XPost: sci.agriculture, rec.arts.tv, alt.california
XPost: sac.politics

In article <XnsAA707D5F9486C6F089P2473@202.81.252.44>,
"Leroy N. Soetoro" <leroysoetoro@barackobama.com> wrote:

Farmers up and down California's Central Valley are up in arms over the
state seizing their land to build its long-awaited high-speed railway and then failing to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars owed them for
years.

Thanks to an order of possession by the Superior Court, California can
take private land through eminent domain for the troubled bullet train project. While landowners are expected to eventually be reimbursed for the property-- and for expenses like lost farming production, irrigation replacement projects and road construction-- many farmers in California's agricultural heartland say state officials have offered them a myriad of excuses as to why they haven't yet doled out the cash.

"I am out a quarter-million bucks on infrastructure, and they haven't paid
a dime for a year," John Diepersloot, a fruit farmer who cleared a large parcel of his peach orchard to make way for the train, told The Los
Angeles Times. "I don't have that kind of money."

So wait... not only do they seize your property from you, but they make
*you* do the construction/land clearing, too? And then they fail to pay,
of course.

Wow. Those leftists bureaucrats really have some stones on them, don't
they?

I wonder what they do if someone says, "Fine, you took the land. I can't
do anything about that, but I'm far too busy to work for you on your
train project, so clear the land yourself."

"We understand the concerns of private property owners affected during the acquisition of their property by the California High-Speed Rail Authority
and construction of the High-Speed Rail system," Don Odell, the
authority's chief of real property, said in a statement to Fox News. "We strive to work closely with affected property owners to minimize the
impact the project has on them and to the ensure that they receive fair market value, consistent with state law, for their land and other expenses they incur due to the construction of the high-speed rail system."

I don't think Mr. Odell actually understands the meaning of the word
'ensure'.

And dontcha love when a bureaucrat says he "understands your concerns"?
In bureaucratese that means he doesn't really care and nothing's
actually going to change.

Also, it's hilarious how this guy is still calling it a 'high-speed rail system', when it's no longer anything of the kind. (If it ever was.)
Instead of a high-speed train from L.A. to San Francisco, it's now a normal-speed rail system from Bakersfield to Merced.

How that's legal is anyone's guess. The voters approved money for a
train to go from L.A. to San Francisco, not Bakersfield to Merced, so
it's seems like using money approved for one purpose for something
entirely different would be illegal. But hey, it's California where the government routinely does whatever the fuck it wants with no regard for
the law.

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