Submitted by Investor Llew, Dec 27, 2007 09:48

Throughout the years, I find myself taking note about possibilities such as the use of eminent domain and the possibility of other abuses when I purchase property.

For instance, I do not purchase a building with a vacant lot next to it unless I have the money to buy that vacant lot. I have seen developers do very unscrupulous development without protecting or shoring up adjacent properties.

In such cases, like my neighbor's across the street, he almost went bankrupt suing the developer as there is no fund set asside to help neighbors who are adversely affected through no fault of their own. Therefore, they must sue with their own funds. (That might be another interesting story for you to write. Scarano is the architect for the 2 buildings on my block that have caused quite a bit of damage to the neighboring buildings.)

Getting back to the ruling in the Kelo case, the trend seems to be to allow the wealthy or those that have enough money to infulence the policitical machine towards their own ends.

In fact, it really isn't anything new, is it? Consider that the Constitution protects The Minority but in fact, in the Context of the era in which the Constitution was written, the Minority was the Land Owners. They needed protection against the majority of Tenants.

In today's world, we are all Tenants. We all pay "rent." Property owners as well since non-payment of our property taxes result in our "eviction" just as if we were non-paying renters. In our case, our LandLord is the Government run by the very same people who wrote the Consitution, the Minority who are in power.

The only difference today is that we are thrown some crumbs and feel happy about it until that small crumb is taken away from a few of us. We do nothing substancially enough collectively to change the direction of the seat of power.

So why should we think things are really different now? It's all the same.

Llew Adal
Small Residential Developer
Investment Educator

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