Held Hostage???

Mr. Wiley at the Cape Vincent JLL blog has a post up asking where Richard Chandler the BP CV Wind Farm project manager and BP's lawyer John Harris are. 

In the post Wiley makes this statement...

"The Thousand Island, New York communities have been held hostage by industrial wind developers for over seven years now and have suffered from the uncertainties."

Yup! And that is because WE allow it!

Having been closely involved in this CV wind battle since 2006, sadly I would say I basically agree.

However, part of the problem is that we continue to allow ourselves to be the victims held hostage and jerked around by people like Chandler and Harris, and the political whims of the State politicians who removed our home rule on this issue.  Until we decide to form some community backbone and address this particular part of the issue we will continue to be the victims at the mercy of  these developers and politicians as they toy with our communities.

After 7 years of his whining about being held hostage by wind developers Wiley still doesn't seem to grasp the fact that the Hirschey govt. he supports thinks the very system actually holding us hostage is fair, impartial, even handed and balanced ...(their words).  And he wonders why we are held hostage and being jerked around.  That would be because we keep giving these people the tools to make us victims and jerk us around!

We have " suffered from the uncertainties " as Wiley claims, because we do everything to avoid what might actually remove those uncertainties and allow us to regain community control.

For seven years and each election cycle we have all this hoopla about industrial wind  election after election and how this is the election that is critical and will really change things, yet  nothing changes.  Actually with the State in control we are in a worse mess than we were 7 years ago since our home rule has been stripped away by Art. X , and we are still at the complete mercy of people like Chandler, Harris and BP, and we STILL refuse to address that issue which is the real root of the problem.

We are like Einstein's definition of insanity.  Each election we get sucked into the same crap of who we have to vote for...yet on the day after each election nothing has changed on the overall industrial wind  issue.  We keep doing the same thing for seven years and getting the same result...just as Wiley says...more uncertainties and we are still held hostage.

You would think we might develop a little intelligence and attempt something different.

Hirschey supporters will say..."Oh.. but we have a new zoning law and comp plan!"

Yeah...and so what?  We don't even have the home rule rights or the backbone to enforce it...so what's the point?  We make a suggestion to the state how we would like to protect our community, and then BP gets to take a shot at our new law to get the State to preempt it.  Great way to protect our community.   Not to mention our town officials can't even read or apply this new zoning correctly after the last election was all about getting a new zoning law!  This law under this system is only an dangerous illusion of control that makes us feel good.

And of course Wiley wants us to write letter after letter to the NYPSC begging for them to not make us victims of BP or some other wind developer's whims for our community.  Instead of asserting ourselves as a group of NNY communities and TELLING the State what we are going to do...Wiley wants us to beg the State for mercy.  And he wonders why there is uncertainty.  So if each election is supposed to make a critical difference this time...why are we still begging the State for mercy???  That logic doesn't ad up!

As a CV citizen who doesn't want the domination of industrial wind you better grasp the reality.  We are where we are election after election as victims, with things actually getting worse,  because we are  the problem.

We are hostages because we keep following and supporting the very system that is holding us hostage. Yet somehow we expect a different result!

That is the real insanity of what is happening in Cape Vincent and WE just keep making it worse day after day!