Trump’s Eminent-Domain Empire

[naaman fletcher]

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:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/265450/donald-trumps-eminent-domain-empire-michelle-malkin

Yes the source is awful, but you know.. broken clock and all.

[AndyTiedye]

1. Trump Believes in Simply Taking Whatever He Wants

He has said as much on the campaign trail.

[Obamanaut]

2. Was just reading an article about Kelo the other day. The development

company lost financing, the promised jobs haven't appeared, and the former Kelo property is just sitting there - idle.

[WinkyDink]

3. Blame the corrupt courts that sided with unconstitutionality.