Quote:We don't live in an agrarian society, so eminent domain is necessary to build infrastructure, schools, air ports, and expand businesses which provide hundreds of thousands of jobs. He has said he doesn't like eminent domain, but being a realist and not an ideologue, he sees it as necessary to expand as a nation.

 

You are woefully misinformed.   Trump has stated he loves eminent domain.   In fact, he loves it so much, he loves the fact that the Supreme Court has expanded the use far beyond what the framers intended. 

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimblasingam...ee68da5efd

 

“Eminent domain is wonderful.” This is a recent quote from presidential candidate and billionaire developer, Donald Trump. It’s a position he’ll have to defend within and without his party.

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More recently, local governments have appropriated this power for themselves in favor – directly or indirectly – of one private party over another by exchanging “public use” for “public needs.” If your property is in the way of a city-approved private development, they might declare that it serves the public needs to condemn your property if you refuse to sell. Until 2005, a property owner could stand behind the “public use” defense from an overreaching municipality. But in the shocking Kelo v New London Supreme Court decision the majority contrived a position that diluted the Framers’ intention for eminent domain into the position that simple “public needs” justified the taking of private property.

 

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Eminent domain is debatable when the government needs to build a road.   But what about when a developer needs to acquire property in order to build something non-governmental?   Like a parking garage for a casino.   Trump did that.  

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...idow-house

 

"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 Plaza next door. In the mid-1990s Trump wanted to build a limousine parking lot for the hotel, so he bought several nearby properties. But three owners, including the by then elderly and widowed Ms Coking, refused to sell.

As his daughter Ivanka said in introducing him at his campaign announcement, Donald Trump doesn’t take no for an answer.

Trump turned to a government agency – the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) – to take Coking’s property. CRDA offered her $250,000 for the property – one-fourth of what another hotel builder had offered her a decade earlier. When she turned that down, the agency went into court to claim her property under eminent domain so that Trump could pave it and put up a parking lot.

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