November 2009 Texas Constitutional Amendment Proposition #1

Welcome to all the people who tripped over this webpage looking for guidance on the upcoming ballot measures. Please click here to see my recommendations on all eleven proposed constitutional Amendments, after reading these comments on Proposition 1.

Tip of the ten-gallon hat to The Travis Monitor.

Proposition One is to read as follows:

"The constitutional amendment authorizing the financing, including through tax increment financing, of the acquisition by municipalities and counties of buffer areas or open spaces adjacent to a military installation for the prevention of encroachment or for the construction of roadways, utilities, or other infrastructure to protect or promote the mission of the military installation."

Which sounds innocuous enough, until you read even a little bit of commentary.

So the military bases in Texas would like some lebensraum, would they? That's fine as far as it goes. Then you get to the part where a homeowner doesn't want to leave the building where he was born, his children were born, and his grandchildren play. Then he gets a jungle boot in the face. Let me be quite blunt about this:

The use of the power of Eminent Domain to seize land from private individuals, so that a government agency can erect power lines, roads, or just have the land lie empty, is EVIL! Taking money from a land owner at gunpoint (as taxes) to give it back to the landowner as a consolation prize for being kicked off their land, is only a different flavor of, but not less, evil.

If you want to lay a sewer pipe, disturb the PUBLIC buildings, roadways, etc. Put your utilities on existing military land. You don't like the non-military stuff near your military stuff? Pull the base back on itself and make empty land on YOUR frikken side of the fence! (the other side of this coin reads: if you don't want to be disturbed by jet aircraft engines in the middle of the night, or the report of artillery fire, DON'T MOVE IN NEXT DOOR TO A MILITARY BASE!)

Vote NO on Proposition 1 This November!

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This page was updated for clarity, and to point readers to the post where I talk about all eleven ballot measures.