Signs Of The Times...

[FirstKnight]

I was in a 3 day safety orientation this week in downtown Detroit. Very shabby area, hookers everywhere, sleezy half empty building. trash watering holes everwhere you looked. Broken down streets,homes and razor wire protecting the surrounding functioning businesses.

Actually made me sad to see a city that was once dawned in greatness and has now just become a slum lord remnant of those things that once were.

This particular building is the Old Central Train Station, just off Michigan Ave in DT Detroit. It's actually the first part of America that cathces your eye when entering the US from Canada on the Ambassador Bridge. You can't help but notice it, it's in direct view and sits taller than any other when on the bridge.Windows all broken out, half there..I won't go into the element that calls this place home...Shabby,disgusting is the lighter side..

Sad situation that the City of Detroit would sit back and allow this type of shabby display to carry on.

Yet there is not an off/on ramp to be seen that is'nt being worked on due to the upcoming Super Bowl event scheduled to happen in the once dynamic...*MOTOR CITY*..

IRONIC.... To say the least.

Damn I'm glad to be a Canadian..I love America..I have also spent approx half my life travelling it's greatness.I do believe it needs a wake up call though as per the element that runs the cities...They just keep getting worse..

2270 x 1704 (Lge Pic): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v24/Stetson11/train.jpg

 

[missile]

Some of that can be attributed to the affluent moving to the 'burbs and leaving the City core to the poor and welfare recipients

 

[FirstKnight]

Some of that can be attributed to the affluent moving to the 'burbs and leaving the City core to the poor and welfare recipients

I agree 100%....What I'm getting at here is ...Either tear the friggin mess down or spend the money to make the very first eyecatcher that we see crossing into the US of A...Repectable!

I can remember at one time....There were older buildings around this area..Well kept and small businesses were everywhere to see..

Now it's just over run by minorities..Aids providers and All the drugs you can stuff up your nose or crank into your arms..

Friggin Sad Display of political prowess and reign...

 

[jimmoyer]

..."Either tear the friggin mess down or spend the money to make the very first eyecatcher that we see crossing into the US of A...Repectable! ..." ----- FirstKnight.

Do you see the connection of this statement to the EMINENT DOMAIN case???

This is a case of GREATER PUBLIC GOOD vs INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS of property where five out of Nine justices of the Supreme Court agreed with you FirstKnight that if local government wants to do something about it, then they should do so without their hands tied.

Especially if private development will be stymied from changing the landscape to the better.

The court has gradually given local government greater discretion over the years in EMINENT DOMAIN, the right to force an individual owner to sell.

From the standard understandable reasons such as water line, sewer lines, railroads, highways and public schools

to the understandable need to bulldoze down urban blight

to finally the right to make an owner sell their property if it encourages companies to settle in the area, create jobs, raise tax revenue for a town to provide more services.

 

[mrmom2]

Hey Jim look at your new landlord :wink:

 

[jimmoyer]

Hey Mrmom2 did you even read my post ?

If you're going to fight it, then show me something other than the rote, predictable reaction.

I've found that approach never is successful.

 

[mrmom2]

I did read it Jim :wink: I was just trying to yank your chain a bit It was supposed to be a little humor thats all :wink: I wasn't being serious :lol:

 

[jimmoyer]

LOL !!

My first impulse to your cartoon was to post one word.

YIKES !!!

But instead I was more interested in how people look at the screwed up landscape, the urban blight, the loss of jobs from one perspective and not tie that to this case of Eminent Domain.

People often view those 2 matters, separately and unrelated.

Okay, sorry, I went the boring route.

 

[jimmoyer]

washingtonpost.com
Eminent Latitude

Post
Friday, June 24, 2005; A30



IT'S HARD TO TAKE satisfaction in the Supreme Court's decision yesterday in the case of Kelo v. City of New London -- the result of which is quite unjust. Yet the court's decision was correct.

New London, Conn., has been attempting to take the property of residents of Fort Trumbull, an economically struggling area, for a redevelopment project that would replace their waterfront neighborhood homes with a hotel, offices and other new features. A few residents refused to sell, so the city -- or rather, a private, nonprofit corporation acting on its behalf -- asserted the power of eminent domain to force them to sell. The Supreme Court ruled that the city has the right to do so, which means that people who have lived for long periods in Fort Trumbull will be forced from their homes based on a vague and uncertain redevelopment scheme. It isn't a pretty picture.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution requires government to pay "just compensation" whenever it takes private property, and the Fort Trumbull residents will be compensated. But it further requires that "takings" be for "public use," and it was this requirement that residents cited in their lawsuit. They contended that the city was taking their land not for any legitimate public use but for the benefit of businesses -- essentially that the government was exchanging one set of private owners for another that would pay more taxes and bring jobs to the city.

The trouble is that there is no good way to distinguish New London's use of eminent domain from assertions of the power that local governments depend on all the time for worthy projects. Railroads, stadiums, inner-city redevelopment plans and land reform efforts all have involved taking land from one owner for the apparently private use of another. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted for a five-justice majority of the court, the justices' response has long been to avoid "rigid formulas and intrusive scrutiny" of legislative determinations "in favor of affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power."

This is not to say that a "public use" is anything government says it is. If the supposed public use were plainly a pretext for a simple private-sector land transfer, the court would presumably step in. But that is not the case here. New London's plan, whatever its flaws, is intended to help develop a city that has been in economic decline for many years. City authorities may be wrong in their judgment that their plans are a good way to revitalize the town. But the Fifth Amendment's takings clause was never meant to ensure good judgment or wise policy. Indeed, it was intended less as a restraint on the substance of what government does than as a guarantee that it will pay reasonably. However unfortunate New London's plans may prove, stopping the city based on a standardless judicial inquiry into how "public" its purpose really is would be far worse.