Kelo Shots

by digby

I happened to tune into Glenn Beck the other day and he was blathering on nonsensically about Rockefeller Center and how the two small buildings next to 30 Rock were a testament to the bedrock American values of life, liberty and property. (The owners of the buildings had refused to sell when they were building Rockefeller Center.) Anyway, he was scribbling furiously on his little blackboard and running back and forth between some old pictures of the area and what not, making little sense as usual. But what I gathered was that this is some kind of paean to capitalism along with a convoluted critique of the Kelo takings decision, which has taken on iconic significance on the right.

Well, it stirred my memory that I’d forgotten to post this post on the Village Voice blog by Julia:

The outcome of New York’s embattled eminent domain development projects is called into question by the economic development project which made them possible.

The Pfizer research facility at the center of the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision is closing, taking over 1,400 jobs with it. The 5-4 Kelo decision allowed New London, CT to use eminent domain to condemn private property for the “public purpose” of commercial development near a new Pfizer research facility. The city, which gave Pfizer a property tax break of 80% for the first ten years, spent $80 million preparing the seized property to build the condominiums and hotels they promised to draw Pfizer into town. Development was supposed to bring 3,000 jobs to the area.

What New London didn’t do, and should have, was get a contractual obligation for the company to stay put in return for the money, because they clearly don’t feel any non-contractual obligation.

Pfizer spokesman Liz Power says the company had no stake in the outcome of the Kelo case. Their operations are being consolidated at a Pfizer facility in Groton (ironically, Suzanne Kelo, the plaintiff in the eminent domain case, moved to Groton after she was thrown out of her home). The New London facility will be empty before the tax break sunsets. New London heard about it when the rest of us did.

The irony.

Here in New York, the Bloomberg administration is fighting to seize properties in downtown Brooklyn and Willet’s Point, Queens for economic development. In the case of the Atlantic Yards proposal in Brooklyn, the city is offering seized land and $700 million in subsidies to developer Bruce Ratner to build apartments and a basketball arena.

Ratner already doesn’t feel any particular obligation to the taxpayers providing his windfall (or the current residents being offered below-market value for their condemned properties). Last week, he told business paper Crains NY, not generally a hotbed of anti-development sentiment, that he didn’t feel a need to share building plans with the public: “Why should people get to see plans? This isn’t a public project.”

Right wingers hate Kelo and they hate the government but they love Masters of the Universe and they love property rights and they just don’t know quite what to think about all this without their brains getting all muddled. Beck hates Kelo because he hates the idea of the government taking someone else’s property. But he also loves guys like Rockefeller, who he extolled on the show as a great American visionary who built a monument to American capitalism. And if Rockefeller could have done what Ratner is doing today, he would have.

To quote Neiwert’s great piece on producerism again:

A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity’s April 15 evening “Tea Party” broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:

Hannity: And I’m going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we’re nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don’t pay anything in taxes! Nothing!

[Crowd boos]

Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.

That’s right — it’s the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama’s targeting, right? So at least they’re being upfront about just who “the taxpayers” are whose interests they’re out marching to defend.

You could find similar sentiments on the right only the month before, in mid-March, when it was revealed that executives at the insurance giant AIG – which had just been the recipient of a massive government bailout – continued to pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses with bailout money. This spurred a loud round of protest, mostly from liberals and labor groups angry about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.

But Rush Limbaugh defended the bonuses, telling his radio audience: “A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration.” Glenn Beck had a similar rant on his Fox show: “What I really, really don’t like here is the idea that we are willing to give in to mob rule. And that’s what this is: The mob in Washington getting everybody all – I mean, the only thing they haven’t said is, ‘Bring out the monster!’ It’s mob rule! They are attempting to void legally binding contracts.”

This kind of obeisance to the captains of industry and their utrammeled right to make profits at the expense of everyone else is a phenomenon known as Producerism, which is a hallmark of right-wing populism.

I’m quite sure Beck doesn’t understand all that. He thinks he’s a champion of the little guy and he believes that he’s standing up for them when he rails against government takings and talks about the right to life, liberty and property. But when push comes to shove, his philosophy actually requires him to defend Bruce Ratner’s contractual “rights” to have the government intercede on his behalf. How convenient.

Meanwhile, as Julia rightly concludes:

[G]iven the outcome of the New London experiment in protecting corporations from the free hand of the market, perhaps the city should think twice about fighting to subsidize someone who feels comfortable telling us to go fuck ourselves before he gets his hands on our money.

I would think so. But then this very special producer might take his unique talents elsewhere and then where would they be?

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