Friday, May 24th, ROPE Report hosted Whitney Mullica and Kelly Wilson of PikeOffOTA (Citizens For Responsible Transportation) to talk about how the Oklahoma Transportation Authority - the pseudogovernmental agency peopled with unelected bureaucrats unaccountable to the public - work with members of the business development community to develop tolled roads that, not only must the citizens of Oklahoma pay to use, but that removes their property from them using the force of the state to create.
Here, Kelly shows that, while eminent domain is used to remove property owners from their property, the 'surplus' land 'left over' after the turnpike has been created, is then sold to the public. Many times, the purchasers of the land are people who benefitted in some way through the OTA turnpike process in the first place.
While this is not illegal, personally benefitting from the process of removing the property of a citizen using the force of the state is ethically and morally wrong. If people can't police themselves along moral and ethical lines, why is the state not protecting citizens by preventing this kind of behavior? Could it be that 'the state' would rather have the money afforded it by the rich and powerful - especially when it comes time to be re-elected?
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