FREEDOM AND EMINENT DOMAIN IN BAKERSFIELD

To be in favor of freedom, suggests that few seem to agree on what it means.

Donna Kunz idea of freedom violates property owner’s ideas of eminent domain. To quote: “It’s a tool of last resort……..the private sector doesn’t always work the way the public wants”. Securing land for redevelopment means doing what she wants with her own vision, while to property owners it means violating their property futures. Without the eminent domain threat a building owner has no reason to listen says Donna Kunz “He’s sitting over at the beach and writing the depreciation off on his taxes”. This sort of freedom is tyranny.

To property owners downtown, freedom means an end to all government regulation. To Donna Kunz, freedom can only be achieved when individual incentive has been crushed and “the people” – Bakerfieldians - own downtown property.

Based on the evidence, there is much miscommunication on this subject. The dictionary defines freedom as “being free.” In turn, free is defined as “not under the control or power of another.” Freedom is not a license to do as one pleases and pass on property to others for them to gain wealth.

Bakersfield Redevelopment Agency (BRA) should not find it necessary to employ the threat of force, for when force enters the picture, some land owners are going to come under the control of government. The “BRA freedom” necessitates the violation of land owners freedom. Human freedom is the freedom for each individual to do as he pleases, so long as he does not commit aggression against anyone else.

All artificially created rights are anti-freedom, because in order to fulfill one person’s rights (desires), another person’s rights must be violated. There are three converging afflictions: guiltism, envyism, and villainism. Why society yearns for an external government force to “level the playing field” and equalize results is beyond understanding.

The BRA under Donna Kunz “leadership” does not have a freedom mission in mind with downtown redevelopment.

Everything in life has a price, the price of artificially created rights is bondage to downtown redevelopment — the exchange of your rights for someone else’s.

Graham Kaye-Eddie