Independent Institute Senior Fellow Bruce Benson discusses his 2010 book, Property Rights: Eminent Domain and Regulatory Takings Re-Examined, in a twenty-minute podcast produced by Kosmos available here. The interview was conducted by Jeanne Hoffman last October, but it is as timely as ever. Topics in the interview include: the use of the courts and...
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Property owners in Mongomery, in cooperation with the Institute for Justice, are organizing a press conference for Saturday to organize opposition to the city’s demolition of homes (many owned by blacks in Rosa Parks’ old neighborhood) through “eminent domain through the back door.” Christina Walsh has a powerful story: On Imagine you come home...
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Five years ago, as the housing bubble was ramping up, affordable housing was a big issue. Today, as housing prices have fallen after the bubble burst, I may be one of the few people who thinks housing prices are still too high. [Also see the recent book, Housing America: Building Out of a Crisis.]...
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In my capacity as chair of the Alabama State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights I am featured today in two Fox stories (print and television). Our committee has been investigating eminent domain as a civil rights issue. The stories describe how “eminent domain through the back door” has become commonplace...
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Any vestiges of goodwill and support for President Obama that I hold are vanishing faster than the Gulf Coast wetlands. Our “green” president is directly responsible for the escalation of the worst man-made environmental disaster in American history. The catastrophic explosion of Deepwater Horizon on April 20 was not directly caused by Obama, obviously....
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Power corrupts, and the power of political activism to thwart the lawful use of private property continues to corrupt our once-free market of competitive enterprises. It turns out that those “spontaneous” demonstrations against Wall-Mart in community after community are in fact well-funded and professionally orchestrated political activist campaigns bought and paid for by Wal-Mart’s...
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The Obama Administration has announced that it wants to spend at least $3.5 billion—and I wonder where they’re getting that kind of money?—over the next 3 years to help as many as 60 poor nations feed themselves. While it is very good news that this involves ending the practice of sending U.S. crops to...
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Pajamas TV has just released the excellent video, “A City Destroyed by Liberal Idealism,” which discusses the ruin of the City of Detroit as a result of “liberal” (i.e., “Progressive”) statism. And this disastrous story is repeated in major cities across the U.S. to the extent that government, urban, collectivist policies have been imposed....
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As cities across the country face growing deficits, instead of their current strategy of raising taxes and cutting services, they might like to take a look at a few case study examples of how those before them solved their challenges. As an example, ten years ago we hosted the then-mayors of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith,...
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Leon County, Florida, where I live, is selling carbon credits for methane gas it is burning from the county landfill, going part-way into turning our garbage into cash. Here’s the story (facts come from the local paper, the Tallahassee Democrat, October 19, page 3A). Because of complaints of nearby residents of odors coming from...
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