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Rosalind_Swenson 
Group: Members
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Joined: May 2011
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Posted on: Oct. 05 2012,12:07 pm |
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I looked up the definition for eminent domain and this is part of what it says:
Federal, state, and local governments may take private property through their power of eminent domain or may regulate it by exercising their Police Power. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to provide just compensation to the owner of the private property to be taken. A variety of property rights are subject to eminent domain, such as air, water, and land rights. The government takes private property through condemnation proceedings. Throughout these proceedings, the property owner has the right of due process.
Eminent domain is a challenging area for the courts, which have struggled with the question of whether the regulation of property, rather than its acquisition, is a taking requiring just compensation. In addition, private property owners have begun to initiate actions against the government in a kind of proceeding called inverse condemnation.
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Trans-Canada showed up on a woman's land with no warning and started tearing up the land and trees. She says she had been fighting against the pipeline since first hearing about it a few years ago. She says she refused to give them permission and received no money and no warning. She was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and obstructing a passageway.
On her own property?
http://tarsandsblockade.org/darylandeleanor/
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And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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Glad I Left
Group: Members
Posts: 2306
Joined: Aug. 2005
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Posted on: Oct. 05 2012,12:51 pm |
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Eminent Domain IMO, is illegal as hell. The gov't should NOT have any rite to seize your property unless you are in the commission of a crime.
It is total violation of the 4th Amendment and I cannot see how it has been upheld this long.
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After we screw up health care reform, let's take on the initiative of unscrewing the education system (gov't education)
Tacitus: (c. 56 AD-c. 117) "The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."
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pantalonesverdes
Rob ('n hood)
Group: Members
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Posted on: Oct. 05 2012,12:58 pm |
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Probably an existing utility easement on the property rather than an issue of eminent domain in this particular case.
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Rosalind_Swenson
Group: Members
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Joined: May 2011
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Posted on: Oct. 05 2012,2:11 pm |
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I'm not sure about the lady I mentioned in my first comment, but this is what happened to a different land owner:
After the Crawford family refused to sell to TransCanada, the next step for this foreign company was to condemn their land. They legally had the power to do this because – and you’re not going to believe this – they simply checked a box on a “T4” form for the Texas Railroad Commission (the body that regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas) that says ‘common carrier.’ Common carrier status carries with it the power of eminent domain – the right to seize property. Meanwhile, the Railroad Commission openly states that they have no regulatory authority to make sure that a private company does not abuse the power of eminent domain. And, guess what, the Commission filed an amicus letter stating that they wanted to keep things the way they are.
http://nacstop.org/standwithjulia/index.html
Sorry, I can't find any "credible" sources, so maybe this isn't really happening. 
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And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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Rosalind_Swenson
Group: Members
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Posted on: Oct. 05 2012,2:35 pm |
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Tuesday, Shannon Bebe and Benjamin Franklin delayed construction for most of the day when they locked arms around construction machinery, intent on protecting East Texas homes. The two were subjected to torture tactics by police only after TransCanada’s senior supervisors huddled with law enforcement to actively encourage the use of extreme pain compliance techniques on the peaceful protesters.
Immediately following TransCanada’s consultation, law enforcement handcuffed the protesters’ free hands to the heavy machinery in stress positions and proceeded to use sustained chokeholds, violent arm-twisting, pepper spray, and repeated tasering to coerce the two to abandon their protest. Extraordinarily, despite their torture, the two endured for over five hours, affirming their courageous stance that taking action now is less of a risk than doing nothing.
Upon the protesters’ arrest, TransCanada supervisors were seen and heard congratulating law enforcement on a job well done.
http://tarsandsblockade.org/press/press-releases/
Those two protesters are being charged with felonies.
http://www.kltv.com/story...ncident
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And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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Rosalind_Swenson
Group: Members
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Joined: May 2011
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Posted on: Oct. 06 2012,10:16 am |
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In 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer built a plant next to Fort Trumbull and the City determined that someone else could make better use of the land than the Fort Trumbull residents. The City handed over its power of eminent domain—the ability to take private property for public use—to the New London Development Corporation (NLDC), a private body, to take the entire neighborhood for private development. As the Fort Trumbull neighbors found out, when private entities wield government’s awesome power of eminent domain and can justify taking property with the nebulous claim of “economic development,” all homeowners are in trouble.
