Florida is considering using Eminent Domain that will displace many poor people. Is this right?
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Mayor Michael Brown wants to enhance the overall quality of life for all residents of Riviera Beach through economic opportunities and new development.
This includes improving the quality of City parks, adding additional police protection and attracting new businesses to the City.
"Our infrastructure will be improved to make Riviera Beach a more desirable place to live," Mayor Brown stated. "This also requires increased accountability from City employees," he noted.
Yes improvement by taking homes from the poor.
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Florida's Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex.
Remember we already have a Republican that is scheming to keep the poor out of New Orleans.
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Louisiana State Senator Craig Romero (R) visited Washington earlier this month under the auspices of raising money for Katrina disaster relief, Roll Call reported today. But the trip was also an opportunity for Romero to drum up support for his run for Congress in Louisiana's 3rd district now held by Democrat Charlie Melancon.
The Huffington Post has acquired pages from a packet of candidate information that Romero handed out to special interest groups: A main selling point of Romero's candidacy is that if Katrina's victims don't move back home, the district will go Republican.
In the 2004 election, 50.2 percent voted for Democrat Charles Melancon and 49.8 percent for Rep. Billy Tauzin (R).
Romero's campaign information includes a pie chart that shows the district's make-up without the residents who were displaced by Katrina. Leaving those residents out, the chart says the district would be have voted 57.1 percent Republican and 42.9 percent Democrat in the 2004 election.
We also have the rich saying they don't want the poor back in New Orleans.
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The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."
Is this something they will use in New Orleans? Is this also the future of America were they can take homes away from citizens for the rich?
"This is a very [racially] mixed area that's also very stable," she said. "But no one seems to care ... Riviera Beach needs economic redevelopment. But there's got to be another way."
In the Kelo ruling, a divided Supreme Court held that private development offering jobs and increased tax revenues constituted a public use of property, but the court held that state legislatures can draft eminent-domain statutes to their satisfaction.
Dana Berliner, senior lawyer with the Institute for Justice, which represented homeowners in the Kelo case, said "pie in the sky" expectations like those expressed by Mr. Brown are routine in all these cases.
"They always think economic redevelopment will bring more joy than what is there now," she said. "Once someone can be replaced so something more expensive can go where they were, every home and business in the country is subject to taking by someone else."
How many see a political issue here where the rich benefits and the middleclass/poor get screwed again? Are we really American citizens or second class citizens?