Seattle Might Use Eminent Domain To Return A Beach To The Public While In Fort Worth...

Today we have an extremely twisted variant of our popular series of items I read in west coast online news sources, usually the Seattle Times, which would likely not appear in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

What you see here I saw in the Seattle Times and it is something I have seen in the Star-Telegram.

The use of eminent domain to take private property.

Texas, or maybe it is just Tarrant County, uses a unique version of eminent domain.

In Washington, and elsewhere in America, eminent domain is used as a last resort to take private property for the common good, for things like building a highway, hospital, school, park and other things deemed needed for public use.

In Tarrant County I have witnessed eminent domain abused to take private property for a mall parking lot, for a corporate headquarters, for a sports stadium and for a badly executed economic development project which has abused eminent domain to take private property to build an un-needed flood diversion ditch and three little bridges.

The worst eminent domain abuse I have witnessed is that which took place in Arlington to build the Dallas Cowboys a new stadium. Texan's homes were bulldozed to smithereens while the owners had not yet had their case heard in court. This provoked widespread outrage, but no criminal charges. I long ago documented this on a Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal webpage.

Now. Contrast how eminent domain is abused in Tarrant County with how and why eminent domain is proposed to be used in Seattle via the Seattle Times Sell or we use eminent domain, Seattle mayor tells owners of beach lot article....

The long battle is continuing over a 60-foot-wide beach lot where Northeast 130th Street dead-ends into the Lake Washington shoreline.

The latest salvo came Thursday from Seattle Mayor Ed Murray.

He has ordered that the city cut a deal with the two owners adjoining the lot on each side. Then it can revert to public use as lake access.

The opening offer will be $400,000, says a spokesman for the mayor.

And if those negotiations fail, Murray plans to ask the City Council for an ordinance to wield that special hammer reserved for government agencies — eminent domain.

To put the $400,000 in perspective, a nearby unbuildable lot on the same street — Riviera Place Northeast — is currently offered for sale at $119,950.

The lot had been publicly used for 82 years as beach access.

Then, due to inept document handling back in 1932, ownership went recently to Holmquist and Kaseburg. The city fought them in court, and lost.

In March, the two put up a chain-link fence and security cameras, recently replaced by a more aesthetic wooden fence.

But a sign still warns, “Private property. No trespassing.” Another sign punctuated, “WARNING. Security Cameras in Use.”

___________________________________________

Now, doesn't that sound like a much more civilized way to use eminent domain to acquire property for public use? Negotiate before bulldozing. What a concept.

In the Seattle case, that property had been used by the public since way back in the 1930s, til legal shenanigans took the property away from the public, which now has the city threatening to use eminent domain to return the property to public use.

But, my favorite part of the article was the part where the two "owners" replaced a chain link fence they had installed to keep the public out, with a "more aesthetic wooden fence."

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, a park in the town's downtown, built to celebrate Fort Worth's heritage, hence named Heritage Park, had been a boarded up, chain link fence surrounded eyesore for years. With, apparently, no one thinking it might be a good idea to make the eyesore less so by surrounding it with a more aesthetically pleasing wooden fence....

Fort Worth's George's Specialty Foods Closes To Challenge Chesapeake Attempt To Abuse Eminent Domain To Steal Their Property

I was looking through FW Weekly a few minutes ago, in the restaurant section, when I saw an ad for George's Specialty Foods, it being a Greek type place in West Fort Worth on White Settlement Road.

In the ad, George's Specialty Foods is telling its customers that they are closed for the purpose of challenging Texas Midstream, which is an alias of the evil entity known as Chesapeake Energy, on the process of eminent domain being abused to take their property.

I'd not heard of this latest Chesapeake abuse of eminent domain in Fort Worth.

So, I Googled "George's Specialty Foods Chesapeake Eminent Domain."

I found nothing.

Is Chesapeake trying to run a non-odorized natural gas pipeline under George's property? Or take land for a drilling site?

Does the George Family know what sort of living hell fighting Chesapeake Energy can bring down on them? Chesapeake may order its stoolies in the city government of Fort Worth to run a few Gestapo Raids on their store, like what was done on Carter Avenue when one of the bravest Texans in Fort Worth  fought back when Chesapeake tried to ram a non-odorized natural gas pipeline under his home.

Does the George Family know you can not fight this in court? Because you will be trying to have a fair fight in what is a corrupted courtroom. Where judges blatantly lie and mislead and always side with Chesapeake and its City of Fort Worth lapdogs. If you aren't careful you might even find that Chesapeake has finagled a bogus lawyer to represent you, without your knowledge, which will lead to all sorts of pain trying to untangle the mess.

