3 more for good measure

LAND RUSH Queens Courier

Holdouts dig in at Willets Point Crain's New York

Neither hindsight nor oversight is 20/20 at the City Council Neighborhood Retail Alliance

Wonderful comment on the second article:

Welcome to more government theft. In New York State, a finding that an area is blighted is a pretext for most if not all eminent domain takings.

In all cases, one must ask who's responsible for the blighting? Usually it is the government or the private party that is seeking to steal someone else's property. In the case of Willets Point, the... (more) City is the cause of the blight because they failed to install and maintain sewers and sidewalks. The fact that the City government is required to provide these is, of course, irrelevant.

Not mentioned in the article was the eternal and ever repeated promise of 10,000 jobs. It's always 10,000 jobs, no matter what business may be occupying the space.

Kelo had two effects. One was to increase takings and the other was to inspire private individual property owners to fight even more fiercely. Plus legislators accross the country began to rewrite the eminent domain laws to protect people from arbitrary seizures or seizures based on flimsy grounds like blight.

Unfortunately, New York State is still in the dark ages and continues to be the serial eminent domain abuser it has always been. Witness the taking in connection with Columbia University. As with Kelo, this is the taking by one private entity of another(s) private property. Only under the bizarre rules of eminent domain would this not be called theft.

But it is theft, grand theft eminent domain.