Government Leading Us to Progress!

So the Pfizer plant that prompted the Kelo decision that legitimized using the right of public eminent domain to take property from one private interest to give it to another, more-favored private interest is being abandoned. So the town of New London kicked a bunch of people out of their homes for nothing.

At base, this episode was a fairly massive change in the traditional understanding of the relationship of the people to government that was okayed in the name of allowing the government a freer hand to pursue broad social goods, in this case gaining a higher tax base and improving the town through redevelopment.

The end result was a fairly complete disaster with people kicked out of their homes by the government in the name of progress and no actual gain to be seen for the trouble.

Don't worry, this was an isolated incident that should in no way influence our faith in the power of government to engineer good outcomes through exercising state power behind good intentions. I'm sure that the fairly significant redefinition of the traditional relationship between the citizen and the government represented by the health-care reform legislation currently wending its way through Congress will not end in a similar disaster...