So, does anyone know what Chesapeake is up to, abusing eminent domain to steal the George family land? When a well known local restaurant closes in protest, why is this not news in the local newspaper of record? Oh, that's right, I forgot. There isn't one.

Another Day In The Freedom For Texas Project

This afternoon one of my sterner taskmasters assigned me the task of figuring out how to blog the scanned version of the Case Closed Court Documents that slapped Steve Doeung in the face, along with a lot of others, who felt slapped, on Monday.

I was not able to figure out how to directly insert the Court Documents into a blog. I was able to make a picture of the start of the Case Closed Document.

And if you go here, you can read the entire Closed Case.

I was Googling for information about the dishonorable Judge Sprinkle this morning and came upon a little blurb in a subterranean part of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram...

"Lawyers in the case said it was only a matter of time before Chesapeake Energy’s pipeline division acquired the right of way for the pipeline, which will run beneath the front yards of more than 30 homes. State law gives energy companies that same right to condemn land through eminent domain as cities or more traditional utility companies.

Chesapeake has been working with local politicians to find an alternate route that won’t affect as many homes.

The Texas Department of Transportation announced last week that it had given preliminary approval to a new route that would run parallel to Interstate 30."

Now, this was in a short article about Judge Sprinkle signing the condemnation order that allows Chesapeake Energy to shove a non-odorized natural pipeline under Steve Doeung's property. With once again, that corrupt newspaper acting like a shill for the Barnett Shale gas drilling industry.

As in the arrogance of the Chesapeake lawyers saying it was only a matter of time before they acquired the right of way.

In other words, there is no recourse in court. It's all pointless. Everything is stacked so heavily in the favor of entities like Chesapeake Energy that no matter how outrageous a plan is, they are totally confident that there is no governing body in Texas that will come to the defense of hapless homeowners.

"State law gives energy companies the same right to condemn land through eminent domain as cities or more traditional utility companies."

Well, that is all well and good. Texas has a law. Here is where that law goes berserko. Maybe moving natural gas is in the public interest. Maybe it's for the greater public good. But the way eminent domain is used in Texas is not the way eminent domain is supposed to be used.

Common sense sort of dictates that you do not run a non-odorized natural gas pipeline under homes. Common sense dictates such a pipeline should not even be considered. No citizen, not even a Texan with fewer rights than other Americans, should have to defend his peace and security against such a threat.

A massive natural gas explosion in Texas, killing 100s of children, is why natural gas had an odor added to it.

The small pittance Chesapeake Energy paid the people of Carter Avenue does not make them whole, as in the same financial state as before Chesapeake legally assaulted them. If that pipeline goes in, the value of their homes go down.

In my opinion, any time eminent domain is used, the victim should be made whole, as in suffer no damage. In DISH, eminent domain was used to cut big swatches from citizen's property, rendering the property unable to be used for its original use.

If Steve Doeung does not feel comfortable with the idea of having a big natural gas pipeline run under his house, that is his right. If Chesapeake Energy needs to use someone's property they should be made to acquire that right only after making the injured party whole.

To do otherwise is nothing but legalized thievery, with the corrupted, co-opted various Texas oversight commissions, like the Railroad Commission and the Texas Environmental Quality Commission, where the foxes have taken over the henhouses, along with the corrupted, co-opted Texas judicial system, which does the bidding, with no application of common sense, of the gas drilling companies.

And back to Steve Doeung and the dirty dealings done to him, how is it that Chesapeake Energy's eminent domain case was not instantly dismissed as soon as it became widely known that TxDOT had agreed to an alternative pipeline route? How could this case of eminent domain abuse be allowed to continue?

There is only one reason this has been allowed to happen, and that reason is the fact that this is taking place in a part of America where the laws have been corrupted, as in "Texas State Law gives energy companies the right...." to run roughshod over Texans, with the state acting as the agents of the energy companies, and not as stewards of the public welfare.

Am I communicating how disgusted I am?

The Mystique Of The Dallas Cowboys & Their New Stadium

This morning I read a Jerry Jones interview about the recently completed new Dallas Cowboy Stadium in Arlington.

The interviewer repeated the local myth that gets repeated a lot and annoys some people in other parts of America, that being the myth that the Dallas Cowboys are America's Team. Most Americans beg to differ.

The Dallas Cowboys being America's Team really is ridiculous. When it came time to build the Cowboys a new stadium they weren't even Dallas's team, they became Arlington's team.

In the interview one of things Jerry Jones says is the following...

"Where we have invested the money in this stadium for the long term will create more people that can come to the Cowboys than could have ever come normally because of the size of the stadium.  . . . More people will have the experience of what the Cowboys are, our mystique, what we’re about. The Cowboys have been about Dallas in the sense that it represents the idea of Texas, and it represents the idea of larger than life and this image that we want for the stadium, which is one of the future."

