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.
What a display of mendacity - a Trumpette calling the likes of Clarence Thomas not conservative enough. I guess a sense of shame is beyond the average Trumpette's grasp.
I tell you these guys are not as conservative as they need to be.
Go suck eggs. You just got done ripping the conservative SCOTUS justices for being progressive about enforcing the Fifth, and now you say they didn't go far enough with Heller - when both deal with clearly enureated rights.
Like I said, no sense of shame.
If Ms. Malkin remembered correctly Atlantic City was in deplorable conditions with half of the taxpayers not paying their taxes, maybe becoming the next Camden. The Casinos may not be perfect but it did help the city and brought in thousands of jobs, made it a heck of a lot better then it was. Ms. Malkin consistently talks about the importance of jobs and are economy, then bad mouths those who create them, what gives?
In Kelo the court sided with the state against the federales. In Heller the court sided with the individual against the federales.
WHOOPS!! What about the state? Well, they didn't do it ~ did just a half job. The rest of it awaited other lawsuits.
In the end states where the public didn't want their state to have the power CT claimed in takings, they acted to limit that power. Most states already limited the power of the states. CT still hasn't fixed their problem. Apparently the people of CT think the government should be able to force you to sell your property to them and then give it to a different private party.
The tenth amendment is intact in the Kelo situation. It's intact in Heller. At the same time the state constitutions of many states with restrictive gun laws say the same thing as the federal constitution ~ so they can be forced to bend to Heller or son of Heller in later suits.
Too many people imagine that conservative thinking is best exercised through the use of the power of the federal government to force states to adhere to a preconceived conclusion.
I wouldn't expect her to fail to tend to number 1.
Once again, the section of the 5th in question previously had been incorporated. And the position you are taking sides with the liberal wing of the court. Pathetic. Truly pathetic.
Too many people imagine that conservative thinking is best exercised through the use of the power of the federal government to force states to adhere to a preconceived conclusion.
Too many Trumpettes twist the very logic of conservatism to pimp him on FR. Yours is just the latest and most depraved demonstration of such.
Most of Trump’s Eminent-Domain Abuses have been catalogued on FreeRepublic in the archives.
Search for “Vera Coking” and “Clare Sabatini” and/or “Vincent Sabatini” on FreeRepublic or atlanticcitypress, three of Trump’s victims.
2006-11-01
12 COKING VS. TRUMP (ROUND 2) / TRUMP THREATENS TO BUILD $3B. CASINO AROUND WIDOW’S ATLANTIC CITY HOME
Author: DONALD WITTKOWSKI Staff Writer, (609) 272-7258
I just noticed something else, DONALD TRUMP ACTIVELY BLACKMAILED NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR JAMES MCGREEVEY WHILE MCGREEVEY WAS GOVERNOR ABOUT HIS HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE PERIOD BEFORE MCGREEVEY CAME OUT OF THE CLOSET.
WRONG! In Kelo the court sided with the state against individuals. In Heller the court sided with individuals against DC, not the federals.
You can't even get the core parties right in your depraved effort to twist Trump's support of Kelo into something less than what should be a fatal blow for conservative support of Trump. I thought you would be better than that. I was apparently wrong.
Michelle Malkin has always been anti-Birther
These stories about Trump are getting old
Of course, Obama Supporters will look for anything to help Obama
Fact is....the majority of people who have benefitted from Eminent Domain are either GOP politicians or GOP contributors. The Dems have their fair share too. Doubt Ms Malkin will reserach that...it hurts her Liberal RINO agenda
If Mrs Malkin is truly a conservative...she would spend more time working to get that Obama Long Form Birth Certificate than posting stuff she regurgitated from some liberal website.
