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Rick Perry Wants to Protect Property Rights?

Via the Austin-American Statesman's "First Reading" blog: Perry wants eminent domain language in Constitution

Sources familiar with his plans say he wants Constitutional language that is similar to Senate Bill 7, which the Legislature passed in 2005 to bar local governments from condemning private property for for-profit economic development projects.

In a 2005 summer special session (remember school finance?), Senate Bill 7 passed the House 140-1 on third reading and it passed the Senate 19-5.


Why take the extra step and stick the language in the Constitution? Politics.
Well, he got in some hot water with some in 2007 when he vetoed House Bill 2006, which supporters said would strengthen landowner protections in eminent domain cases. Perry said late changes made to the bill would open the door to lawsuits that could cost taxpayers $1 billion. His veto caused the president of the Texas Farm Bureau to say at the time, “Shame on Rick Perry for fooling us all these many years!”

And when U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison launched a state PAC to run for governor late last year, she said Texas needs a governor who will work for, among other things, “private property rights.”

Copyright 2009 The Austin American-Statesman. All Rights Reserved.


So rather than do something genuinely positive for private property rights (abolishing property taxes, ending occupational licensing laws, or allowing full and open firearm carry just to name a few), he wants to tweak the law to say stealing someone's land for private profit is very bad...but is fine when the theft is for The Public Good.

Amazing how morality works like that, isn't it?

One of the greater insults here, of course, is that Perry wanted the Trans-Texas Corridor, a project that would have sucked up vast tracts of private land to pave dedicated transit systems and grant - you guessed it - private concerns special privileges to sell crap along the side. Just as one might expect, transportation projects were explicitly exempted from Senate Bill 7.

Funny how that works, eh?

Perry's a phoney.

Posted by drizzten on January 22, 2009 02:22 PM |

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I just read an article the other day, and I'll have to dig for it, about how all plans related to the "Trans Texas Corridor" are going through renaming to remove all references to the TTC. The plans will be broken up into chunks and still pushed through, they'll just have different, less conspicuous names.

Somehow, this Perry thing sounds similar to me.

Posted by: TheFlamingoKing | January 22, 2009 05:25 PM

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