Bush Library/Lawsuit

[jtstang]

A George W. Bush think tank may be an oxymoron, I'm not sure.

[SMU Football Blog]

Three hour hearing today; Buchmeyer took matter under advisement.

[Stallion]

BTW when they are throwing around numbers like 500 Million (3 times the cost of the Clinton Library) and the need for "megadonors" you got to think that SMU and Dallas is the big favorite. Guess we will get more than just a Clinton trailer home on the Arkansas River.

[mrydel]

BTW when they are throwing around numbers like 500 Million (3 times the cost of the Clinton Library) and the need for "megadonors" you got to think that SMU and Dallas is the big favorite. Guess we will get more than just a Clinton trailer home on the Arkansas River.

Show some respect. It is a doublewide.

[Stallion]

maybe we'll line up 3 double-wides in a row so it will qualify as a trailer park.

[smupony94]

In Stallion Estates just north of San Antonio on 281 there are triple wide 2-stories.

[Ponymon]

BTW when they are throwing around numbers like 500 Million (3 times the cost of the Clinton Library) and the need for "megadonors" you got to think that SMU and Dallas is the big favorite. Guess we will get more than just a Clinton trailer home on the Arkansas River.

Does it have Astro turf?

[smupony94]

It has a Landing Strip

[smu diamond m]

ZING

[EastStang]

I thought that was Stallion's girlfriend.

[MrMustang1965]

House bill could force library donors out of shadows
By Jim Snyder

Should Democrats pass a new ethics law, President Bush may want to read the fine print before signing it. A little-noticed section in one 80-page version could make it more difficult to raise money for presidential libraries.

House Democrats have made passing a broad ethics package among their top priorities next year when they take over the majority for the first time in 12 years. The bill is still in the works but will likely borrow heavily from a measure Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) introduced earlier this year.

That bill, HR 4682, most famously would prohibit privately funded travel and lengthen a lobbying ban from one to two years for top staff and former members. Less known is its provision, on pages 76 to 80, requiring the organization that raises money for a presidential library to disclose donors to Congress four times a year.

Bush already has grand plans for his library. The fundraising goal is $500 million for the facility, and, reportedly, a new think tank that has been likened to the Hoover Institution, a conservative policy center in Palo Alto, Calif.

By comparison, President Clinton’s library in Arkansas cost $165 million, twice as much as George H.W. Bush’s library at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Three Texas schools are currently bidding to be home to President Bush’s library: Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Baylor University in Waco, and the University of Dallas.

Brett Kappel, a campaign finance expert at Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, said new disclosure rules could complicate fundraising efforts. Kappel said foreign sources in particular are sensitive to perceptions that they are trying to influence the American government.

Presidential libraries currently aren’t required to list donors, although they sometimes do voluntarily. Most of the library fundraising arms are 501(c)(3)s that are required to release some tax information. But that information doesn’t include a donor list, according to Suzanne Coffman, a spokeswoman for Guidestar.org, a non-profit database.

Congress has debated the issue of requiring the disclosure of presidential library donors before, perhaps most notably after President Clinton’s controversial pardon of financier Marc Rich. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, was a major donor to the Clinton library.

“This has made the rounds before,” said Sharon Fawcett, an assistant archivist for presidential libraries, of the disclosure rules.

In the past, lawmakers were unable to agree on whether the disclosure rules should extend beyond the president’s term, and if so, for how long, Fawcett said.

The lack of disclosure rules makes it difficult to find out how extensively presidents fundraise for their libraries while they remain in office. But generally, Kappel said, “It’s a lot easier to raise money while you are in office.”

The House bill would require the disclosure of any donation of $100 or more, whether the president was still in office or not.

There are only 12 presidential libraries that are part of the national archives. They start with Herbert Hoover and include every president since.

The Presidential Library Act of 1955 created the system of privately erected and federally maintained presidential libraries. A law passed in 1986 required the creation of private endowments to offset ongoing operating costs.

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/T ... nyder.html

[Horse Hockey]

Three hour hearing today; Buchmeyer took matter under advisement.

It was very civil. SMU only called them "opportunists" once.

Vodicka went last. He pointed out that the UG deed to SMU did not include all the property he received in the 4 deeds conveying the property to him. He also pointed out that the UG deed contained a reservation and/or exception from the grant and cited 5th Cir. authority that as the claimant in a trespass to try title case SMU had the burden to present evidence that none of Vodicka's property was included in that reservation/exception.

