Wisconsin clears the way for Foxconn by bulldozing working peoples' homes and paying them pennies on the dollar

boing
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The US has decided that if a change in ownership/use of a property increases the taxes paid to the local or state government, that change is considered a public good.

ie - Your auto repair shop gets taken by eminent domain so that a national pharmacy chain can build a retail outlet there. The retail pharmacy will do more gross business than your auto repair shop, so more taxes go to the locality. PUBLIC GOOD.

  • Your quaint lake next your business can be taken by eminent domain, filled in, and turned into a parking lot for a Walmart, bc this allows Walmart to open a store and increase the taxes paid on that spot of land that was once a lake (and is now part of a Walmart business). Public Good bc taxes are increased.

(These are real examples from Colorado)

Welcome to the America Corporation

also - @Melz2 & @morcheeba - I think you are both barely missing each other, and about to get in an accidental fight (or is it too late?). Please step away and breathe deeply. You both offer interesting points here, but seem to be getting annoyed at each other because of miscommunication.

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Well the law in Wisconsin actually seems to be better than ours (I’m in the UK) - at least for homeowners.

Their law only allows compulsory purchase where the property can be said to be ‘blighted’ - which appears to have quite strict limits (there are different rules for what are termed “1st class cities” but those don’t seem to apply here).

Once the land is ‘blighted’, there is still a process of setting a ‘fair’ price which looks remarkably similar to the way prices are set in the UK.

Owners of ‘condemned’ or in UK-parlance ‘compulsorily purchased’ land are also entitled to relocation expenses and payments towards the cost of finding replacement housing.

UK version:

Basically, the law in Wisconsin seems fine - from the viewpoint of homeowners.

The Village (now there’s a Prisoner reference if I ever saw one) just seems to be trying to ignore the law.

See also:

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Adding to previous replies - you don’t technically still have a mortgage. The dead hand is gone :slight_smile:

You do however still owe a financial debt which is now just not secured on anything.

Contrary to what many people think you can’t just hand over the keys to the bank and walk away. You still owe any shortfall and the bank can and often will still pursue you many years later.

In the UK banks generally have up to 12 years to take court action to recover any shortfall.

The early part of my career as a solicitor featured a fair bit of attending court to deal with claims against people who’d defaulted on mortgages in the early 90’s UK property slump and had since done well enough financially that the bank thought they were now worth suing.

Comes as a bit of a shock after 11 years and a few months…

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From a brief read-through of the Kelo decision, the difference is that the relevant state law in that case explicitly allowed for expropriation for an economic development project as being a public benefit. Therefore the issue was whether the proposed use could properly be classed as a ‘public benefit’ as required by the constitution.

Here state law doesn’t even seem to allow it, so Kelo and the constitution don’t even come into it.

I’d be interested to know more about the municipality’s arguments that they can proceed but I haven’t found much on that.

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The US constitution specifically says “public use” not “public benefit” which should have been enough to get a 9-0 vote in favor of the homeowner in Kelo. “Public benefit” is way way too stretchable.

Here in the USA, we have a centuries old bipartisan tradition of our state and local government officials confusing “public benefit” with “something that slips some cash into my back pocket” and the endorsement of property confiscation for a foreign megacorp should cause every American to smell a rat.

Having said that, I hope that the posters here aren’t opposing this home confiscation mainly because eeewww, Foxconn is a yucky company. It would be every bit as wrong if, for example, a Democratic administration was confiscating homes to allow SpaceX to build a plant.

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Yes, I can see the argument about whether Kelo was rightly decided or not. Just trying to clarify that this issue doesn’t even appear to get that far.

On the ‘public use not public benefit’ point, looking at Kelo that ship would appear to have sailed long ago.

Accordingly, when this Court began applying the Fifth Amendment to the States at the close of the 19th century, it embraced the broader and more natural interpretation of public use as “public purpose.” See, e.g., Fallbrook Irrigation Dist. v. Bradley, 164 U. S. 112, 158-164 (1896). Thus, in a case upholding a mining company’s use of an aerial bucket line to transport ore over property it did not own, Justice Holmes’ opinion for the Court stressed “the inadequacy of use by the general public as a universal test.” Strickley v. Highland Boy Gold Mining Co., 200 U. S. 527, 531 (1906). We have repeatedly and consistently rejected that narrow test ever since.

