Pharmaceutical giant stomps the little guy in Kelo

I've been tied up with family affairs so I'm just now reading the particulars on the Kelo decision. I was pretty outraged in general by the trampling of private rights. I'm appalled that SCOTUS would allow this expansion of eminent domain to stand. It's not dissimilar to the forfeiture laws for drugs. For instance, in this case the property is also guilty of not generating enough income for the state by legal means.

And don't you find it a little contradictory of the Honorable Court to allow the feds to expand their sphere of control over state's rights under the Commerce Clause in Raich, and then turn around and say it's up to the states to regulate within their own borders in this matter. As Judge Thomas said,

"The consequence of today's decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful," he wrote. "So-called 'urban renewal' programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted by uprooting them from their homes."

This decision seems to me little more than a defacto forfeiture for the crime of being poor. It shakes the foundation of our society - the assurance that a man should be secure in his own home. Municipal projects are one thing, but how far are we from fascism if the government is allowed to decide which private entity can own property? They do that in third world countries don't they?

The Cato Institute puts it more eloquently.

"With today's decision, no one's property is safe, since any time a government official thinks someone else can make better use of your property than you're doing, he can order it condemned and transferred," Roger Pilon, the group's director of constitutional studies, said in a written statement.

But here is the most infuriating detail of the case. From CNN:

The case pitted the city of New London, Connecticut, against homeowner Susette Kelo and six other families who were trying to keep the municipality from condemning their homes for use as part of a redevelopment project, centered around a $270 million global research facility built by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Figures it would be a pharma corp but it could have been any corporate monolith from insurance to media. Forget fascism. What we need to worry about is corporatism. That being said, Loretta Nall has the last word on the Pfizer angle.

So if you have drugs in your house the government can come and take your house, your kids and put you in jail for those drugs. However, if a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical giant wants your property so they can make drugs there, they are now in the clear to take it. This world has gone absolutely MAD!