FEE DEMO UPDATE
The President's 2004 budget was published today and, not unexpectedly, it calls for permanent authorization of recreation user fees on federally managed public lands. It also requests authority to expand public-private partnerships (privatization) for the delivery of recreation and other forest-related services.
The good news is that there is little, and diminishing, support within Congress for continuing any recreation user fees program, except for National Park Service managed lands. The likelihood of Congress acting to eliminate recreation user fees programs for the USFS, USFWS and BLM has never been greater than it is today. The bad news is that Congress is not similarly disposed to halting the privatization of access to, and control of, America's great outdoors. The very bad news is that America's National Parks, in particular, face extraordinary pressures on all fronts.
My quick read of relevant sections of the President's budget suggests that the threat of recreation users fees represents a battle not yet won, and the threat of privatization/ commercialization, a battle not yet lost.
It's therefore up to every one of us to continue battling fee-demo until it is defeated and to do everything within our power to make the ever-growing threats of commercialization and privatization visible and contentious.Congress will listen, so long as we make ourselves heard.
BUSH AND THE PRIVATIZATION AGENDA
I hate to say this---but in my opinion, the "All Bush Wants is Iraqi Oil" statement is not just simplistic, it is wrong. I'd suggest that Bush wants war for a variety of issues, not the least of which is that without the specter of an enemy, Bush's Presidency would surely end in 2004.
But war (or the imminent threat thereof) is crucial for accomplishing Bush's many agendas. War is an ideal tool for transferring public wealth to corporate entities. War deprives citizens of the use of their own money and resources while repressing the general public. War drains the federal reserves without providing public benefits---and in so doing war CREATE THE NEED TO PRIVATIZE.
PRIVATIZATION is, I would suggest, the first love of the Bush Administration and promoting a privatization agenda is, I contend, as important a reason for Bush wanting war as is his vision of gaining control of Iraqi Oil.
As General Eisenhower told us:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
And as General Douglas MacArthur warned us:
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor--with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it ..."
BUSINESSES FOR WILDERNESS...AN OXYMORON?
"Business for Wilderness" (B4W) is a PEW-funded project of a trade association called "Outdoor Industry Association" (OIA) which is itself a member of the wise-use, anti-wilderness, American Recreation Coalition. Rather significantly, B4W's program director serves as OIA's representative to the ARC. The outdoor recreation industry is officially supporting more wilderness and better wilderness management... or are they?
Business for Wilderness is lending support to various wildland campaigns, but only if those campaigns seem likely to increase access for their customers, who will then buy more recreational items. It appears they may be more than willing to compromise wilderness qualities as long as it results in greater access to outdoor experiences for their customers---but do they really support preservation of WILDERNESS qualities and experiences??
B4W says, "Business for Wilderness will promote the new American land ethic that demands we BALANCE protecting special places and preserving access to recreational opportunities, and do it in a way that enhances economic growth." (emphasis added)"
The following is what B4W says in their currently-featured "Campaign of the Month" -- the Nevada Wilderness Project:
http://www.businessforwilderness.org/campaigns/
"Ensuring top-quality recreation experiences for human-powered outdoor consumers is a high priority for outdoor industry. Wild and undeveloped lands, and the special outdoor recreation experiences found there, are essential for the health and longevity of the $17.8 billion human-powered outdoor industry. Protection of the wild lands of Nevada is essential to the vitality of the recreation experiences they provide."
AND SO IS THE FOLLOWING:
http://www.businessforwilderness.org/campaigns/#know
"Know Your Customers! We strongly recommend that you always evaluate the priorities and beliefs of your customers in deciding whether to engage your business in a conservation campaign. For example, mountain biking is not allowed in designated Wilderness areas and many mountain bikers are concerned that new Wilderness
designations will permanently close popular trails. Business for
Wilderness encourages and applauds collaboration between the mountain biking and conservation communities who continue to work together to protect public lands. For more information on the mountain biking community's position on Wilderness, visit IMBA."
FINALLY...WHERE IS THE INDIGNATION?
From: Lance Olsen
Privatization of the national parks will be a subsidized one. The companies will make money not for their capitalist ingenuity but because they know that Bush will pay them with taxpayer dollars. This is more socialism than capitalism. This is use of tax dollars for social experiments, social engineering.
All you say is true---and there's more. The biggest development promoting National Park privatization to have occurred in recent years was not the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program passed in '96. That was, perhaps the second most important development.
The biggest development was the National Parks Concession Reform Act of '98 passed during the Clinton era with the support of National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).
