RBG as in Ruth Beder Ginsberg, Not Red Blue Green along with liberal SCOTUS members ushered in confiscating private property to private entities as long as there was a public purpose. Today we are losing farms not to Big Agri but for renewable energy. To power data collection.
31 Million Acres Will Become Solar Panel Farms By Bureau of Land Management
The new area is 31 million acres, or 48,438 miles, spanning 11 states. This land is currently under the Bureau of Land Management regulation. These regions have traditionally been used for grazing where ranchers had grazing rights. It will change the ecology of a region the size of North Carolina.
Eminent Domain In Maryland
Let’s put this into more tangible terms. The state of Maryland plans on constructing a power transmission corridor. The dimensions are 70 miles long, and 15 miles wide. This is what you would call contiguous space; that is, the expanse runs uninterrupted by gaps. In the graphic below I’ve displayed a corridor of roughly the same size and what regions of my area would be affected if the project were run along I 696 in the Detroit metropolitan area. I’ve highlighted Pontiac which is approximately 15 miles to the north of the freeway. The shaded area is a rough estimate that stretches 70 miles to the west on the route to the capital of Lansing. All the cities and towns that you see along the way would be eliminated if the corridor were instituted in the region I chose on the map.
I picked out the towns that would be eliminated, and here are the respective populations:
Madison Heights 28,238
Royal Oak – 57,452
Huntington Woods 6,260
Berkeley 14,934
Beverly HIlls 10,435
Birmingham 21,434
Pontiac 61,689
Troy 87,339
Bloomfield Hills 4,377
West Bloomfield Township 65,123
Southfield 75,687
Franklin 3,027
Farmington Hills 82,528
Wixom 17,134
Walled Lake 7,297
Novi 66,314
Milford 16,996
Brighton (Northern Portion) 4,906
Hartland 15,467
Howell 10,008
Fowlerville 2937
Webberville 1,296
Williamston 5,253
Population Total is 666,131
That is 1050 square miles and roughly 672000 acres.
This is not to say that Maryland is displacing 666,000 people, but I am merely painting a picture of the size of the area affected. And for Michiganders this should really hit home as you imagine this corridor cutting through the northern ramparts of Detroit. This is a massive area. This area is not for solar panels, this is for power transmission lines.
2005 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Aids Destruction of Property Rights
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2005/06/24/high-court-upholds-eminent-domain/
A divided Supreme Court ruled yesterday that local governments can seize homes and small businesses in the name of economic revitalization, handing cities broad powers to raze private properties to make room for shopping centers or office complexes that generate tax dollars and jobs.
In a 5-4 decision in one of its most closely watched cases of the year, the court dealt a blow to property-rights advocates who argue that cities increasingly have abused the power of eminent domain by turning homes over to private developers even where there is little showing of public benefit.
https://fedsoc.org/case/kelo-v-new-london
No. In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens, the majority held that the city’s taking of private property to sell for private development qualified as a “public use” within the meaning of the takings clause. The city was not taking the land simply to benefit a certain group of private individuals, but was following an economic development plan. Such justifications for land takings, the majority argued, should be given deference. The takings here qualified as “public use” despite the fact that the land was not going to be used by the public. The Fifth Amendment did not require “literal” public use, the majority said, but the “broader and more natural interpretation of public use as ‘public purpose.'”
The Kelo decision significantly broadened the government’s takings power. This caused significant controversy, and states were quick to act to quell concerns about this expansion of power. In response to Kelo, many states have passed laws which have restricted governments’ takings abilities (such as implementing a stricter definition of what constitutes a “public use,” requiring heightened levels of scrutiny to justify an action categorized as a taking, etc).
Don’t Study The Constitution, Look To The International Community
Justice Ginsburg on Using Foreign and International Law in Constitutional Adjudication
On judicial review for constitutionality, my own view is simply this: If U.S. experience and decisions may be instructive to systems that have more recently instituted or invigorated judicial review for constitutionality, so too can we learn from others now engaged in measuring ordinary laws and executive actions against fundamental instruments of government and charters securing basic rights. . . . The U.S. judicial system will be the poorer, I have urged, if we do not both share our experience with, and learn from, legal systems with values and a commitment to democracy similar to our own.
Judges in the United States, after all, are free to consult all manner of commentary — Restatements, Treatises, what law professors or even law students write copiously in law reviews, and, in the internet age, any number of legal blogs. If we can consult those sources, why not the analysis of a question similar to the one we confront contained, for example, in an opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the German Constitutional Court, or the European Court of Human Rights?
Censorship Used To Stop Criticism of Energy Projects
Yanasa TV was demonetized for featuring a video regarding eminent domain and carbon capture and carbon pipelines in the Dakota and Idaho region.