New York republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino’s campaign promise to stop the building of a mosque planned near ground zero may be a fun fight to watch.
I am no fan of eminent domain myself. I have no personal experience of the government paying me pennies on the dollar for my home for the greater good of the community. However, even without any personal experience, I believe that a person owning land should not be forced from it because of community plans or the economic welfare of a local or state government whose track record is no better (or quite possibly worse) than mine. In my mind I was here first, pay me an agreed upon price or take your plans elsewhere.
At the same time I don’t believe that a mosque being built near ground zero is such a good idea either. There may be nothing illegal about it, but in principle it would be worse than building a strip club next to you local elementary school (although some of the youngsters might enjoy going to school a bit more…Hmmm, I might be on to something there). Many on the left decry the rights of a religious group to build a place of worship, which I also have no qualms with. But the peaceful religions I know of would not attempt to build on a site knowing the amount of resentment and provocation their plans are promoting.
What a dilemma, which is the lesser of two evils?
Enter Carl Paladino, he claims to be against eminent domain. However, he must dislike the idea of a mosque being built near ground zero more so. He promises that if elected he would “use the power of eminent domain to stop this mosque and make the site a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country”.
If he is elected (don’t hold your breath, we’re talking about New York here), and if he keeps his campaign promise (again, keep breathing – this is a politician), and if he would play his cards right, one of two things could potentially happen. On the outside chance that all of the above comes to pass there would be a very long, drawn out, and very expensive court battle. In the end the mosque would be built but eminent domain would be dealt a devastating blow, or eminent domain would win out and there would be no mosque. Either would be palatable in my opinion, but both would put whipped cream and a cherry on top. Right off the top of my head I can only think of one way for that to happen. Go to court, fight it out, and keeping fighting him until you bleed off all his financial resources and win. The ACLU would then need to step in and fund an appeal, which would overturn the lower court’s decision. That would be the devastating blow for eminent domain, and the investor for the mosque would have no monies left to carry on with his plan and would be forced to sell to Donald Trump, who offered $6 billion to buy the building from him… Hey, it’s my fairy tale, I’ll tell it how I want to… And they all lived happily aver after.
To add a little more realism, I doubt Paladino’s plan is little more than a ploy to win out at the primaries and use this as a divide and conquer technique against the democrats that support both building the mosque and robbing people of their property at a reduced rate that is not negotiable by the current owner.
Good luck Carl, you’ll need it.
