Condemnation nation

Browsing magazines in Barnes & Noble the other day I noticed there was an article on eminent domain in the October issue of Harper's Magazine. So I sat down and read it (hmmm, should have found a couch) and I have to say I was surprised over the angle it took. Apparently, so it says, it was all the liberal judges who supported the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain. Furthermore despite all the ho-ha from across the board, the democrats pretty remained silent on the issue. In fact it was the Republican controlled states that all rushed to pass state specific laws limiting the extent to which eminent domain could be applied (as the ruling allowed).

I guess I hadn't been following the case well, and just assumed this would be popular with wealthy Republicans who support the mega-retailers and developers that love eminent domain like an old and wealthy relative. However Harper's (and I have to admit I haven't divined the political affiliation of Harper's yet) clearly states that its the liberals and not the libertarians who love eminent domain and the more broadly it can be applied "for the public good" the better. Dis-information? Well perhaps this is just an indication that the "liberal" democrats are actually not so liberal at all. More likely its that their definition of liberal has strained itself too far in the direction of socialist. I can't personally name a single friend, even those who might consider themselves "liberal", or merely left of Bush, who thinks the ruling was a good one, or that cities should be able to cease property purely on the basis of earning more tax dollars.

As the Harper's article points out, there are serious doubts that even well considered eminent domain land grabs are for the better. In this decade they are seldom used to convert blighted land to productive real estate, and mostly to convert diversely populated land to monoculture big box stores. Diversity of land use can endure all kinds of attrition and remain vital. Whereas we all know that monocultures are highly susceptible to being wiped out by a pox - a single bad quarter, a slash-and-burn takeover, or a single crooked CEO or CFO.

The result its an empty big box and underutilized, non-tax yielding land and property. Indeed, as my local neighborhood bears witness, empty real-estate is much coverted by some property developers as it is a very hand tax right-off. In the short term by inflating its "market value" its value as a tax right-off can actually exceed its value as leased property. Hence we spend five years surrounded by mostly empty store fronts because a big developer could care less about unutilized retail space, something highly unlikely if the same property was in the hands of small property owners.