KAOS Radio Austin

Eminent Domain is the government's "inherent right" to steal your property for "public use," a phrase that can mean almost anything. In the US, the gov is generally required to offer you some money first and then to outright take the property if you refuse the sale.

This is an issue that seems to stay in the background of history. As I looked for articles about the Transcontinental Railroad and the interstate highways, probably the two largest uses of eminent domain in the history of our country, I found extensive articles on the projects that gave only a phrase to eminent domain, and nothing more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

First Transcontinental Railroad

One of the first uses of eminent domain in our country was the First Transcontinental Railroad, begun during the administration of Lincoln. One documentary in existence claims that Jesse and Frank James were motivated to rob trains because of land taken from their mother. This is not widely claimed by other sources. What is not in doubt, however, is that their popularity amongst the farmers of Missouri was related to the unpopularity of the railroad that had stolen so many people's land and cheated others. Railroad men frequently convinced farmers to invest in having a railroad pass near their land. Because of government boondoggle and private fraud, many railroads went bankrupt and the investors lost their money. To add insult to injury, farmers in remote areas were frequently unable to afford the railroad's rates to ship their produce.

Article about conflict between farmers and railroad (very little about eminent domain); http://cprr.org/Museum/Railroad_Builders/Railroad_Builders_12.htmlhttp:/...
History of railroad and its scandals and political beginnings (again, almost nothing about eminent domain): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

Interstate Highways

Few people realize that the interstate highway system was actually the brainchild of the defense department. Of course, the cause of "national defense" made it even easier for the government to steal people's land and homes under the umbrella of eminent domain. So next time you are driving on I-35, or whatever interstate highway is near you pause and reflect on the fact that we are all driving on stolen land.
Here is a history of the highways, minus the eminent domain part:Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

There is nothing in the show to match up with this article, but it is worth reading. Here is an excerpt:

from River of Resistance by Michael Schwartz

The New American Century Goes Missing in Action

It's hard now even to recall the original vision George W. Bush and his top officials had of how the conquest of Iraq would unfold as an episode in the President's Global War on Terror. In their minds, the invasion was sure to yield a quick victory, to be followed by the creation of a client state that would house crucial "enduring" U.S. military bases from which Washington would project power throughout what they liked to term "the Greater Middle East."

In addition, Iraq was quickly going to become a free-market paradise, replete with privatized oil flowing at record rates onto the world market. Like falling dominos, Syria and Iran, cowed by such a demonstration of American might, would follow suit, either from additional military thrusts or because their regimes – and those of up to 60 countries worldwide – would appreciate the futility of resisting Washington's demands. Eventually, the "unipolar moment" of U.S. global hegemony that the collapse of the Soviet Union had initiated would be extended into a "New American Century" (along with a generational Pax Republicana at home).

This vision is now, of course, long gone, largely thanks to unexpected and tenacious resistance of every sort within Iraq. This resistance consisted of far more than the initial Sunni insurgency that tied down what Donald Rumsfeld pridefully labeled "the greatest military force on the face of the earth." It is already none too rash a statement to suggest that, at all levels of society, usually at great sacrifice, the Iraqi people frustrated the imperial designs of a superpower...

The formal political leadership of Iraq, locked inside the heavily fortified, U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, remains publicly compliant when it comes to Bush administration plans to transform Iraq into a Middle Eastern outpost – including the continued presence of American troops on a series of mega-bases in the heart of the country. The rest of the government bureaucracy and the bulk of Iraq's grass roots are increasingly insistent on an early American departure date and a full-scale reversal of the economic policies first introduced by the occupation.

In Washington, for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, the outpost idea remains at the heart of the policy agenda for Iraq in this election year, along with a neoliberal economy featuring a modernized oil sector in which multinational firms are to use state-of-the-art technology to maximize the country's lagging oil production.

Iraqi resistance of every kind and on every level has, however, prevented this vision from becoming reality. Because of the Iraqis, the glorious sounding Global War on Terror has been transformed into an endless, hopeless actual war.

But the Iraqis have paid a terrible price for resisting. The invasion and the social and economic policies that accompanied it have destroyed Iraq, leaving its people essentially destitute. In the first five years of this endless war, Iraqis have suffered more for resisting than if they had accepted and endured American military and economic dominance. Whether consciously or not, they have sacrificed themselves to halt Washington's projected military and economic march through the oil-rich Middle East on the path to a new American Century that now will never be.

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=12887