Never Mind!!!

The wonderful comedienne Gilda Radner left us with happy memories, and hysterically funny characters created from her fertile imagination.

My favorite was Emily Litella, the old lady, hard of hearing, who would rant during the news segments 'anchored' by Chevy Chase. He often struggled to keep a straight face while she demanded to know what all the fuss was about Russian Jewelry, or Endangered Feces. Every routine would end with him gently correcting the old girl: 'That's Russian Jewry, or Endangered Species. At which point she would smile sweetly at the camera and deliver the payoff line: Never Mind! followed by gales of laughter and applause.

This week, Associated Press quietly brought us one of those 'Never Mind' moments.

Pfizer decided to locate a major facility in New London, CT. Downtown, where other people owned the real estate. So the city fathers decided to condemn and seize the property. You know, for the 'greater good', since Pfizer would generate more tax revenues than the local proles.

Pfizer's pharmaceutical research center, which opened in 2001, was a catalyst for a planned multimillion-dollar private development that was to include residential, hotel conference, research and development space and a new state park. City officials decided they needed 90 acres adjacent to the Pfizer center to complement the building.

Many homeowners in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood sold to accommodate the wrecking crews, but seven fought the city all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in 2005 that cities could use eminent domain to take property for private development.

In the end, great damage was done, as the principle was established that a government could seize property from one private party, and hand it over to another private party, all in the name of increasing the tax revenue base. For the 'greater good', you know...

Anyone smell moral hazard in any of this yet? Have there been any instances in which real estate developers paid off local officials for zoning preferences, for instance?

So, here we are in 2009, and Pfizer decides they're not going to go through with the project, after all. How many millions spent in legal fees? And, the city now owns the property they seized from the previous landowners, and are out the money they spent buying the more cooperative ones out.

Bet they'll have an easy time selling all that 'Prime Commercial Property'.

To quote Emily: Never Mind!

We have a cultural problem, in that the Constitution has been reduced to something used to line the birdcages of the powerful.

This creates economic quandries. Eventually. Inevitably.

If we could just say 'Never Mind', smile and move on...