There is no ethical difference between you and the fundamentalist Christians who believe their community has a right to protect itself from what it sees as the evil, conniving, raping gay-marriage advocates. It’s just your druthers versus their druthers. You both believe you know what’s fair and right, and you want to impose it on everyone else. And frankly, you make their job of tyranny easier because they can point to you and proclaim, “he does it too.” Obviously, you will differentiate yourself from them by some self-serving rationale, but you and they are cut from the same cloth.
When will conservatives learn that they ARE the government?
The government IS the people, especially at such a podunk level as this. The “county” is nothing but the people who live their. It’s not some occupying force or remote alien robot.
All the people who live in such fear of the “gummint” sure don’t seem to have any problem with living as grovelling, slavering serfs to corporate overlords without a shred of the accountability, accessibility and fixability that a democratically vulnerable government has. I wonder why that is.
I have advocated nothing of the kind. Don’t be so dramatic. I said the woman should be paid a fair price. She would not be a victim.
There is a big difference between not liking a certain development project and bitching about it, and demanding that the government step in and steal from individuals to stop that development project. I personally do not own any real estate, but my parents do: they own several dozen acres of undisturbed, peaceful land. Are they owning this land for their health? Hell no. They expect urban growth to continue, and to sell this land to some developer 20 years from now and walk away with a buttload of cash, and I say good for them. If maintaining land in some “unspoiled” state is a goal of yours, find enough people who agree with you and buy the land for more money than the developers are offering. Don’t have enough money to outbid the developer? Tough shit, fucknut. It’s not your land, and the only amount of say you have in it, morally speaking, is what they choose to give you. If you convince the government to step in and force the property owner to comply with your pathetic little wishes, that doesn’t make you right, it just makes you a thug with a bigger gun than the other person. To conclude: fuck you. I hope that the owners of property surrounding your home all decide to sell to developers, and you wind up living in the middle of a quadrangle of Walmart stores.
Ditto. And a circle of Freewill Baptist churches as well.
Nope. It doesn’t work that way. What you do with your land affects others. When you fuck with the rights of the many, you’re going to get smacked down and that’s just as it should be.
Why do conservatives hate their grandchildren so much that they want to destroy the planet for them?
And liberals complain when the up tight republican government sticks their noses into things like TV and Radio “obscenity” (FCC I’m looking at you) or gay marriage, but seem to be more than agreeable to voiding a business transaction they don’t like.
Face it, at times like this, the libertarians are right, the government should get the fuck out of the way and let people live their lives the way they want. If that means tits on TV, so be it, if that means selling land to a developer, then that’s OK too. If there is a truly compelling reason the government needs that property, e.g. roads, power plants, prisons, whatever, then they should be allowed to make the purchase at market price without being held up (both ways) by the current owner.
Using the power of eminent domain to prevent one sort of development in favor of another is a corruption of the entire concept.
BTW, this particular “government of the people” is trying to get this transaction done before the newly elected “government of the people” is sworn in, because the new gov’t won’t pursue this nonsense.
There are indeed, and what they do is make an educated guess as to what price the market is willing to pay. Which, in this instance, already has a lower bound approximately $2 million higher than the county’s offer. “Objective real estate experts” will do the same thing; guess what people are prepared to pay.
If only someone in this thread had espoused such a view, eh, rather than those pesky “conservatives”. You keep invoking these red herrings, from “satanic” corporations to environmental “rapists”, because the unpleasant truth (for you) is that this is nothing more sinister than a lady selling her own property to provide for her old age. And you go on to present the county’s actions as the inviolable and unstoppable will of the people, apparently immune to the idea that county officials can be every bit as self-interested and ill-motivated as anyone else.
Every single piece of the built environment has been through the hands of developers at one time or another. That includes not only your satanic WalMarts (but aren’t the pentagrams cheap), but also pet shelters, modern art musems, asylums for the chronically statist, your own house; you name it, it got developed. By rapists, apparently. I don’t know how you can live with yourself, in a property founded on such evil.
Oh, they’re building retirement homes, by the way. Occult affiliation unspecified.
What you do with your dick affects others. Should you be forbidden from procreating?
What fucking rights? The right to steal people’s property?
I can’t speak for conservatives, but I think you should look up the word “conserve”. Meanwhile, why do you hate your grandchildren so much that you want them to be drones who belong to The State?
Corporate overlords?
Vulnerable government?
snicker snicker BWAHHHAHHHAHHHAAA!!
Do you realize if the widow hadn’t wanted to sell to the developers, she could have told them to go pound sand and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing they could have done about it?
But if the government wanted to buy this property and she said no, they would have taken her to court and forced her to sell!
So who exactly has the greater power?
One, I’m not a conservative. Two, I have no intention of ever having children, hence, no grandchildren. Three, the planet can take care of itself. I’m concerned with people. Four, why do you hate people who are here and now so much that you would steal from them to protect your wacked-out vision of how land should be best used?
As a libertarian, I am genuinely grateful for such morsels of support as these, but I do feel compelled to qualify your statement somewhat: government should get the fuck out of the way and let people live their lives the way they want so long as they are peaceful and honest in their dealings.
This is a much better answer than mine, which was that the ungrateful fuckers forgot our birthdays again and we’ll see if they like it when we forget to list them in our wills! Now who’s having an early bird special tonight?
Actually, based on recent cases, there’s a non-trivial chance they could have gone to the county and had the land condemned under eminent domain to be given to them. Yet another reason why eminent domain sucks.
I think that a stemming force that threatens your entire town’s economy is a perfect use of eminent domain.
It isn’t just the environment that is in question. If someone built a subdivision on the wild piece of land right next to your house, you’d have to deal with traffic, sprawl, changes to the local business structures, a new need for government services…in short the lifestyle of everyone nearby would change and that represents a compelling public issue. I’m sure you would have some objections if a pig farm or sports stadium or private airport was built right next to your home.
I’m glad I voted for a local government that protects my community and guidesit in a fashion that is best for the people that live here, not outside developers and corporations that don’t give a fuck about Santa Cruz.
Look, Dio, I’m fully in favor of open space projects. A not insignificant chunk of my taxes goes to that out here. I have no objection in general to the county buying her land. But they need to pay her what the land is worth! That worth has been determined in the best possible way: by a serious offer to buy.
I’m hardly a “pave it all” type, but neither am I a “preserve it all” type. Personally, if the open land next to me was to be sold, I’d much rather houses go there than a big box.
There are other ways the use of land can be controlled, zoning being the most obvious. The use of eminent domain for just about anything is way out of control, and that element is what bothers me the most about this story.
This is true. Check the link i gave above.
Some of the worst abuses of eminent domain over the past few years have been cases where people have been forced to give up their property to corporations and other private, for-profit organizations.
I agree. They should pay her what the land is worth…and not a penny more.
Not forbidden but I should be- and am- held responsible for the children I do bring into the world and part of that reposnsibility is not allowing my offspring to infringe the rights of others.
I’ve not advocated stealing anything. I’ve advocated the right for a community to pay a fair market value for property in order to stip that property from being sold to entities which would do their community harm.
When have I advocated any such thing?
And that, dear Dio, is what scares me about you. You want the government to decide what is best for everyone, instead of letting individuals decide what is best for themselves.