Tulsa R3's - Ron Paul Revolution list: "May I Retain My Domain, Your Eminence?"
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Ryan Underwood (Meetup)
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Ryan Underwood (Organizer) sent a new message to the Tulsa R3's – Ron Paul Revolution mailing list:
May I Retain My Domain, Your Eminence?
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GM Will Shut Down Factory Built on Land Seized in Controversial 1981 Poletown Taking
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/11/27...t-on-land-seiz
Yesterday, General Motors announced the planned closing of five plants in the US and Canada. One of the factories that will be shut down is in Hamtramck, Michigan. The plant was originally built as a result of the 1981 Poletown condemnations, in which the City of Detroit used eminent domain to forcibly displace some 4000 people:
Maybe the naysayers were right all along.
General Motors' decision to close its Hamtramck assembly plant recalls one of the most bitter development controversies in Michigan's history. Closing the plant will no doubt open old wounds — and raise anew questions of who benefits from such massive urban revitalization projects like the Hamtramck plant....
By the early 1980s, then-Mayor Coleman Young was seeking to create jobs for economically distressed Detroit. He agreed to support General Motors' plan to build its new assembly plant on the border of Detroit and Hamtramck.
But the more than 300-acre site was home to a Polish neighborhood known as Poletown. It featured about 4,000 residents, more than
1,000 houses, several Catholic churches and more than 100 businesses.
That neighborhood stood in the way of GM's plant. In a bold and hotly contested move, officials used government's eminent domain
powers to seize and raze those properties on GM's behalf. It made national news, got people like consumer advocate Ralph Nader
involved, and the many protests included a nearly monthlong sit-in at the neighborhood's Immaculate Conception Church that police eventually broke up with arrests.
The opponents took their case to the Michigan Supreme Court, which, in 1981, decided to back the GM project. The court said that taking property from one private owner to give to another private owner in
the name of economic development was an acceptable use of eminent domain.
The closure of the plant some 37 years after the Poletown condemnations were upheld in court doesn't by itself prove that the takings were unjustified. We cannot expect any factory to remain open forever – and indeed keeping unprofitable facilities open actually damages the economy in the long run. What does undermine the “economic development” rationale for the Poletown condemnations is that the use of eminent domain destroyed far more value than it created. As I described in a 2004 article about the Poletown case and its aftermath, the new factory never created anything close to the 6000 jobs promised by GM and city officials. On the other hand, an enormous amount of harm was caused by the displacement of 4000 people, and the destruction of numerous homes, businesses, churches, and schools. In addition, local, state, and federal governments spent some $250 million in public funds on the project (GM paid only $8 million to acquire the land). That money could have been better spent elsewhere. Poletown and other similar cases demonstrate that the use of eminent domain to forcibly displace people for private development projects is both unjust and likely to harm local economies more than it benefits them.
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