Yes We Can!
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.
I’m glad Trump elevated the Obama birth issue, but that’s IT. He is NOT a conservative, at all, ever.
born June 14, 1946 in Queens, New York, NY (Meets the Jus Soli Requirement)
Parents were
Frederick Christ Trump, born October 11, 1905 in Queens, NY, died June 1999 in Queens, NY
Mary Ann MacLeod, born May 10, 1912 in SCOTLAND, died August 7, 2000 in Queens, NY. Arrived in US October 5, 1935. Naturalized as a US Citizen March 10, 1942.
Both parents were US Citizens at the time of his birth (Meets the Jus Sanguinis Requirement)
Donald Trump is a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN unlike Comrade Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama.
He’ll never get my vote.
National Review = Romney Campaign = RINO Rag
He has peaked at 16 %; there’s nowhere to go but down. Better to let him continue attacks on Obama.
Michelle Malkin a RINO? Give up if you and two or three others that agree with you are going to be a political movement.
We can do better than either Trump OR Mitt RINO.
Michelle Malkin: 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.
You misread what I wrote, Michelle was never mentioned. I’ll post it again so you can reread it. I took a swipe at the National Review, Romney and RINO’s.
National Review = Romney Campaign = RINO Rag
This should be required reading for all who trumpet the Trumpster.
The bright side is that after a rapist and a marxist, a ruthless property developer would be a step up.
I’ll concur that NRO has some RINOish leanings among some of their writers. But would you throw Mark Steyn in that group?
My point is, Trump has used the jack boot of government to help his crony capitalist ends just like GE and GM and others do. Truth is truth, and it doesn’t matter whether NRO is among the many outlets that publicize it or not.
And what’s hilarious is that folks who are pro-Trump go around grousing about “RINO’s.” Trump’s only disqualification for Prez is that he is King Daddy RINO of all RINO’s.
I firmly believe that the shorter a period of time folks have been involved in politics, the more they misuse the word RINO.
Vera Coking offered to SELL her little home in what was then a crime ridden slum neighborhood for $1 million to the developer ~ BOB GUCCIONE.
I'm sure Michelle knows who he is.
It was Bob who had the idea for turning Vera's plot into a parking area for limousines.
Anyway, Vera beat Bob. Complained constantly about the construction noise (trying to keep Bob from exercising his own property rights, and his right to make money).
Finally he threw in the towel and abandoned the property leaving empty steel girders hanging in the air over Vera's "million dollar lot" ~
The Redevelopment Authority sought another developer to restart the job. They found Trump ~ and he agreed but with some changes. His organization said they needed a bigger site, more rooms, etc. and he doubled what was planned. That plan did not need Vera's lot. Anyway, Trump built his casino, hundreds of people got jobs, and life has moved on. Oh, yeah, Trump took down the steel that Bob had put up ~ it just didn't work.
Trump offered Vera $250,000 for her otherwise worthless lot. She refused. I guess she still thinks that after all the development that's taken place around her that her "rents by the hour" 3 story hovel of a hotel is still worth a million bucks.
Hmmm.
Did she say that was her home? Well, she's there, but there those people who come and go.
I dare the editors at National Review Online to stay at Vera's overnight, and take Michelle with you. Jus do it. Do it. Take your I-pads and do it!
The Redevelopment Authority went to court to go ahead and take Vera's lot ~ way back when Bob Guccione was still trying to redevelop this slum.
That's the case Vera won ~ that the Authority didn't have the power of Eminent Domain. The City does though, and considering the excess redevelopment costs Vera laid on the taxpayers of Atlantic City, they might do that anyway ~ and just strip her bare and nekkid (Eeeeekk!)
So, will you...
a) vote for OBozo or
b) stay home and watch OBozo win by the absence of GOP votes?
I remember reading his book “The art of the deal” and fuming. He got his facts wrong. He blamed the Tax Reform Act of 1991 and its changes in real estate depreciation for his problems. The problem is that that act was passed in 1986.
Then he went on to trash those bankers who wouldn’t change the deal to his benefit when he couldn’t pay them what he owed. Imagine that. Bankers looking out for their depositors, stockholders, and the government’s money. Horrors.
He overextended himself, cheated on his wife, and then expected the banks to bail him out. The problem is that too many of them did, because they were too willing to get in on his schemes in the first place and had to cover their (_!_)’s.
Trump isn’t as good as RINO Huck on social issues and isn’t as good a businessman as RINO Romney. If you want the worst of both worlds (Huck’s big brother populism and Mitt’s squishy social positions), then the Donald is your man.
OK, but Michelle Malkin wrote the article;I haven’t been a big fan of NR for quite a while, but they were of historic importance in the cold war era.
Yes We Can!
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