Donald Trump Photo by Boss Tweed. Source: Wikimedia Commons

CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST Michelle Malkin, in a piece published in National Review Online and elsewhere on April 22, played a trump card against Republican potential presidential candidate Donald Trump who is trying, these days, to sound very conservative, when she pointed out that Trump has frequently sought to aggrandize his personal fortune through inducing local governments to exercise the power of eminent domain on his behalf. Conservative voters who have misgivings about Mitt Romney because he remains unrepentant over the Obamacare-style health care program he gave Massachusetts when he was governor should be even more leery of the validity of Trump’s conservative credentials. As Ms. Malkin writes: “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,” Ms. Malkin continued.

“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,’” the definition of which has been stretched “like Silly-Putty,” she wrote. “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.”

Mr. Trump “has championed the reviled Kelo vs. City of New London Supreme Court ruling upholding expansive use of eminent domain.” He told Fox News 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,” she added.

These are concerns that I have had about Donald Trump for many years and are the main reason that when I first heard he was entertaining a possible presidential run as a conservative Republican, I found it incredulous

Make no mistake, we’d be far, far better off with Trump as president than with the one we have now, or with any Democrat Party candidate in recent memory. If he does come out on top in a Republican primary, he will most likely get my support in a general election. But he is surely no principled conservative, and the Republican Party certainly ought to be able to do better.

This is, I believe, an appropriate moment to reiterate the importance of limited use of eminent domain, as stated in the Bill of Rights.

Some people think that the use of eminent domain is never justified, but the nation’s founders understood that there are times when it is necessary. They were, however, deeply concerned about abuse of the practice, and with good reason. That is why the Fifth Amendment expressly states, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”

Debate has raged over the definition of “public use,” but its intended meaning was clearly understood by the founders, and by no stretch does it include taking private property from any individual or business and giving it to another private individual or business. Yet that has become common practice, and it is a practice the Billionaire Trump has both employed and championed.

The most disturbing rationale for eminent domain in current practice is the presumption that “public use” includes enhancing tax revenues. Local governments today routinely confiscate private property for the benefit of private developments on the justification that the new project will generate more tax revenue than whatever it replaced. That practice is in diametric contradiction to the intent of the Fifth Amendment and would be abhorrent to the Founding Fathers. It should also be abhorrent to us.

The use of eminent domain is justified in some instances for public works such as roads or reservoirs when necessary for the common good, but it should be exercised judiciously, reluctantly, and only after all efforts at good faith negotiation have failed and after all reasonable efforts to accommodate a reluctant seller (such as altering a boundary or a route) have been exhausted.

And when the exercise of eminent domain does become necessary, the Fifth Amendment requires “just compensation.” Yet in practice, victims of government confiscation of private property under the power of eminent domain are rarely compensated justly, and often they are paid only a small fraction of their property’s fair market value.

Yet even fair market value, while a suitable determinant for compensating a willing seller, is often not just compensation for having one’s property seized. If, for example, I have a small business that is in the path of a street widening, forcing my business to close at that location, and the government takes my property against my will, any compensation short of enabling me to relocate to a site as well suited to my business as the place I’ve been operating, and with comparable facilities, is not just

In other words, I should not be worse off after having my property seized under eminent domain than I was before. Yet rarely is that measure applied.

Conservatives who get giddy over the prospect of a Donald Trump presidential run because he is not a Washington insider, or because he is rich and famous, or because he dared to pursue the “birther” issue, or even because he is now echoing the Tea Party mantra of lower taxes and reduced government spending, need to give serious consideration to who and what this man really is and to his decidedly anti-conservative abuses of individual rights by seeking to magnify his staggering wealth through the abuse of eminent domain.

If Trump thinks that it’s okay for the government to take property from people, without just compensation, to build his own personal empire, does anyone seriously think that as emperor of the United States he would actually take less private property from people than the government is currently doing or that he would undertake a reduction in the size or power of the government over which he presides? It’s not in his makeup.

If conservatives cannot do better than this in pursuing a candidate they can support, we are in deep trouble.

Source: www.PerspicacityPress.com. Copyright © 2011 Rand Green Communications.
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