Harmon Seaver wrote: > Ah yes, forgot about that -- the fancy condo right smack in the downtown > historic district used to be a while city block of historic buildings people > wanted to save, and, in fact, there were developers with money who wanted to > restore them, but the city, for some reason no one could figure out, condemned > them, took the whole block with eminent domain, then razed the whole thing -- > with no plan whatsoever in mind for what would replace it. Or so it seemed. Then > they sold the whole block to this other developer for one dollar, and gave him a > ton of TIF to build a big, very modern, condo which doesn't even remotely jive > with the rest of the area. > This same city council approved a zone change from church/residential to > business with no knowledge, supposedly, of what or who the purchaser of the > property would be -- the church said it had to be kept secret. Turns out it's a > new Super Wallmart. > Isn't it great the way fascism works?
That's not fascism - that's old-fashioned public officials acting in their own interests. The first answer to it is democracy. Vote the buggers out. The second is resistance. The third (not yet tried) is open government. Government should not be allowed to keep secrets from citizens, and the words "commercial in confidence" on a contract signed by government should invalidate it. Local governments are people we employ to fix the drains and clean the streets and make sure he schools stay open. No reason we should tolerate them doing deals behind our backs.