He asserted that there as no summary judgment evidence that he did not own any of the property within the reservation/exception. As far as I could tell from the terms of the leases that Vodicka quoted to the court, the property within the reservation/exception had to have included property in which Vodicka had an undivided interest, since all unit owners had an undivided interest in all the "dirt," along with their individual fee ownership of their condo unit(s).

He asserted that since the UG deed did not convey all his property to SMU and there was no evidence that some of his property was not included in the reservation, under the controlling 5th Cir. precedent, a summary judgment on SMU's trespass to try title claim was improper.

SMU cited a Texas court of appeals case, that had been reversed by the Texas Supreme Court on other grounds, for an "estoppel" argument. I have now read the case. I believe it would only prevent Vodicka from asserting that he (Vodicka) did not have title to the property described in the deed to SMU at the time of the UG conveyance so SMU did not get title to the property described in the deed. That was not Vodicka's argument.

Vodicka also quoted the definition of "owner" in the Condominium Declaration. "Owner" was expressly defined as an individual or entity that owned one or more units. He quoted the provision that authorized UG Association to sell the entire property if "owners" agreggating a 75% interest or greater in the common elements "agreed" that the property was obsolete and written notice of this agreed obsolescence was filed of record. He argued that "owners" could not be synonymous with "an owner of multiple units" since all owners of multiple units came within the defined term "owner." He had Texas case authorites that to "agree" means a meeting of minds to further support his argument that the unilateral act of SMU, even if it owned 93%, did not satisfy the condition of the Declaration to UG's authority to sell the entire property.

He pointed out that the language of the Declaration about the sale of the entire property did not ever mention anything about a vote to declare the property obsolete. He argued that alone raised a fact issue concerning the UG Association's authority to sell the entire property that precluded a summary judgment on SMU's trespass to try title claim because SMU's motion for summary judgment relied exclusively on the voting provisions of the Declaration to prove UG's authority. He cited several authorities where under very analogous circumstances appellate courts, including the supreme court of one state, had held that the express language addressing a specific issue prevails over the general language relating to voting.

SMU restated that it was entitled to vote on the basis of one vote per unit and argued that meant if one owner owned 75% or more of the units that owner had the right to compel the sale of the entire property without the agreement of any other owner.

All VERY professional. Who'd a thunk it!

The court announced that once it had made its ruling on the motion for partial summary judgment, it would enter a scheduling order for the trial.

[EastStang]

Normally, you don't want to act like a baby when you make an argument to the Court. Since Vodicka has not been spending time in jail for contempt citations, I suspect that he's at least solicitous of the judges. It sounds from the argument that there really are few facts in dispute and certainly on the 75% issue that is a pure legal argument. It also sounds like the chain of title issue may require some documentary proof. But it also sounds as though Vodicka's legal argument is quite weak on that point since that goes to damages not occupancy.

With the winter months having hit Dallas, SMU ought to take the magnanimous step of opening the place to the homeless for shelter since they can't tear it down right now. Nothing would drive values down faster.

[OC Mustang]

Vodicka would probably pay some to "squat", and then take SMU to court over that. What wonderful headlines, "President George "W" Bush, compassionate conservative, displaces homeless in order to fund $500 million library in his name at the edge of Highland Park."

Call me a cynic, but I think Vodicka would stoop that low.

[Horse Hockey]

With the winter months having hit Dallas, SMU ought to take the magnanimous step of opening the place to the homeless for shelter since they can't tear it down right now. Nothing would drive values down faster.

I can just picture the UP and HP police when they stop one of SMU’s resident “homeless” ambling through the residential areas and the resident provides proof that he lives in a SMU apartment at UG and is just out for a stroll or is just going shopping at Preston Center or Highland Park Shopping Center. Although I wouldn’t want to be SMU when the federal judge got wind of this ploy to lower the values, perhaps if SMU did open UG to the homeless, UP and HP (and/or some $$$$$$$ residents) would pitch in some money to get rid of Vodicka and Tafel, i.e., the “opportunists,”AND the homeless.

This may be an urban legend, but I remember hearing in the 1970s that the home(s) that now constitutes the very small park (with only a tennis court or two) that HP opened on Abbott, north of Knox street and south of where Hillcrest becomes Cole Avenue, had been donated by the owner to the Dallas Black Panthers in very early 1970 (difficult for those not here in the late 1960s and very early 1970s to believe) and that HP used a strawman to buy the property from the Panthers and tear the structures down, hence a tiny HP park in the middle of an otherwise residential block with terrible parking. If it worked once........