This is not a very well-spoken, articulate man. The Dallas Cowboys have some sort of mystique about them? What is this mystique? The Dallas Cowboys represent the idea of Texas? What is the idea of Texas? The new stadium is larger than life?

Well, it is rather large. I'm going to make a prediction about what much of the rest of America will think about "their" team's new stadium. There will be a lot of talk about how out of place the building looks, like it does not belong there. Much will be made of the commercial, industrial and residential blight that is to the south and west of the stadium.

I've never seen a major sports stadium in such a rundown setting. Seattle's new football stadium has the Seattle skyline on the north end and the Mariner's ballpark on the south end, with no blight no matter where you look. Denver's new football stadium, same thing, no blight. Houston's, no blight.

Now, I've really not seen all that many professional football stadiums. Maybe there are others that have been built in a residential neighborhood, using eminent domain to move people off their property, surrounded by pawn shops, boarded up businesses and other blight. I suspect not, though.

It will be interesting to see what America thinks when they see where their team is playing. It ain't gonna be pretty, is my guess.

That's the new Dallas Cowboy stadium in the picture at the top, hovering over a FINA gas station.

The Soviet State of Texas

It might seem to be the most absurd thing imaginable to suggest that the Great Republic of Texas has anything in common with the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, when one sees Texas up close and personal one sees many similarities between the USSR & Texas.

For example, in the old Soviet Union two of their major cities were named for two of the USSR's founding fathers, one named Leningrad, the other Stalingrad. In Texas two of the major cities are also named after founding fathers, one being the capital of Austin. The other being Houston.

In the Soviet Union huge statues were erected to honor Joesph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin. In Texas, one of the largest free standing statues in the world was erected to honor Sam Houston.

In the Soviet Union the death penalty was used frequently. Texas, by far, leads the United States in number of executions.

In the Soviet Union you could get thrown into the Gulag for the most minor of crimes. In Texas so-called justice is meted out in equally harsh terms. A personal example. Last month a friend of mine, down in Corpus Christi, was stopped for a minor moving violation. The cop ran her name and came up with a warrant for her arrest. She was handcuffed and thrown in the back of the cop car and brought to a jail where she was stip searched and booked. Her crime? Six years prior, at a Krogers Grocery, she had written a check for $20 on a now long closed account. Unknown to her, the check bounced. Apparently Krogers took the case to court and got a judgement, unbeknownst to the victim. The $20 check, via fines and interest, had ballooned to almost $500. Luckily for my friend she had family who could help her, including a sister who is a lawyer and a judge in Houston. She was out of the Texas Gulag in 3 days.

Texas has this rather antiquated, very corrupt, system that is responsible for many of the Texas crimes against humanity, that being the Justice of the Peace system. These 'judges' are not trained in the law. They are elected. They are often incompetent. Example. Dallas has a mass transit train called DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit). DART employs pseudo-police officers to maintain order on the trains and the train stations. The locals calls these pseudo cops the DART Gestapo. A Fort Worth reporter was in Dallas covering a DART story several years ago. He stood at a street crossing waiting for the 'walk' sign to turn on. Beside him were two DART cops. He waited and waited for the apparently broken light to change. It never did. Finally the cops walked away. When they were several hundred feet down the road the reporter made a run for it and crossed the street. The cops then chased after him, stopped him, accused him of breaking the law as soon as their backs were turned. They gave him a ticket with a large fine. The reporter tried to get his day in court via the Justice of the Peace that handled that jurisdiction. After try after try of appearing in person to get the matter settled, he gave up. Years later he is still battling this.

In another incident a man and his 10 year old son were accosted by the DART Gestapo (aka DART KGB) over some minor infraction. When the victim objected the Gestapo tasered the man. In front of his 10 year old son. The man was hauled away by the cops, leaving the 10 year old to fend for himself. The victim spent 10 days in the Dallas Gulag, unable to post bail.

A 15 year old boy was shot dead by the DART Gestapo when he jumped out from some bushes and said boo. The boy was unarmed.

You can read all about the DART Gestapo here.

Another shocking example of corrupt Texas justice occurs in a county on the fringe of the D/FW Metroplex, that being Johnson County. Ten percent of Johnson County's population has spent time in one of the county's jails. If you want to be horrified at how badly justice can be perverted in Texas read this shocking article about a couple good citizen's nightmarish ordeal when faced with the law in Johnson County. This story is not for the squeamish. And you will likely be quite ashamed that this occurred in the United States. With very little local outrage. But then again, how much protesting did the citizens of the Soviet Union do? Very little, lest they get thrown into the Gulag. Texans don't do a lot of protesting either. I don't know if this is due to fear of the Texas Gulag or just plain old-fashioned ignorance of the sad situations that occur here.