NPCA has now, so it appears, had second thoughts about what they allowed to happen. Today NPCA acknowledges that many of their worst fears about that Concession's legislation have come to fruition. They knew from the start that the bill was flawed---but they saw it as a cup half full, as a good start and as a work in progress. Only a handful of grassroots groups declared that legislation to be horrendous and denounced it without reservation.
It's important for environmental activist to remember that privatization of the National Parks agenda pre-dates Bush and was already moving forward under Clinton/Gore with the cooperation of the largest and most influential environmental "watchdog" organization(s) in the USA.
The fact that the biggest such National Park Service watchdog organization, NPCA, gets substantial funding from the biggest NPS-concessionaire in America (Delaware North Corporations) is sometimes lost on people, as is the fact that NPCA's other corporate funding comes from such sources as Georgia Pacific, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, ADM, The Coca-Cola Company, Anheuser-Busch Companies, Bank of America, etc...
http://www.npca.org/support_npca/corporate_support.asp
The fact that NPCA's president, Tom Kiernan, served on Bush's Interior Transition team (along side of PERC's Terry Anderson---"Mr. Privatization")is sometimes also long on folks.
Fortunately, these facts were NOT lost upon Jeffrey St. Clair who, in January '01, posted the message I have appended. Jeff identified what he called "sell out greens" .... though he, unfortunately, failed to similarly identify and fully expose the very most obvious and obviously-evil privatization /anti environmental members of Bush's team. I suspect Jeff assumed we all knew who those villains were and what they wanted.
First on the list is Terry Anderson of Political Economy Research Center. Anyone wanting to learn more about the driving force behind Bush's privatization of the parks agenda would do well to start at the top of the list with Mr. Anderson.
Anderson's #1 agenda item is privatization--privatization of anything and everything. Putting America's public lands on a cash-carry basis (and especially putting recreation on a cash-carry basis through the widespread imposition of user-fees) is only his #2 agenda item. His second agenda item relates directly to the first---ie., user fees are simply a tool of privatization.
Bush is working feverishly to implement both of Mr. Anderson's agenda items. But let's not forget---those agenda items are shared by Democrats such as Clinton/Gore/Lieberman/ Gephardt etc. and by organizations believed by some to be "environmental watchdogs"!
Let's never forget that though fee-demo was born of Ronald Reagan's President's Commission on Americans Outdoors in '88, it was first introduced as legislation by New Mexico's Pete Dominici in '92 and later by Utah's Jim Hansen in '96. And fee-demo was always one of Al Gore's favorite "reinvention" programs. Let's not forget that the National Parks Concessions Reform Act of '98 was supported by Clinton/Gore and by much of the name-brand environmental community!
WHERE IS THE INDIGNATION from within the grassroots environmental community???
WHY DO WE PERMIT corporate-lapdog "watch-dog" groups to speak for the grassroots environmental community when these organizations have been bought and paid for by the very interests they are supposed to be watch-dogging??
WHY DO WE ACCEPT as members of our community, persons or organizations listed on Bush's transition team? Is there one person on that list who deserves our support??? Are we really on the same team working for the same goals???
AND WHY HAVE SOME MANY FORGOTTEN or perhaps ignored the warning offered by Michael Frome at the 2000 Pacific NW Wilderness conference. Frome said for all of us to hear....
"These and other national environmental organizations, I fear, have grown away from the grassroots to mirror the foxes they had been chasing. They seem to me to have turned tame, corporate and compromising, into raging moderates replacing activism with pragmatic politics, and a willingness to settle for paper victories.
"It grieves me deeply to read a statement by a Wilderness Society representative calling the new management plan for Yosemite National Park 'an elegant balance between park protection and visitor use and enjoyment.' It sickens me when this plan clearly would turn Yosemite Valley into a pricey crowded commercial resort benefiting above all the park concessionaire, the multinational Delaware North, better known for its facilities at race tracks and baseball parks."
The Corporate Takeover of America's National Parks could easily become President Bush's crowning public lands "environmental" achievement. If he accomplishes what he sets out to do, all but a few cynics will believe he saved and restored our nation's Crown Jewels---the corporate media will, no doubt, ensure that his efforts are given the correct spin as will the corporate greens!
If Bush accomplishes what he sets out to do, which is nothing less than "The Malling of the National Parks", we will have allowed the private sector to escape with a public treasure of incalculable value---a treasure we, as Americans, currently own and stand poised to lose.
Let's not allow that to happen.
