Lege Trend: Private Property Rights Meets Tort Reform Meets Drones.

California legislature passed a bill to protect property owners from drones filing within 350 feet above their property. Very pro-private property rights legislation.

This measure,  Senate Bill 142 , was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown. The Governor is concerned that drone operators will be exposed to litigation.

Sacramento Bee

Courthouse News Service: Drone Regulations Grounded in California

Candidate for Railroad Commission, Eminent Domain & Pipelines. RRC Did only Bureaucratic Busy Work.

Dr. Mark Miller, the 2014 Libertarian nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, and announced his candidacy for Texas Railroad Commissioner in 2016. From his statement:

“Among them were appropriate regulations for wastewater wells that trigger earthquakes and eminent domain abuse by common carrier pipelines. Sadly, regulations promulgated by the Commission under Porter’s watch turned out to be nothing more than window-dressing, resulting in additional bureaucratic busy-work, but with no…

Club for Growth. Eminent Domain. Trump.

Club for Growth, the fiscal conservative group, put out a White Paper on Trump.

  • “Donald Trump is not a pro-growth conservative.
  • He has advocated for universal, government-run health care, for a massive new tax, and for the abuse of eminent domain so the government could forcibly buy up your property for a developer to build a shopping center,”
  • …the Club believes he [Trump] would not govern as president in accord with the pro-growth principles of limited taxation, free trade, less…

Eminent Domain and the Border Wall

Connecting the dots, HotAir explains that to build a border wall, requires that land be acquired.  Acquiring land by a governmental entity,  lends itself to eminent domain when landowners aren’t willing to give up their land.

Eminent Domain for a border wall is being called:

  • more symbolic than substantive
  • serious limits on what a fence can do
  •  sharply declining returns on those fencing investments
  • costly
  • inefective

WTVC 9

Vista Regional Water Plan is the New Trans Texas Corridor

An Elgin community meeting about the Vista Regional Water Plan was laser focused on eminent domain. The citizen comments abou the Vista water pipleine to move water to San Antonio :

  • “The hyper growth pattern planned is similar to California’s”
  • “This meeting is about eminent domain. When plans began for the Trans-Texas Corridor, the eminent domain issues began.”
  • References to the Spanish company building the pipeline, like the Spanish company that was the focus of the Trans Texas…

Advertising for Eminent Domain Protestors

Pipeline protesting proliferates the Northern Plains. The most recent rally cry is a purchase of billboard ad space along the proposed route of a pipeline. 

Dakota Rural Action purchased the billboards to get citizens engaged.  The determination whether to award eminent domain to the common carrier in the permitting process.

Considering the string of recent denials of eminent domain authority to private entities, like a pipeline, in the last few months, the billboard ad buy is a smart…

Government Takes Land by Eminent Domain. Builds Nothing. Now re-sells Homes.

In the 1950s and 1960s, a transportation authority in California gobbled up, with compensation, homes to make room for a freeway, and maybe some rail. High hopes. Big dreams of efficient transportation were for naught. 

Nothing was built. But since the mid 1900s, the state has leased the homes to residents, who now hope to buy their abode. 

Here’s the math, the homes were bought for $20,000ish, market price for nearby comparable homes now is $800,000.

LA Times