Kathy is right
Kathy has an excellent essay about the Supreme Court decision yesterday regarding the scope of eminent domain. I couldn't agree with you more, Kathy. The decision totally pissed me off. I understand about eminent domain and the need to take some private lands for public use.
However, I don't think eminent domain should be used to turn over the private property of one (or several) individuals to another private entity or corporation. Because I think it is a dangerous precedent to set. The argument endorsed by The Supremes seems to be that this taking of private property benefits the public by adding to tax revenue and creating jobs.
The problems with this are manifold. In my experience, there is usually great tax incentives given to the companies by the locales that are wooing these companies - and they usually have a long tail. For example, where I went to high school, Sears & Roebuck was wooed out of Chicago to the suburbs. They built this sprawling structure and parking garages because they were offered this multi-year sweet tax deal (I think it was 20 years). Everybody said, lookee how the tax base will grow! But the thing is, the schools still haven't really benefitted. Moreover, there wasn't really a gain in jobs, because it just meant that the people who had been commuting east now commuted west. It didn't really create any jobs at all, just moved traffic flow around. Now, when the tax deal runs out of time, what is to keep Sears from picking up and moving to some other suburb that is offering a deal? What do they care if they have to build another building?
Consider...suppose eminent domain were used to take 7,000 acres of farmland in Southwestern Kansas. US farmland only feeds the world, but some private developer wants to build a sprawling tourist trap including a man-made lake, multiple water parks, a sprawling strip mall full of outlet shops, and a series of hotels. To be sure, this would create jobs for a community of only 2,000 people and it might even bring up the tax base. However, it would also bring problems. First of all, you'd have to build several interstates to bring people in from Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, Eastern Kansas, etc. (Southwestern Kansas is lacking in anything even remotely like a multilane highway.) It would mean needing to build bigger hospitals, bigger schools, and a number of additional other public services to accomodate all the extra people, both permanent and transient. It would increase crime and require more police and a full-time fire brigade instead of the volunteer department they have now. If you offer a tax incentive to this mega developer, WHO THE FUCK PAYS FOR ALL OF THIS? I can tell you. It would go back to the farmers of the area because they are the ones who own the vast majority of the county. Totally unfair. And yet, according The Supremes, totally reasonable. I say screw them. It is totally and completely outside of the idea of fair. I think it goes against the idea of equal protection under the law, and I find it highly offensive in the main.
You'll say, no doubt, that the concept of putting such a theme park in such a nowhere place would be stupid. I agree with you. However, the fact of the matter is that urban sprawl is not a fiction. More and more farmland is gobbled up every year to expand strip malls and be turned into subdivisions. Eventually this whole damn country will be paved over if we keep letting this happen. I only used SW Kansas as an example, any small farm county in the midwest would be the same.
So, shall we take out a couple of subdivisions to build Chicago a third airport? Shall we destroy a school to provide more parking for downtown Madison workers? There has to be another way! And tell me this...Someday when Chicago expands clear out to Rockford (not too far into the future actually) will eminent domain be used to take out a subdivision to provide a farm and a place to make the food that all those suburbanites eat? Fuck No! Because eminent domain will never be used that way. Feeding the public isn't important enough, I guess.
