Pfizer is not abandoning the area. With the Wyeth merger they are consolidating facilities with the one across the bridge in Groton. The local impact is not devastating, though the desired result of any merger is cost saving through the elimination of redundant assets. It is probably inevitable that the area will sadly lose some jobs but it will still remain the largest of Wyeth/Pfizer’s five major global research centers.

Actually Kelo did do that, according to this.

She sent out postcards to the seizers reading: “Here is my house that you did take From me to you, this spell I make Your houses, your homes Your family, your friends May they live in misery That never ends. I curse you all May you rot in hell To each of you I send this spell For the rest of your lives I wish you ill I send this now By the power of will”

To be honest, after reading this, it sounds very mean spirited and sort of insane. Cursing the seizers is one thing, but hoping that their families suffer misery in life and rot in hell afterwards is a bit crazy. She’s a nutter huh

Some people may actually value things other than money. One would think that if money were the main point, she would have taken money and not bothered with the headaches of the court system. ”

Ya it definitely wasn’t about the money. But someone who received $450,000 for a $100,000 house isn’t the first thing I think of when I think “victim of government abuse.”

I’d love to get eminently domained.

It’s legal to kill peace officers in self defense. Here are some acquittals from the ’80s and early ’90s on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder or attempted murder of peace officers: Ramona Africa of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (for shooting at peace officers during their attack on the MOVE house), Larry Davis of the Bronx, New York (for wounding six transit cops who were trying to arrest him for murder), Randy Weaver & Kevin Harris of Ruby Ridge, Idaho (for killing one US Marshall), Eleven Branch Davidian survivors (for killing 4 BATF agents during the initial attack on their church).

Your results may vary.

It would be better for the Kelo victims (or the current victims of judicial famine in the Central Valley) to harass the government employees involved in their oppression. Perfectly legal and anyone would get tired of people following them everywhere, twittering their locations and what they and their families are doing, and posting public information about them. Likewise calling, faxing, writing, and visting.

The idea that you would kill a person for attempting to comply with a legitimate government decision speaks more of your moral deficiency than of any sort of outrage at the potential for abuse of eminent domain.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government….”

Not saying we’re there yet… but there is a there there.

Some people may actually value things other than money. One would think that if money were the main point, she would have taken money and not bothered with the headaches of the court system.

It’s sad story.

these things are confusing

And, hey, isn’t juror null the next-to-last refuge of an oppressed citizenry?

Well, word hasn’t reached the stock market yet. Pfizer’s stock is at $17.43, approximately where it was in summer 2008 … before health-care reform, Obama, the financial crisis, etc.

Maybe the money runners figure that signing up millions of people for health insurance makes pharma R&D more attractive, not less.

rpt: Don’t worry. Billy Tauzin has Big Pharma well covered in this deal. Those of you who see the legislation as some sort anti-business legislation let their ideology blind them to the reality of lobbyist domination.

Lobbyist domination in legislation is, by it’s very nature, anti-business. This is rent seeking of the basest nature.

John Skookum: If a landowner in this situation put a bullet between the eyes of any government myrmidon who showed up to turn him out of his hearth and home, and I were sitting on the jury, there would be no conviction.

Thankfully, most people have a bit better appreciation for the rule of law than you do. Regardless of what you think about Kelo, there are plenty of legitimate uses of eminent domain. Even if that were not the case, however, life is a more important right than property, and is almost universally recognized as such in modern Western democracies (and not a small number of non-Western ones). The idea that you would kill a person for attempting to comply with a legitimate government decision speaks more of your moral deficiency than of any sort of outrage at the potential for abuse of eminent domain.

If a landowner in this situation put a bullet between the eyes of any government myrmidon who showed up to turn him out of his hearth and home, and I were sitting on the jury, there would be no conviction.

Perhaps Kelo will end up as short-lived as the con-game that spawned it.

Off Kilter: The ultimate irony, perhaps, is that this government intervention has likely gone to naught because of another government intervention: the healthcare reform legislation is likely signally Pfizer that there isn’t going to be as much money to be had from R&D in future…

This is the kind of slippery slope that could lead to a revolutionary spirit.

This does not control the legal issues, but it should influence those who would engage in these giveway/takeaway deals.