New York State Leads the Nation in Government Land Theft

Whenever New York State's Albany racketeers wish to steal someone's home, business or other property for a politically connected crony, they do a "cost benefit analysis".  One would think that with all the cost benefit analyses that have shown that the thievery would result in economic benefits New York might lead the nation in economic growth.  But the reverse is true.  New York's economy declines more the more that thugs in Albany steal land.  One of the chief beneficiaries of the ongoing stealing and ludicrous "cost benefit analyses" is the New York Times.  Their new office building across from Port Authority was built on property that the Times, at the behest of Albany's racketeers, stole.

Why doesn't Kevin Cahill, Assemblyman from the 101st Assembly District, fight New York State's criminal land theft?

I just received the following press release from the Institute for Justice and the Castle Coalition.

Do You Own Property in New York State?

You’d Better Pay Attention to Tuesday’s

High Court Argument on Eminent Domain Abuse

Arlington, Va.—If you own a piece of property in New York, you’d better pay close attention to an oral argument taking place on Tuesday, June 1 at 2 p.m. in Albany before New York’s high court.

This case—Kaur v. Empire State Development Corporation—may well decide if powerful private interests can team up with the government to take away your home, your small business, your farm or your factory through eminent domain for someone else’s private gain.

It is called eminent domain abuse and it is a plague that has wreaked havoc across the Empire State for decades. Tuesday’s court argument will decide whether Columbia University—a private institution—may direct the government’s power of eminent domain to take property away from its neighbors for the university’s private use and profit. Columbia seeks to take the property of neighbors Nick Sprayregen and Amanjit Kaur to expand its campus. If Columbia were a public university, this would be a public use. But Columbia is a private university and, as such, the takings are for private gain.

Immediately following the 2 p.m. oral argument, which is expected to last for about one hour, property owners, their advocates and supporters will hold a press conference outside of the court to answer questions and explain why property rights must be respected in the state. The press conference will take place at Academy Park, 20 Eagle Street in Albany, directly across the street from the front of the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.

Dana Berliner, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ), said, “This is the kind of abuse of government power on behalf of powerful private interests the Framers of the Constitution sought to prevent when they drafted the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and required that private property could only be taken for a public use. Taking someone’s land for a private institution like Columbia for its private use and profit is not a public use.” The Institute for Justice, which represented the homeowners in the infamous eminent domain abuse case Kelo v. City of New London, is the nation’s leading advocate against eminent domain for private gain.

In December 2009, a New York appellate court sided with the property owners, ruling there to be “no credible proof of blight in Manhattanville”—the neighborhood Columbia seeks to take. The court found that “the process employed by ESDC [the Empire State Development Corporation] predetermined the unconstitutional outcome, was bereft of facts which established that the neighborhood in question was blighted, and ultimately precluded the petitioners from presenting a full record before either the ESDC or, ultimately, this Court. In short, it is a skein worth unraveling.” The court also found that eminent domain should only be used for public use—not a private, elite organization’s expansion. The ESDC—unhappy with this sharp rebuke—appealed to the state’s highest court.

Just last year, the Court of Appeals refused to stop the use of eminent domain for an arena for the NBA Nets and private development project in Brooklyn. It now has an opportunity to redeem itself in this decision.

In the wake of Kelo, 43 states have passed laws to limit the ability of government officials to abuse eminent domain, and state court after state court has rejected Kelo-style takings. New York stands alone in its abject failure to provide its citizens with any meaningful protection from eminent domain for private gain, and this case represents an opportunity for enough to, finally, be enough.

Robert McNamara, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, said, “New York is the worst abuser of eminent domain in the country. New York’s courts have been looking to the legislature to fix this problem, while the legislature has been looking to the courts. Meanwhile, New Yorkers have been looking at condemnation notices. It is past time for the New York Court of Appeals to give the state’s citizens the property rights protections promised in their state constitution.”

New York laws are hopelessly stacked against property owners. For years, New York’s courts turned a blind eye to the enormous benefits afforded to private developers, outrageous behavior on the part of government officials, and even blatant evidence that the projects would be miserable flops. IJ released its statewide analysis, Building Empires, Destroying Homes: Eminent Domain Abuse in New York, which shows just how badly New York agencies have been abusing their power. The Associated Press reported that IJ documented how New York is “a hotbed of abuse, with 2,226 properties statewide either condemned or threatened with condemnation through eminent domain in the past decade to allow for private development.”

