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Missing the Story
Can a city use its power of eminent domain in order to seize property and then turn it over to a private developer? In Kelo vs. New London the Supreme Court ruled that it could, but by the time the case was finally decided in 2005 the private development project in question had already started to run out of steam. 
Last week, in an ironic coda to the story, Pfizer, which the city of New London had hoped would build a headquarters building on the land, pulled out of New London completely.
Over at CJR, Ryan Chittum says this is a great story that the press completely whiffed on:
The Hartford Courant, fifty miles up the road, wrote a 900-word story the next day on Pfizer’s moves and barely mentioned the whole Supreme Court controversy that roiled the city and country for months. Neither did the Associated Press in a brief. The Wall Street Journal ran with 600-plus words on C3 and didn’t mention Kelo.
....Finally, today, the fourth day of the story, we have major papers covering the Kelo angle. The Daily News hits it, while The New York Times admirably puts its story —and it’s a good effort—on page one.
What took so long and why have other papers been missing on this? Are our institutional memories that short? Are we staffed that thin? Are we that disconnected from our readers?
Believe me, they remember Kelo.
I wonder about that. Sure, lots of political junkies remember Kelo, but I'll bet that something like 99% of the country couldn't distinguish it from a brand of corn syrup. Nor do they care about the town of New London, or about Pfizer, or even about the eminent domain issue in question. The facts of the case make it an interesting topic for a feature story — hubris, irony, hard times, etc. — but in a straight news piece of a few hundred words I'm not really surprised the Supreme Court case didn't get much of a mention. After all, Suzette Kelo is no Michael Jackson.
Say Eminent Domain and they'll care
Think you're wrong on this one, Kev. Sure, most people may not remember Kelo, but it you say eminent domain, they'll remember and would really, really be pissed if they heard this latest twist on the story. I agree that the media really whiffed on this one.
Kelo
I sure remember it. It still enrages me I'm from CT and the eminent domain law has not changed here as far as I know. I seem to remember the liberal side of this argument was let the state do what it wants for the betterment of all. However, it made me understand the rightwing fear of gov't and insistence on the right to own guns. I'm genereally very liberal in my views, but in my view that means that I believe in empowering the individual to stand against the apparently inexorable expansion of the power of the corporation, not allowing the state alligned with the corporation to trample the individual.
I read the article in the NY Times and was surprised that the story was not blaring across the internet.
The funny thing is that
The funny thing is that after her home was disassembled and moved and the site buldozed (beautiful vacant lot status at the moment) Susette Kelo moved to Groton . . . where Pfizer is now going to beef up their research labs. Hopefully she didn't buy a little pink house across the street :)
I suspect lots of people
I suspect lots of people know Kelo. It was an outrageous case, and since then, at least in my neck of the woods, we've seen other Kelo-like maneuvers tried.
From liberals to proto-teabaggers at the time, everyone was offended by Kelo.
And while I generally liked Souter, it was a shame he couldn't be Kelo'd himself.
Thank you for writing about
Thank you for writing about this. I live in downtown New London, and trust me, Pfizer pulling out of town is getting a lot of talk around these parts. People, including myself, are outraged that eminent domain was used to remove people from property they owned and lived on, and then the land was never used. I am very interested in investigating other uses of eminent domain in America, as this area of southern CT has another issue, the possible completion of Route 11, where eminent domain would be used to clear residents out of the path of its construction - including land on the road my parents and grandparents have lived on since before I was born.
Conservatives were incensed
Conservatives were incensed at Kelo and are even more incensed now after this news broke. If there's any silver lining, it's that many states have tightned their emminent domain laws after the populace's displeasure over the SC's Kelo ruling. I can only hope more states take notice and ensure this debacle does not happen again.
Sorry, Kevin, you're wrong
I definitely remember Kelo, and disagree that the liberal take on it was to support eminent domain. The idea of the government taking away your property to benefit a private entity seems to epitomize the issue of how corporations and big money dominate our society.
The other telling example of this was the way that Texas booted folks out of their property to give the Rangers a stadium--the source of George W. Bush's fortune.
