Posted on 02/11/2016 6:15:22 PM PST by House Atreides
You can't build a real estate empire unless government helps you snatch private property, or so says Donald Trump, who routinely defends eminent domain as an inevitable business reality. Maybe he needs broader business experience.
In Saturday's Republican debate, Mr. Trump fielded a question about eminent domain and had a ready answer. "You need eminent domain," Mr. Trump said. "A lot of the big conservatives that tell me how conservative they are," they "all want the Keystone Pipeline. The Keystone Pipeline, without eminent domain, it wouldn't go 10 feet, OK?"
Not OK, or accurate. In the decade since TransCanada proposed the pipeline system, which includes the Keystone XL route President Obama rejected last year, the company says it has negotiated voluntary easements with 96% of 2,600 landowners across 3,000 miles and nine states. That includes 100% of landowners on the Keystone XL path in Montana and South Dakota, and 91% in Nebraska. TransCanada has on rare occasion turned to eminent domain, a process that usually involves a panel of experts determining fair compensation.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Next, they'll come out against amnesty. < /S >
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Looks like the Wall Street Journal confiscated the rest of the article. Hope the author got fair market value!
Trump is putting the Constitution last and his business first.
So private agreements were negotiated. If the pipeline is built, the threat of eminent domain will face each landowner. So negotiating a better deal now makes sense. But if eminent domain did not exist, it is a lot more likely that there would be hold-outs. From the small part of it that I read, the article does not prove what it purports to.
That’s all well and good to say when its the other guy.
Also, 'voluntary easement' is interesting. I'm assuming they are compensated for the easement as the easement can devalue their land and typically the easement runs with the land and should be a permanent easement.
There is actually case law where, depending on the type of sale, the easement could be removed and the landowner could remove the pipeline from their property.
Interesting arrangement.
God, this CRAP is getting old. Cruzers are raving nuts...
Got Trump through the debate...that’s how one WINS!
That’s because “the article” has an agenda. It’s to satisfy Tom Donahue and the Chamber of Cronies.
Hooray!
I found a reader who has reading comprehension!
Eminent domain is like wo many other things. It gives one a choice between two paths.
Negotiate or litigate.
So 96% negotiated rather than litigate.
And people who comprehend only that which they wish to see will always be with us and are best ignored.
During a recent battle with Big Wind, we learned that the property owners signing the leases were under a gag order to keep others from knowing what the lease agreements were.
A prominent farmer in our area told me that he wanted no wind turbines on his properties, but was willing to lease them a 60 foot easement across the back of his farm for underground transmission lines.
When his lawyer got to looking over the lease agreement, he found that doing so would grant the developer partial control over the entire farm, not just the 60 feet, should they so choose.
He got it changed, and then moved miles away from the project
Certainly dangerous given that Big Wind could likely seek adverse possession in the courts if you wanted out of the lease, legally. A landowner would be buried by the attorneys and would have no choice but to renew.
A shame we can’t read the article without subscribing.
This is not the house of the man I mentioned, but the house of another non-leaseholder I know who got the hell out of Dodge and took a loss on what he thought would be the house he and his wife would live the rest of their lives in.
That 500 foot tall Monument to Gaia is actually 1200' from their house.
So TransCanada Corp used eminent domain. So Trump is right.
Looks like a real nice property. Too bad it took a big hit on value.
His son’s former nice new house is just out of the picture to the right.
I dug that pond for them in the foreground/
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