Yesterday, Tower Investments filed a motion to dismiss the Nashville-chartered Metropolitan Housing and Development Agency’s Petition for Condemnation of the company’s 5.6-acre downtown property. MHDA is attempting to clear land for the proposed Music City Convention Center, the construction of which is currently projected to cost nearly $600 million.

What makes this case particularly interesting is that Tower doesn’t oppose the development plan per se; rather, it wants to build a hotel “in such a way that enhances and accommodates the convention center.”…

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Popular outrage over eminent domain abuse may have waned a bit since the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned Kelo ruling in 2005, but economic development takings remain incredibly unpopular throughout the country. Public opinion polls indicate that more than 80 percent of Americans oppose eminent domain for economic development, which is surprising when one considers the relative inaction on the part of state legislatures to meaningfully protect their citizens’ property rights.

However, there are reasons to be optimistic. Brooklynites fighting the proposed Atlantic Yards development…

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If you’re a fan of professional print journalism, you may be a little worried as of late.  Denver’s Rocky Mountain News just closed its doors after nearly 150 years in the news game.  Meanwhile the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are both on life support.  Even the New York Times, the largest newspaper in America, has cut its dividend and mortgaged its headquarters for $225 million.

It seems clear that the age of broadsheet newspapers is coming to an end,…

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The celebrity parade calling for more foreign aid to poor countries has become so ubiquitous — and accepted — these days that critiques of it are rare. So it’s refreshing to see just such a critique in no less vaunted an outlet than The New York Times Magazine. The magazine’s current issue features an interview with Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and author of the book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There is a Better…

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Yesterday’s NYTimes had a good article on the city of Pittsburgh and its surprising resurgence.

A generation ago, the steel industry that built Pittsburgh and still dominated its economy entered its death throes. In the early 1980s, the city was being talked about the way Detroit is now. Its very survival was in question.

…

Entrepreneurship bloomed in computer software and biotechnology. Two of the biggest sectors are education and health care, among the most resistant to downturns. Prominent companies are doing well. Westinghouse Electric,…

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Coming from the UK, CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray knows a little something about the history of political empires. Today, however, we find ourselves faced with a new era of eco-imperialism, particularly in the field of global warming policy. Iain explains:

“Eco-Imperialism” = efforts by the developed world to impose its environmental priorities on the developing world. Developed countries seek to pressure the Third World into reduce greenhouse gas emissions “for the sake of the planet,” regardless of its impact on the…

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On the front page of the Washington Post, writer Steven Pearlstein contradicts himself by writing that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being “rescued from the harsh discipline of markets and the consequences of their own misjudgments,” undercutting arguments for “privatization, deregulation, and a faith in free markets.”

But the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is hardly an indictment of the free market: Fannie and Freddie are “Government-Sponsored Enterprises,” not products of the free market or the…

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