All that said, it would be useful to have a discussion on when eminent domain is appropriate. I'd like to see more high speed rail, especially for freight, but it may mean expanding rail corridors. If the trade-off is clearing most freight trucks off the road and curtailing carbon emissions, shouldn't we want that?
just a couple of notes: New
just a couple of notes: New London is a city (albeit a small one), not a town, and Pfizer was never planning to build its headquarters on the land taken by eminent domain. They used state and local funds to clean up a brownfields site that then bought for about $10, got an 80% tax deferral over 10 years (which coincidentally will expire about the time they are due to close the New London campus, and then built their R&D HQ there, including a reception desk made of exotic African hardwood that cost $700 sq.ft. and a helipad for corporate types who couldn't be bothered to be limo'd from the corporate jet landing in Groton, a 20 minute (in bad weather or traffic) ride. The Fort Trumbull area was razed to satisfy widely known but only obliquely committed to paper demands by Pfizer to "improve" the area with a luxury hotel (for which Pfizer refused to commit to renting a set number of rooms for corporate visitors, having been burned by a similar agreement with the Mystic Marriott), upscale condos, and improved spaces for feeder R&D startups. Also, the city and state managed to ameliorate the airborne effluvia from the sewage treatment plant across the street from the HQ. Alas, apparently the stench from that is returning to previous noxious levels as the stink from the Pfizer deal grows.
I think more people know about this...
I have been surprised by how many people know about this case. I worked a part-time job last year in data-entry. It was low-paying, and most of the people there were working class and overall disinterested in politics. But everyone knew about Kelo.
do the right thing, seize Pfizer's land
Had the city of New London done the right thing and seized Pfizer's land to improve the lives of its residents, many more people would know about this case of eminent domain. Imposing eminent domain on a corporation would make it a page 1 story, but imposing eminent domain on some homeowners for the possible benefit of a large corporation is not front page news to large corporate owned media companies.
Eminent domain is neither a liberal or conservative issue. What makes eminent domain controversial is when it is used to profit individuals rather than communities. Conflicts between private and public desires will always create a controversy. Depending on the issue, from dams to military bases, from sports arenas to highways, eminent domain creates winners and losers from public policy, which is why its use should be limited.
The NYT remembers Kelo
because they used eminent domain to acquire the land for their headquarters.
I disagree
I imagine that editors at the Hartfort Courant and other local papers felt that the economic implications of the failed project were much more interesting, and more important, to local readers than the four-year-old Supreme Court case--even if it has turned into a cause celebre on right-wing radio. You have to remember who they're writing for--and I imagine that everyone in New London and Connecticut in general is sick to death of hearing about Kelo by now.
If you're not in that area, exactly why is it important to know that Pfizer pulled out of the project which prompted the Supreme Court case? Does that somehow invalidate the principle? Did the fact that "Roe" became pro-life after Roe v. Wade mean that we need to go back and re-evaluate that too? To me, it's sort of interesting, definitely worth a read, but hardly a subject which demands immediate attention.
I always kind of thought that Kelo was overblown anyways, the basic idea has existed in case law for decades now.
"If you're not in that area,
"If you're not in that area, exactly why is it important to know that Pfizer pulled out of the project which prompted the Supreme Court case? Does that somehow invalidate the principle? Did the fact that "Roe" became pro-life after Roe v. Wade mean that we need to go back and re-evaluate that too? To me, it's sort of interesting, definitely worth a read, but hardly a subject which demands immediate attention."
Well dipshit, they are different, in ways that liberals used to understand.
Kelo is about the government boot stomping on your face forever.
Roe V. Wade is about an individual keeping the government off her/his body.
Roe may have changed her views, but Roe V. Wade protects other individuals.
Kelo went bust, so perhaps there is more reason for cities and states to pass anti-Kelo laws, and more reason for the citizen to oust pro-Kelo douchebag governments.
HTH.
Stirred a lot of anti-government paranoia.
Which of course is a rightwing recruitment opportunity. Of course some sort of reasonable eminent domain policy, which allows linear infrastructure (things like roads, power lines, pipelines, railroads etc) to be built, but is used rarely, and anyone forced out is adaquately compenstated, is needed. But extreme (or at least cases that can be blown up to sound extreme) abuses need to be avoided, as they can result in the penduluem taking a hard swing in the opposite direction.
Do you have any clue
Do you have any clue whatsoever about what Kelo was about?
Kelo is a decision that people who follow politics will know.
tagged as:- result
Both on the right & left. It's funny, it's one of the areas that I, arguably a liberal, agree with my very conservative friends. NO, I'm not against Eminent Domain if the taking of property is for a public project. But if it's for a commercial project or corporate entity, well then let them have to pay full price to gather up all those lots.
