>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>-What I hate is flattening houses and
>-neighborhoods to make way for big boxes. It's, you know, wrong, even
>-if it's only Nathan's "rightwing" that agrees.
>
>It's funny-- a thread starts with the question of whether state or federal
>law should be changed to gut local home rule powers, and Doug suddenly turns
>it around so that anyone who defends those home rule powers has to also be
>in favor of every abuse that might happen, when the point is that I'm
>defending the positive uses of eminent domain and not giving state
>legislators all control over local planning decisions.
Fuck, I'm not against eminent domain for real public improvement purposes, but I think those should be narrowly defined. Awful things have gone on in the name of urban planning; we've just heard some examples from LA, and I know of plenty from NYC and New Haven (the laboratory for urban renewal). There's a real prob with eminent domain as it's actually practiced, and it's not just right-wing cynics playing on crude populist sentiments.
Doug