Free Republic

Since he shot to the top of the presidential polls, Donald Trump’s serial bankruptcies and bullying nature have made big headlines. But no one seems to have brought up a bullying business practice he’s particularly fond of: eminent domain.The billionaire mogul-turned-reality TV celebrity, who says he wants to work on behalf of “the silent majority,” has had no compunction about benefiting from the coercive power of the state to kick innocent Americans out of their homes.For more than 30 years Vera Coking lived in a three-story house just off the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Donald Trump built his 22-story Trump...

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...

As of early 2015, almost ten years after the Supreme Court upheld the Kelo condemnations, the properties that were the focus of an epic legal battle remain empty and undeveloped. Several plans to redevelop these lots have fallen through. The only creatures making regular use of them in the intervening years have been a colony of feral cats. These failures were not simply caused by adverse publicity resulting from the public backlash against the Supreme Court ruling or by the recession and financial crisis that began in 2008. As a 2005 New York Times article noted, the failure was a...

Ten years ago, on June 23, 2005, the United States Supreme Court dropped a judicial thunderbolt in Kelo v. City of New London. By a narrow five-to-four margin it rejected a spirited challenge that Susette Kelo and her neighboring landowners had raised against the ambitious land-use development plan put forward by the City of New London, Ct. The formulaic account of the holding is that a local government does not violate the “public use” component of the Constitution’s takings clause — “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation” — when it condemns property that will...

Charlie Birnbaum’s parents were Holocaust survivors whose patch of the American Dream was a modest Atlantic City home near the ocean. Their son has held on to it — through hurricanes, economic slumps and even his mother’s murder. Today, it may be taken away when the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority asks a state court to give it Charlie’s property. The CRDA basically argues it has the right to take whatever properties it wants and do with them whatever it wants to reshape Atlantic City whatever way it wants. Traditionally, to seize someone’s property through eminent domain, you had to show...

Daryl Justin Finizio, the recently elected Democratic Party Mayor of New London, Connecticut has apologized to the families and homeowners who lost their homes as a result of the city's decision to condemn properties in the Fort Trumbull area of that city. Those efforts began over a decade ago. A lawsuit by the victims which attempted to stop the city from taking their properties and destroying their homes ultimately led to the Supreme Court's Kelo vs. New London decision in 2005. The Court ruled in favor of the City based on what it believed was "a carefully considered development plan."...

In a recent speech in Hawaii, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some interesting predictions about two of the Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions: Kelo v. City of New London, which ruled that government can condemn private property and give it to other private owners to promote “economic development,” and Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II. On Kelo, Scalia reiterated his 2011 prediction that the decision will eventually be overruled, stating that it “will not survive.” Kelo was a closely divided 5-4 decision (Scalia voted with the...

Nine years after the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision gutted the right of American property owners to resist eminent-domain seizures, the neighborhood at the center of the case remains a wasteland. Fort Trumbull in New London, Conn., was bulldozed to fulfill the vision of politicians and developers eager to create a New Urbanist mixed-use “hub” for upscale living in the depressed town near the mouth of Long Island Sound.

‘Kelo’ Revisited Properties were seized and a neighborhood razed in the name of ‘economic development’ that never came "See that pole with the transformer hanging from it?” Michael Cristofaro asked me. “That was where my family’s home was.” MICHAEL CRISTOFARO STANDING IN WHAT ONCE WAS HIS YARD IN NEW LONDON, CONN. TIM COOK / THE DAY I looked up at a line of high telephone poles marching diagonally against a blanched winter sky across a vast, empty field; that was entirely uninhabited and looked as though it had always been that way. New London, population 27,000, a rundown onetime whaling...

Just got a robocall from his office this evening (Aug 24)...... Altmire Invites Constituents to Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform on August 26 August 18, 2009(???) (PITTSBURGH, PA) -- Today, U.S. Congressman Jason Altmire (PA-04) announced that he will hold a town hall meeting on health care reform in Farrell on Wednesday, August 26 at 4:30 p.m. The meeting will be held in the auditorium at Farrell Area High School, located at 1600 Roemer Boulevard in Farrell, PA. Doors will open at 4 pm. If anyone knows applicable town meeting sites could you please post this there. BTW,...

