BTW Loco another thing I found while poking around looking at WW1 photos
& stories: in The Great War, over 1/2 million French colonial troops
served on the European Front. Most of them were Muslims from North
Africa (Algeria, Morocco, etc etc).

Do you think any of the rioters are descendents of these men? Would you
look in the eye of a great-grandson of a French WW1 vet, and tell him
he's not a good enough French citizen to expect equal rights from his gov't?

The French have a heck of a lot of problems, their socialist system is
*very* expensive for the state to maintain. But when it is heavily
slanted in favor of certain groups and against others, why wouldn't you
expect them to complain? And get angry when their complaints are brushed
off year after year?

This should be part of the "light bulb going off" that you talked about.

rgnmstr wrote:
Well thunder the case you cite is only one. There is a whole counry
outside of New London. In one Maryland county the county exec. tried to
take a large number of homes and small business in a waterfront area and
give it to private DEVELOPERS for the purpose of RETAIL DEVELOPEMENT.

That's happened in a nunmber of areas I know about, with varying degrees
of success. It's just an example of how power corrupts.

This is just a way for big time developers to get land a bargin prices and
get in bed with those in office.


In NC, the land developers simply run for office themselves. A lot of
mayors & county commissioners are developers or real estate brokers. In
many cases, the voters don't seem to mind until they get outrageously
greedy.


thunder wrote:
Hey, I said the ruling was a travesty. Property rights have been eroding
under eminent domain abuse for years.

Yep. Even cases where the property has been grabbed for public projects,
there is often a howl because the deal is one-sided and some tasty
crumbs are tossed to the insiders.

DSK