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.
Advertisement
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.
— Robert VerBruggen is an associate editor of National Review.
The only question I have is how much did the DNC pay Trump to run for the Republican nomination?
We need a candidate to run from Barack Obama's Left to weaken him. Can we get Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro interested? They might have citizenship issues, but that hasn't seemed to matter to BHO. Can we go on offense and think outside the box a little?
I'm appalled that the question even needs to be asked.
This is a bad time for the nation, a critical time, and it calls for serious leadership. Trading one vacuous huckster for another won't do us any good.
Be they politicians, commentators or voters, Republicans never learn. They make a public spectacle of eating their own and then wonder why Democrats and their pals in the media have little trouble convincing Independents that the Democratic candidate is a better bet. Even when Democrats misbehave, other Democrats seldom attack them in public. They either ignore the bad behavior, defend it or take a neutral approach. But not Republicans. They can't wait to rush to the nearest microphone to vent.
Ok, Trump is a self-serving showman. But give me one Republican with the chutzpah to take on Obama like this, besides Sarah? Yet you Beltway types give her a hard time too. Ladies & gentlemen in DC: WE WANT MEN & WOMEN LIKE SARAH & DONALD. Find someone or shut-up! !
Let us know when you plan to give the land back to the Native Americans. Then we can talk about property rights. They didn't sell it to you: it wasn't owned.
I have never commented before on NRO, but I hugely enjoy the great articles and insight I gain from it's excellent contributing authors.
I left the Republican party permanently (Something I never dreamed of) after GWB spent money like a drunken sailor, and allowed this incompetent socialist into the White House.
I have now lost all faith in the party, after Rep. Boehner voted to keep the alt engine for the F-35, and then sold us out on the budget deal, nothing any Republican says will ever get me to believe in them again.
Chris Christie and Gov Walker deserve credit for tough stances on public sector unions, and Eric Cantor is a voice in the wilderness, But as far as my eye can see, there are nothing but incredibly incompetent public (self) servants on both sides of the aisle.
I will vote for Trump, precisely because he is a jerk, but a jerk who knows when he's getting screwed on a deal, and will make sure it is America that comes out on top.
I have stood by and watched every administration since Reagan run us down a road to oblivion. And yet you want me to keep believing?
I will never donate another dime to the RNC, but I will do anything I can to ensure we have a competent leader in 2012.
Bet ya a steak dinner that Trump is the next President.
Let's hope he performs where no politician has shown the slightest competence.
"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 ..."
That's a TOUPEE??? Toupee' or bad 'do, fuggedaboutit, and forget about Trump. He's got too much of the Dem-style bully in him.
Trump is a joke and designed to make the right look stupid for falling for his act.
But I was expecting quite a different content to this article. Trump is not exactly a friend to property rights or to capital, but not because of eminent domain games or enlisting the state to push through developments. No, see, he is an expert in borrowing so much money that his bankers are the ones on the hook, then defaulting and leaving his creditors with the tab. Heads he wins, tails his creditors lose.
The man lacks elementary commercial morality. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, simply a notorious deadbeat who has bilked more bondholders than anyone since Jay Gould. He doesn't belong within a mile of any kind of power and I wouldn't trust him with a dime, let alone the country.
"Can Republicans support someone with so little regard for the property of others?"
Why not? They have before. Bush's presidency coveted the property of others by spending trillions that the government "borrowed" out of thin air. Hello, inflation and eventual tax increases which have very little regard for the income (property) I earn. Get off your high horse NRO, Bachman's family receives farm subsidies, Trump tried to utilize eminent domain, McCain had his hands in the S&L debacle (although he probably doesn't remember it), Huckabee commuted sentences of what turned out to be future felons. Get all the skeletons out now and brush them off. Heck if McCain would have had some of Trump's attitude in 2008, maybe he wouldn't have had his hat handed to him.