I have already seen this story....it has been written by 5 different people in the past three days. Some liberal wrote this 3 days ago
Michelle Malkin...you are no conservative. I challenge you to a debate anywhere, anytime. Covering up on the Obama Eligibility issue is not conservative
http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1003&Itemid=165
http://www.zeitz-law.com/articleScans/zeitz2.pdf
Coking vs. C.R.D.A., Donald Trump, and Trump Plaza
Represented senior citizen and widow Vera Coking successfully against Donald Trump, Trump Plaza, and the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority in eminent domain and personal injury cases where they collectively tried to take her property by eminent domain for a project adjacent to the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. This mater is a reported decision in New Jersey (C.R.D.A. v. Banin, 320 N.J.Super. 342 (Law Div. 1998)) where the New Jersey Superior Court upheld Ms. Coking’s right to keep her property and awarded attorney’s fees and costs on her behalf. Her personal injury case was settled on her behalf during the course of trial in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
National Review = Romney Campaign = RINO Rag
And totally in the tank for Obama....
Geez...when will these RINOs devote as much time to Obama Eligibility as they do what nostril Donald Trump picked on April 23 1987?
It is inescapable that whatever it is in charge of DC it's an agent of the federal government in the final analysis, so you have to GO TO THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF to see what the individual's prerogatives might be.
Heller could NOT be a case of the individual against a state since there was no state involved.
In Kelo you had two parties to the conflict, neither one of them the federal government. The right of a state, CT, to interpret its own laws was left intact.
In most of the states where there was a comparable issue (and remember, the US states were all over the place with how takings limitations should be interpreted in their laws), people took action to FIX the problem. In CT they didn't. There an individual has to bend over and take it ~ that's why they vote for all the Progressive Leftwingtard nut cases they send to DC. They are "different" ~ the court gave them what they want. Kelo seems to have been the only individual in the state who didn't like the way they abuse people, but Kelo could move and should have done so long ago.
Again, a warning to any conservatives in New England, if you can't win elections and can't get justice in court GET OUT OF THERE before they kill you and sell your chilluns in the public markets.
Gawd, the DC city council, functioning just like gun-grabbing city councils in Chicago and NY, passed the laws in question. Not the feds.
The only question raised by Heller being based in DC was the matter of incorporation to the states, not the manner and level of the gun control laws in question.
But go ahead and keep twisting fundamental truths, Trumpette. It's all you've got.
Bet it is ~ don't you?
Coking, et al, then went against Donald Trump BUT in a separate action.
Some of the problem has been with the courts which are, at different times at different levels "mobbed up" by different entities, none of whom are even named in these suits.
This last case left A.CRDA in an untenable position no matter which way they went.
After going over more of the court intrigue I suspect there was not then nor is there now a legislative fix for the A.CRDA ~ New Jersey is lucky to have gotten so much of this work done before it all ground to a halt. That place was N A S T Y
The author, Michelle Malkin, has repeatedly ripped Obama. But since you can't attack her anti-Obama bona fides, not the issues she is raising, I guess you gotta attack where it is published.
Another stellar display of depravity from the Trumpettes.
Dirtboy, how the DC city council operates is of no consequence. They were created by Congress. The Chicago city council wasn’t. I expect at a minimum that you stick to federalist principles when studying the Constitutional issues. The individual bringing suit in Heller lived in DC. He was, in effect, suing the federal government to adhere to the Constitution. Try this brief. It includes Scalia’s summary of the who struck johns ~ http://www.lawnix.com/cases/dc-heller.html
The author, Michelle Malkin, has repeatedly ripped Obama. But since you can’t attack her anti-Obama bona fides, not the issues she is raising, I guess you gotta attack where it is published.
Another stellar display of depravity from the Trumpettes.
Malkin has been anti-Birther from the beginning. She has ridiculed and harangued Birthers....and must be frustrated that her RINOness has not been real effective
Instead of attacking Trump with re-postings of liberal media articles....why not devote more energy to Obama Eligibility....oh wait....that would be contrary to Obama’s re-election
BTW, DC is not a state....it actually gets its funding from Congress.
Birthers like you make me want to say take your movement and shove it where it don't shine - and I am otherwise sympathetic to it.
Birtherism is not the sole litmus test of conservatism, despite your fervent belief to the contrary. And I will take Malkins calm and rational reasoning over your idiotic Trump bloviating any day of the week.
It wasn't Congress that passed the laws in question, but the DC council acting like city councils around the country.
Like I said, the only federalist consideration was whether a finding of individual rights in Heller would be incorporated as a result of the ruling. Your attempt to imply anything more, yet again, shows the extent to which you are twisting logic.
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