"Supreme Lordship"

Pfizer to Close New London Headquarters:  A Look Back at Kelo

Michael Round

December 7, 2009

In a quiet announcement last month, Pfizer announced it was closing it's New London, Connecticut headquarters, and moving across town to Groton.

They leave behind a massive campus, and one dilapidated site.  Both are pictured here:

In the background is the sprawling campus.  The foreground?  The dilapidated site?  The prior home of Susette Kelo.

Yes, that Kelo.

This photo was taken years after the controversial Supreme Court eminent domain case to take the private property of one (several) people and give it to another.

Pfizer never developed it.  And now they're moving to another campus.

The full case name was:  Sussette Kelo, et al. v. City of New London, Connecticut, et al.

Jobs.  Tax revenue.  Expansion.  At any cost!  The "ends justify the means"!  The City wanted it all - and now has none.  It deserves none.

The history of  "eminent domain" is an interesting one.  It was taken from the mid-19th century from the legal treatise, De Jure Belli et Pacis, written by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in 1625, who used the term dominium eminens (Latin for supreme lordship) and described the power as follows:

"... the property of subjects is under the eminent domain of the state, so that the state or he who acts for it may use and even alienate and destroy such property, not only in the case of extreme necessity, in which even private persons have a right over the property of others, but for ends of public utility, to which ends those who founded civil society must be supposed to have intended that private ends should give way. But it is to be added that when this is done the state is bound to make good the loss to those who lose their property."   (wikipedia)

"Supreme Lordship"?  "The seizing of private property - by force -  to give to others"?  Maybe in some countries, but not in ours, founded on the idea of individual rights.

And where does "property" rights come in?  Ayn Rand said it well:

"The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."

A news story on the recent announcement - with video ...

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-pfizer1110nov10,0,766810.story