March 14, 2007: Excavation around house
 

http://cellar.org/2007/ChinaHouse.jpg

I'm not selling to you developers!

Ah yes, the reluctant dweller. Here in the US, we have zoning laws to ensure that landowners can't just do whatever they want with their property, and eminent domain laws to ensure that the government can take it from them if someone more powerful wants the land for something else.

For the most part, we also have developers that don't begin work unless everything's ready. Don't want to waste the labor in digging a big hole, if you're just gonna have to fill it in again.

According to the full story, the owners have connections with the government. But now they have no connection to the world, as the excavation is 40 feet deep. Watch that first step, it's a doozy.

scratching Red China off moving to new country list

Oh well, there goes the neighborhood.

Are they renting out?

Now they have to commute to work via parachute, like the guy in that car commercial.

"Hey Bobby, will you run over to Mrs McGillacuddy's and borrow a cup of sugar?"

"Sure, Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..."

Arthur Dent would be proud

"A man's home is his castle." "No man is an island." A man's home *can*, however, be an island, castle or not.

They must bury their electrical, sewer and water supplies *really* deep in China...'cause I don't see any going to that building.

I'll bet their kids behave really well. Getting kicked out of the house could be really painful.

Fill that sucker in, and you've got a pretty damn fine moat.

Pizza guys hate to deliver here.

:lol: Quite possibly the funniest (and most appropriate) thing I've ever read on Cellar!

Another holdout.

Yeah... I've seen that house! And leave it to HP to paint their name on the roof!

Eminent Domain
 

I wouldn't be so sure about the U.S. and any laws protecting us. As we saw in the Kelso case in Connecticutt, the homeowners lost, and the Supreme Court affirmed the eminent domain action. In numerous other states, similar attempts are made every year. While I was in Georgia, the State Legislature attempted a bill that would allow the eminent domain proceedings to go on in private, and the first you, the homeowner, would hear about it is when you were served the paperwork. It was defeated/killed, fortunately.

The Supreme Court effectively said U.S. citizens have no property rights. The good news is some states are enacting laws to further protect the citizens, so some good may have come from it. Still, I don't like what that decision portends.

Hi Armygrognard. Welcome to the cellar!

UT and I live in PA, one of the better property rights states, not ideal but not Red China either. I'm 100% with you on Kelo, the Supreme Court attacked a fundamental liberty on that one.

File this under pig finds pearl.
Democracy Now is for once offended:
Police Kill 12 Protesting Expropriation in India
In India, at least twelve people were killed after police opened fire on villagers opposing the forced expropriation of farmland in West Bengal. The Indian government wants to use the land to create a tax-free industrial park for an Indonesian chemical firm. More than five hundred police were deployed. Authorities had not tried to enter the area since January due to local opposition.