Eminenet Domain in the hands of Republican Rick Perry !

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

AP on anti-TTC rally

The AP wire:
About 250 farmers and ranchers rallied at the Capitol today to protest Governor Rick Perry's Trans Texas Corridor.
Critics say the highway project will gobble up the property of rural land owners.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn joined the demonstrators and called Perry's associates "land-grabbing highway henchmen."
She also called the governor's plan the "Trans Texas Catastrophe."
...
Spokesman Robert Black also says Strayhorn in the past has supported toll roads.
RG Ratcliffe has this in the Chron:
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn got farmers, ranchers and small-business owners whipped into a frenzy at a Capitol rally Tuesday as they called for Gov. Rick Perry's impeachment over the land-condemnation provisions of his Trans-Texas Corridor plan.
"Perry and his hand-picked highway henchmen say we have a choice: no roads, slow roads or toll roads," Strayhorn said. "I say to Governor Perry and his highway henchmen: Hogwash. Vote our way today for freeways."

- posted @ 4:08 PM permalink
source: http://perryvsworld.blogspot.com/

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Trans-Texas Corridor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This article or section contains information about a planned or expected future road.
It may contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change dramatically as the road's construction and/or completion approaches and more information becomes available.
The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is a transportation network in the planning and early construction stages in the U.S. state of Texas. The concept uses swaths of land up to 365 m (1,200 ft) wide to carry parallel links of expressways, rails, and utility lines. The expressway portion would be divided into two separate elements: truck lanes and lanes for passenger vehicles. Similarly, the rail lines in the corridor would be divided among freight, commuter, and high-speed rail. Services expected to be carried in the utility corridor include water, electricity, natural gas and petroleum, plus fiber optic lines and other telecommunications services.

Some of the highways that will be incorporated into the TTC plan include Interstate 35 and Interstate 69.

The system has been criticized for a number of reasons. Among the most significant is the fact that the TTC will be extremely expensive. Additionally the system will require about 23,300 km² (9,000 square miles) of land to be purchased or acquired through the state's assertion of eminent domain. Environmentalists are concerned about the effects of such wide corridors, and private land owners have expressed disgust at the idea that their land may be seized and in turn be sold in exclusive agreements to other developers in order to help pay for the transit links.

To help pay for building the roads and rails, the highways will be toll roads. The current 6,400 Km (4,000 mile) plan has a projected cost of about US$183 billion.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Texas_Corridor

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City Council limits eminent domain
January 19, 2006

The San Angelo City Council this week made it more difficult for future councils to condemn property in the city for private investors.
Council members wanted to limit the power of eminent domain after a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that set precedent for similar takings.
The ordinance must be approved at the Feb. 7 council meeting for it to take effect. It mirrors a state statute already on the books that prohibits cities from taking land for private investors, but council members said they wanted to act in good faith for residents concerned about property rights.
City ordinances can be overturned by future councils.
source: http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4399149,00.html
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for those on the airwaves of KXYL (Brownwood Talk Radio) who want to lay eminent domaine abuse at the feet of "Liberals", read the following excerpt from
Bush and the Seven Deadly Sins
by Mina Hamilton
Dissident Voice
May 29, 2003

" Back in 1989, Bush hauled in the moolah on the stadium built in Arlington, Texas for the Texas Rangers. What's interesting about this one is that the Texas legislature passed a bill allowing the private corporation that owned the Rangers to exercise eminent domain, normally a power reserved for public entities.

We're all pretty familiar with condemnation for public projects. It's what the Army Corps of Engineers does to build flood-control dams or Municipalities do to construct water mains or Highway Authorities do to obtain rights-of-way. In the Texas Rangers case the condemnation was on behalf of a handful of private individuals, one of whom was George W.

This surprising form of socialism with baseball teams condemning private property for new stadiums is now quite common in the US. It had a particularly sordid ring in the Texas deal.

This private corporation condemned not only enough land for a spanking new baseball stadium, but also took an additional 300 acres - yes 300 acres - of surrounding land for commercial development. Arlington residents floated most of the package with jacked-up taxes. These paid for the bonds needed to buy the land. It seems that our no-tax President wasn't ideologically opposed to increasing taxes if it padded his own bank account.

The padding was generous: Bush made out like a bandit with his initial investment of $640,000 zooming to a cool $15.4 million in 1998 when he sold out. (4)

A similar type of socialism for the rich is planned for Iraq. US taxpayers fund the war, George's cronies and benefactors mop up on juicy reconstruction contracts and then the CEO's of Halliburton, Bechtel, and other post-Saddam beneficiaries direct vast sums back into the Bush/GOP campaign war chest. "

source: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles5/Hamilton_Bush-7Sins.htm