Kelo Decision Follow-up

Remember the outrageous Kelo vs New London decision in 2005, by which the Supreme Court ruled that the government could seize whole neighborhoods and destroy them so that presumably politically connected developers could use the land? Let’s see how the historic ruling is working out for the Connecticut town:

The New London newspaper The Day reported Fort Trumbull has seen no new construction since bulldozers flattened the neighborhood and said the mayor’s new vision lacks “any clear path to achieve it.” …

The property grab began while a hotel, conference center, athletic center, office park and other projects were planned next to a $300 million Pfizer office building.

Pfizer has left and nothing else has happened.

Even the Democrat mayor, Daryl Justin Finizio, considers the ruling a fiasco.

Finizio said in an interview with the editorial board of The Day that the land, which has become a home to feral cats, could be used for a parking garage that would serve Electric Boat company offices nearby. It could have solar panels for power, landscaping and first-floor shops, he said.

Nearby parcels, he said, could be used for “tiny house neighborhoods.”

Tiny houses like this one formerly belonging to Susette Kelo before the Supreme Court ordered it destroyed so that Big Government could replace it with a vacant lot:

Susette-Kelo

George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin notes that it remains to be seen whether Finizio’s trendily green-washed plan for the land will prove viable.

“Even if it does, the condemned land will have remained empty for a decade or more by the time the new development project is completed,” he said.

“This ensures that, even from a strictly economic point of view, the Kelo condemnations will end up destroying far more value for the city of New London than they are likely to create. Had the city simply left the previous property owners alone, they would have continued to pay property taxes on their homes and rental properties, and otherwise contribute to the local economy. In addition, [the] city and state would have saved millions of dollars in various expenses associated with the takings.”

Not even Big Government necessarily benefits from its own authoritarian excesses.

As NewsBusters notes,

The odds appear strong that there will be a 10-year anniversary of no concrete action in Fort Trumbull, showing that there’s a practical as well as a constitutional argument against what the Supreme Court did – namely that governments rarely know what they’re doing when they undertake what they like to call “redevelopment.”

Funny how the liberal “mainstream” media doesn’t consider this story to be worth following up on — unless you consider the true purpose of the ruling, which has nothing to do with development or tax revenues, and everything to do with strengthening the iron fist of the government at the expense of individual liberty.

On a tip from Just TheTip. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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