News Focus
News Focus
icon url

mainehiker

06/23/05 10:51 AM

#403489 RE: Joe Stocks #403480

i thought that would make you happy, you support these people i thought?
icon url

steviee

06/23/05 11:00 AM

#403495 RE: Joe Stocks #403480

Joe, only right since we only lease from the Gov't. anyway, BAAAAAAA, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
icon url

choad

06/23/05 12:14 PM

#403564 RE: Joe Stocks #403480

Why should that surprise anyone, it's for the public good. LOL The reason it feels so good is because all those beaurocrats have switched to Kools....notice the gentle smoothness as they blow smoke up the posterior of the consenting populace.
icon url

langostino

06/23/05 1:49 PM

#403626 RE: Joe Stocks #403480

Sad, but hardly surprising

Often the law is just a reflection of shifting societal values. The boundaries of the power of eminent domain are defined by how society defines "in the public good" and "necessary for the general health and welfare".

It's a sign of the times that instead of measuring public health and welfare in terms of things like preservation of natural resources and heritage, more people are interested in defining it these days by measure of consumption and short-term greed/gain.

It's truly a perverse turning of the whole notion of the common good and a sense of intergenerational obligation on its head to expand the doctrine this way.

But then, I think morally we've been going down the tubes since the 80s when our national ethic began to erode. The "Me" Generation is all grown up and running the country now. Are you really surprised that this is what they bring you? Once CEOs took pride in raising the standard of living of the people who worked for their companies, and the way the hometown business raised up and gave to a community. Now they take pride in how much they can soak the community for in terms of handouts, and define their success by how far down they can compress the benefits and wages of their workers, and how much they're able to "produce" by using their corporate power to corrupt and manipulate the political system to advantage. (Would this court ruling have any significance but for corporate types trying to get something they couldn't get in the free market, or were unwilling to pay up for, via power-control of elected stooges they paid off to do their bidding and corruptly pull the strings of the common power of government to advantage?)

For those people who invested all their moral outrage at where Slick Willie's willy was, and wrote the political blank check to worship of the "get-rich-quick and with no effort" ethic that dominates business marketing in our culture (hey, the airwaves wouldn't be dominated by daytrading seminars and real estate flipping infomercials if there wasn't an appetite for and response to them), yet now decry the outsourcing, out of control government spending in the form of corporate giveaways, and the vaporized middle class, I have no sympathy for you. You got what you earned and richly deserve.

In something of an ultimate irony, there are tons of people hanging out a few hours a day on bulletin boards, reading a few headlines and think they should be able to click a few buttons on a computer screen and "make money", then trying to kid themselves into believing they will have "earned it" by dint of their brilliance or meager output of effort, if they guess right. Either that, or don't much care about the moral equivalence if they think otherwise. And worse, either knowing that this is part of the tapestry of internal societal crumbling and not caring (so long as I get mine, what do I care?), or being to damned stupid (perhaps intentionally) to admit that's the net effect of people gaming (read: preying on) each other in a mostly net-zero game.



icon url

Fred Langford

06/23/05 2:20 PM

#403656 RE: Joe Stocks #403480

Wasn't it Ben Franklin who said, 'Those who would give up liberty for safety, will have neither liberty or safety'
How I wish our voting population would have paid more attention in school!

Fred

BTW, hope some of you saw my heads up on BRCM post last week...
icon url

langostino

07/01/05 1:04 AM

#405882 RE: Joe Stocks #403480

Congress sends a message to Supreme Court

About that ruling on eminent domain ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/30/AR2005063001082.html