Land shark

Everyone's heard of pool sharks and loan sharks - people who are known to make large amounts of money through trickery, cheating, extortion and/or intimidation. Well, there's another kind of shark that needs to be added to that list - land sharks. These are people who prey on individual land owners and coerce them into either selling their property at greatly reduced prices or arrange to have the government steal it out from under them. One of the more well-known land sharks is our current President - George W. Bush.

Back in the 1990's, he bought a part-ownership in the Texas Rangers and, along with his partners, got the state of Texas to help them steal 270 acres of land from the landowners in and around Arlington. They only really needed about 17 acres to build the stadium they wanted, but grabbed the extra land anyway and turned it into commercial development. Bush put down about $600,000 for his investment in the team, and when it came time for him to be cash out, his share was worth $14.9 million - most of that from the the increased value of the land for and around the stadium.

There's now talk that the Texas Rangers organization is wanting to donate some of that land for George W. Bush's Presidential Library. Over at the Mahablog, Barbara's feeling a bit thrilled at the prospect - not because she thinks its a good idea, but because it gives her a chance to revisit the story of how the Texas Rangers got the land, how they stiffed Arlington and how no one seems to be paying any attention at all to the story. She's got a lot of good information together, and when you're done reading, I suspect that, like me, you'll be wondering why this has gone without scrutiny for so long. It sure makes me wonder what would happen if the tables were turned - if, by some odd chance, a Democratic governor-turned-president were to possibly have been involved in a somewhat shady land deal....