Eminent Domain By Any Other Name

The helpful city of St. Louis wants to relocate a corporate citizen:

After a raging fire destroyed the Praxair Inc. plant on Chouteau Avenue in June, St. Louis officials pledged to help the firm find a new location.

Pledge to help, of course, is a synonym for not renewing permits and, through regulatory rigamarole, preventing the corporation from repairing and reopening the facility in its present location. Because of an industrial accident that scared people, but ultimately didn’t hurt or kill anyone.

Fortunately, though, the city had some choice property on its hands that it could unload offer to the ungrateful company:

On Wednesday, the company said thanks, but no thanks. It said the site proposed is contaminated by remnants of the Manhattan Project.

“Praxair is not interested in building a new facility on a floodplain within a Superfund site where, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has indicated, there may be risks of radiological exposure,” Praxair Distribution President Wayne Yakich said in a statement.

So, as a result of this helpful assistance from the city of St. Louis, it will drive a private business from its municipality along with the employment and tax revenue that come from private businesses employing people. As a result, the city of St. Louis will break ground on another entertainment destination with a half life of 18 months to provide, briefly, low-paying service jobs or the city of St. Louis will offer tax breaks, incentives, and other regulatory foolery to draw some other business which has not caught fire recently to the city.

All in a day’s work for your city officials, who get a headline two-fer for driving out the evil, stand-alone corporations and bringing in the parasitic crony capitalist corporations.

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