Eminent domain can certainly be abused, but few would call it useless.
Would you let one property owner stand in the way of the widening of a
highway that is overloaded with traffic? Or how about a truly
blighted area, like say Camden NJ, or Asbury Park, NJ.


Yes, I would let a property owner stand in the way of building
anything. It's his property. He sets the price, or doesn't sell at all
if he does not want to. Everyone has a price, though.

I'm not so sure that everyone has a price. Or at least not one
that a government can reasonably pay, especially when religion gets
involved. How much do you think the Arab world would demand if you
wanted to take the city of Mecca? Does that much wealth exist even
if you gave them the entire rest of Earth, and 10 copies of Earth,
in exchange? The same might apply on a smaller scale to a little
old lady who is not willing to give up her husband's grave (on the
property) or move him.

I would be inclined to ask, just out of sheer orneryness, for the
destruction of all copies of all Social Security numbers, and the
death penalty for spammers, carried out if necessary by nuking the
foreign country they are in.

I'm sure there would be others out there who would demand things
like:
- an end to abortion
- unlimited access to abortion for pre-teens and up
- an end to handguns
- an end to gun control and nuclear weapons control
- an immediate end to the war in Iraq
- an immediate nuking of Iraq
- everyone converts to insert demander's religion here
and obviously these conflict a lot.

If the project is
that important the price will be met. If it's not, then work around that
person. We've all seen those little houses up against the superhighway.
It's not my idea of fun, but if the owner doesn't mind why should I?
As for blight, you can certainly enforce building codes or zoning
restrictions if the property is dilapidated.

I can see use of eminent domain for roads and other *PUBLIC* projects,
such as parks, libraries, dams, water pipelines, etc. Cities have
no business even getting involved in, much less using eminent domain
for, private projects like stadiums (Arlington, Tx is planning on
taking a huge area for the Cowboys stadium, as mentioned on the
news last night), hotels, malls, convention centers, etc. And city
governments have no business making "bids" for things like the
Olympic games.

A real world example involved a run-down motel in my area that harbored
drug dealers, prostitutes, hardened criminals, and homeless. It is on the
edge of a residential area where houses cost over $1 million, but still
near to a more blighted area subject to redevelopment. The city really
wanted to build a fancy hotel there. They cited the owner many, many times
for violations (which he paid) and conducted frequent raids on the
property. Eventually, they charged him with a number of building code
violations and he had to upgrade the property. It's easy to appeal to
someone's business sense, as he would be able to charge much, much more
for the rooms after the work was done. In the end, he agreed to build the
new hotel himself. At this stage, I don't think he can really afford to do
it, but he did knock down the old motel and the land is now vacant. I
don't know what will happen to it, but I imagine it won't be vacant
forever given the good location. He'll probably sell it or else come up
with the money through investors. The point here is that the blighted
motel is gone and he kept his property. As much as I hated that motel,
I support his right to develop his own land himself.

Gordon L. Burditt