Friday, January 4, 2019

IT JUST GOT WORSE: Trump's Border Wall Attack on Private Property Just Escalated

I have been pointing out that President Trump's immigrant-hating is anti-private property, since if the undocumented are living on land where the owner of the property is willing to rent to them and they work at jobs on private property, it is an attack on private property to stop such undocumented.

But things have escalated.


 NBC News is reporting that at a press conference Trump floated the idea of using "the military version of eminent domain" to immediately seize privately owned land along the border to build his wall.

Got that?

Using the military to seize private property where private property owners don't want a wall going up on their property.

Let me repeat: Using the military to seize private property.

Just when do we get to call Trump a bad guy?

-RW 

UPDATE 

Via ABC News:

President Donald Trump is seriously considering potential options to circumvent Congress, including declaring a national emergency to help pay for parts of his desired border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to multiple sources familiar with the ongoing discussions.

Among the options are reprogramming funds from the Department of Defense and elsewhere, sources said.

18 comments:

  1. This isn't something that's new. How do you think freeways and road expansions happen in every city in the US. The fact that you are saying this is somehow strange or unusual is what is really strange and unusual. And "Using the military to seize private property."

    Really?!

    All this means is that he plans on using the constitutional authority for postal road and military base/ defenses to build the wall. Say what you want about the constitution, the only unusual thing here is that a president is actually concerned about constitutional justification.

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    1. Re: David T,

      ── This isn't something that's new. How do you think freeways and road expansions happen in every city in the US.──

      Roads and freeways are supposed to be for public use. A border wall is not.

      You seem to be all right with the idea that a president can take your land whenever he feels like it, under any excuse he cares to present.

      Delete
    2. You can split hairs over public use or public interest but it makes David's point no less valid. Contrary to being a Libertarian I have no problem with upholding sovereign borders when immigration is used for heinous political purpose or it affects the people in this country negatively.

      Delete
    3. Once again the usual Torres strawman.

      Delete
    4. Re: Shegottawideload,
      --- I have no problem with upholding sovereign borders ---

      Anti-market and anti-property rights zealots usually don't have that problem indeed. You only pay lip service to property rights when it suits you, or mock them by conflating political borders and property lines.

      Delete
    5. What's the dividing line between market based migration and an invasion? Arms? Intent? Disparate culture?

      What is the clear dividing line?

      Delete
  2. ── Trump floated the idea of using "the military version of eminent domain" to immediately seize privately owned land along the border to build his wall. ──

    And that's no lie or fake news. I can tell you: I was watching that press conference live, during my lunch break, and that is exactly what Trump suggested he would do in order to get around any legal challenge coming from property owners along the border to federal Eminent Domain requests. The president is implying that he would simply expropriate people's land as if he was a third-rate dictator of a banana republic.

    ── Just when do we get to call Trump a bad guy? ──

    You'll never hear that from Trump fan boys because they will argue that the "demographic changes foisted on us" is such an existential crisis that it requires extraordinary measures to "Get 'R Done!"

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  3. It doesn't make Trump uniquely bad. fedgov has been taking private property along he southern border for many years. http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/527/transcript.html
    Most likely all the land was taken already. That article is nearly a decade old.

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    Replies
    1. Re: Jimmy Joe Meeker,

      No, the land hasn't been taken.

      Delete
    2. If they don't have it all yet the intent to take it goes back to at least GWB. Maybe Trump is bad for using powers given to the office that we were promised would never be used, but then they shouldn't have been given to the office in the first place.

      Delete
  4. Oh, this is getting better and better:

    "Tucker Carlson Thinks the Problem With America Is Market Capitalism"

    http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/04/tucker-carlson-thinks-the-problem-with-a

    "[Carlson writes:] 'Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They haven't so far.' This is a time-worn rhetorical technique of freedom's enemies, who sneer at material standards of living in order to elevate abstract social goals over the needs of actual people.

    "[T]o Carlson, economic freedom is disposable — 'a tool[...] created by human beings[...] like a staple gun or a toaster,' which politicians can eliminate if they decide it's 'weaken[ing][...] families.'"

    According to Carlson's thesis, "[...] the goal for America is [...] happiness". In order to ensure said happiness, government must ensure it, because we are surely not getting it through freely engaging in trade and capital accumulation.

    This is just further evidence that Trumpistas are more in tune with Fascism and could not be further away from libertarianism or classical liberalism.

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  5. Eminent domain is inherently a violation of private property and since mid 20th Century has been used to destroy viable neighborhoods for the ostensible purpose of helping the poor, but in reality line the pockets of local govts and private developers. The nationwide Urban Renewal scam and the infamous New London case come to mind.

    Trump tried to use ED privately years ago to purchase land on the edge of one of his properties from a recalcitrant owner who actually beat Trump in court.

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  6. None of you libertarians seemed to care about the private property when border ranchers are having fences destroyed and well heads broken by all these 'invited guests'. Curious.

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    1. Doesn't it seem odd to you, that if the issue is so untenable and egregious why would the Central government need to confiscate the border lands at all?

      With conditions so poor why are the owners not walking with their feet? I would assume they are bearing the brunt of this "crisis"

      Furthermore when the "crisis" is not solved by this ridiculous 21st Century version of an American Maginot Line, with it's tens of billions in cost over-runs, it's substandard construction, including poor quality steel from CHINA, and cement from, wait for it! MEXICO!

      What then?

      Knowing your type you'll gladly accept Internal Passports, Central Statist ID cards, Mandatory Check points, and hundred of thousands more federal bureaucrats.

      What fools you are! I truly hope for the cause of the preservation of our white race, you haven't bred!

      Delete
    2. Re: Paul Hansen,

      Curious. A broken fence or well is not the same as having your gawddamned land taken from you by the bureaucrats with guns. But you Trumpistas don't seem to have a problem with *that* provided it is done by your dear leader.

      Delete
    3. Eminent domain is clearly anti-private property. Walls have been used for centuries to determine and protect private property boundaries. I agree with you Paul that violations of private property by the people crossing borders is just as serious. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a private effort to build walls and other deterrents to funnel people to public lands or away from the private lands. If this isn't happening privately, then the private incentive must not be there.

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    4. The land owners on the border are losing wide swaths of their land because fedgov wants to create a no-man's zone. It's not just a couple of feet at the edge of their land but plowing a wall through it, sometimes right in the middle of it.

      They would probably accept a couple feet on the edge to protect their property but I doubt losing acres of it isn't exactly worth the wall to them.

      Delete
  7. All the MAGAs and Trump idolaters here keep referring to our traditional process of Eminent Domain seizure, and seem to miss the distinction between what Trump is espousing (a sort of "Military Eminent Domain" seizure) and traditional, Constitutional Eminent Domain seizures. One can presume that Trump advocates the former because it is faster and more expedient than the latter, and not subject to the delays and impediments that "traditional" Eminent Domain seizures would entail. e.g., possibly having hearings in military courts instead of civil courts (if there are to be hearings at all, that is); Shorter time frames for due process (again, if any at all), appeals, etc.; easier and more expedient burdens of proof and production in order for the government petitioner to prevail. etc. etc.
    So, to be clear: Moving from a civil process to a military process would be a clear crossing of the Rubicon, and should alarm anyone who values liberty, rule of law, and our system of Constitutional Republicanism.

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