Donald Trump and Eminent Domain [Revisiting Trump's support of the Supreme Court's Kelo decision]

In a free market, there’s a pretty simple process for dealing with the situation that arises when one person covets another’s belongings: The coveter makes an offer to purchase them. If the offer is rebuffed, the coveter can make a new proposal, but he cannot simply take what he wants. It’s an effective way of recognizing the impracticality of the Tenth Commandment while enforcing the Eighth.

Donald Trump’s covetous nature is not in dispute, but what many may forget is that he’s no great respecter of the admonition not to steal, either: The man has a track record of using the government as a hired thug to take other people’s property. This is called, of course, “eminent domain.”

The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment allows the government to take private property for “public use,” so long as “just compensation” is paid. In the infamous 2005 Kelo decision, the Supreme Court held that “public use” could include, well, private use, so long as the new property owner paid more in taxes than the previous one. In other words, it allowed developers and the government to gang up on homeowners. The developer gets more land, the government gets more tax money. The only losers are the original owner and his property rights.

A decade and a half ago, it was fresh on everyone’s mind that Donald Trump is one of the leading users of this form of state-sanctioned thievery. It was all over the news. In perhaps the most-remembered example, John Stossel got the toupéed one to sputter about how, if he wasn’t allowed to steal an elderly widow’s house to expand an Atlantic City casino, the government would get less tax money, and seniors like her would get less “this and that.” Today, however, it takes a push from the Club for Growth to remind us of Trump’s lack of respect for property rights. The problem dates back to at least 1994.

That year, Trump promised to turn Bridgeport, Conn., into“a national tourist destination by building a $350 million combined amusement park, shipping terminal and seaport village and office complex on the east side of the harbor,” reported the Hartford Courant. “At a press conference during which almost every statement contained the term ‘world class,’ Trump and Mayor Joseph Ganim lavished praise on one another and the development project and spoke of restoring Bridgeport to its glory days.”

The wrinkle? “Five businesses and the city-owned Pleasure Beach now occupy the land,” as the Courant put it. The solution? “The city would become a partner with Trump Connecticut Inc. and obtain the land through its powers of condemnation. Trump would in turn buy the land from the city.” Here’s how the story concluded: “The entire development would cost the city nothing, Trump said, and no private homeowners would be affected because there are no dwellings on the land. Trump would own everything.”

That brings us to the story of the aforementioned elderly widow in Atlantic City, which starts at about the same time. The woman, Vera Coking, had owned property near the Trump Plaza Hotel for three decades, and didn’t want to move. Trump thought the land was better suited for use as a park, a parking lot, and a waiting area for limousines. He tried to negotiate, at one point offering Coking $1 million for the land. But she wasn’t budging. So New Jersey’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority filed a lawsuit, instructing Coking to leave within 90 days and offering compensation of only $251,000. Perhaps the only upside to this story is that in neither case did Trump succeed.

The Bridgeport plan fizzled. Coking fought in court, and — in part because these were the days before Kelo was decided, no doubt — she was lucky enough to win. In 1998, a judge threw out the case. In 2005, however, Trump was delighted to find that the Supreme Court had okayed the brand of government-abetted theft that he’d twice attempted. “I happen to agree with it 100 percent,” he told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto of the Kelo decision.

Can Republicans support someone with so little regard for the property of others? Let’s hope not.

RE: The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment allows the government to take private property for “public use,” so long as “just compensation” is paid.

NOT IN THIS CASE IT IS NOT.

The Fifth Amendment Public Use Clause authorizes a city to exercise its eminent domain power only “for public use.” Yet, in Kelo the court permitted a city to transfer one homeowner’s property to another private party as long as there would be some future “public benefit.”

The perceived injustice of allowing the government to transfer a citizen’s perfectly well-kept land to a corporation for its own use generated dismay and anger throughout the public and resulted in a host of state constitutional amendments and other takings restrictions.

In a recent legal memo, “Revisiting Kelo,” The Heritage Foundation documents the confluence of errors in the Kelo decision and sketches where we can expect to go from here.

SEE HERE:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/06/revisiting-kelo

In looking at the “modern trilogy” of public use cases, the memorandum surveys the step-by-step gutting of the property rights protections found in the text of the Public Use Clause. In this analysis of the case, the memorandum argues that the court erred in two fundamental ways: contorting the text of the Public Use Clause and missing Supreme Court precedent.

