (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Australia) or expropriation (South Africa and Canada) in common law legal systems is the inherent power of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or sieze a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent. The property is taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties who will devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, economic development. The most common uses of property taken by eminent domain are for public utilities, highways, and railroads.[citation needed] Some jurisdictions require that the government body offer to purchase the property before resorting to the use of eminent domain. - --------- [U.S.] The Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) affirmed New London's authority to take non-blighted private property by eminent domain, and then transfer it for a dollar a year to a private developer solely for the purpose of increasing municipal revenues. This 5-4 decision received heavy press coverage because the Court sided with the city's argument that this sort of taking and private redevelopment was a public benefit. Kelo inspired a public outcry that eminent domain powers were too broad. As a reaction to Kelo, several states enacted or are considering enacting state legislation that would further define and restrict the state's own power of eminent domain. The Supreme Courts of Illinois, Michigan (County of Wayne v. Hathcock(2004)) Ohio (Norwood, Ohio v. Horney(2006), Oklahoma, and South Carolina have recently ruled to disallow such takings under their state constitutions. The redevelopment in New London, that was the subject of the Kelo decision, proved to be a failure and as of the late fall of 2008 (over three years after the court's decision) the redeveloper has not been able to obtain financing for the project and nothing has been built on the taken land in spite of the expenditure of some $80 million in public funds. American libertarians argue that eminent domain is unnecessary. Bruce L. Benson notes that utilities, for instance, have a variety of methods at their disposal, such as option contracts and dummy buyers, to obtain the contiguous parcels of land needed to build pipelines, roads, and so forth. These methods are routinely used to acquire land needed for shopping malls and other large developments.[5] Defending the Undefendable argues that the problem of recalcitrant landowners (i.e. "the curmudgeon") who refuse reasonable offers for the sale of their land is solved in the long term by the fact that their failure to accumulate wealth through such trades will give them a relative disadvantage in attempting to accumulate more land. Thus, the vast majority of land will tend to ultimately end up in the control of those who are willing to make profitable exchanges.[6] [edit] Bush Executive Order On June 23, 2006 - on the one-year anniversary of the Kelo decision (see above), President George W. Bush issued an executive order stating in Section I that the federal government must limit its use of taking private property for "public use" with "just compensation", which is also stated in the constitution, for the "purpose of benefiting the general public." He limits this use by stating that it may not be used "for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken".[7] However, eminent domain is more often exercised by local and state governments, albeit often with funds obtained from the Federal government. ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V12 #912 *********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:drg.jordan@sasktel.net List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca FAQ list: http://www.canfirearms/Skeeter/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://www.canfirearms.ca CFDigest Archives: http://www.canfirearms.ca/archives To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next four lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".)