Friday, September 20, 2013

David vs Goliath: Eminent Domain Proposal in Richmond, CA Advances

Commentary by Roger Erickson

My son writes from California.

"We've talked about the possibility of this before, with some precedent from the great depression both in the form of eminent domain and communities disrupting auctions to make foreclosed farms return to their evicted owners.

I just saw a segment about this on PBS newshour. 

Richmond, CA is about to take matters into their own hands.

Eminent Domain Proposal in Richmond, CA Advances
Obviously the financial industry is panicking and trying to shut things down, but the plan has now passed the city council vote and looks like it's really going to happen.

On the one hand, it's a pretty radical use of eminent domain, but on the other it's now fallen to local government to do something because the financial industry, the federal government, and the state government have made it clear that they are not going to do anything sufficiently radical themselves. This is worth keeping an eye on."



1 comment:

John Zelnicker said...

Roger -- Yves Smith has written about this plan more than once and it has a LOT of problems. Search the Naked Capitalism website for "eminent domain" and you will get a list of several articles in the past year or so.

Some elites are complaining that it is "just a wealth transfer to a few elites", which is a true, but highly ironic, statement.