View in Making A Wilderness: The Rockefeller Legacy, Chapter III
By THOMAS J SHEPSTONE, AUG 27
View in Making A Wilderness: The Rockefeller Legacy, Chapter III
AUG 27
Chapter III - Blue Bloods or Blue Collars?
The Rockefeller/NRDC gang of blue bloods views Upstate New York with what can only be described as metropolitan mockery. It is a region characterized by what Daniel Henninger labeled “pastoral poverty” and they want it set aside for their own aesthetic pleasure.
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The debate leading up to the December 17, 2014 decision of Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking in New York is instructive as to the pervasive influence of the Rockefeller/NRDC gang in trying to empty out Upstate New York and turn it into a wilderness playground. This is because natural gas development is a distinct threat to acquiring land, as it invariably leads to higher property values. Preventing such development is, therefore, key to the long-term strategy of the gang for what Vivian Krause calls “strategic parkification.”
The Rockefeller/NRDC gang, accordingly, enmeshed itself in the politics of natural gas development in New York. It managed to get Andrew Cuomo to appointed his ex-brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and two other senior NRDC attorneys, along with several other NRDC allies to an advisory committee on fracking. It was used as cover for a time until the fracking opposition had sufficiently fermented for the cork to pop. It was then quietly dropped.
Meanwhile, the gang enticed Cuomo to appoint member and OSI President Joe Martens as DEC Commissioner, meaning both the advisory committee and the official they were advising were loyal to it. Martens was President of the Open Space Institute when selected as Commissioner. He was also a founder of the Catskill Mountainkeeper, both organizations, along with NRDC, having been created by John Adams, a close associate of the Rockefeller family and its mega land interests in the Catskills. Adams’ son, Ramsey, in fact, is the Catskill Mountainkeeper in the flesh and received his salary from the Open Space Institute until the Mountainkeeper constituted itself as a separate non-profit corporation. The elder Adams also simultaneously served on the boards of the Mountainkeeper, the Hudson Riverkeeper, the Open Space Institute and NRDC.
So, not even counting the other natural gas opponents on the committee, of whom there were several, there were effectively four top level NRDC representatives dominating any state policy discussions. NRDC friends on the committee included, for instance: Robert Hallman of the NY League of Conservation Voters (where Kennedy, NRDC founder John Adams and other NRDC/OSI leaders served as Directors); Mark Brownstein of Environmental Defense Fund (where OSI Executive Director Christopher Elliman sat on the Advisory Board); Robert Moore of Environmental Advocates which proudly advertises itself as part of the “The Clean Water Not Dirty Drilling team” that also includes Catskill Mountainkeeper and NRDC. The following is a table depicting current and former associations of key representatives of NRDC, the Open Space Institute and their sister organizations:
The story here isn’t about that long abandoned Hydrofracking Advisory Committee, which was nothing but a temporary fig leaf grabbed from the NRDC tree. Rather, it’s about the influence of the Rockefeller family. More specifically, it’s about the special interests of the Rockefeller family, which is the force behind not only the family’s #ExxonKnew campaign, but also the NRDC gang. And, what is this gang of blue bloods about? Well, it’s land, privacy, seclusion and maintaining distance from blue collar deplorables, just as it was in William Rockefeller’s time.
Look, for example, at property sales in the vicinity of Lew Beach, New York, where Larry Rockefeller has developed his Beaverkill Mountain development for NRDC friends. It is readily apparent the Open Space Institute and its affiliate the Beaver Valley Land Trust, together with a for-profit subsidiary called John Hill Associates, are shifting land around among each other. Much of that land eventually gets shuffled into New York State ownership in such a way as as to create a tax-exempt open space buffer around the expensive second home estates of Larry Rockefeller’s buyers. This effectively enlarges what is a private preserve for other elites at public expense. Those elites include not only Rockefeller clan members, but also Dan Rather, of CBS infamy.
Rather bought in early and remains a big fan, especially of the fishing. A New York Times piece from 1987, though, tells us what it’s all really about; “Reversing Rural Blight in the Catskills” by which they mean replacing the working folks wearing Carhartt carpenter jeans with the pampered Patagonia set. Here’s how it was described some 32 years ago (emphasis added):
Tom Miner, the environmentalist who is executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development in Margaretville, applauded Mr. Rockefeller’s efforts saying ”he is bringing zoning to areas where there is none, and at the same time protecting the land and the interests of the people who are buying it.”
And while local reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, a few people living in the valley have expressed worries that the Beaverkill may be heading for a two-tier, rich and poor society, as it was expressed by Lee Wulff.
Mr. Wulff, who has lived in the area for almost 60 years and may be its most famous fulltime resident, is the owner with his wife, Joan, of a world renowned fly fishing school which itself caters mainly to the wealthy, although people of more modest means often enroll.
”There is no question that Larry Rockefeller is a force for good here,” said Mr. Wulff, who puts some of his students up in the renovated inn, whose prices he equates with those of ”a Manhattan hotel in the wilderness.” Rates for a double room at the inn are about $300 a night, including meals.
”But the valley seems to be evolving into a beautiful park for rich people in which you have the wealthy and the people who wait on them,” Mr. Wulff went on. ”Improving the area is all to the good, but land values and taxes have gone up and the average man can’t afford to live here.”
…Mr. Wulff’s comments were echoed by Tillie Hoag, a long-time resident of the area living at Balsam Lake, who said she has repeatedly raised the question of whether the Beaverkill was going to end up, as she put it, ”being a valley of the elite.”
Tom Miner stated the truth, perhaps unwittingly; the idea was to protect the interests of the folks buying, that is to say friends of Larry, rather than those who lived and needed to make a living in what did, indeed, become a “valley of the elite.” No one can live there who cannot afford to buy one of those cool virtue-signaling and overpriced Patagonia jackets at what used to be the Lew Beach general store.
The friends of Larry, a/k/a the NRDC gang, like it that way and that’s precisely why they hate natural gas development so much. Such development not only threatens their land scams, but also promises to bring true vitality to the people who live in these rural areas they’d rather make into wildernesses. They’d much prefer to empty it of most folks, except for like-minded Patagonia wearers and others with very special interests to protect.