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Let Them Eat Zoloft
As the Senate takes up health care reform, we're sure to be treated to yet more scenes of our elected officials bending over backwards to kiss the gold-plated butts of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. So far, just about every new turn in the health care battle is confirming what many have known for some time: The US health care system is run largely for the benefit of these corporate giants, rather than for the American people, and no piece of legislation is likely to change that fact.
But to fully appreciate the license these industries have been given to run roughshod over the public interest, you have to take a trip to Connecticut. The state is a longtime home base for the insurance industry, with 72 companies and the nation's highest concentration of insurance jobs. It also has more than its share of drug and biotech companies. What luck then, for these industries, that the man who appears to hold a swing vote on health care reform is their own Senator Joe Lieberman, who has enjoyed enormous financial support from the insurance companies and plenty from Big Pharma, as well.
While Connecticut may be loyal to its health care companies, the opposite clearly is not true. This week the giant drugmaker Pfizer sent shock waves across the state when it announced its decision to shut down its huge research facility in New London. While some workers will be transferred to a facility in a nearby town, the closure represents a devastating loss of industry and tax base for this working-class coastal city. It also marks the disintegration of an elaborate publically financed urban development scheme that began a decade ago.
After the closure of a naval installation in the mid-1990s left New London in desperate economic straits, Pfizer swept in with promises to revitalize the city with a state-of-the-art R & D headquarters. To serve the company's interests, the state government decided to use eminent domain to seize private property, uproot residents, and destroy a neighborhood in order to revamp the surrounding area. The state won the right to do so in a landmark Supreme Court case, Kelo vs. New London. But it built nothing on the vacated land. And now Pfizer, as the Wall Street Journal put it, has decided to "bug out." One local resident told the New York Times, "They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away."
Here's how Jeff Benedict, a Connecticut lawyer and author of a book on the land grab, described the situation an op-ed in the Hartford Courant:
Consider the bitter pill that Pfizer Inc. slipped New London this week. Barely a decade after constructing a $300 million research and development headquarters in the city, the pharmaceutical giant announced it was shutting down the facility. Just like that, New London will lose 1,400 jobs and become home to a gigantic, vacant office park that sprawls over a 24-acre campus.
Never mind that an entire residential neighborhood was bulldozed by New London to change the look of a 90-acre landscape around the Pfizer campus. And never mind that along the way the city used eminent domain to drive out homeowners and then fought a costly eight-year legal battle against holdouts Susette Kelo and her neighbors that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Fifth Amendment has always allowed government to take private property for public use. But in its most universally despised decision in decades, the court upheld the takings in New London by equating public benefits-the promise of increased tax revenues and new jobs-with public use.
In other words, the potential of a massive redevelopment scheme anchored by the arrival of Pfizer's facility justified evicting homeowners who stood in the way of progress. There's just one stubborn fact: It's been four years since the infamous Kelo ruling and the city hasn't gotten a thing built on the 90 acres it now controls.
After all the shouting, the developer ran out of money and the city has zero prospective replacements. Barren weed fields are all that exist where homes once stood.
According to the Times, Pfizer said it was pulling out of New London and consolidating its operations as a "cost-cutting measure." As the AP reported last month, Pfizer has managed to boost its profits this year despite the recession by "slashing costs on everything from manufacturing and marketing to research and development" and cutting 6,500 jobs. In the immediate future, AP notes:
Pfizer will keep cutting costs, now that it has completed the biggest drug industry deal of the year. The $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth last Thursday cements Pfizer's position atop the industry, and the combined company is expected to eliminate nearly 20,000 jobs by the time integration is complete.
Let's put all this cost cutting in further context. Pfizer's profits in 2008 were $8.1 billion. The drugmaker ranked 11th on the Fortune 500's list of most profitable companies, and also made Fortune's list of "biggest winners," described as "20 firms [that] managed to make money...even as the economy crumbled." Wyeth's 2008 profits were over $4 billion, so the acquisition is guaranteed to keep Pfizer in gravy, despite the $2.3 billion in criminal penalties it recently agreed to pay for illegally promiting off-label use of its drugs, in the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Justice Department. Residents of New London and other locales abandoned by the company may also be interested to know that Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler's 2008 compensation came to a cool $14.8 million-up 17 percent from the year before.
