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.
There are no private parties anywhere that exercise the power of "eminent domain". Even utilities incorporated in the same manner as municipalities (e.g. just about every high energy power line in America) only exercise eminent domain through government agencies designed to take care of the details for them. In most cases the power company is after an easement and not full ownership. Farming, et al, continues to be done UNDERNEATH THE WIRES.
I doubt you could find a politician in the country who'd agree to a private agency or individual doing eminent domain!
Private RE developers using quasi-public sleight of hand through state administrative processes does not make casino/mall/housing development a “government work”.
Look, I don't know if your discontent arises out of the fact that gambling is involved, or a small hotelier was inconvenienced, or you don't like Trump, or you don't quite understand where Bob Guccione comes into this.
What happened to Bob in Atlantic City is particularly deplorable ~ although he'd once had $400,000,000 net wealth, a drop in the art market, a minor recession, and various changes in his marital status (plus his wife died of cancer) ~ because he got involved building a "too small" casino on property where he didn't have full control. An adjacent property owner made his life miserable, interfered with his construction schedule and did a variety of other things that ran the project well over its budget. That was too much for Bob who later (2010) died of lung cancer which was discovered at about the same time.
I guess beating down a sick man and driving him to banruptcy is a big win for some people.
But an Asian man from LA owned the 38 acres that Trump needed to build more facilities near the course. He wasn’t a “holdout,” he merely wanted to be paid for his land.
It was strongly tempting to our Fresno city leaders including conservative mayor Alan Autry (Bubba from “In the Heat of the Night”). The newspaper, Fresno Magazine, radio and TV people all pressured him. But after all kinds of wrangling, the owner said he wanted $38K per acre, the going rate for Central Valley farm land with water rights. The Donald didn't want to pay so much, and asked Fresno City/County to condemn the land using eminent domain, but both entities said no despite the prestige and money it would have brought us.
I was always proud of them for standing up for the Constitution in a state that seems to want to ignore or repeal our founding document. God bless them all.
Hasnt the GOP learned anything?
We cant run a person because he is against someone. He has to stand for something as well.
Are we going to settle for someone as putrid as Romney or Trump, or are we going to demand a better canidate.
Trump is a sleaze. A two bit huckster with a slick PR machine.
Romney double ditto. Both are below what should be our standards.
All I am is saying is that we have become so desperate for a Anti Obama that we would choose a “Anyone but Obama” no matter who that person may be.
No More McCains, No More Doles, and no more rinos.
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