The fight over Fort Trumbull eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Court in 2005, in one of the most controversial rulings in its history, held that economic development was a “public use” under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision against Kelo and her neighbors sparked a nation-wide backlash against eminent domain abuse, leading eight state supreme courts and 43 state legislatures to strengthen protections for property rights. Moreover, Kelo educated the public about eminent domain abuse, and polls consistently show that Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to Kelo and support efforts to change the law to better protect home and small business owners. Moreover, in the five years since the Kelo decision, citizen activists have defeated 44 projects that sought to abuse eminent domain for private development.
Meanwhile, in New London, the Fort Trumbull project has been a dismal failure. After spending close to 80 million in taxpayer money, there has been no new construction whatsoever and the neighborhood is now a barren field. In 2009, Pfizer, the lynchpin of the disastrous economic development plan, announced that it was leaving New London for good, just as its tax breaks are set to expire.
http://www.ij.org/kelo-v-new-london
Dirtbags.
Ok, so what about a foreign company being able to claim eminent domain?
I agree with you GIL, eminent domain is BS. ESPECIALLY for companies to be able to use it.
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And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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Rosalind_Swenson
Group: Members
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Posted on: Oct. 19 2012,1:37 pm |
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Just in case anyone hasn't already heard about this:
Two New York Times reporters were handcuffed and told to leave when they tried interviewing protesters of the XL Pipeline.
QUOTE Two reporters for The New York Times were detained Wednesday while covering protesters at the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Wood County in East Texas. The two reporters, Dan Frosch and Brandon Thibodeaux, who identified themselves as members of the media, were handcuffed by a pipeline company security guard and a local police officer. After ten minutes, the two were released, but told they had to leave the property or face arrest. They were on private property at the time at the invitation of the landowner.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas...rotests
Two journalists working for the New York Times were detained in East Texas while working on a story about the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline, according to NYT spokesperson Eileen Murphy.
The incident happened Wedensday, when an East Texas landowner allowed freelance reporter Dan Frosch and freelance photographer Brandon Thibodeaux on private property to report on the controversy surrounding the seizure of private land for use by TransCanada.
The two journalists were detained by local police and TransCanada security for about ten minutes, then told to leave or they would be arrested. Frosch and Thibodeaux left the property.
http://www.fox51.com/news...ipeline
The only "credible" news I've found it on so far is NPR and that small article on a local Fox station. The NY Times reporter himself didn't even mention it in the article he wrote. -Weird. I don't understand why he wouldn't have mentioned that in his own article.
But then CBS barely mentioned when their reporters were threatened with arrest by BP and the Coast Guard, and CBS was the only mainstream source I could find that mentioned it.
40 reporters arrested at the RNC in St. Paul in 08. The CBS reporters in the Gulf. An insane number threatened, injured and arrested covering Occupy protests, the LA police picking from a "lottery" which reporters would be allowed to cover Occupy LA, and now this with the NY Times reporter in Texas.
Does any of this sound like the United States?
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And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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grassman
Group: Members
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Posted on: Oct. 19 2012,3:03 pm |
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.
Texas landowners take a rare stand against Big Oil
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI | Associated Press – Wed, Oct 17, 2012.
SUMNER, Texas (AP) — Oil has long lived in harmony with farmland and cattle across the Texas landscape, a symbiosis nurtured by generations and built on an unspoken honor code that allowed agriculture to thrive while oil was extracted.
Proud Texans have long welcomed the industry because of the cash it brings to sustain agriculture, but also see its presence as part of their patriotic duty to help wean the United States off "foreign" oil. So the answer to companies that wanted to build pipelines has usually been simple: Yes.
As the company pursues construction of a 1,179-mile-long cross-country pipeline meant to bring Canadian tar sands oil to South Texas refineries, it's finding opposition in the unlikeliest of places: oil-friendly Texas, a state that has more pipelines snaking through the ground than any other.
In the minds of some landowners approached by TransCanada for land, the company has broken the code.
Nearly half the steel TransCanada is using is not American-made and the company won't promise to use local workers exclusively; it can't guarantee the oil will remain in the United States. It has snatched land. Possibly most egregious: The company has behaved like an arrogant foreigner, unworthy of operating in Texas.
To fight back, insulted Texas landowners are filing and appealing dozens of lawsuits, threatening to further delay a project that has already encountered many obstacles. Others are allowing activists to go on their land to stage protests. Several have been arrested.
"We've fought wars for it. We stood our ground at the Alamo for it. There's a lot of reasons that Texans are very proud of their land and proud when you own land that you are the master of that land and you control that land," said Julia Trigg Crawford, who is fighting the condemnation of a parcel of her family's 650-acre Red'Arc Farm in Sumner, about 115 miles northeast of Dallas.