In other words, Pfizer's determination to slash costs and eliminate thousands of jobs in the midst of a recession is motivated by nothing but sheer greed. This is business as usual for the pharmaceutical companies, which exist to serve the interests of their executives and shareholders, not the public-and which will be just as ruthless as we allow them to be.
Yet this lesson seems to have bypassed many of our elected officials, who persist in pretending that the drug companies can be their "partners" in health care reform, rather recognizing them as their adversaries. The rest of the industrialized world seems to have grasped the notion that it's the government's job to make sure the private health care industry doesn't gouge the public. These governments do their job by imposing stiff regulation on these companies, far beyond anything that we will see in the current health reform here.
Here, the drug companies are so used to getting their way that they are indignant when anyone in government finds the gumption to stand up to them at all. This morning, the Los Angeles Times reports that Big Pharma is protesting parts of the House reform bill, which it sees as violating the secret deal it made last summer with the White House. The paper reports that "senior administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, are warning members of Congress not to antagonize the deep-pocketed industry at a time when a major victory appears to be within reach, according to Democratic aides."
Although they will probably get their way in the end, the drug companies clearly are pissed off at the Democrats because they think they've been double-crossed. It's a feeling that that's no doubt familiar to the residents of New London, Connecticut.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllThe eminent domain trick has been pulled over and over on citizens, and communities,( my village the "Rodeo Grounds" of topanga calif. was dismantleded in 06' and I still have not found a permanent home) I propose the good people of new london "Eminent DOmain" them right back and take over the campus , start a REAL ANARCHIST UNIVERSITY to end CORPORATE PERSONHOOD, get disenting lawyers and professors to teach, free housing for senior students and minors... MAKE A COMMUNITY!
The derogatory term squatting is used when low income people use abandoned property. But isn't that essentially what Phizer did in this case? They squatted for a few years and then quit squatting when they decided to squat elsewhere (probably in China or India). Just because Phizer has lawyers who make big money, don't think that what they do has any more validity than what a "squatter" does. When all is said and done, everyone is a "squatter."
And...
"Barren weed fields are all that exist where homes once stood."
Death, destruction, destitution, and barren weed fields have a way of cropping up all over the place when the right wing is in full control for a number of years.
"The derogatory term squatting is used when low income people use abandoned property. But isn't that essentially what Phizer did in this case?"
No. What you describe would be a little like old Golda Meir's lying dream of Israel: "a land without people for a people [in this case, corporation] without land." Phizer didn't squat on abandonded property. They got the city to use "eminent domain" to seize people's homes and evict them, tear down housing which had been occupied, and give the property to Phizer to develop.
Well since Phizer failed to develop what they said they would, they were definitely squatting. They did get stock market and other gains over the mere plans to develop what they said they would, but they never paid the taxes they implicity promised to pay in the development plan that got them the residential property.
Morever, for anyone who does not accept the process, or for that matter the general concept of large Corporations taking over private, middle class or lower class residential property, they were squatting regardless of whether they developed what they said they would or not.
Not everyone considers the term squatting derogatory. It is also the term for a considerable movement around urban land and ownership reform in England and, to an extent, elsewhere.
I got some of the sharpest lessons I have encountered yet in anarchistic cooperation in London and Bristol squats a couple decades ago, and had they not been previously burned by bad press and suspected me of writerly motives, they might have taught me more.
Cheers to Brixton and Southwark from an old fool who never fit elsewhere either!
Well like everything else that benefits the poor more than the rich, squatting has a more favorable reputation and more governmental support in most other countries than in the most pro-rich country, the US.
Defeat ObamaCare. No to HealthCare Deform.
The Dems have proven to be just as capable as the Republican when it comes to screwing the American people and doing the bidding of big monied interests.
"...no piece of legislation is likely to change that fact."
Exactly. Because the ONLY system that is morale is Universal Health Care for all Americans. Anything less is just the same as we got w/a fresh coat of cheap paint.
And, since, as this author points out, 'no piece of legislation is likely to change that fact,' then I suggest we move on, let our bribed reps do what they're gonna do anyway, and focus our energy on things where our chances of success are better than 0...
Like, um...
Kelo was a disaster but there has been poor follow-up by citizens. Liberal Democrats supported it, including those on the Court.
