Congressional Reform of Civil Forfeiture: Punishing Criminals Yet Protecting Property Owners

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-75
Author(s):  
Sandra Guerra Thompson
Author(s):  
Tiago NUNES ◽  
Miguel COUTINHO

After almost a century of several attempts to establish a coherent land registration system across the whole country, in 2017 the Portuguese government decided to try a new, digital native approach to the problem. Thus, a web-based platform was created, where property owners from 10 pilot municipalities could manually identify their lands’ properties using a map based on satellite images. After the first month of submissions, it became clear that at the current daily rate, it would take years to achieve the goal of 100% rural property identification across just the 10 municipalities. Field research during the first month after launch enabled us to understand landowners’ relationships with their land, map their struggles with the platform, and prototype ways to improve the whole service. Understanding that these improvements would still not be enough to get to the necessary daily rate, we designed, tested and validated an algorithm that allows us to identify a rural property shape and location without coordinates. Today, we are able to help both Government and landowners identify a rural property location with the click of a button.


Author(s):  
Anne Phillips

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, this book challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. The book explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. The book asks what is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? The book contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But it also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, the book demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Elias Kamaruzzaman ◽  
Norzaidi Mohd Daud ◽  
Samsudin Wahab ◽  
Rozhan Abu Dardak

Technology changes will always be for the better, not only to the end users but also to the intellectual property owners of the technology and the implementers of the technology. The objective of this paper is to study the feasibility and viability for entrepreneurs to become service providers for the dispensation of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and supporting services such as aerial crop reconnaissance using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drones. The methodology used for this study is SWOT Analysis. Both primary and secondary data is used for this analysis. This study finds that paddy farming employing drones is feasible. The beneficiaries of this study shall be the government, by way of lowering financial cost to subsidise the paddy planting, the farmers who no longer need the services of migrant workers, thus saving production cost, and finally the drone service providers and their downstream business associates who can engaged themselves in very lucrative businesses.


2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly G. Key ◽  
Teresa A. Lightner

ABSTRACT This study examines the relation between commercial and industrial property values and local property taxes using 1999 to 2009 data for the state of Georgia. Results show a negative relation between commercial values and property taxes, consistent with the new view of capital tax prediction that these taxes are borne, at least in part, by property owners. Incidence estimates show very high to full capitalization. There is little evidence of a relation between industrial property values and property taxes, contrary to prior research. This study is the first to provide empirical evidence of differences in commercial and industrial property tax incidence. The study contributes to the understanding of the capitalization of business taxes, which has been the subject of very little prior research. The results can inform policymakers who consider trade-offs in tax revenue needs, economic development, and issues of fairness in their localities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 393-393
Author(s):  
John Pothen ◽  
Keland Yip ◽  
Ellen Idler

Abstract Can forgotten stories from the past inform a city’s future? As older adults continue to live longer and comprise more of the population than ever before, the suitability of gentrifying spaces for older adults aging in place is increasingly important. Critical theories of gentrification argue that remembering the experiences of older adults in this context - experiences of suffering, resilience, and structural violence - is essential to promote changes in support aging in place. In this study, we tell a story of individual experiences, structural violence, and aging in the ongoing gentrification of one neighborhood in southwest Atlanta. We construct this narrative through a qualitative analysis of 1,500 local newspaper articles from 1950 to the present day and 10 in-depth interviews with ex-residents of the neighborhood aged 65-87. Drawing on the theory of planetary rent gaps, we frame gentrification as a class struggle between property-owners and working class residents. We highlight the city government’s role as a facilitator for property-owners through projects including the Model City initiative, preparation for the 1996 Olympics, and ongoing development surrounding the Atlanta BeltLine. We show how these projects have affected the prospects for aging in place in general and, specifically, by affecting access to healthcare services. We share this story in an effort to combat the politics of forgetting and to inform a richer, more inclusive, and more equitable future for gentrifying spaces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7359
Author(s):  
Sadaf Alam ◽  
Miimu Airaksinen ◽  
Risto Lahdelma

Key stakeholders in industry are highly responsible for achieving energy performance targets. Particularly, this paper assesses the attitudes, approaches, and experiences of Finnish construction professionals regarding energy-efficient buildings, or nZEBs. A three-tier investigation was conducted including surveys and expert interviews with several stakeholders. The structure of this approach was informed by preliminary data and information available on the Finnish construction sector. The questionnaire showed that the stakeholders ranked energy efficiency and embodied energy/carbon as very important. The survey highlighted that the importance of the embodied carbon CO2 in the materials is less important than the energy efficiency from many of the stakeholders’ points of view. “Energy efficiency” is very important for ESCOs, contractors, and facility managers followed by architects, HVAC engineers, and construction design engineers. Nevertheless, the opinions of architects ranked “embodied energy CO2” as the most important regarding nZEB. When it comes to the importance of “running time emissions” toward nZEB, contractors and ESCO companies ranked it as 1 for importance followed by property owners (78%) and tenants (75%). It is very fascinating to see from the survey that “running time carbon emissions” has been ranked 1 (very important) by all stakeholders. This study will enable construction industry stakeholders to make provisions for overcoming the barriers, gaps, and challenges identified in the practices of the nZEB projects. It will also inform the formulation of policies that drive retrofit uptake.


Urban History ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rutledge

Estimates of urban population before the Black Death have been hampered by a lack of suitable data. Although it is common knowledge that many towns reached a physical size in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that was not exceeded until the early-modern period, little definite is known about the gross urban population at this date. Where attempts have been made to estimate urban populations these have traditionally depended on multiplying from one arbitrary sector of the community, such as property owners, taxpayers or freemen, or on back projections from the late-fourteenth-century poll tax returns. The problem with such an approach is not only that there is little independent basis for the multipliers used, but also that the relationship between any such arbitrary sector and the urban population as a whole may alter from town to town as well as from time to time within the same community. An exception to this approach has been the recent work of Derek Keene, who has used other indicators of population size and pressure, namely land values, the extent of the built-up area and density of settlement, to estimate the early-fourteenth-century populations of Winchester and London. It may be significant that this method has produced considerably higher population figures than had been reached by the more traditional approach. In this uncertainty, any source that purports to record the whole of a demographically defined section of the population is of considerable interest. Norwich is fortunate in the survival of such a source in an early-fourteenth-century tithing roll for the leet of Nedham and Mancroft (hereafter Mancroft), one of the four leets of the city.


2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-316
Author(s):  
Bruce G. Merritt

In 1964, a California ballot initiative, Proposition 14, aiming to rescind a recent fair-housing act, proved controversial. Supporters argued that property owners had a right to sell to whomever they wished. An undercurrent addressed the supposed deleterious impact to property values if minority families could move into white neighborhoods. Racist motives were denied. This article analyzes the divisive effects of the issue on one southern California church community as it pondered the role of organized religion in matters of social justice.


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