Will the Entertainment Tonight crowd know Kelo? Uhhh, cone on now. They only care about the latest celebrity/politician caught cheating on their spouse, or entering rehab or some such nonesense that I could care less about....(OK, Vitter's prostitution thing caught my mind for a bit, but only cause he's just another lying right wing political hypocrite).
kindness: "it's one of the
kindness: "it's one of the areas that I, arguably a liberal, agree with my very conservative friends"
Same here. This is the kind of government abuse that honest liberals and honest conservatives (and there are such people of both stripes - just not amongst politicians) can agree to hate. You'll find similar sentiments amongst left and right about the bank bailouts. Interestingly William Black, who as a key government figure in cleaning up the S&L mess ought to know, talks about how much less corruptly the S&L cleanup was handled than the current mess, and that was during the Reagan administration.
Not all politics is left vs. right, much as some people like to believe it is. Mets vs. Yankees is one thing - take no prisoners! But in politics it should be a little different. The two people who pushed hardest for a real Fed audit are Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ron Paul - a self-described socialist and a libertarian. Talk about strange bedfellows. Yet I find nothing inconsistent or unreasonable about them finding common cause.
Same here
I didn't like the SCOTUS decision, but it was definitely arrived at on constitutional grounds. In one of those turn frequent about-faces that the court conservatives are famous for, they ended up finding against the city (and state) even though in doing so they were "legislating from the bench." The so-called liberals upheld the state law and found for the city, and if memory serves, the basis of their argument is that there was no constitutional basis for them to do otherwise even if they sympathized with the plaintiff, Kelo, et al.
What's it all about?
Mostly it seems our Supreme Court needs to answer that question.
How could they have thought it was right for the gov't to equate the interests of a corporation with that of the community, so that they would displace individual rights to property?
There is debate about tax dollars being used to help banks, AIG and car companies. It's a gov't plan to help the entire nation avoid a Depression. In all that effort the goal was to protect the economy, so that individuals, not corporations, would not suffer. That's quite different than hoping a corporate plan for development will make a community grow more quickly (economically) at the direct expense of one (or a handful) of individuals for primarily the benefit of another handful of individuals. Where's the nation's interest in that? Where is the necessity?
Eminent domain isn't to be used frivolously and the SC ought to know that.
The reason the majority
found for the city was that there was no federal constitutional basis for doing otherwise if I recall. The definition of "public use" would have to be tightened in such a way that there could almost never be in private gain derived from a taking and we all know that that could never be enforced. Suppose a city wanted to take privately owned land for a public park. Could opposition to this then use the likelihood of businesses and homes ringing the park having future monetary gain as evidence that the taking violated the constitution? And the Kelo case was not national in scope. The nation's interest was irrelevant, other than as a matter of law in general.
Kelo didn't just reaffirm precedent
MuckrakerAP wrote, "I always kind of thought that Kelo was overblown anyways, the basic idea has existed in case law for decades now." Actually, MuckrakerAP, Kelo extended existing precedent in important ways. First, the land wasn't considered blighted, and previously, eminent domain for an the purposes of economic development was supposed to be only for land considered blighted. Second, eminent domain in the past was used for a road or park or public building or other public project. Kelo extended eminent domain to the government taking land from one private owner and giving it to another. Under the theory of Kelo, if your neighbor can convince the courts that he can make better use of your back yard, you can be forced to sell your property. That's why liberals join conservatives in horror over this decision, and why Pfizer's failure to complete the project generates this "See, we told you so" response. It is to be hoped that the Supreme Court overturns Kelo at its next opportunity.
I'd like to see that, too
but on what basis would they overturn it? The U.S. Constitution is mute on what states can or can't do in the area of takings as well as not having any clear limits on the reasons the federal government use in a taking.
Most sheeple can't even get
Most sheeple can't even get concerned over the Bill of Rights, much less eminent domain. More thoughtful citizens have simply given up on the US.
People in Texas sure
People in Texas sure remember Kelo. In fact, Texans, albeit in a poorly attended election, just voted in favor of an anti-Kelo proposition. Another commenter mentioned George W Bush. In "Schrub," Molly Ivins wrote about how much of his fortune came from valued added by through property taken by the local sports authority on behalf of the Texas Rangers. Strangely, not many Texans know about this story. Nor do Texas Republicans object about property takings when it concerns expanding urban freeways to a gazillion lanes. But an amazing number of people in Texas know about taking private property on behalf of private developers.
Poor New London
I had the mixed fortune to live in NL for about 3 months last year during which time the huge economic/financial crisis hit the entire country. It's a town that could almost be used to study the entire economic history of the U.S. in microcosm. When I was there, it had been several years into its "renaissance" and it was a visibly tenuous success at best. As my stay there was ending, just as the worst recession in nearly anyone's memory was upon us, I despaired for it even as I was not unhappy to be leaving and heading back to the left coast. Now this awful development. It'd take a real miracle, of the supernatural kind, to save this town now.