Posted on 02/06/2016 9:06:55 PM PST by Enlightened1
You are correct that a lot gets done and done fairly through eminent domain. However, like many things the government does it relies on people and officials doing things to the right degree and with the right motives and with a sense of fairness to the people involved and to the public.
A lot of people (Trump included) note all the good things that are done through eminent domain. Nobody is disputing that. What we are disputing is the idea that merely making more tax money is a sufficient cause for taking a property (as an FYI, in the Kelo case, the ruling came from Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer— given that Trump agrees with the case, are those the kind of judges he would nominate?). As the dissent in the case noted:
“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
It’s not the concept of Eminent Domain that I oppose, but rather the idea that public use should be extended beyond what almost anyone would consider to be public use. While there is a lot of room in between one extreme to another on these cases, it does become a question of judgment and fairness. Are people using this lever of the law fairly or not? What are the right circumstances in order to kick someone out of their home? I think it’s a really instructive lesson to note that the original plan at Kelo was never built and is now an empty lot. Similarly, the grand designs of using Casinos to save Atlantic City have imploded.
Finally, you mention fair market value — In the Coking case, the amount offered through eminent domain was clearly not remotely close to the amount that was a fair market price (i.e., the amount Trump had already offered her). By his own words he would have been willing to go up to 5 Million (he’s the business genius, right? Isn’t that the fair market amount?). Yet, he offered somewhere around 1.9 or 2, and then resorted to the eminent domain case, where she was offered 251K.
Was that a fair market value?
...I don’t get it.
I'm a realist. Trump has issues as does Cruz.
Trump is a loose cannon while Cruz is generally unlikable as a person.
You’ve met Ted Cruz in person? Really?
Trump is for Trump.
$215k was FMV or close to it. Trump offered her a great deal and she was a stubborn fool not to take it. Her right. Her fault.
I've listened to Ted plenty. His voice and demeanor make my skin crawl and he's a little loose with the truth from time to time. Not trying to bash the guy but that's my impression. He also doesn't seem to play well with his colleagues and has confined his base to evangelicals. That's a problem.
Fair market value is based on a lot of factors, especially location. Trump knows this and that’s why he offered 2M and said he’d have been willing to go up to 5M. That’s why the 251K offer through eminent domain was such an insult.
So either Trump is a horrible business person and offered nearly 8 times the fair market and would have paid nearly 20 times the fair market value OR he and his cronies decided to screw a woman out of her property with an insulting eminent domain payment that they called FMV.
I’m not sure which of them is worse.
I don’t want to insult your logic, but what you are saying just makes no sense.
did you ever have an appraisal done on your house? Maybe you should go review how those things work. Fair market value is based on the market. Given that the market is determined by what people are willing to pay (not some abstract estimate of what “land” is worth), the market should have been set by what Trump and Guccione offered.
Face it, they were trying to screw her.
No, they were trying to expedite the process by paying her a lot more than it was worth.
And, no what a person might have offered in the past is not relevant to an appraisal. Only recent sales that were actually consummated.
yes, let’s put that in an ad and show how Trump was so fair to her.
He’s trying to bluster past this because any fair viewer will see his actions as they were — him trying to bully someone into giving him what he wanted.
So you prefer the potty mouth. Good to know.
He doesn’t play well with RINOs. Gee, that’s also good to know.
Chill. She was a greedy, stupid old bat. She should have taken the money but did not. The beach needed her flop house bulldozed. Trump was her White Knight.
Nice of you to state it so clearly. Now we all know where you (and Trump) stand on property rights.
LOSER!
Thank you. People who want to fight the system get what they want. She won her case and no one took her property. She got her way to the detriment of the community. Her right I guess. But the attack on Trump out of this is pure BS.
Rebuttal; Donald Trump at the 88 GOP convention, introduced as a conservative and praising Dan Quayle and George Bush. Watch if you are interested in learning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usb0iE5WiZI
No, you need to read my tagline.
I’ll vote for Hillary.
You’ll vote for Hellary over Trump?
Well, that’s telling.
she won the case and kept the property for years. She DIDN’T WANT ANYONE TO TAKE HER PROPERTY for ANY amount. She wanted to stay there, and she did for years after winning the case. The CRDA became involved in 1996 and the case took 3 years. So in 1999 she was left alone from the Eminent Domain case.
She then lived there another 11 years before moving to a retirement home in CA near to her grandson. She didn’t sell because she didn’t want to move. Her descendants may have wanted more money, but again.. it was her place and her decision.
As for the detriment of the community, it didn’t look like the Casino boom was that good of an idea for Atlantic City in retrospect. Maybe they should try limited government and encouraging entrepreneurship instead of handing out land to politically connected cronies.
In my neighborhood, we had a nut like her. 30 acres of development was a mud pit for 3 years while it fought through the courts. The hold out was a s***hole Like Ms. Coking’s dump only smaller. I know the consequences of stubborn resistance to progress. First hand. Your world can be full of those people. I hope mine isn’t. I’d rather have a Wall.
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