Privatization of Sandy Hook National Park

Quoted from appended article:

[... conservationists have questioned whether reuse of the historic Fort Hancock structures for commercial uses including a restaurant, pub, conference center and office space would be appropriate. ]

When the Presidio National Park commercialization / privatization demonstration was launched a few short years ago .... the big-green environmental community not only cheered for the developer --- they grabbed a big piece of the action for themselves. http://www.sfbg.com/News/32/02/Features/intro.html

Today, it is difficult to find any environmentalist (including those who helped the Presidio project happen), who will not decry that "demonstration" as an egregious attack upon the integrity of the National Park system at best, or as a crime against nature, at worst.

Today I learned of a new attack upon the National Park system that threatens to be every bit as a horrendous as the Presidio fiasco.  What we are looking at is a 90 million dollar private, commercial, development within a National Park. And --- as far as I am aware --- none of the National Enviro groups have yet mounted a campaign to stop it !!!

It is through these private-development schemes that George Bush and Gale Norton intend to "fix" the National Park System. Bush, Norton and NPS Director Fran Mainella will, unless actively opposed, parcel out our shared heritage bit by bit and make it available to developers and to other commercial private interests.

WHO WILL STOP THEM!!??

Scott

PS... I've been contacted by New Jersey grassroots activists opposing this development. If you've suggestions, contacts, or ideas that will help them, please contact me ASAP. Thanks. 

The Privatization of America's Great Outdoors has become a top priority within the Bush administration. And for this reason, the passage of permanent Fee-Demo authorization coupled with the authorization of a "Charter Forest Pilot Demonstration Program" were recently listed by Undersecretary Mark Rey as amongst the President's highest USFS legislative priorities.

Unfortunately, the general public and even some within the activist community have yet to aggressively oppose this monstrous threat. Unfortunately, when I speak of the USFS and National Park Service as using fee-demo to  "Sell the Sunset", there are still some who believe I'm exaggerating.

Fortunately, no one need take my word for it. Fortunately President Bush's own public lands policy advisor,  Terry L. Anderson, has explained the reality of the situation far more clearly than I could ever do.

Pasted below is Mr. Anderson's vision for how America's Public Lands would/will be managed once they are privatized.

But understand that Private/Charter Forests can only work when coupled with recreation user fees. To see the result, please read on. To stop this madness, please help us defeat fee-demo.

Scott

Quoted from appended article:

 ["If you make a space great enough, and you have events that are basically open to the public and you get paid for them, which takes care of all the flowers and the maintenance and the signs - that's a great deal," Biederman said.]

Secretary Gale Norton and President George W. Bush do not speak of "privatization" when referring to programs such as Charter Forests or Rec Fee Demo. They prefer to use the less provocative phrase, "private-public partnership".

But let there be not doubt, what they are speaking of is PRIVATIZATION precisely as the following article speaks of PRIVATIZATION.

All across this nation, the American People are being asked to trade our common heritage in exchange for a few dollars that can be spend upon pretty flowers or clean toilets.  We are being offered the same raw deal the Native Americans of New York City received so long ago.

If ever you doubted that fee-demo was about the commercialization and privatization of America's public lands, the following article is likely to help you accept the direct connection. To learn more, please visit www.wildwilderness.org/wi/privatize.htm

Scott
 

Quoted from excerpted article below:

Given the response of private parks to consumer preference, what kind of parks would consumers prefer and be willing to pay for? Some newly privatized parks, particularly those in or near urban areas, would undoubtedly be redeveloped for mass recreation. Some urban parks might even cease to be parks at all because recreationists might not be willing to pay enough to bid away the land from alternative uses.

President Bush, his management team and Congress have embarked upon a public lands privatization agenda, the likes of which we have not seen at anytime in America's history. It makes the privatization efforts of President Reagan and James Watt pale in comparison.

Sadly, the details of this agenda are known to few other than those who are actually directing the transition from public ownership to privatization.

Pasted below is a short excerpt from a lengthy and detailed Cato Institute report on public land privatization. What I have provided gives only the basic nuts and bolt of how to use Recreation User Fees as a first step in the processes of transferring management control from public to private hands.

For those who think Fee-Demo should be "fixed" --- please think again. Fee-Demo can certainly be "improved upon" --- but any attempt to do so without fully understanding the reasons for which fee-demo was created will serve no purpose other than to facilitate the privatization/ commercialization agenda detailed in this Cato Report.

Scott

To learn more, click here.

Delaware North Companies just took another major step toward becoming the dominant player in managing America's National Parks when it acquired the Yellowstone NP concessions contract.

Delaware North's President, Jeremy M. Jacobs, is a member of the American Recreation Coalition's Recreation Roundtable . The Recreation Roundtable is to recreation management of public lands within the USA as the World Economic Forum (and it's member corporations) that is meeting in New York City today is to controlling the World's economic agenda.

