Trying my best to work out why you’d have a law like this, I’d guess the logic is that “The State” (that terrible foe) should only be able to forcibly acquire land (at whatever price) in circumstances where the land is either needed for some obvious public good like sewers or utilities or is actively damaging to the public good by being overcrowded, dilapidated, etc.
And even then only if you are not actually living it.
And not just because the city would like to sell or rent your land to a private company.
Looks like Kelo v New London all over again. I’m betting just like that situation Foxconn won’t even break ground on the facility. Or an alternative title this situation, Kelo v New London 2: Corporate Boogaloo.
Racine wisconsin: population 80,000. 12% Spanish speaking, 22% African-american. So not quire 10,000 Latinx, and not quite 18,000 African American in a community of 80,000.
ETA: Racine county, since @anotherone wants to be pedantic: 20,000 African Americans, 15,000 Latinx, and 7,000 “others” (aka, did not identify with any of the ticky boxes on the census form, the big excluded category seems to be mid-eastern/central Asian people). Out of 195,000 total population.
Still not seeing any sign of a mythical lily-white Wisconsin with no brown people to speak of. Hint: just because you never see brown people in Wisconsin doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it just means that segregation has successfully hidden them from you.
At least they didn’t FedEx each of the residents an Amazon box containing a small pox blanket before displacing them from their homes. They also don’t have to report to Foxconn sponsored reservations. Yet. So… it could be worse?
In’t it heartwarming seeing the government returning to what it does best. If only there were some buffalo around that could be shot. MAGA, y’all!
People keep bringing up the suicide nets without understanding that, even without them, foxconn employees enjoyhave a suicide rate far lower than china’s average. The employment Foxconn offers literally saves lives.
But, I’ll bring it up again. Racine county has a suicide rate of 13.8/100,000 (year 2013).. At its peak, Foxconn had 14 suicides in 2010 out of approximately 1 million employees. That’s a rate of 1.4/100,000 – ten times better than Racine. Foxconn employees 5x the number of employees than Racine County has residents.
Until just recently, I lived in the Racine area. Sturtevant to be precise The city of Racine has one of the larger percentages of black residents. City of Racine however only runs up to about Hwy 31, coming up a mile or so short of Hwy H where the Foxconn land sits. The area between Hwy 11 and Braun Rd is still nearly all farmland. It is Mt. Pleasant actually, and Mt, Pleasant is mostly all white and heavily Republican. So, no, the eminent domain is not bulldozing low income housing, but instead snatching up the property from a solid Trump enclave. Ironic actually.
In the UK we have ‘compulsory purchase’ where land can be acquired by the state or local bodies for infrastructure schemes - the new HS2 high-speed railway from London is currently going through that process, and there will soon be another one for the Heathrow expansion which will take out an entire village - but the government must pay a fair market rate for the purchases. The situation in Wisconsin is simply obscene.
That’s exactly what the Kelo decision was about. The city wanted to tear down a neighborhood and allow a casino to build there because it would increase the tax base.
And as @comedian pointed out, the SCOTUS members who allowed the city to do that were: Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer. Those who wanted to rule in favor of the homeowners were: O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas.
you are looking at the city of Racine, not the county and this is a story about the county and not the city… Black residents make up less than 13% of the population in the county.
Same in Canada, any level of government is able to ‘expropriate’ privately owned land for use of infrastructure that will (hopefully) improve conditions for local and greater use/enjoyment. Example, expansion of a highway, building a library, hospital etc.
Plans are drawn out and several levels of government are in the process (for a highway expansion), environmental assessments are required plus a ream of those procedures. Ultimately private land owners are provided extensive notice of intent and provided a ‘fair market value’ for the property.
What is happening in Wisconsin is mind boggling railroading of its constituents to allow a foreign company to set up shop? Wow.
Back in the 70s, eminent domain scared the poop out of a lot of people living in Summit and Cuyahoga Counties in OH. The Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area was just getting underway, and a couple of small towns were evicted to clear land for the park. Alternatives were, oddly, not sought or presented by the NPS; maybe not so unusual if you consider the program was spearheaded by James G. Watt. http://www.landrights.org/VideoGoodOfAll.htm
