Nick Schweitzer dug into the forced sale of a pair of Milwaukee parcels formerly owned by Bee Bus Line to the city of Milwaukee for the benefit of neighboring Integrated Mail Industries (emphasis in the original):
Of course, the way the article is written, it seems so wonderful. After all… jobs will be created with this new land! But let’s look at what really happened here. IMI went to Bee and asked to buy the property for a price. Bee said it wanted moren (actually they just wanted at least what they paid for it), and IMI, instead of continuing to negotiate in good faith, went to the city and demand they use eminent domain to take the property at a lower price and resell it to them. This is nothing but government sponsored theft.
If property rights meant anything, then a property owner (Bee Bus Lines) ought to be allowed to ask whatever they wanted for that property. If their price is too high, than no sale will be made and they’ll be stuck. But just because IMI didn’t want to pay a price doesn’t mean that they ought be allowed to go the city to “force a sale”. That is like suggesting that if a woman declines a man at a bar, he ought to be able to go the police and have a cop hold her down while he rapes her… to force the completion of a “transaction” he demanded of her. Having a right to something means nothing if it does not include the right to refuse sale of that item, for whatever reason. This isn’t the God Father… you have the right to refuse an offer.
I’ll force you to go to Nick’s place to catch the bombshell of the poliical leanings and donation patterns of the owners of the AB Dada Group, ISI’s parent company. I’ll just say that Milwaukee’s reputation as a “clean government” took another hit.