House votes to overturn Supreme Court decision on eminent domainBy Pete Kasperowicz - 02/28/12 05:19 PM ET The House on Tuesday afternoon approved legislation that overturns a 2005 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the ability of states to take control of private property under the doctrine of eminent domain and hand it to another private developer. That decision, Kelo v. City of New London, led to sharp complaints in particular from Republicans, who argued that the Court ignored the normal "public use" standard. Under that standard, eminent domain was seen as permissible only when the land or property taken would...

Imagine you paid thousands of dollars for a vacant lot where you wanted to build your dream house. The lot is 500 feet from a rural lake, with only a couple of houses between the lot and the lake, with a partial view of the lake. You obtained all the appropriate permits from the county and state, and then — just days after you laid some gravel — the federal government came in and told you that you couldn't build on the land. They then told you that you were subject to a fine of $32,500 per day until you...

I wrote briefly about the Congressional amicus curiae brief [pdf] in support of the petitioners in McDonald v. Chicago when it was submitted.  We saw a great deal of support from both sides of the political spectrum, but one signature was notable for its glaring omission: Ron Paul. I'd been wondering about that, and Howard Nemerov was able to get a statement from Dr. Paul's office: Congressman Paul’s DC office said he didn’t sign the brief because he believes that it interferes with state’s rights, whose policies shouldn’t be dictated by the federal government. Let's get a few things straight...

A U.S. Supreme Court justice recounted over cocktails a while ago his travails with his hometown zoning board. He wanted to build an addition onto his house, containing what the plans described as a home office, but he met truculent and lengthy resistance. This is a residential area, a zoning official blustered—no businesses allowed. The judge mildly explained that he would not be running a business from the new room; he would be using it as a study. Well, challenged the suspicious official, what business are you in? I work for the government, the justice replied. Okay, the official finally...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin G. Scalia said Tuesday he does not believe the high court's "infamous" Kelo decision of 2005, which held that cities can take land from some residents with compensation and give it to others for economic development, will be lasting law. "I do not think the Kelo decision is long for this world," Scalia said in a speech to Chicago-Kent College of Law. He compared the court's decision in Kelo v. New London, Conn., No. 04-108, to the Dred Scott case, which held that slaves were outside the protection of the U.S. Constitution, and to the...

Reason Magazine featured a great article that chronicles a new twist in the famous Kelo vs. New London case. This landmark case radically increased the size of government under the eminent domain clause by forcing Susette Kelo to leave her house so that the City of New London could use the land for “economic development” in 2005. The new twist comes from a story recounted by a journalist and author Jeff Benedict. Benedict recounts a recent book reading of The Little Pink House (written on the Kelo case) in which Justice Richard N. Palmer, one of the 4 judges who...

If a state Supreme Court judge approaches a journalist at a private dinner and says something newsworthy about an important decision, is the journalist free to publish the statement? I faced that situation at a dinner honoring the Connecticut Supreme Court at the New Haven Lawn Club on May 11, 2010. That night I had delivered the keynote address on the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous 5-4 decision in Kelo v. New London. Susette Kelo was in the audience and I used the occasion to tell her personal story, as documented in my book "Little Pink House."

Should it be any surprise that six years after the horrible landmark Supreme Court's 2005 case Kelo v. City of New London, which brought about the decision that governments could seize private property for the sole reason of "economic development," the Fort Trumbull site in question is today a total dump, where "economic development" by the local government has ceased to ever happen? The Eminent Domain blog, Gideon's Trumpet, points out that the site has sat there for years following the court's decision and has become overgrown with weeds and other vegetation. It is a far cry from the well...

The Kelo vs. New London case saw the Supreme Court expanding the government’s eminent domain powers to include taking property and giving it to other private citizens for the purposes of economic development and enhancing tax revenues. It was a terrible blow to property rights in America. And now, in perhaps a fitting end to the sad chapter in American jurisprudence, the City of New London is now using the property the fought to seize all the way to the Supreme Court as a dumping ground. Video below, and a letter to the editor noting the irony of the city...

...The Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation and the National Federation of Independent Business appeared as “friends of the court”, arguing that placing the amendment to the state constitution on the ballot is permissible under the US Constitution because they claim that it does not change the definition of “public use” or grant new rights to property owners, but rather codifies existing definitions in order to protect property-owners from abuse and provide certainty. Karen Harned, a spokesperson for the NFIB legal center, stated that “"It's one thing for government to take private property for long-standing and well-agreed public uses, but it's just...