In Missouri, attempts to change the law have been fought by towns and cities all over the State.
Too many people don't seem to be able to think their way out a bag and seem addicted to short term gain.
When I look at the suburban sprawl in the surrounding suburbs around St Louis City, I wonder if it is the result of the Kelo decision. Ever since I moved out to the suburbs after leaving the city, I have noticed traffic congestion getting worse even at early hours.
I remember when the city council shamelessly sided with bulldozing 254 houses for shopping malls. The problem I think is that people are so addicted to poison themselves with so much junk from the shopping malls that they would show no feelings towards people and families who worked hard to pay up and live where they want.
Here's a copy of that news in late 2005.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501087.html
There have been some successes but usually limited to cases of big corporation withdrawing because the public outrage was too powerful for them to continue. On the issue of eminent domain, I sympathize with the conservatives and libertarians because today's corporate puppet government gives the land to mainly the commercial interests with more resources as O'Conner warned would happen in her dissent on Kelo before she retired. Oddly, these are the same interests that complain about "big government" and then shamelessly mooch off of them. I wished progressives would have some sympathy on this issue.
Zoloft and soldout. Is there a similarity? Oooooo ... I Think SO!
Until we have a Congress or a Supreme Court willing to rollback the "human rights" of mega-corporations, the real rights of real humans will be trampled upon.
**But in its most universally despised decision in decades, the court upheld the takings in New London by equating public benefits-the promise of increased tax revenues and new jobs-with public use.**
So, the government, with the backing of the courts, seized and destroyed these people's homes because there would allegedly be a greater public benefit in the tax revenues which would be generated. Yet, the corporation, after having gotten the court to make "its most universally despised decision in decades" walks away leaving the local government with nothing.
Well done. Maybe counting tax revenue from corporations before it hatches ISN'T a good public use after all.
And Joey the Lieberman should not be the swing vote in healthcare. If Connecticut had applied the law equally to him, his race would have been over after he failed to become the Democratic nominee. His subsequent run as an independent was illegal but apparently Too Important To Fail.
What an example this story is of what is wrong with our country. It should find its way into textbooks... but with corporate control over every aspect of our lives, that's not going to happen. Say, you know if you make Zoloft MANDATORY, it will increase tax revenues by increasing Pfizer's profits. Maybe...
Ridgeway hits two birds with one stone. Ladies and gentlemen, how do you like it when big government meddles with personal and business affairs like this? Do you want a government that interferes for the big drug companies and against people's property rights or do you want a government that doesn't meddle for big business and respects people's property rights? Government should get out of the way so that small businesses and self employed entrepreneurs can grow their own medicine and cut down the high prices of drugs. By not meddling for corporate giants, they will have no excuse to meddle against people's property rights.
"The government is best which governs least." - Thomas Jefferson
Ridgeway gets most of this right, but some of the local specifics escaped him. Allow me to fill in. (For the past six years I've stood a weekly vigil with several of the activists that were trying to defend the Fort Trumbul Neighborhood from this travesty).
pFizer was behind the development from Day One. That was not proven until recently, but there it is.
But pFizer wasn't alone.
We used to have a Governor named Rowland. He finished his last term in Federal Prison. He spent a lot of CT's taxmoney on "Economic Development". His friends the Developers, the Construction Business and Construction Trades Unions loved him. He sent them lots of work. In New London, they set up a quasi-governmental organization called the New London Development Corporation, NLDC (the four most hated letters in SECT).
They had big plans, pFizer was just one part. There was going to be a marina and luxury hotels, fancy restaurants, a restored Revolutionary War Fort, a Coast Guard Museum.... you know, a "Real Destination".
This was sold to the City as a jobs project.
New London is poor.
Many of the people there live modestly, per force.
Homeowners in Fort Trumbul were not rich people. Many of them, including Susette, were the third or fourth generation in their houses.
And the jobs they worked are not real high-end jobs. Real work isn't considered worth paying for anymore.
And for people that don't pull down 6 figures, finding housing in CT is tough.
There were also several local companies that were blown out by this development. A landmark Restaurant, Hughies, and Calamari's scrap metal yard (the first place I saw industrial strength recycling as a kid) among others. Hughies probably had sixty or more people working at any one time and Calimari's had dozens of workers. These weren't executive jobs, but they were jobs.
