A bittersweet story can have a happy story line followed by a horrendous ending or a horrendous story line followed by a happy ending … this seems a case of the latter:
“In all honesty, I’m not happy about what happened to me,” Ms. Kelo said. But, she added, “With 43 states changing their laws, in that sense I feel we did some good for people across the country.”
(Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case, NY Times, 11/12/09)
(Pfizer certainly doesn’t deserve the ‘good people’ comment … Court Documents Reveal Pfizer was Massaging Data to Increase Neurotonin Sales, The Pop Tort blog, 11/12/09.)
But the NYT’s article puts all the blame on a corporation that town officials begged to take government issued corporate welfare.
Pfizer behaved the way it did because a cabal of short-sighted economically illiterate and unaccountable public officials condemned private property as part of a corporate welfare scheme.
This is not to excuse Pfizer – because there is no excuse for them – but the press seems to forget that the New London city officials are the ones who condemned the land and threw open the city’s coffers for corporate exploitation.