Every day, government in the United States flaunts its corruption — evaluate Tennessee's eminent domain theft from farmers

07 April 2023

Joe Lancaster at Reason . . .

. . . began today's topic, this way:

One of the nation's largest automakers has some big construction projects in the pipeline, and the Tennessee state government isn't going to let anything stand in the way—even the private property rights of black farmers.

[S]tate lawmakers overwhelmingly approved legislation that would grant Ford $884 million in state incentives.

The bill also apportioned $745,100 to fund the Megasite Authority of West Tennessee, an 11-person board with the power to execute contracts on behalf of the development. It can also take privately-owned land, via eminent domain, in order to facilitate construction of the facility and supporting infrastructure.

According to Tennessee Lookout, the state is planning to seize privately-owned farmland while only paying a pittance to the owners—far from fair market value.

For example, the state sued Ray Jones for an acre of his land. But while land in the area sells for $200,000 or more per acre, the state offered Jones a measly $8,165.

It also sued Marvin Sanderlin for 10 acres of his property: two acres that would be used to build the road and eight that would become inaccessible once it was built. Sanderlin was only offered $37,500, or $3,750 per acre.

Speaking to the Tennessee Lookout's Anita Wadhwani, Sanderlin called the offer a "ripoff," saying, "you can't buy a swamp here for $3,500."

Enter a painful history

From Anita Wahdwani at Tennessee Lookout:

[L]ike the other Black families who spoke to the Tennessee Lookout about eminent domain lawsuits filed against them, Sanderlin drew a direct line from the state’s current efforts to take his land to the struggles in every preceding generation of his family to hold onto what they owned.

“It’s not the first time we’ve had to fight,” Sanderlin said. His great-great grandmother, an enslaved woman, successfully sued for the rights of her children to inherit a portion of their slave-owning father’s estate, an extraordinary undertaking that is still memorialized in Memphis-area Black history accounts today.

During Sanderlin’s own lifetime . . . . he spent years speaking out against discrimination Black farmers endured in accessing federal farm loan programs.

“They’re giving a $6 billion company access, but they aren’t worried about this one little farmer,” he said.

“We’re giving up land, but we’re going to get less out of this deal than anybody, and we’re impacted the most.”

Government seizures of private property . . .

. . . almost never work to the common population's benefit that the seizing government claims. The tax money given away to powerful corporations is never returned to the public in form of the forecasted societal benefit.

Instead, these seizures (of tax money and land property) lubricate US Corporatocracy's parasitizing extortion(s):

[I]f there isn’t corruption in there to grease the wheels, the mechanisms of government don’t run.

As Anita Wahdwani implicitly pointed out . . .

. . . eminent domain operates even more evilly — when it screws private landowners, so as to add still more to Oligarchs' pot of stolen lucre.

Explicitly stated by Joe Lancaster:

It's bad enough when a state decides to give hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to companies worth billions.

But it's truly abhorrent to seize land from private hands simply because the state feels that a company should use it instead.

The moral? — Pay attention to what's going on

Did you, for instance:

approve of sending literally billions, billions and billions of dollars

in money and weapons

to (Nazi-led) Ukraine

so as to benefit the American Military Industrial Complex

and

and rampaging oligarchs worldwide —

while American citizens struggle financially here at home?

Do you ever wonder what happened to the two-way intended tenets (Government and We the People) of the presumed Social Contract?

American society is failing because the United States' fascist Corporatocracy never stops parasitizing it.

Should we remove American Fascism's blood-sucking needles?

How?

Is Chris Hedges right?

PeteFree.com

Every day, government in the United States flaunts its corruption — evaluate Tennessee's eminent domain theft from farmers