This is the third entry of a series on the parallels of misinformation locally and nationally that led me to write Systems out of Balance.
Before the year 2002 I had little involvement with town politics or government. I ran for the Board of Education once, but lost. People claimed I actually had done well, considering that I ran unaffiliated. Yet I was running in the same small town I was raised in, as a former teacher who had graduate level studies and research in education, and I recently served the town on a committee to study school regionalization. It appeared that such experience and name recognition could not overcome being backed by a party. Since I knew I would not be joining a party any time soon, I did not seek an elected position again.
I also refrained from becoming involved in town commissions because of having been told that I “intimidate people with research and logic.” Living well with my neighbors was more important to me than getting my way. Small town government tends to be more grassroots, more democratic than what has evolved at the national level (and, for the Illimunati guy out there, more open and honest, less clandestine). As long as democracy was having her way I was content to let be.
There were events occurring on the national stage that I had trouble “letting be.” My research into alternative media sources was not providing the same information as corporate media about terrorism and Iraq. Most striking were interviews of Scott Ritter, conducted by a local independent radio station, WAMC. Ritter was the former chief weapons inspector for Iraq before policies by the Clinton Administration made this position untenable. Understandably, this conservative Marine was no fan of Clinton, nor was he a big fan of Bush II, who he claimed was providing misinformation on the likelihood of WMDs in Iraq.
Millions of people from all over the world started to gather in protest against a possible invasion of Iraq, but these events did not make the echo chambers of corporate media. Instead, the echo chambers constantly rehashed what later proved to be misinformation provided by the administration. Support for Bush II exceeded 80%.
I remember an email correspondence I had with a friend from college, an extremely accomplished scientist in cancer research, who was among this 80%. I have no doubt that, by the traditional scholastic measures, this friend was smarter than me. But I also had no doubt that he was wrong in his selection and interpretation of information about Iraq. If even our country’s top scholars could be bamboozled, what did that portend? That question nagged at me constantly.
Then, in August of 2002, the Yale Farm Golf Course proposal came to town. During this public relations phase of the proposal the developers stated three objectives: 1) a world class golf course; 2) 61 luxury estates; and 3) environmentally sensitive development. The developer was Roland Betts, a former business partner with Bush II and a fellow school chum from Yale. Unlike Bush II, Betts was a Democrat. His publicist was the former Democratic 1st selectman for this town. Betts opened up a public relation phase with this former 1st selectman, thinking to win broad public acceptance before the actual application phase started.
I had doubts about the project from the start. The project straddled 780 acres of rural headwaters in both North Canaan and Norfolk. Golf courses thirst for water; they are better suited for lowland areas that water flows towards, not highland headwaters that water flows away from. People’s wells in that area might be impacted greatly. Since I worked for a nonprofit watershed organization you might think this was my main concern, but it was not. Logically, the location of the golf course did not make sense but I was not a hydrologist that could provide any proof that this was so. On the other hand, I did know quite a bit about conservation development approaches, and the developers did not appear to be serious about this particular objective.
I also knew that trickle-down economics, in its various manifestations, inevitably fail to serve the middle class. In this case the developers were alleging that an upscale development project would stimulate the economy for all. Many people automatically accept the truth to this. Then again, not many people know that resort-oriented towns turn into service sector economies with greater wealth disparity, or that high end summer homes near an urban fringe trend towards becoming high end permanent homes with permanent demands for services that outstrip tax revenues.
I felt compelled to share this knowledge by writing a couple of articles for the local newspaper, called the Norfolk Voice. Ironically I did not then, nor ever have, outright opposed the development. I maintained that developers had a right to develop their land in accordance with the regulations and approvals provided by the town, but that these developers were neither presenting what they promised in terms of a conservation development, nor would they deliver what they promised in terms of economic development good for all. In other words, I mainly attempted to clear up some misinformation.
My organization, the Housatonic Valley Association, was drawn into the process. Towards the end of 2002 I was called upon to present a rudimentary build out of the headwaters where the golf course was located, as part of a larger workshop on the pros and cons of the Yale Farm proposal. The build out did nothing to prove that the Yale Farm Golf Course should not occur, but warned that towns needed to be cautious when approaching large scale development projects for rural headwater areas.
David Tewksbury, project manager for Yale Farm, introduced himself to me after the workshop, pointing out that the opinion pieces I wrote were cynical. He explained how Yale Farm emulated a conservation approach that had been done in Vermont. I was not readily buying it, which only proved my cynicism in Mr. Tewksbury’s estimation. I also commented that our town needed affordable housing more than upscale housing, to which he stifled a laugh and declared that this project certainly would not involve affordable housing. I had made my first enemy over the Yale Farm Golf Course.
Still, I took somewhat to heart the claim that I was being cynical, and actually was impressed with how Mr. Tewksbury sought me out to talk things over. Perhaps they really believed they were pursuing a conservation development and I should not be quick to judge their intent. Perhaps they were not misinforming others so much as being misinformed themselves. I also had to keep in mind that the Yale Farm Golf Course proposal was going to draw both supporters and opponents from my town, all well-meaning in their intent. For a person that had wanted to keep a low profile and just let democracy run her course, I suspected I was about to be caught up in a storm.
In the year 2003, that storm arrived at many fronts.
Great narrative / series.