A tip of our hat to Jacob Sullum, writing for the Reason Foundation, for cleverly coining the phrase “big blighters” to characterize redevelopers who — particularly but not exclusively in New York — abuse the term “blight” in manufactiring a justification for the use of eminent domain to wrest usable, ordinary properties from their rightful owners, in order to consolidate them into redevelopment sites on which they build for private gain and call it “public use.”
See http://reason.org/news/show/big-blighters, December 9, 2009.