As far as I can see the opinion is that once the local legislature has decided something is for a public purpose, you’re going to struggle to get the Supreme Court to disagree no matter who sits in the Court.

Viewed as a whole, our jurisprudence has recognized that the needs of society have varied between different parts of the Nation, just as they have evolved over time in response to changed circumstances. Our earliest cases in particular embodied a strong theme of federalism, emphasizing the “great respect” that we owe to state legislatures and state courts in discerning local public needs. See Hairston v. Danville & Western R. Co., 208 U. S. 598, 606-607 (1908) (noting that these needs were likely to vary depending on a State’s “resources, the capacity of the soil, the relative importance of industries to the general public welfare, and the long-established methods and habits of the people”). For more than a century, our public use jurisprudence has wisely eschewed rigid formulas and intrusive scrutiny in favor of affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power.

Having said all that, I do note that the previous cases referred to did generally have some wider intention of benefiting the public rather than just “Let’s give X Corp. a bunch of money and cheap land to come build a factory here and hope that translates into lots of local jobs.”

I mean - throw in a public swimming pool or a mall or something. Just, you know, any kind of figleaf.

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Yeah, I was wondering about the technicalities of that. I knew that people who stop paying their mortgages see their credit ratings get destroyed, at the very least (even when their houses, claimed by the banks, are sufficient to pay off their debts). Seizing the house of someone with a mortgage and not fairly compensating them seems the most efficient way of totally screwing them over in a single action.

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This part I’m a little bit fuzzy on. It seems tremendously immoral to require someone to continue paying the mortgage on a property that was seized by the government though no fault of their own. Is there a court in the world that would be sympathetic to the bank’s plea in this case?

I mean it’s still not great for the former homeowner, but at least they could theoretically start again if they’re not forced to keep paying the Mortgage on the house they no longer own. Of course it’s still a disaster for older people who lost most of their equity, but for young people it’s mostly the bank’s problem. They’re out the 20% downpayment and whatever equity they built up, but there’s still time.

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Yeah, it’s monstrous. And to add ironic insult to injury, the best-case scenario, if they don’t pay, is that their credit rating is so shot they’d have a hard time renting anywhere.

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Trump doesn’t do anything for free. He’d expect them to return the favor.

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Comparing suicide rates at a particular company facility to suicide rates in an entire county makes no sense statistically because the people employed in that facility are not similar enough to the population as a whole. For this to be meaningful, you’d have to account for other factors. People who work at the facility fall into a narrower age range than the population of the county as a whole. Debilitating mental illness would prevent someone from being employed at Foxxconn, but not from living in Racine. Same with substance abuse issues. To make any reasonably valid determination, we would need to compare the facility’s suicide rates to suicide rates among a population whose characteristics are as similar to the Foxxconn employees as possible. Otherwise we’re just introducing countless creeping variables.

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Unfortunately you are probably right. In the wake of Kelo, several states passed legislation prohibiting eminent domain for these sorts of takings for private development. I wish they all had.

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I think we’ve found our plural noun a blight of assholes.

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one of them is trying to win, the other to communicate. It’s very frustrating to watch OR be part of. my 2c.

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We do? The loss this state to the GOP has direct ties to the DNC and Democratic Party abandoning the state, see Hillary skipping the state and when the recall was going on Obama was no where in sight. Along with the state Democrat Party being a bunch of buffoons who can’t get out of their own way. The candidate they ran against Walker twice (Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett), who is as exciting, forward thinking and thoughtful as paste, would have trouble winning in the best circumstances. Running Barrett as a candidate, IMO, directly lead to Russ Feingold loss in the US Senate race. Then add the gerrymandering of districts you have where we are at.

All that being said, support is being eroded daily. See the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election. See them being forced to fill the empty seats in a special election because the Republicans know they are going to lose.

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Back in the 60’s/70’s there was an abundant of public water fountains. Good luck knowing where a public water fountain is these days but they do exist for public health reasons.

Seems having public water fountains ‘hurts free enterprise’ hence public water fountains have been reduced if maintained.

Enjoy bottled water.

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