Christina Walsh, director of activism and coalitions for the Institute for Justice, said, “Your right to own your property shouldn’t depend on what state you live in. New York’s courts must put a stop to these land grabs and tell Columbia—a private institution—that government power will no longer be at their disposal. Nick Sprayregen, owner of Tuck-it-Away Self-Storage and the rest of the property owners are heroes who are standing up not only for their rights, but for the property rights of all New Yorkers. Every New Yorker should get behind them and demand that the courts protect their constitutionally enshrined rights. If the Court does not recognize at least some outer limit on government’s eminent domain power, then all property in the state is at risk.”

Among those participating in the post-argument press conference will be: Norman Siegel (attorney for Tuck-it-Away Self-Storage owner Nick Sprayregen), Nick Sprayregen, Amanjit Kaur (property owner and party to this lawsuit), New York State Senator Bill Perkins, Tom DeMott (Coalition to Preserve Community), Nellie Bailey (Harlem Tenants Association), Luis Tejada (Mirabal Sisters), Walter South (Community Board 9), Daniel Goldstein (Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn), Mike Elmendorf (New York director of the National Federation of Independent Business) and Christina Walsh (director of activism and coalitions, Institute for Justice).

Two New York Sun Articles on Women

Today's New York Sun carries two amusing articles about women. First, the Sun reports that Den Hollander, a Manhattan attorney, is suing Columbia University because it offers women's studies courses. Mr. Hollander attended my alma mater, Columbia Business School, and he seems to be arguing that women's studies courses "teach girls unfairly" while there are no equivalent courses for guys. Too bad there's no legal cause of action for intellectual vacuity. Women's Studies Departments would lose that suit every time. (Uh oh, there goes my promotion...)

Second, Lenore Skenazy has an article "Wanted Ugly Women". John Molony, the mayor of Mount Isa, Australia, a mining town where there are five males to every female (and based on my experience with mining towns they are probably a young, rowdy bunch) has extended a public invitation: "With five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa".

Feminists in Mount Isa and around Australia have leaped to attack Mayor Molony, and Askenazy asks: "Who is being abused?" by Molony's frank invitation.

What really made me laugh about the article is that instead of showing pictures of two of Mayor Maloney's invitees, the Sun attached pictures of Halle Barry and Christie Brinkley to the article! What a way to sell newspapers!

Mayor Molony and Den Hollander might strike up an alliance. Maybe the faculty and students of Columbia's women's studies department wish to emigrate to Mount Isa. I'm sure that the miners would find themselves enlightened.

My wife and I have had access to an apartment here in the city but sadly we will be leaving this fall or winter. One of the things I will truly miss is my daily New York Sun.

President Bollinger's Criticism of Ahmadinejad Is Not Evidence of Academic Freedom at Columbia U

My wife's pal, Mary Anne, was going to visit us in Manhattan last night but couldn't because the streets were too jammed. At the invitation of Columbia's President Lee Bollinger, Iran's President Ahmadinejad was in town. As a result, Mary Anne couldn't find a taxi. It's been so long since she ventured into a subway that she forgot that she could take the cross-town shuttle. So she cancelled her visit. Unfortunately, President Ahmadinejad was not asked to cancel his.

I have previously blogged about President Bollinger's failure to protect Jim Gilchrist when student-thugs stopped Gilchrist from speaking at Columbia. President Bollinger has not invited any high profile conservatives or libertarians to Columbia, rather following Columbia's long tradition of paying special attention to the children of German romanticism, to include Nazis in the 1930s and Ahamdinejad now, and ignoring or suppressing the children of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.

Having invited President Ahmadinejad and having been subjected to criticism for doing so, President Bollinger aimed to show the world how robust academic debate at Columbia can be. He lanced President Ahmadinejad. The Chronicle of Higher Education (paid access)notes that President Bollinger called President Ahmadinejad "fanatical". President Ahmadinejad replied that President Bollinger had violated the rules of hospitality. President Ahmadinejad is apparently a supporter of academic collegiality, at least when he's not exterminating dissidents.

The New York Sun's reaction to President Bollinger's introduction was mixed. On the one hand, the Sun regrets that Columbia gave goose-stepping German romantics, common among Columbia's faculty, an opportunity to applaud at Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial. The quack academics' support "will be a gift to him that keeps on giving". The Sun argued that President Bollinger aimed to use Ahmadinejad's presence as a "teaching moment" especially in light of the widespread anti-Semitism among the Columbia faculty. President Bollinger strongly criticized President Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial conference and expressed "revulsion" for what President Ahmadinejad stands. According to the Sun, President Bollinger put Columbia' anti-Semitic Middle Eastern Studies department on the spot.

President Bollinger also criticized the incarceration of Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American employee of the left-wing Open Society Institute. President Bollinger also announced that Columbia was offering Tajbakhsh a teaching job.