Another example of how similar the State of Texas is to the Soviet Union is the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal. In the USSR when the government needed land for one of their fool projects the proliteriat had no rights. The Soviets would just take their land. In the State of Texas the eminent domain laws have been perverted in ways the rest of the United States does not allow. In Texas you can get the corrupt local government to use eminent domain to condemn houses when a Shopping Mall wants to expand its parking lot. This happened just 5 miles north of me at the Northeast Mall. 5 miles east of my location the Dallas Cowboys and the city of Arlington conspired to pervert the concept of eminent domain in order to steal dozens of houses, dozens of businesses and dozens of apartment complexes, uprooting well over 1000 people in a violation of basic human rights that would have done the old Soviet Union proud.

In the United States one of the basic tenents of our basic rights is the right to be left alone. I think that is what annoys me more than anything about the perversion of the law that occured in Arlington so that a private business could build a stadium. One day you are happy in the house you built on the land you worked hard to buy. The next day you are told you must leave. And will be paid full market value for your property. And you have no say in whether you want to sell or not.

None of this stuff should occur in America, land of the free, where human rights are to be protected, revered and cherished. Not ignored, violated and scorned. Texas really needs to follow the lead of the USSR and overthrow the current dictatorship and establish a democratic republic where basic human rights are protected by the state, rather than violated by the state.

If I suddenly cease posting you can assume I have had a knock on my door and the Texas Gestapo/KGB has me in custody for speaking out against the state. Let's just hope they don't take me to Johnson County. Or Dallas.

Super Bowl XLV

The temps reached into the balmy 80s on the first Sunday of the New Year. So I went bike riding at River Legacy Park. There was a large number of like minded people out on the trails enjoying the temporary respite from winter. On my third time around a group of 3 younger guys came up behind me. I sped up. They kept up. I asked if they wanted to pass. They said no, that I was setting a good pace. I sped up. I don't think they realized I was much older than them and that they could possibly be pushing me to an early heart attack. After about a mile of this un-asked for punishment I came to a bypass (that is not a heart attack reference), so I took the left and the speed demons did not. So I was rid of them. And not a crank of the pedal too soon.

After the exhilarating exhausting bike ride I decided to head to the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium to snap some pics of the current state of construction. As many of you know the new stadium is pretty much being built on a graveyard of stolen homes and destroyed apartment buildings and bulldozed businesses.

As I got to the stadium zone I came in from a new angle, that being heading east on Randol Mill Road. This direction brought me to a very unfortunate unflattering view of the new stadium, with rundown tenement looking apartment buildings of a way more decripit state than those destroyed by the stadium, sitting now in the shadow of the new, according to Cowboy owner Jerry Jones, Roman Colisseum of the 21st Century.

To get a pic of the newly added banner extolling the upcoming 2011 Super Bowl hosted in the new stadium we pulled into one of the commercial buildings appropriated by the Cowboys. I got my pic and then drove in front of the building attempting to escape the parking lot, to no avail due to a line of traffic cones. Turning around I saw a large sign in the window of the former bank, saying "Dallas Cowboy Preview Center". It must give one quite a sense of empowerment to be able to take owner's places of business for your own purposes. It's almost like living in the Wild Wild West. Or the former Soviet Union. With Eminent Domain laws making it all very legal.

I have not as yet heard if Jerry Jones and the Cowboys are going to invite the former residents, of the land they legally stole, to the opening football game or the Super Bowl, or even for a look at their old land. I don't know know if it is known nationally what the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones did to people to get this stadium. I believe the total of Tony Romo's new contract is larger than the total paid to the victims. In addition to his 5 year contract Tony Romo got a $13 million signing bonus. As far as I know neither the Cowboys or Jerry Jones has given any of their land grab victims even so much as a Christmas card with a hard loaf of fruit cake.

I have not yet called up the Cowboys to pay my $100 non-refundable fee to be put on a list to pay $50,000 for a Personal Seat License Fee that gives me the right to pay a couple hundred bucks for a game ticket and hundreds more for a parking ticket. I gotta get right on that today. I'll be so sad if all the Seat Licenses sell out before I get myself one. I so don't want to miss that Super Bowl in 2011. Then again, maybe by then there will be such a big national stink over the way the Cowboys and Jerry Jones built their new stadium that the NFL pulls the game from Dallas and awards it to a more civic minded, more decent, more humane, more worthy team. Yeah, I'm sure that is gonna happen.