For a few residents of a small Connecticut town, the land of the free doesn’t seem quite so free any more.
With the backing of the so-called “eminent domain” doctrine, the town of New London has decided to confiscate property from landowners near the Thames River. This would be less odious if it were for some public good, like a badly needed water purification system because everyone would otherwise die of thirst (to pick an example completely at random).
But no, the real reason:
…to clear the way for a private development project that would include a hotel, a conference center and offices. The city has argued that redeveloping 90 acres along the river and near a new Pfizer research plant would give a much-needed economic boost to the city of about 26,000 people, where the unemployment rate of 7.6% is about twice the state’s rate…
To reduce down to the essentials, private citizens are having their homes confiscated by the government in favor of corporations.
All arguments about the benefit to the town aside, this is completely unfair to the people being expelled from their homes – some “generations old” – and undoubtedly the corporate developments will gain much more out of this than the people of New London, who will have no ownership of the new developments. Smells like economic fascism to me.