The Little Pink House, Kelo v. New London, stealing stuff, and government incompetence

In 2005, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Kelo v. New London, using the powers of eminent domain to seize property from one private owner and hand it over to another private owner -- a developer who promised more than 3,000 new jobs and $1.2 million in tax revenue.

In other words, someone's campaign contributor wanted some land, but didn't want to sell at the price the contributor wanted to pay.  Favors were called in.  Strings were pulled.  Stuff was stolen.  Nothing more to it than that. 

This is from the Gideon's Trumpet blog:

As regular readers of this blog know, the redevelopment project that gave rise to the wretched U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, never came about. In spite of the city’s boasting about the quality of its plans, nothing was ever built on the Fort Trumbull site from which the city displaced an entire unoffending, well maintained lower middle-class neighborhood. Though the formal taking took place in 2000 and the U.S. Supreme Court gave its approval to it in 2005, the city’s project has been a failure, with 91 acres of waterfront property sitting there empty and overgrown by weeds.

Now, we learn from the local newspaper, The Day, that following the hurricane Irene, the city has designated the Fort Trumbull redevelopment site as a place to dump vegetation debris. For a video of locals dumping that stuff on the site, click here.

Connecticut taxpayers have thus been soaked tens of millions of dollars, not just for nothing, but for making things worse — for transforming a nice local neighborhood into a dump.

Here's a video of citizens hauling their post-storm crap to what was once a nice little neighborhood:

The best book on the Kelo vs. New London case is Little Pink House. 

Here's a summary, from Amazon.com:

Suzette Kelo was just trying to rebuild her life when she purchased a broken-down Victorian house perched on the waterfront in New London, CT. The house wasn't particularly fancy, but with lots of hard work Suzette was able to turn it into a home that was important to her, a home that represented her new found independence.

Little did she know that the City of New London, desperate to revive its flailing economy, wanted to raze her house and the others like it that sat along the waterfront in order to win a lucrative Pfizer pharmaceutical contract that would bring new business into the city. Kelo and fourteen neighbors flat out refused to sell, so the city decided to exercise its power of eminent domain to condemn their homes, launching one of the most extraordinary legal cases of our time, a case that ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court.

In Little Pink House, award-winning investigative journalist Jeff Benedict takes us behind the scenes of this case -- indeed, Suzette Kelo speaks for the first time about all the details of this inspirational true story as one woman led the charge to take on corporate America to save her home.

I'll never understand what makes voters believe that their city councils, governors, state reps, congressmen, or presidents have a clue about economic development.  Why?  Because they don't have a clue. 

And even if they did, it wouldn't justify theft.  Here's some John Mellencamp, on the joy of owning a Little Pink House, and not having to worry about Fascists stealing it. 

This means you, Jerry Jones.