President Bollinger's response to President Ahmadinejad raises several questions. First, why so much attention from the president of Columbia to the crackpot ideas of President Ahmadinejad? Such attention would be unnecessary were Columbia University committed to academic freedom. Were conservatives, libertarians and a range of views given free rein at Columbia, which suffers from the dominance of goose-stepping neo-German-romantics, then President Ahmadinejad wouldn't require the university president's attention. Second, from the standpoint of intellectual import, President Ahmadinejad deserves less, not more, attention from President Bollinger than does Jim Gilchrist. Third, there were a number of Ahmadinejad supporters in the audience, obviously a fringe, ideologically-obsessed segment of the public. Given this skewness, is Columbia University an institution that can be taken seriously?

Courtesy of Larwyn, quite a few bloggers have nailed this issue nicely. In Slate, Anne Appelbaum argues

"the novelty of Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia lies in the fact that he wanted to make that speech at all. Though a blustering Columbia dean foolishly told Fox News that "if he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion," the university would happily invite Adolf Hitler to speak, too, it's impossible, in fact, to imagine the Führer accepting."

Hitler was really pre-television, while Ahmadinejad is post-World Wide Web. Perhaps Ahamdinejad's media strategy has more in common with Abraham Lincoln's. Lincoln nailed the presidential nomination when he came to New York to speak at Cooper Union. Whom or what country is President Ahmadinejad aiming to nail?

Arthur Herman in the New York Post calls Columbia's invitation to Ahmadinejad "abject, squalid and shameless", after a cowardly resolution by Oxford University's debating union in 1933 that it would not fight Hitler. Herman points out that Columbia bans ROTC but not President Ahamdinejad. While President Bollinger argues that a university is a forum for argument, Ahmadinjead is not a theorist, but a real-world murderer. Herman is in effect suggesting that the best people to argue the question of drug illegalization are not drug dealers and users, but people who have studied the problem academically. Or the right people to argue the case against the death penalty are not convicted murderers, and there is little or no free speech added to an invitation for a serial killer to speak on campus. The left views President Ahmadinejad as emblematic of an anti-capitalist struggle, and so implicitly applauds the incarceration of journalists, the holocaust denial and the thinly veiled threats of nuclear aggression.

Merv of PrairiePundit calls President Bollinger's invitation to President Ahmadinejad "corruption of academic culture" and "brainless activisim, not academic freedom". He notes that "professors seek publicity, not freedom". Prairiepundit mocks the "punk activism poisoning Ivy League faculties". Merv, quoting David Limbaugh, points out that the First Amendment does not oblige Columbia to invite President Ahmadinjead. He notes that "Contrary to the left's claims, there is nothing we can learn from Ahmadinejad that we don't already know -- at least not in this forum."

In contrast, Jules Crittenden raves about President Bollinger's speech. He notes:

"Among the many parts I liked, is this part where in plain terms he calls Iran the enemy in Iraq, and asks A’jad why he’s supporting terrorists who kill American troops. How come everyone else seems to have such a hard time saying that?"

Rick Moran of American Thinker quotes Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post calling Columbia's invitation to Ahmadinejad a disagrace:

"THE PROBLEM with Columbia's action, the reason that there can be no moral justification for the university's decision, is because by inviting Ahmadinejad to campus, Columbia has made the pros and cons of genocide a legitimate subject for debate. By asking Ahmadinejad challenging questions, Bollinger has reduced the right of the Jewish people to live to a question of preferences."

Moran goes on to quote several neo-German Romanticists such as Ezra Klein, who asks "When did America become so weak, so insecure, that we mistrust our capacity to converse with potentially hostile world leaders?" Perhaps an invitation to a university is unnecessary for conversation, though. And as Merv of Prairiepundit points out, we already know what President Ahmadinejad thinks. Perhaps Klein's neo-German-romantic appetite for holocaust denial was whetted during the Iranian holcaust denial conference last year. Or perhaps Klein want to see more evidence. Professor Julian Cole adds:

"Taking potshots at a bantam cock of a populist like Ahmadinejad is actually a way of expressing another, deeper anxiety: fear of Iran's rising position as a regional power and its challenge to the American and Israeli status quo."

Well, yeah. Hitler was a "bantam cock of a populist" too, Professor Cole. Shouldn't Neville Chamberlain have been afraid him? Or was Chamberlain right to follow an appeasement strategy?

Finally, Dinocrat quotes the lies about President Ahmadinejad's speech in the Iranian news agency, IRNA:

"…The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad..."