Big Yellow Taxi and Property Rights

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“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” Joni Mitchell sang it — and today, we’re living it. Across the country, farmland and open land are being bulldozed for soulless private-equity apartment blocks and “affordable housing” boondoggles cooked up between politicians and developers.
From Florida to New Jersey, the government isn’t just rubber-stamping ugly growth — it’s trying to seize private property to hand over to builders. But sometimes, people push back. A family farm in Cranbury, New Jersey just beat an eminent-domain takeover — a rare win for ordinary Americans who actually own and work their land.
This isn’t anti-growth. It’s pro-sanity. Build where it makes sense. Revitalize cities. But don’t bulldoze heritage, agriculture, and generational property just to slap up another copy-paste complex. Paradise is precious. Let’s stop paving it over.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Big yellow taxi and property rights. Yeah, big yellow taxi.
Old Joni Mitchell song familiar with the lyrics pave paradise
and put up a parking lot. I've seen this happen often.
Like I said, I am a I'm not anti growth
by any stretch of the imagination. I just think things

(00:39):
need to be done the right way. And one of
the things I cannot stand is when you get various
different developers in bed with politicians. And this happens more
often than not on the local level. Oh yeah, we
gotta take this and we got to turn over this wetland,

(01:00):
and then we got to do And I've seen this
happen all over the country, seen it happen, you know,
here in the state of Florida where I live now,
where oftentimes you'll see areas and farmland being taken down,
raising land, and all of a sudden you've got some
ugly ass apartment complex. Like I said, before. It looks

(01:23):
like it was designed. It was like designed by the
architecture firm of Excel and PowerPoint. Okay, ugly, ugly, like
something you'd see the Soviets put up. Oh yeah, it's
got some palm trees and maybe a pool in the
middle and an area where you can play cornhole or

(01:46):
something like that. But again, you could punch your hole
through most of these walls. It's just garbage and it's
owned by a lot of private equity. Now soundedly that.
It's also when the government gets involved and starts seizing
property eminent domain, and that goes back to something we
talked about on the program. This was going back to

(02:07):
two thousand and five. Two thousand and five I railed
against this and it was in Connecticut. It was the
Supreme Court decision Kilo versus the City of New London.
There where to this day, this day the land was seized,
seized by the government. I think it was. I think

(02:28):
it was for Pfiser. I can't remember. The pharmaceutical company
was supposed to put some plant there and they never
did and they never did. Well. Glad to see this.
This is a step in the right direction. Town in
New Jersey. Cranbury, New Jersey, surrendered its attempt to seize
through eminent domain a working a working farm, like a

(02:54):
working farm that has been owned by a family for generators.
Oh yeah, the government and their infinite wisdom wanted to
take and seize that property land because they wanted a
developer to build one hundred and thirty affordable housing units
on the property. Yeah, this is this is government and action.

(03:21):
This is a kid. Do you ever own anything? Do you?
The government came up files it where you don't hand
it over to a developer. Seize private land and hand
it over to a developer. Not very American if you
ask me.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
This.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Six months ago, the township announced it a plan to
take legal action to seize the farm because again the
Deoisy the Joisy Supreme Courts nineteen seventy five Mount Laurel doctrine,
which requires New Jersey towns to build low rent housing.
I mean, how stupid of it is you require a

(04:03):
town to build low rent housing. So Cranberry needed to
create two hundred and sixty five units over the next
ten years. So the farm was a piece of land
that was open, was farming that was there. Hey, we're
just gonna go head, We're gonna take that. Now, that
was a case of eminent domain. But you're seeing it

(04:25):
happen all over and you know, all over the country
where again government officials, government officials, and yeah it's Republicans. Yeah,
it's Democrats getting in bed with developers. And oh, look,
look at all the property tax revenue we're going to
be able to generate for your town. Right, it's actually interesting.

(04:46):
We have a saw commercial for gentlemen. I got to
look at look who's name up because I saw it
brief end and got his name. So the commercials running
for the head of the agriculture department here in the
state of Florida. It's a big position. And he points
out that he's just putting a stop to this nonsense.
It's a farmer. He's basically just keep Florida rurle again

(05:09):
here you don't want the farmland knockdown, or you don't
want the ranch land taken away. And he's not wrong,
he's not wrong. Yeah, like I said, I'm all for Tom.
I don't have any problem. You want to put some
more units up in the city, you want to revitalize
various different areas. Right, But again you Jany was onto

(05:29):
something you don't want to have to pay paradise and
put up a parking lot watch dog on Wall street
dot Com