Remember Kelo? Well, read about Singh and Kaur:
[President of Columbia University Lee] Bollinger’s latest assault is on the property rights of a couple of small-time Harlem businessmen. Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur own—or perhaps I should say “own”—a self-storage business and a gas station in West Harlem. Bollinger wants the land they occupy to full his “vision” of Columbia University’s hegemony on the Upper West Side. So he is going to take it.
According to a column on the episode by Glenn Reynolds in The New York Post, the last legal hurdle—review by the Supreme Court—to Columbia’s seizing the property vanished last week. “Traditionally,” Reynolds points out,
“the ‘public-domain’ power was used to acquire property needed for things like roads and bridges. It’s still often defended in those terms, but the ‘public use’ required for such takings has now been interpreted by courts to include pretty much anything the government wants to do with the property—including handing it over to someone else who just happens to be wealthier or better-connected than the original property holder.”
Read the full post here.
The American government is purposely subverting the Constitutional right of its citizens to own private property. Your property rights are an illusion.