SEE HERE:

http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/rule-of-law/judicial-activism?activism-type=contorting-text

In both Berman v. Parker (1954) and Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff (1984), the Court addressed cases involving nonfrivolous claims of injuries to the public: urban blight and oligopolistic land use. Historically, the government has had the right to protect the public by condemning property that injures the public.

In Berman, however, the court mistakenly concluded that “[t]he ‘public use’ requirement is … coterminous with the scope of a sovereign’s police power.” As a consequence of conflating the state’s eminent domain power (which is limited by the Public Use Clause) with its general regulatory power (which is a component of the government’s police power), Kelo misread decades of precedent that had more specifically addressed government use of police power under the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, not the use of eminent domain.

Kelo also erred in treating the concept of “public use” as “public purpose.” The memorandum emphasizes that, because the court did not address a Public Use Clause question until late in the 19th century, it did not have the opportunity to articulate a well-developed theory of the meaning of the Public Use Clause that was grounded in the Framers’ intent. The text of the Public Use Clause limits takings to situations in which land would be used by the general public or by its representative, the government. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has consistently read the term “public use” far more broadly as meaning mere public benefit.

Although the Supreme Court has continued to give lip-service to the proposition that the government may not take property from “A” simply to give it to “B,” the reality is that the court has never found a taking that fails the public benefit test.

in her Kelo dissent Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated that no one but a “stupid staff[er]” could fail to imagine some public benefit from any government taking. With Kelo, what remained of the meaning behind the Public Use Clause went up in flames—and with it, the protection of citizens’ property rights.

Many scholars, even before the Kelo decision, saw the decisions in Berman and Midkiff as the death of the Public Use Clause. But three facts about Kelo—(1) it was a controversial subject; (2) the court was divided 5-4; and (3) O’Connor, who had written the court’s Midkiff opinion, dissented—ignited a national debate on the meaning of the Public Use Clause.

It is no surprise that conservative Justices Scalia and Thomas, together with Rehnquist decided AGAINST The City of London and the LIBERAL wing of the court decided FOR The City of London.

Eminent Domain should only be allowed for Public Use. IOW used only for such things as roads, post office, national defense, utilities, highways, and other needed public buildings for government operations. It should never be a tool for corporate Get Me Dat Developers to have local or state governments take a persons private owned land by force to give to another person or corporation so they can make a profit. That was never the laws intent or purpose.

Casino's and motel/hotels and malls etc should not fall under Eminent Domain acts. How Trump has obtained his wealth does bother me. Like it or not it's mainly by Casino operations. Casino's serve no other function than to separate persons from their money. Their product is a false hope of one paying their money to a casino in the form of bets with the casino having a huge advantage and winning a fortune. It's like the grab machine used to get kids to pay several dollars in arcades to buy some 50 cent toy.

I see no difference in how Trump got his fortune than Joe Kennedy got his and established the Kennedy fortune. It was off of other peoples misery. That part of Trumps personality concerns me. Trump is a salesman. Whether it's selling cities on the idea of a new casino, a land deal, or his own idea it's all the same. The part of him that has to have attention also is a concern. It's not just positive attention it seems but any kind of attention it seems much like the current Resident.

Will Trump abide with the limits as written into The Constitution and protect and uphold it? Or will he do like Obama run roughshod on his own agendas and as long as some Conservative issues are won make some persons happy? Trump knows what to say to whom and when. That aspect is much like Hillary Clinton who can also play conservative in conservative venues and that scares me.

I think Trumps bottom line is Trump. His support of Romney at a time we had better choices also sticks in my mind. He's a salesman. Our government is not a corporate board room it is an elected representation for We The People. Will We The People be served in a Constitutional manner or will we see yet more of We The Corporate Interest? To whom will Trump serve and to whom does he owe his allegiances? Since 1989 we have witnesses POTUS after POTUS and congress after congress serve interest both foreign and domestic ones other than our own and promise us the moon and deliver misery too us. My support is going to Cruz. He's the one I trust the most based on his own record and his own character. Is the media playing us for fools hyping up Trump because they see Cruz the biggest threat? Remember this. The media could stop coverage of Trump today and by next month many would forget about him.

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