After reading the comments in my earlier post about the confluence between a recent property seizure in Oakland and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s wild defense of eminent domain in the Kelo decision, I did a bit more digging into the lead developer on the Oakland project, Forest City Enterprises, Inc.
Forest City is a publicly-traded development and real estate conglomerate involves a huge tract of Brooklyn in New York City. The Ratners are proposing to turn it into a condo-shopping-basketball-arena complex; Bruce Ratner of Forest Park is the owner of the New Jersey Nets. The Ratners are lobbying the city and state of New York to exercise eminent domain powers to seize properties in Brooklyn for this project.
(Incidentally, Bruce Ratner’s brother Michael runs the far-left humanrightsnow.org website, and is president of the George Soros-funded “Center for Constitutional Rights,” and is one of the major legal players trying to free the terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Quite a family there.)
In addition to the Uptown Project in Oakland, Forest City is a prime contractor in a gigantic shopping mall project in San Francisco which involves eminent domain seizures of private property. The company is also partnered with the New York Times to build the Times’ new headquarters in Manhattan–on a site that was seized especially for the Times by New York City. Small surprise then that the Times is (thus far) second only to Nancy Pelosi in cheerleading for the Kelo decision.
Speaking of Pelosi, as the Democrats’ leader in the House, San Fran Nan has been the beneficiary of a great deal of campaign largesse from the Ratners.
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