Posted on 06/23/2005 10:40:12 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Last year Tom Brokaw bought a Montana "dude ranch" with several others, including Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, actor Michael Keaton, one of the other partners, revealed on Wednesday's Late Show with David Letterman. The February issue of Sunset magazine reported the purchase and how the buyers turned the ranch into a private fishing camp, but didn't mention Rubin's involvement: "Last spring...an out-of-state partnership including former anchorman Tom Brokaw and actor Michael Keaton purchased a 640-acre ranch for a reported $8 million, creating a private hunting and fishing preserve."
Back on the May 12, 1999 NBC Nightly News, the day Rubin resigned from his Treasury post, Tom Brokaw praised Rubin, telling viewers he "is going back to private life after quietly and very skillfully positioning the government to help fuel these extraordinarily good times."
On Wednesday's Late Show, Michael Keaton, a star of the new movie for kids, Herbie: Fully Loaded, brought up fishing and that prompted David Letterman to ask: "Recently, I've heard from Tom Brokaw, that you and Tom purchased a fishing camp."
Michael Keaton: "Yeah."
Letterman: "Now, what is that? Is that on the up and up?"
Keaton: "Yeah, yeah. It's a friend of our's, Skip Herman, and Tom and Robert Rubin, actually, who was in the Clinton administration, Secretary of the Treasury. And, of course, you know, we were smart enough to, like, make him, like, you know, like, groundskeeper, instead of taking care of the money. Hey, Robert, you mow the lawn or something. Shouldn't I take care of the money? No, Tom will do that, don't worry about it!"
Letterman: "What goes on there? What happens there?"
Keaton: "Oh, I could never tell you about that."
Letterman: "I mean, you guys get together, like once a week-"
Keaton: "No, no, what we did, it was more to preserve it than anything. It was an old dude ranch that had been in the family -- it's right up the valley from me -- and, you know, the guy would let us fish there after the dudes had gone, you know -- I know-" (cut off by audience laughter)
Letterman: "After the dudes had gone."
Keaton: "So we bought it, just really to save it. It's a really pristine section of the river, and a beautiful section. We just all went together to buy it. It's really beautiful."
Letterman: "And you're not running around snapping each other with towels."
Keaton: "Well, yeah, I mean, that happens. (Audience laughter) Yeah, yeah, we have a sign, like an old rickety sign that says, 'no girls!'" (laughter)
(The MRC's Brian Boyd corrected the closed-captioning against the video of the June 22 Late Show.)
To see where this ranch is located and if anyone had reported this Brokaw-Rubin venture, I performed some Nexis searches and came up with only one article, in Sunset magazine, which reported the 2004 transaction for the ranch in the area of Big Timber, Montana. (Letterman also owns property in Montana.) The article cited Brokaw and Keaton, but not Rubin.
An excerpt from the story in the February edition of Sunset magazine, "Home on the range: Meet Montana ranching families want to raise healthier beef for you -- and save their way of life," by Jeff Phillips:
The town of Big Timber, once the region's largest wool producer, today has only 1,700 residents, but Montana State University Extension agent Marc King, who works with both farmers and government agencies in Sweet Grass County, says the face of that population is starting to change. "Most every ranch in this county has been in the family for at least three or four generations," explains King, "but as those families are forced to sell, new owners are taking the land out of production."
Last spring, for example, an out-of-state partnership including former anchorman Tom Brokaw and actor Michael Keaton purchased a 640-acre ranch for a reported $8 million, creating a private hunting and fishing preserve. Members of that partnership now own at least 12,000 acres of ranchland in the heart of the region.
END of Excerpt
The article is posted online, but you'll need to be an AOL member or pay to read it: www.sunset.com
In a later letter to the magazine, Brokaw corrected the price to $7 million.
No, they all come from somewhere else. New York mostly, but also the proverbial town in the Mid West. A few "Hollywood types" are native to CA, darn few. And the majority of them are the kids of transplants from the East. The rest are from other parts of the country.
Ted Turner is not from CA, neither is Brokaw, Gibson, Rubin, Redford, the list goes on and on. California was a nice Western state until the East moved West.
They may be from somewhere else, however the elitist hollywood culture that they embraced is obvious.
