Steve Stanek, a research fellow at The Heartland Institute, emails to point out that when he was managing editor of Heartland’s Budget & Tax News, he oversaw a piece that was run on eminent domain and the taking of property for sports stadiums. Below, from the piece, Kelo Could Ban Takings for Stadiums, is the part applicable to Bush. Note well: The article mentions properties were taken by eminent domain from hundreds of private owners:
George W. Bush Profited
One of the most famous eminent domain cases involved… where baseball’s Texas Rangers play. At the time, future President George W. Bush was an owner.
In 1991, the team convinced local voters to approve a tax increase that helped build a new $191 million stadium. The city of Arlington used eminent domain to acquire the property from hundreds of private owners, claiming the stadium was a “public use” just like highways, schools, and government buildings.
Several property owners were lowballed, and court decisions increased their final take. The compensation for one 13-acre plot was increased from $877,000 to $5 million, for example. The city, not the team, was held responsible for making the larger payments.
The stadium clearly benefitted the Rangers’ owners more than anyone else. Bush turned his initial $600,000 investment into $15 million when the team was sold in 1999. But it has produced little of the promised economic benefit to Arlington, and there has never been a real “public use” factor aside from baseball fans’ paying their money to see games.
–RW
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2016/02/how-george-w-bush-profited-from-eminent.html
The Bush Family Evil Empire from Prescott Bush helping Adolph Hitler to George H.W. Bush’s role in the Iran-Contra Affair, and then, installing G.W. Bush for 2 terms? WTF? Shouldn’t their be a limit on family presidential aspirations? A yet unborn Bush may be your President someday after doomsday. Or may it’s alive today, eating the eggs of it’s siblings. There has been no slime that has crawled lower or betrayed this country more than the Bush family Evil Empire. I cannot bestow my disgust, as I would like, with these bottom feeding scum-suckers. They should be dragged out of that so -called “ranch” in Crawford and hung by the sturdy limb of the nearest tree. Son’s of bitches!