Book twenty-eight: Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage by Jeff Benedict

Quote 1: "To The Honorable Mayor Beachy and City Council: I am 85 years of age, have lived here all my life, and at this stage in my life I cannot even think of moving. I do not want to move. Respectfully, Helen Ballestrini pg. 85

Quote 2: "Bruising political fights tended to obscure the fact that the people on the other side were human beings." pg. 263

Quote 3: "Economic development was a valid public-use purpose for exercising eminent domain. Cities, especially depressed ones, had to be allowed to take private properties to stimulate private development that would ultimately produce jobs and tax revenue." pg. 296

Quote 4: "In County of Wayne v. Hathcock, the Michigan Supreme Court had just overturned a prior decision allowing the City of Detroit to bulldoze a neighborhood with more than a thousand residents and six hundred businesses to make way for a more lucrative occupant -- a General Motors plant. The Michigan justices had ignored decades of precedent and declared it unconstitutional to take private land through eminent domain and then award it to someone else who could generate more tax revenue for the city." pg. 302

Quote 5: "Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic, limitation on government power...Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded. ... The specter of condemnation hangs over all property...Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory." pg. 323 

Quote 6: "A group in Los Angeles had started a national campaign to have Justice Souter's home in New Hampshire condemned and taken by eminent domain." pg. 344

You buy a house, you live in it, then the State takes it from you and gives it to a wealthier person because the house they will build will bring in more tax revenue or they give it to a private developer who is going to add a block of row houses or they don't do anything with it other than take it from you. If that doesn't scare the heck out of you, it should. Thankfully, as a response to the disgraceful outcome of Kelo v. City of New London, many States have created stricter requirements for when eminent domain can be used. Still doesn't mean it can't happen, just means it is a touch harder.

28 down plus 24 to go.