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 limo parking lot — Coking’s private property be damned. The nonprofit Institute for Justice, which successfully saved Coking’s home, explained the confiscatory scheme:
An article deserving of a lot more attention than it’s been getting, in my opinion. Hey, it’s not like this information is coming from somewhere over on the left.
If a person cannot be safe in keeping that which they worked and invested in, land, then where is our freedom. You cannot have freedom when those that “know people” can just come and take what is yours, that is the USSR. I like that Trump is stirring the pot up, but that basically kills any support from me. Cripes, one of the reasons we left Briton was to own our land. I think if they way this should work, you, not your minions, you the person trying to take my land, should bring your gun and I should have my gun, and you should stand on my walkway and ask me to leave…
@Greg:
Yes, we know. True conservatives have serious issues with Trump, not the least of which is his similarity to the dem-lite GOP members like McCain. You won’t have any arguments from most of us that Trump should never be President, even if they might be for different reasons.
Liberals will be running this information like crazy when they realize that Trump is the Republican candidate. They do not realize this as of yet.
At this site, there are some very knowledgeable people. To just make up a percentage, my guess is, we would all score in the top 10% of a test on current political knowledge and constitutional knowledge. Unfortunately, most people are not like that.
Here is what it is going to come down to. Trump is going to get a lot of people engaged in the Republican primary. Half of these will be political neophytes. Of those who vote, they will look at their ballot and see a list of 10 political candidates and Trump. That is how many will see the primary; so that Trump will win a plurality wherever turnout is high.
Then in the main election, it will be Trump versus Obama. Everyone knows our economy sucks and many, even if they do not blame Obama, recognize that he did very little in 4 years to turn things around. Many of these will not even realize that Congress changed from being strongly Democratic to half and half.
Trump–successful in economic ventures and knows how to deal with the Chinese.
Obama–not so successful in economic ventures and ready and willing to bow to the Chinese. There will not be this sheen to Obama that he had 2.5 years ago.
Furthermore, name recognition is the best predictor of political success, and Trump and Obama are not far apart in this realm of celebrityship.
The hope of the left will be to take every bit of slime that they can find on Trump and shout it from the highest mountain (front page in the newspapers, front page of all the magazines). Just as flattering photos of Obama (and family) were the default cover for nearly every magazine in America in 2008, this time, it will be split more evenly, with unflattering photos of Trump staring out at us from every newsstand.
I agree with most of you that, there are 5-10 candidates better than Trump. However, he is the card that we are dealt. The key will be Congress. A good Congress will keep Trump from getting too goofy.
Who here will have the tee-shirt franchise with the heads of Trump and Obama, with the ubiquitous phrase, “You’re fired” emblazoned along the top?