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Congratulations, indeed!

We need to support efforts to assure that abuse of eminent domain powers, as in the Kelo case, are not permitted to flourish in NC. Let's see if other civic and corporate leaders are willing to follow BB&T's lead.

That does it for me. I'm moving all my accounts to BB&T.

I am confident the libertarian philosophy has a shaky foundation, but I hadn't thought they were so completely naive.

The idea that the original decision was motivated by "the insatiable appetite of government and its wasteful spending" is silly. Cui Bono? The commercial arena, of course. The underlying arguments for the decision might have pointed to increasing tax revenue, but commercial interests threw money at this problem and got the result they wanted.

If BB & T made a decision to eschew loans to these groups, you can bet it was a business decision and had nothing to do with integrity. They looked at these propositions as high risk, given the the unpopularity of the decision. They correctly surmised that the next few that come along will probably be turned down, opening avenues for citizen action against existing eminent domain land grabs.

You libertarians are going to have a hard time in the coming years unless some sanity is restored to the executive branch. Our business-friendly administration has already stacked the regulatory deck with ex-CEOs and lobbyist approved pinheads that seek to promote the multi-national corporate agenda. You're going to find yourselves ranting against the government, which you are so eloquent at doing, not. And you'll find that, suddenly, companies are the government, and they are no longer on your side.

Hi, Lon. It's nice to see you write something not entirely outrageous for a change. I actually partially agree with you on one or two things you've said here. Naturally, you're wrong on some others.

"but commercial interests threw money at this problem and got the result they wanted."

Right, but only because the government allowed it.

"If BB & T made a decision to eschew loans to these groups, you can bet it was a business decision and had nothing to do with integrity. They looked at these propositions as high risk, given the the unpopularity of the decision. They correctly surmised that the next few that come along will probably be turned down, opening avenues for citizen action against existing eminent domain land grabs."

You may be right here, but I do believe that the BB&T CEO is at least partially libertarian since he requires upper management to read Atlas Shrugged.

"You libertarians are going to have a hard time in the coming years unless some sanity is restored to the executive branch."

Everybody's going to have a hard time until that happens.

"Our business-friendly administration has already stacked the regulatory deck with ex-CEOs and lobbyist approved pinheads that seek to promote the multi-national corporate agenda. And you'll find that, suddenly, companies are the government, and they are no longer on your side."

We'll find it? We already know that's the case, and that's one of the things we're trying to put a stop to. Where you go wrong, however (and quite incomprehensibly), is in believing that the answer to this problem is more government. You believe that it's the corporation half of the equation that's the problem. Corporations have no power over you except when government gives them subsidies and protection in exchange for political donations and favors. In an anarcho-capitalist world, however, consumers would have the ultimate power over corporations because the free market would stop any one corporation from becoming too powerful.

With the current adulterous relationship between government and corporations, you are correct in fearing the corporations, Lon. Note my comment about the equation above. Government and corporations currently represent two sides of a balanced equation. What you fail to realize or refuse to admit (probably the latter) is that by giving government more power, as you wish to do, you are also giving the corporations more power, because whatever you do to one side of the equation you must do to the other.

Of course, it was the government who created this particular equation; as such, it is the government we must attack and whose power must be diminished, not the corporations.

Of course, the most preposterous aspect of your belief system, Lon, is that you believe corporations have too much power over people, and so you want to deprive them of that power only to transfer it to government. You want totalitarianism to exist; you only want the people of your choosing to exercise it.

"If BB & T made a decision to eschew loans to these groups, you can bet it was a business decision and had nothing to do with integrity. They looked at these propositions as high risk, given the the unpopularity of the decision. They correctly surmised that the next few that come along will probably be turned down, opening avenues for citizen action against existing eminent domain land grabs."

How do you arrive at that conclusion, given the historical facts of these cases,lontjr?

One more comment: Your final paragraph injects a note of partisan politics into this matter. However, eminent domain abuse is more of a bureaucratic category of abuse, and is not necessarily political.