All that couldn't compare to the 5000 pFizer jobs and another 3000 in the surrounding "Hospitality/Entertainment/Tourism" project.
NLDC co-opted the City Council.
All kinds of ugliness went on, city officials trashed houses just before they were appraised, thug tactics.
pFizer came in, brought in a big national firm to build their facilities, hiring almost zero local workers. They opened their campus and sure enough, 5000 pFizer employees commenced to commute through this tight little New England city daily. They live out in the sprawl that our farmland is becoming. And they do pull down 6 figures. And the Acres and Acres of McMansions built to accomodate them are all the housing that's been built for the past fifteen - twenty years around here. That's why it's so hard to find anything affordable. At least, some of them carpool.
And as part of their deal with New London, pFizer got a Ten Year property tax reduction of over 60%. That still has a year or two to go. They'll be gone before they ever pay full assessment.
But the rest of the deal unraveled as the Rowland administration grenaded.
This was one of several high profile boondoggles they ran, There was a huge riverfront development in Hartford that went 200 million overbudget. Enron was in on another 200 million hiest from our Treasury. Rowland steered contracts to a buddy who built him a really nice cottage on a lake. That was what he got nailed for. Forget the half billion (and counting) that he "lost". The New London project was late in the pipeline, they got the site cleared....
What we discovered is that there are two distinct versions of Eminent Domain. Public Use and Economic Development. Public Use is how they put the Interstate Highways through peoples' farms. It's property taken by the state or Municipality for a public asset.
Most people can at least understand that as a "Public Good" issue, even if they don't agree. But Economic Development is taking property from one private owner and giving it to another BECAUSE that new owner will make more economic use of it. Nobody can be OK with that.
Then it went to the Supreme Court and it was the Conservatives in a bloc of four that would have struck it down, it was the "Liberal" Judges that upheld the City's position.
To the Cons, this represents a Taking. They are big on ownership rights and "Value" of material property. They oppose Government Taking that Value from an ideological standpoint.
But I have yet to hear an explanation of how that can be squared with "Liberalism". Taking from the poor and working class and giving to the rich and corporate is the antithesis of Liberal Doctrine, isn't it?
Anyone want to take a whack?
CV,
What a sad story, but so typical of neoliberalism.
There is an enormous difference between Classic Liberalism, which is founded upon the ideas of social enlightenment such as democracy and egalitarianism, and 'economic liberalism', which is more correctly termed 'neoliberalism', and is a system of capitalist exploitation--precisely what occurred in New London. The terms are confusing because they both use the root 'liberal', which means 'free'. However, these two terms are antithetical and should not be confused. You probably will better understand and recognize neoliberalism by its more common title: "free" market capitalism.
Below is a brief excerpt from an excellent article by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia that I think will be helpful to you in understanding neoliberalism. To read the entire piece, which provides the main points of neoliberalism, go to http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalDefined.html
What is "Neo-Liberalism"?
A Brief Definition
Updated: February 26th, 2000
"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Right-wing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neo-liberalism.
"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called The Wealth of Nations. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.
Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt's New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted.
But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it "neo" or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale.
CV,
Here's the rest of the article, which I retrieved from http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalDefined.html
The main points of neo-liberalism include:
THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much.
CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job.
PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."
Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neo-liberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America."
In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutting back social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end.
Nanoo
That Eminent Domain issue sucks. Not only that it's stupid. A friend of mine who has traveled European countries says it's different over there. We also have zoning laws and property tax issues where it forces many people to sell their land, which further increases solid urban sprawl.
Thanks for your post. How sad for those people who lost their homes. Frankly it's far too common for city economic development committees to pursue anything without long term and fair thinking.
As a result of the $2.3 billion fraud settlement (which by the way was about 50/50 criminal and civil penalties, not all criminal as Ridgeway says), six whistleblowers received a total of $102 million, on paper. Meanwhile, I've always wondered in cases like this, where the penalty money actually goes (if it actually gets paid at all...).
As for New London, as a community they probably got what they deserve, except for the victims of the eminent domain case. I well remember that landmark Supreme Court case, Kelo vs New London, and despised that decision. Nothing good could come of it, I thought. Arbitrary and capricious. A lot of people I knew were angry about it, some saying not so sarcastically that it would enable any local city council to "take" by eminent domain just about anything they wanted, for any purpose they declared in the public interest.
