Burns Bkish Funeral Home

Perhaps you’re in the dark about their dirty conspiracy to steal away with our country’s most iconic, most essential, social-democratic institution.The heist is happening now, it’s happening fast, and its sole objective is to deregulate, defund, and ultimately dissolve hundreds of millions of acres of public land.The public lands — first thing to know, they’re a treasure. They’re the national forests, the national parks, the wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and more. They’re the mountains and grasslands, the deserts and tundra and swamps that together represent one of the greatest accumulations of collective wealth in the world. They’re rich in precious minerals, replete with wildlife and stunning to behold. They provide clean water, fresh air, jobs, food, healthy fun, and spiritual fulfillment to millions. You can camp, hunt, hike, fish, raft, swim, walk, wander, stargaze, make love, get lost, find privacy, and seek solace in them, free for the most part from crowds, fees, or surveillance cameras. They’re ours, they’re everyone’s. At least for now.Some want all this to end. Some want to terminate a century of public land conservation in this country by rolling back environmental laws, gutting budgets, and transferring large swaths of federal forest to the covetous mitts of right-wing local governments or private interests. Over the last five years, at least, a cohort of anti-public-lands politicians and activists across the West have been promoting a land seizure campaign that would see states like Utah and Idaho requisition most of the federal lands within their borders, thereby robbing millions of people of their claim to the public domain.These agitators have simultaneously tried to sabotage laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Antiquities Act, an 111-year-old statute that allows the executive branch to independently create national monuments and preserve public land. The Trump administration has largely supported such atavistic objectives, pushing policies to financially starve land management agencies, eliminate national monuments, and e... (Jacobin magazine)

But Montauk Shores features something other trailer parks don’t: million-dollar views — and billionaire residents.Owning a trailer at the park has become the ultimate status symbol for the tony Long Island town’s summering rich and famous, many of whom use their relatively modest mobile digs as a second pad to escape with the family or even as a glorified changing room after a long day of romping in Montauk’s waves.There’s also the indescribable cachet that comes with shabby chic.“All you own is the box of air above the land,” noted a former Montauk Shores trailer owner. “Whoever buys here is essentially buying a 24-foot-wide-by-50-foot-long box of air.”But for some deep-pocketed denizens, that’s all they want. So many wealthy people have infiltrated the trailer park that it now has its own “Billionaires’ Corner,’’ a local Realtor told The Post.“It has definitely become a thing — it’s epic,” he said.Montauk Shores wasn’t always a refuge for the rich.Originally created as an impromptu campsite with tents in the 1940s and ’50s, the trailer park eventually drew public servants — especially police and firefighters — along with some teachers and fishermen.In 1976, 152 of its residents banded together and bought the 20-acre property — with its 900 feet of shoreline at the end of Long Island — rescuing it from bankruptcy.The move made Montauk Shores the first trailer-park condo association in the state.Life was good. Blue-collar workers who wouldn’t normally be able to enjoy an expensive oceanside view got one, local surfers landed access to the gnarliest waves, and retirees searching for peace and quiet were rewarded with unspoiled coastline, with only Dick Cavett’s Tick Hall home and the late Andy Warhol’s estate far off in the distance.Helping to keep the park’s development under control was an unspoken rule: Anything new had to be wheeled in.But as improbable as it seems, the trailer park has been increasingly pulling in billionaires by the boatload.There’s Vitaminwater co-founder Darius Bikoff, hedge-fund manager Dan Loeb, film producer Karen Lauder — whos... (New York Post)