David Cisco exactly. there was a guy in a nearby town that lost a truck stop he owned because he didn't pay property tax. Every time I hear ads on the radio saying "grow your wealth through tax liens" I get mad. I wonder if calling up the advertising company and informing them that they are, at best, a fence for stolen goods would phase them at all?

There is a little publicly known method in Texas where the party who wants to seize property will jump ahead of the owner and pay annual taxes on said property. After that, the party that's paid the taxes has every right to evict the owner. More famously in Texas, it's been the case that members of a Chamber of Commerce will evoke a fraudulent Health and Safety code violation, condemn the property, evict the owner, and take over the property with little or zero compensation to the owner.

Agree! most people do not get this. I point it out every time I can that we are not home owners if we pay taxes on that home.

Others call it "Utter Bullshit."

There are certain situations where eminent domain should apply... Widening roads, hospitals or any PUBLIC works project. But Trumps does realistate, nobody builds factory's anymore, he wants to build condo's or hotels, he likes it for personal gain.

Nope. In all those cases, private property is taken based on what a select group of private individuals (known as the "government" - whether Federal, state, or local) deems to be the best for everyone. Even if it could somehow objectively be deemed as best for the "public," it still does not justify intrusion on the private individual's property rights. Just because 9 out of 10 people in the room would benefit from a gangrape does not mean it's justifiable. The Takings Clause as a legal term, however, is only going to continue to grow. SCOTUS has already ruled that taking land from one individual and giving to another individual is constitutional so long as the general net growth in the area may reasonably grow due to such transaction.

Don't agree.

Good thing it's truth status doesn't depend on whether you agree with it!

The government is run by morons for the most part.

Not morons, just thieves. Tailypo's story was likely calculated corruption and fraud.

Everyone involved with kicking those people out of their homes should be sitting in prison right now.

Taking it up the ass is not a solution.

Sometimes you can't.

Too bad then.

Nobody is entitled to economic outcomes. Bring on the stone age. Most old roads were established by property owners themselves, and they are straight because they follow the property lines.

I think thats what he means. That using emminent domain to expand a road, provided that the expansion is necessary is entirely constitutional. What is not, however, is the seizure of property to build private facilities no matter the supposed need.

So what?

ArtemiaSalina We need bridges, roads, reservoirs, infrastructure, ect., to be a well functioning society. Land for those things has to come from somewhere. I'm sorry for the lady's house but it wasn't just about her. It was good for her community.

The solution is to not have the government be responsible for building roads. That way businesses, home owners, and road companies could have the freedom to develop a solution.

Why does it always come down to roads? I'm pretty sure the road can just be built elsewhere, and if somehow it can't, oh well. A person's liberty is infinitely more important than the minor convenience of another road.

Buff Awesome - Because roads are generally something everyone can agree that we need and use. It is not like a factor or shopping mail that is for profit. It is inherently for the public good. Both can be viewed as liberty. The liberty of easy of travel vs the liberty of controlling your own home. At some point, the rights of the many should out weigh the rights of one. Lets say the government is trying to build a freeway, and you have the one home left in the way. This freeway will save 10,000 drivers 1 hour off there commute every day. That would be insane to not force you to move with good compensation. Why does your liberty to want to live where you are trump the liberty of over a year of time of people's life every day?

Sorry for the wall of text, but deconstructing this argument takes time. The "for the greater good" fallacy. The cornerstone of neo-liberalism. I knew that was coming. Let me ask you, who gets to decide what the greater good is, you? What measurement are you using to weigh the convenience of the road with the person's property rights? One of the biggest problems with the "greater good" fallacy is that it attempts to weigh the value of "goods" (in the moral sense, not the economic). It's like trying to weigh the value of charity and free speech. Now I don't know about you, but I think they're both incommensurable and I'm sure you'd agree with me. I mean, who wouldn't? Would you be willing to sacrifice one of those for the other if the ends justified the means? Moreover, would you want to live in a world without free speech or without charity? Me personally, I think a world without either of those would suck, but, by your logic, as long as the ends justified the means, it'd be worth it, no matter how much freedom was destroyed or how many people you stomped on to get there. Another problem with this logic is that you never tell me what the benefit would be to the victim. How would they benefit from their home being destroyed? You might say, they'll be well compensated, but if they don't want to sell their home, what good would money be to them? Clearly, they don't value it. They value their home. Just because you think it'd be good for them doesn't mean *they* do. Would you be so arrogant to assert that you know what's better for them, like they're children? Or is it because it's just one person or family in that house. Is it the number that matters? What's the cut off then? 10,000:1? 5,000:1? 10:1? Who gets to decide this arbitrary number? You? Then there's always the threat of unintended consequences. What if the person who owned that property killed themselves out of despair? People have killed themselves for lesser things, like gambling debts. Would the sacrifice of their life still be worth it for the minor convenience? Does Human dignity mean so little to you? What if that person was destined to do great things? Another big problem with the "for the greater good" fallacy is the lack of consideration for unintended consequences and loss of potential. Because you cannot see or do not wish to consider the benefit of leaving the house be, you assume it isn't there and act anyway. It's hard to defend that which is not currently tangible because it's not there and most people do not have the imagination to predict that which could be. So, rather than consider the consequence of violating ones rights, you'd rather stick with the tangible simply because it's there. Even the whole idea of checks and balances is not a substantial argument, because government always grows and overreaches. Once it has power it'll exercise it to the nth degree. Case and point: eminent domain. It used to be only for emergencies, like war time construction, but now it could be for anything, like a tax right off for a major corporation. It's better to not have it. The reality is that the economic advantages and disadvantages of a proposed public project can be quantified. But people also want freedom of speech and of religion, equal protection of the laws, privacy, and other goods which block certain choices, yet which cannot be costed out. You can go on and on about how buildings said road will make things more efficient, but such analysis cannot tell one whether the objectives one seeks are objectives one ought to seek, or whether nonquantifiable factors should be ignored. Before you answer all this though, let me ask you something else, to put things in perspective, and I want you to answer this first: Let's say the road you have planned goes directly through a Native American reservation. Would you be willing to destroy their sacred lands and scatter the tribe to the winds if it meant saving an hour of travel time for commuters?

Just because I think we can agree that we all need and use roads, does not mean all roads are a good idea. The Gravina Island Bridge, aka bridge to nowhere, is mindbogglingly stupid. It is a bridge that was going to cost $400M and connect to 50 people. It was congressional pork barrel spending at its worst.