Eminent Domain Abuse
Giant corporation, greedy local developers and their corrupt cronies in local government colluded to steal homes and property from private citizens.
The citizens fought back in court, but ultimately lost when the U.S. Supreme Court ok’d the land grab.
Now, the giant corporation says, “uh, never mind,” and halts the development project.
The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.
But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.
To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”
The Hartford Courant reports:
Pfizer Inc. will shut down its massive New London research and development headquarters and transfer most of the 1,400 people working there to Groton, the pharmaceutical giant said Monday….
Pfizer is now deciding what to do with its giant New London offices, and will consider selling it, leasing it and other options, a company spokeswoman said.
Scott Bullock, Kelo’s co-counsel in the case, told me: “This shows the folly of these redevelopment projects that use massive taxpayer subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain.”
If there ever was an example of corporate facism it’s this kind of “public/private” cooperation in the name of “redevelopment.”
Whether it’s bulldozing poor neighborhoods to build new stadiums for millionaire sports clubs, at the expense of taxpayers, not the millionaires themselves, or declaring an older but vibrant part of a city “blighted” so a big company like PPG industries in Pittsburgh could build its Gothic monstrosity, the one thing all of these projects have in common is the abuse of the U.S. Constitution’s takings clause.
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