Oil and agriculture have lived in peace in part because a one-time payment from a pipeline company or monthly royalties from a production rig can help finance a ranch or farm that struggle today to turn a profit from agriculture. The oil giants also respected landowners' fierce Texas independence, even sometimes drilling in a different yard or rerouting a pipeline to ensure easy access to the minerals below.
TransCanada is different. For one, it has more often sought and received court permission to condemn land when property owners didn't agree to an easement.
"This is a foreign company," Crawford said. "Most people believe that as this product gets to the Houston area and is refined, it's probably then going to be shipped outside the United States. So if this product is not going to wind up as gasoline or diesel fuel in your vehicles or mine then what kind of energy independence is that creating for us?"
While using foreign steel for a U.S. pipeline and condemning land is not all that unusual, Keystone XL has been so controversial nationally — sparking protests in Washington, Nebraska and other states, and even getting a mention in the presidential debate on Tuesday — that it may have given Texans the push they needed to fight.
Activists have handcuffed themselves to machinery. A group has moved into a grove of trees on a TransCanada easement. A 78-year-old great-grandmother, Eleanor Fairchild, whose late husband worked in the oil industry, spent a night in jail after trespassing — along with actress Daryl Hannah of "Splash" fame — on land condemned on her 425-acre farm. On Monday, eight others were arrested for their protest activities.
TransCanada's pipeline, some landowners say, is more worrisome than those built by other companies because of the tar sands oil the company wants to transport. They point to an 800,000-gallon spill of mostly tar sands oil in Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010. It took Enbridge, the company that owns that pipeline, 17 hours to detect the rupture, and the cleanup is still incomplete.
With a pipeline, landowners give up control of the land for a one-time check, risking a spill that could contaminate their land or water for years. It's a risk many are willing to take in exchange for cash — to a point.
Some say the risk of a spill now is too high to cooperate. Others want guarantees TransCanada will take full responsibility for a spill.
Most pipeline projects in Texas have been completed with an average of 4 percent to 10 percent of condemned land. TransCanada, however, has condemned more than 100 of the 800 or so tracts — or about 12.5 percent — of the land it needed to complete a 485-mile portion of the pipeline that runs through Texas.
Many of the lawsuits in Texas are about TransCanada's "common carrier" status. This allows companies building projects benefiting the public to condemn private property. The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled if a landowner challenges a condemnation, the company must prove its project is for the public good.
Crawford, whose family has denied other pipelines access to their land, argues that since TransCanada's pipeline will have only one access point — or a place where oil can get into the pipe — at a hub in Cushing, Okla., it does not qualify for the status, which requires the pipeline be accessible in Texas.
"This is not about the money," said Crawford, who notes that TransCanada's final offer of $20,000 amounts to less than $1 a day over 60 years, less time than her family has been on the land. "This is about the right of a landowner to control what happens on their land."
David Holland's 3,850-acre rice farm and ranch in southeast Jefferson County is littered with nearly 50 pipelines. In the five years since he was first approached by TransCanada, he said he has signed contracts with two other companies. He insists he would do the same for TransCanada — if they offered him fair value for his 10.5 acres.
Until now, Holland said, he and other landowners had given pipeline companies a roughly 20 percent discount because it was cheaper than fighting Big Oil. TransCanada offered him more than $400,000 for his land. But that, he said, was about $200 less for every 16.5 feet than he had previously received. After Holland declined, the court allowed TransCanada to take the land for $13 for every 16.5 feet — totaling slightly more than $20,000.
"Every landowner in the state is furious at them," he said.
Some landowners have reached agreements without a problem. Henry Duncan, whose 200-acre farm is across the road from the Crawford's, wouldn't say how much TransCanada paid, but feels he was fairly compensated for his 7 acres. He does wish they would use American-made steel for the pipe and hire local workers. He, too, feels they bullied landowners, but is realistic.
Pipeline money helps keep his 100 head of cattle roaming the pastures. It could help him and his wife as they age.
Seems to me they just push their way around.
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git er done!
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grassman
Group: Members
Posts: 3858
Joined: Mar. 2006
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Posted on: Oct. 19 2012,10:54 pm |
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Well by golly, let me just take a little plunge at it and say...THEY HAVE PEOPLE PISSED OFF ABOUT FUEL PRICES AND THEY WILL RAPE AND PILLAGE WHILE THE GOING IS GOOD!? While that works for the ELITE, it does not work for long.
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git er done!
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