Guess they've cashed in on their ill gotten gains.
All the people who lost their life savings thanks to Rubin's chicanery as Secretary of the Treasury.
I never could watch Brokaw. I always thought he was a phony.
I have cancelled my newspaper subscriptions too.
Before I got a computer I relied on the weekly issue of Washington Times.
You did good.
Reminds me of a South Park episode:
Robert Redford: This is perfect. Why didn't we think of it sooner? This town still has some charm left, not the mess we turned Park City into.
Phyllis: Forgive me for being observant, but, won't we just end up doing the same thing to this town?
Robert Redford: Yes. And the town after, and the town after that. Like termites, we will move this film festival from town to town until we have used it up. And then move on, until every quiet mountain town is like Los Angeles.
Phyllis: Why? Why would we do such a thing?
Robert Redford: Because we have to live in L.A. And if we can't live in quiet, simple, peaceful mountain towns, then nobody will! [Laughs maniacally] Waitwaitwait. Zoom in to a close-up of my face when I do that. Ready? Then NOBODY will!
Developers reap benefits at expense of governments
By Allen G. Breed and Martha Mendoza ASSOCIATED PRESS April 4, 2004
Millions of dollars in property tax breaks intended to preserve farmland are going instead to companies that bulldoze farms to build housing subdivisions, malls and industrial parks, an Associated Press investigation has found......
In most states, the tax breaks date to the 1950s and '60s, when lawmakers became alarmed at the rate at which farmland was disappearing under concrete and asphalt.
But loopholes in the laws are producing unintended, though perfectly legal, consequences.
Here's what's happening: A developer buys land with the intention of building on it. During the years when he readies the property for construction – preparing architectural plans, acquiring financing and permits, even building roads and laying water pipe – he runs some cows or cuts some hay. Then he claims the tax break. Because of the loopholes, often even a pretense of farming can be enough to qualify.
Usually, the tax break ends only after construction of buildings begins; sometimes, it doesn't even stop then.
In California, which has more stringent requirements for its land preservation laws than most other states, pop star Michael Jackson saved more than $1 million in property taxes on his Neverland Ranch by claiming the land conservation tax break.
Every state offers some type of tax incentive to protect land from development.
Land Trusts, Members of Congress, Big Industry Testify Exclusively
Congress Holds Stacked Hearing on Conservation Tax Credits Big Capital Gains Tax Break would Shift Private Land and Conservation Easements to Land Trusts and Government
By Carol W. LaGrasse There was no chance to be heard. The House Ways and Means Committee's Select Revenue Measures Committee held an advocates-only oversight hearing on April 29 to "scrutinize" the Bush Administration's proposal to "encourage conservation" by granting a fifty percent reduction in the capitol gains tax if a landowner sells land or conservation easements to the government or a non-profit land trust.........
Well I think the land should be used for a public housing project, a homeless shelter and a drug rehabilition center. The fresh air would be good for these poor people.
How could that be? The American people once believe every lie that Tom Brokaw told them in his popular SD accent.
And the leftist media elites just loved Rubin too.
is this the same Tom Brokaw who used to host a US TeeVee show back 20th century? I thought he was dead.
You would not want to be Ted Turner.
He's is miserable.
OK, I read it your post #13 and it read:
"..Hollywood types are Kalifornians,.."
These "Hollywood types" come from New York City and congregate around movie town. California was a Live and Let Live state until these freaks came from back East and ruined it. The Hollywood culture, as you call it, they brought with them from New York.
How many of the Hollywood types that are buying up the grand ranches in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakota's are native Californians?
Hollywood culture has more to do with New York City culture, even though Hollywood is geographically located in California, than it does with original California Western culture. Hollywood is merely NYC with better weather. Your presumption that California and Hollywood are equivalent is the same as my assuming that you're an "Abo" just because you're an "Aussie".
Birds of a feather.....
Sorry mate.. somehow I couldn't agree with that statement.. I have worked both in NYC and LA. Your observation is off the mark.
But then yours is not spot on as well, We're all entitled to our opinions based upon our perceptions, real or imagined. If all California is like Hollywood to you, well then, keep that thought. You're welcome to it.
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