One thing that Ridgeway fails to explore in this article, and which should have been fairly easy to confirm one way or the other, is whether the City of New London actually obtained ANY NET ADDITIONAL tax revenue from the presence of the Pfizer facility there, what with all the tax breaks and deferred taxation schemes that nearly always go along with such corporate giveaways. Related to this is the probable fact that given that this was a research facility many if not most of its employees moved to New London to work there and now most are stuck, with what social and financial costs to them and the community? I'll bet many are upside down on their mortgages.
This case is of course in the finest tradition of corporations coercing huge tax breaks and other concessions from municipalities. A lot of palms usually get greased along the way.
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"I'll bet many are upside down on their mortgages." ... and on their college loan payments too.
I hope there will be an eventual good use of the land and facility.
Also I'm wondering if too many people are just saying yes to too many prescription drugs when they could just say no.
Thanks especially to CV...
Recommended reading which cites case after case about the failures of corporate welfare deals and how taxpayers get stuck with the tab, if not environmental clean-up, when it fails: The Great American Jobs Scam by Greg LeRoy.
Thanks CV,
for that excellent journalism on New London's developmental history.
Proves my point: a lot of palms were greased along the way.
(Your post was not present when I was composing mine... simultaneous overlap?)
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USans, including pseudo-leftists, enjoy the benefits bestowed by these godzilla monsters such as Pfizzer, but lament the liabilities. It would be better if USans avoided the liabilities by building economic independence. And those so-called benefits are also best avoided. These godzilla monsters don't invest resources most beneficial to the people. The most beneficial investment in the healthcare field is in basic research, to develop a much greater understanding of biological processes, and especially the applications of nutritional and medicinal plant chemicals unencumbered by "intellectual property" protections. Laissez-faire capitalism simply isn't up to par. After many decades privateers in all sectors have proven themselves mostly incapable of the discipline and fortitude of basic research, with only a handful of innovations such as the computer mouse out of Xerox Parc. Instead, the privateers in all sectors focus almost exclusively on research to generate short-term profits.
The US National Institute of Health and other public agencies provide about 36% of medical research funding with privateers providing the rest. Obviously the NIH should be funding/controlling the great majority of research, and the total should be increased from the current $94 bil to at least $200 bil/yr. In 2000, the Congruss' Joint Economic Committee "found that of the 21 drugs with the highest therapeutic impact on society introduced between 1965 and 1992, public funding was 'instrumental' for 15." - wikipedia.
New London screwed up. It should never have let Pfizzer in. Instead, all of the local medical institutes around the country can join in collaboration to increase public research activity, ostracize the privateers, and instruct the federal gubmint to pay if it wants to play. And tell anyone in your local community who wants to hang onto Pfizzer to ride it on out of town.
"...This is business as usual for the pharmaceutical companies, which exist to serve the interests of their executives and shareholders, not the public-and which will be just as ruthless as we allow them to be."
Isn't that the law regarding all corporations?
Maybe eating Zoloft isn't a bad idea. I am eating Zoloft these days. It is the only way I can stand living in the nation anymore.
Good to break the spiral, bad to stay on for years, you become marshmello.
Thanks for the warning. I will check that out with my shrink.
Excellent, concise analysis of Z! Thanks also your activism and for sharing your sad personal experience in New London.
Helena Hanbasquet writes:
""...This is business as usual for the pharmaceutical companies, which exist to serve the interests of their executives and shareholders, not the public-and which will be just as ruthless as we allow them to be."
Isn't that the law regarding all corporations?"
I've seen this assertion that it's "the law" that corporations must serve first and only the "interests of their shareholders." The implication being that their sole interest is return on investment. This is bunkum. Corporations exist by charter, and are purposed by charter. You could in theory create a non-profit with shareholders whose intent would be to lose money for the purpose of researching creation of a small hydrogen-hybrid electric car in hopes of making it profitable in, say, 10 years. Nothing prevents a corporate charter from considering the "public good."
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If you think eminent domain is bad (and it is) try living in a State where sovereign immunity is still practiced. I am one of many who was nearly killed by a speeding State dump truck. The State said "so sue us - we've got millions$ and we'll out-money anyone we injure or kill".