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.
The story I cited is from the Institutes for Justice. The people that won the lawsuit.
You haven’t cited any source for your contention that she asked for 1 million.
I’m kinda busy right now but every news story I checked on this has Guccione making the offer.
As you know Guccione lost a ton of money trying to be a casino developer. He was a loser in that field. Trump was and is a professional in real estate.
In another post I say she sold the building in 2007. That is incorrect. It was the other holdouts that sold.
Lastly all politicians are scum period. Donald Trump is less so.
No doubt! I have friends who tout this or that person and I tell them that they’re still politicians. As far as Michelle Malkin, something about her just doesn’t sit right, imo.
If it is a choice of Obama -vs- Trump I would not hesitate to vote for Trump
And he is the oNLY one with the guts to call out Obama so far.
And while the media sits here and questions ‘birthers’ the Congress is ABBROGATING ITS RESPONSIBILITY to the contitution, but letting the ineligible usurper on the throne. Pussies, all of them
And that’s...the rest of the story.
This was actually part of the core territory of Atlantic City the far-seers up there thought ought to be knocked down.
Buildings falling down, starving termites with nothing more to munch on, salt water damage you would not believe ~
There are some natural limits on your God given right to maintain a fleatrap and fire hazard in a densely populated urban area!
Trump says he may seek the nomination. That's an issue that Trump himself brought up. Some of us including Michelle Malkin are addressing that important issue.
Addressing the Trump-may-seek-the-nomination issue doesn't obfuscate the birth issue, just like addressing the birth issue doesn't obfuscate the Trump-nomination issue.
And yet another Trumpette strawman, and just as pathetic as your efforts to defend Trump's support of Kelo. I guess Heller was just another progressive ruling, then, eh? PATHETIC.
BTW, the Fifth has several points ~ each of which needs illumination by law to fully understand. CT just didn't illuminate the same way Kentucky, Tennesse and West Virginia might ~ where COAL MINE DEVELOPERS could purchase mineral rights without even notifying surface right owners! USSC hasn't touched that one.
Even more pathetic. The fact that other eminent domain matters have not been addressed by SCOTUS in no way diminished what an abomination Kelo was. Conservatives on SCOTUS voted unanimously against it. Yet you are raising these strawman arguments because Kelo is such a black mark against Trump.
You might be willing to fool yourself, but that just goes to show how big a fool your are making of yourself on this thread. The rest of us realize just how full of it your are.
I’d love to see some sort of miracle where the Hermanator takes hold.
I never thought I’d see the day when a FReeper tried to claim that a position staked by Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist was a Progressive effort to rewrite the laws.
Yup.
I was wrong about her selling, sorry.
I would believe the salt water thing, I’m a Jersey guy.
Flea traps can easily be condemned! Right now I’m in Scranton where every third house is condemned!
In 2010 security from the Trump casino did her a favor when they smelled gas and alerted the authorities. Maybe it was just fate!
Anyway Ms. Coking won one for private property owners in NJ, if not making the best choice for the people of AC.
Amen, a successful businessman with no liberal baggage.
“Buildings falling down, starving termites with nothing more to munch on, salt water damage you would not believe ~
There are some natural limits on your God given right to maintain a fleatrap and fire hazard in a densely populated urban area! “
Please don’t support the dishonest argument that people like Trump (and Jim Komen of Komen Properties) use to support their legalized thefts through eminent domain.
(1) A genuine firetrap can be condemned and demolished by the municipality if it is a hazard to other people. The property taken by Trump (and Komen) did not fall into this category, with a possible few exceptions.
(2) If I had a termite-ridden building that was falling down, and that I could therefore not inhabit, rent out, or use for a business, I’d take any reasonable offer—even the value of the land alone—to rid myself of the property taxes, insurance, and utility bills. Some people with property in this condition simply abandon it, don’t pay the taxes, and let the city confiscate it.
Item #2 is from my background in managerial or engineering economics—if you have something that can’t give you service but costs money to maintain, the best thing to do is sell it for what you can get or even give it away. I am sure that Trump, as an experienced businessman, knows this too, and he insults my intelligence by arguing that people won’t sell worthless property unless compelled to do so.
That we can beat Obama is a given. We can pick a name from the phone book and beat him. That however is beside the point. The question is what will our next president bring to Washington. ANY one in the field right now beside Trump will bring the same old tired answers. Does anyone seriously think the Chinese OPEC and or the Russians would be scared of Mittens Pawlenty Johnson or Newt? Please!
"Grow up." Who in 'f' are you...you POS!!
Sorry, Trump is right. You are wrong. China exists. Europe exists. The Middle East exists.
They aren’t conservative enough. You know that.
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