On Wednesday afternoon U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker 
Libertarian Victory Against Corporate Welfare: Pfizer Abandons Kelo Property in Connecticut
“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party …” Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Conner in her dissent in the Kelo decision.
“This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a ‘public use.’” Justice Clarence Thomas in his dissent in the Kelo decision.
Not the manner of Victory we had hoped for; but a Victory none-the-less…
Among the twenty some shut-downs and relocations announced by the drug company Pfizer yesterday, was the transfer of a proposed R&D facility from New London, to Groton, Connecticut, involving the abandonment of the property taken from Susette Kelo in the name of “economic development.” To this day, the parcel where her modest single family home once stood remains an empty lot. No 3,169 new jobs (or, as the Obama Administration would say, “new or saved jobs”). No $1.2 million in new local tax revenue.
Cato’s Ilya Shapiro comments Cato@Liberty:
That this purported “public use” is now exposed as the façade for corporate welfare that it always was is, of course, little comfort to Suzette Kelo and the other homeowners whose land was seized. But hopefully this will be an object lesson for other companies considering eminent domain abuse as a route to acquire land on the cheap — and especially for state and local officials who acquiesce in this type of behavior.
As far as we Libertarian Republicans are concerned, it couldn’t happen to a nicer city. Screw You New London!
Full story at the Washington Examiner – Beltway Confidential
Last 5 posts by Clifford Thies
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