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Eminent Domain and the Crony Capitalist-in-Chief

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Jim Tragos

During the Friday June 24th White House Press Briefing, Scott McClellan was asked this question by one of the reporters:

Q Thank you. Scott, does the President plan to introduce legislation to counter the Supreme Court's decision on eminent domain? Isn't a man's home his castle?

To which McClellan answered:

"First of all, on the Supreme Court decision from yesterday, we were not a party to that case. The President has always been a strong supporter of private property rights."

Is this statement true? So uncommon is the enactment of eminent domain that for almost anybody, even politicians, this answer would forever remain in the realm of ideology, its nature hypothetical, its veracity unprovable. This is not the case with George W. Bush, that living breathing artifact of crony capitalism. According to Robert Bryce from his piece "Stealing Home" in the May 9, 1997 Texas Observer, Bush and his partners "successfully used the power of government to take land from other private citizens so it could be used for their own private purposes."

The Bryce piece is worth reading in its entirety but here are a few highlights:

- "Bush got into the Rangers deal in March 1989, when he helped arrange a syndicate that purchased the team for $89 million from Fort Worth oil man Eddie Chiles. Bush invested $600,000, which bought him a position as one of the two managing general partners of the Rangers organization, a job that paid him $200,000 per year."

- "In April of 1991, the Rangers shepherded through the Legislature a bill written by Arlington State Representative Kent Grusendorf, which would create the Arlington Sports Facilities Development Authority, a quasi-governmental entity endowed with the power of eminent domain."

- "Shortly after the bill was signed into law by former Governor Ann Richards, three parcels of land located near the stadium, nearly thirteen acres in all, were condemned by the ASFDA.

- "The Mathes family refused to sell, and the ASFDA seized the land through eminent domain."

- "But evidence in the Mathes case suggests that the Rangers owners were planning to condemn the Mathes' land and other tracts as least six months before the ASFDA was created. In an October 26, 1990, memo to Tom Schieffer, Mike Reilly, an Arlington real estate broker and part owner of the Rangers, said of the Mathes property, "In this particular situation our first offer should be our final offer. . . If this fails, we will probably have to initiate condemnation proceedings after the bond election passes."

Thanks to the work of Robert Bryce, we have a way to gauge whether Scott McClellan's unequivocal statement; "The President has always been a strong supporter of private property rights," is backed up by the facts. But McClellan wasn't the first to replace the facts with a strong pronouncement of their polar opposite. Only a few short years after this land grab, according to Bryce, "Bush actively campaigned for governor on a property rights agenda. In October 1994, he told members of the Texas Association of Business, "I understand full well the value of private property, and its importance not only in our state but in capitalism in general, and I will do everything I can to defend the power of private property and private property rights when I am the governor of this state."

You won't be surprised to learn that the mainstream media ignored this story in the run-up to the 2000 election, and though these facts are again made relevant with the Supreme court decision, you can be sure they will be ignored again.

Jim Tragos

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION