Posted on 04/23/2011 7:05:23 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Don’t be fooled by the Donald. Take it from one who knows: I’m a South Jersey gal who was raised on the outskirts of Atlantic City in the looming shadow of Trump’s towers. All through my childhood, casino developers and government bureaucrats joined hands, raised taxes, and made dazzling promises of urban renewal. Then we wised up to the eminent-domain thievery championed by our hometown faux free-marketeers.
America, it’s time you wised up to Donald Trump’s property-redistribution racket, too.
Trump has been wooing conservative activists for months and flirting with a GOP presidential run — first at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and most recently at a tea-party event in South Florida. He touts his business experience, “high aptitude,” and “bragadocious” deal-making abilities. But he’s no more a standard bearer of conservative values, limited government, and constitutional principles than the cast of Jersey Shore.
Too many mega-developers like Trump have achieved success by using and abusing the government’s ability to commandeer private property for purported “public use.” Invoking the Fifth Amendment takings clause, real-estate moguls, parking-garage builders, mall developers, and sports-palace architects have colluded with elected officials to pull off legalized theft in the name of reducing “blight.” Under eminent domain, the definition of “public purpose” has been stretched like Silly Putty to cover everything from roads and bridges to high-end retail stores, baseball stadiums, and casinos.
While casting himself as America’s new constitutional savior, Trump has shown reckless disregard for fundamental private-property rights. In the 1990s, he waged a notorious war on elderly homeowner Vera Coking, who owned a little home in Atlantic City that stood in the way of Trump’s manifest land development. The real-estate mogul was determined to expand his Trump Plaza and build a limousine parking lot — Coking’s private property be damned. The nonprofit Institute for Justice, which successfully saved Coking’s home, explained the confiscatory scheme:
Unlike most developers, Donald Trump doesn’t have to negotiate with a private owner when he wants to buy a piece of property, because a governmental agency — the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority or CRDA — will get it for him at a fraction of the market value, even if the current owner refuses to sell. Here is how the process works.
After a developer identifies the parcels of land he wants to acquire and a city planning board approves a casino project, CRDA attempts to confiscate these properties using a process called “eminent domain,” which allows the government to condemn properties “for public use.” Increasingly, though, CRDA and other government entities exercise the power of eminent domain to take property from one private person and give it to another. At the same time, governments give less and less consideration to the necessity of taking property and also ignore the personal loss to the individuals being evicted.
Trump has attempted to use the same tactics in Connecticut and has championed the reviled Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court ruling upholding expansive use of eminent domain. He told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto that he agreed with the ruling “100 percent” and defended the chilling power of government to kick people out of their homes and businesses based on arbitrary determinations:
The fact is, if you have a person living in an area that’s not even necessarily a good area, and government, whether it’s local or whatever, government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and make [an] area that’s not good into a good area, and move the person that’s living there into a better place — now, I know it might not be their choice — but move the person to a better place and yet create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good.
Like most statist promises of bountiful job creation, government-engineered redevelopment math rarely adds up. Trump’s corporations have backed casino-industry bailouts and wealth-redistributing “tax-increment financing” schemes — the very kind of taxpayer-subsidized interventions we’ve seen on a grand scale under the Obama administration.
Championing liberty begins at the local level. There is nothing more fundamental than the principle that a man’s home is his castle. Donald Trump’s career-long willingness to trample this right tells you everything you need to know about his bogus tea-party sideshow.
shouldve done it last time...
Did you ever think you’d ever see the day when freepers would excuse eminent domain?
There are conservative freepers, and there are people who hang out on FR and post idiocy.
We have Conservatives who think Kelo should have been settled by requiring Connecticut to use eminent domain ONLY for public purposes, to wit,roads, schools, sewers, water, and sport stadiums.
READ IT some time. George Washington, George Mason, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and a host of other of the Founding Fathers supported the Fifth Amendment.
It would seem you do not.
It would seem you do not.
Here's what it says:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
If you want to limit the expression "public use" you can do that by law ~ the USSC didn't touch that. CT doesn't limit the expression constitutionally, and they're not alone in that. Other states do limit but only by laws that can be rescinded at any time by the legislature.
If you don't like the implications of Kelo, don't live in CT or another state that doesn't limit "public use".
Why don’t you explain to all the conservatives here, and Michelle Malkin, why Trump is an exception? Clearly you’re in favor of government land snatching.
The problem with your alleged argument in favor of government land grabbing is that Trump lobbied government officials to act on his behalf. Oh, and guess what? The courts ruled against Trump thanks to Infinite Justice.
Don’t ever attempt to put words in my mouth.
The “just compensation” portion of the Fifth is 20% of the Amendment. Your definition of “public use” apparently applies to private development as well. How progressive of you.
Your stripes are showing, again.
The other side ~ the Gub'mnt ~ said that since more tax money could be derived from the improved property this was a good public purpose being served.
Now you want to tell me that the issue in Connecticut in Kelo was about "just compensation" ~ when, in fact, it was actually about whether or not the land taken was a slum.
CT said they could take property, and pay for it, whether it was a slum or not.
In these debates both sides should stick to the facts of the case at law ~ maybe it might have a different outcome if other things were true, but that wasn't the case.
The USSC said "DO IT" ~ and the people of CT have yet to act to change their own law. Other states have changed their laws.
So, wow man, you don't like democratic processes used in government or the Tenth Amendment and you want to tell me I'm not conservative enough for your taste?
You are way off base.
I'm discussing the issues and you're calling people names.
Study up on "takings" for a few months and get back to us. Tell us how many issues there are.
The Constitution itself assumes the federal gub'mnt can take private property for public use ~ whatever that use might be ~ as long as just compensation is paid. There are FEW condemnations ever made by the federal government BTW. One of them involved the USPS forcing the sale, to them, of a postal facility in New York City. It was owned by a private party who wouldn't fix the roof. That same party sat in the next pew in the synagogue next to Postmaster General Tisch. Word is he didn't like Tisch.
George Washington approved of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Take up your question with George.
Trump may have lobbied the RDA people, but it wouldn't matter. RDA had been condemning property all along ~ usually to assemble lots where there were legal impediments to such assembly by private parties.
We have a 4 acre lot in my neighborhood that has been abandoned for 50 years. The trees are falling down. It was owned by a lady, since deceased, who fell on bad times and ended up in a rest home. Her custodian was unable to negotiate a disposition with the heirs regarding the lot. I think there are now well over 100 people with a property interest in that lot, and most of them are unlocatable.
If we had an RDA it would go to court to condemn the property and reorganize it into something suitible for compatible development.
The heirs would then await their share of the proceeds and we wouldn't have 4 acres of dangerous jungle down the street.
What will ultimately happen absent an RDA is that somebody will get killed by one of the falling trees. Their heirs will sue the pants off the folks who believe they own that lot. That will be a big surprise to them.
I could not help but notice that you and your little friend ritense avoided that one.
So, they condemn old houses rented out by private parties as homes for poor people, and then they build a publicly financed stadium that SELLS skyboxes to the rich.
Sorry, hon. I always favor the rights of the individual first.
How about the stockholder's broker?
Is the term individual too nebulous for you?
Just what is it you are trying to say. Remember, you are among friends so just get it out there ~ tell us what you mean ~ what individual doing what job is it that we are to prefer to another individual?
Now that'd be something eh?
Tell me I have no business trying to get that abandoned lot cleaned up, and maybe even sold to a developer.
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