The 1998 National Park "reform" bill that has made it possible for Delaware North to snap up one National Park concession contract after another,  was sponsored by ARC, the Recreation Roundtable and it's member companies.. (worth reading!)

That ARC-inspired reform bill was supported by the watchdog group, National Park Conservation Association.

NPCA is, in turn, financially supported by Delaware North.

And so, the circle of influence is completed.  In fact, one might say that Pay-to-Play and the free-market have been, once again,  proved to work exactly as intended.

Scott

Pasted below is the very latest from Free-Marketeer, John Baden on the Charter Forests issue. And here's a short quote from his column:

 Sincere Greens will support and monitor this policy innovation. It has the potential of addressing the problems they've identified.

To whom is Baden referring when he speaks of "Sincere Greens"?

Is Baden referring to just his few bono-fide wise-use fellow travelers -- such as Terry Anderson, Don Leal, Randall O'Toole, Dan Kemmis and the like?? Or is Baden suggesting that there are genuine environmentalists who will support President Bush's Charter Forest, privatization, madness.

If so ... then WHO are these groups? Who in the environmental community is prepared to get behind Gale Norton and Mark Rey and sell out America's public lands?    Who want to be first in line?

Scott

The article I shared yesterday about inmates being able to buy their way onto a prison workcrew generated a fair few comments --one of which is pasted below. The writer of this comment makes an important connection between pay-to-play and a rarely-considered potential downside of volunteerism.

When it comes to volunteerism on public lands, my chief concern is that volunteerism is simply another tool used and abused by those special interests seeking special/enhanced access. But perhaps, as the writer of the following comment points out, there is an even more significant downside.

No matter which of us is correct, it is important to know that the American Recreation Coalition is promoting volunteerism as vigorously as they are promoting recreation user fees and that Americas federal land managers have bought into BOTH of these privatization mechanisms, hook, line and sinker.

Scott 

Quoted from article:

[... for the cost of a latte, criminals can stay out of jail but still do their time, communities are kept clean and the sheriff finally can afford to purchase Ferrall a new set of wheels.]

With a little imagination, these days there appears to be no limit to what kind of user fees some people can dream up. The following example has got to be one of the most imaginative.

You know how the recreation industry and the Forest Service likes to say that 'for the cost of a movie and popcorn, a family can walk on public lands or view the sunset'??? --- Well for just the cost of a latte, a low-risk criminal can now BUY his way onto a prison work crew.

What a deal!    What lunacy!!!

The user-fee genie must be forced back into its bottle before things spiral out of control, completely!

Scott 

 It seems to defy logic: San Francisco is, by many accounts, the cradle of the modern environmental movement, a place that probably has more environmental organizations and activists than any other city in the nation. So how did San Francisco become the place where private interests first managed to take control of a national park? And why did San Francisco-based nonprofits and foundations this year help promote the worst pro-nuclear sellout in decades?

So began a truly eye-opening investigative series that appeared some years ago in the San Francisco Bay Guardian -- a series that not only asked important questions, but offered seemly enlightened, and thought provoking, answers. It is a series that, IF correct in it's assignment of blame, could go a long way to explaining why many of the Big-Green organizations seem to be focused upon agendas than are radically different to those being pursued by the environmental grassroots.

By way of EXAMPLE, please consider the fee-demo issue which I know the best and am qualified to speak upon. But consider that what I am saying/asking is equally applicable to issues such as globalization, free-trade, etc.

This SF Bay Guardian series quite possibly explains why the most- corporatized of Big-Green organizations steered clear of the recreation fee-demonstration issue after groups such as Wild Wilderness, the Sierra Club, and American Lands Alliance defined that issue as "the recreation industry's attempt to Commercialize, Privatize and Motorize recreation opportunities on America's public lands."

The explanation offered in the Bay Guardian series is remarkably simple. It suggests that major environmental funders have set tight limits upon the issues their grant recipients may, and may not, work. And while several of the organizations named below are engaged in important work upon motorized recreation issues, perhaps they will not (or can not) get involved with the fee-demo issue because to do so would mean aggressively opposing private-sector "Commercialization" and "Privatization". The Bay Guardian series says that "privatization" is an issue that the funders have placed OFF-LIMITS to their grant recipients and the article specifically shows how these Big-Green organizations have promoted the privatization of public lands and resources.... including the privatization of a National Park.

Could this concept of 'funder-control' explain why a number of big-green organizations have been not merely sitting on the sidelines but have been actively SUPPORTING the 'Commercialization and Privatization of public lands' agenda?  (examples of this agenda, in addition to fee-demo,  include the Merced River Plan, the Yosemite Valley Plan, the Canyon Forest Village Plan, etc.)

It seems that, as often than not, when my organization joins an appeal, an Amicus, or a lawsuit brought upon a federal agency by really great environmental organizations - there are usually one or more  Big Green organizations sitting on the opposite side of table opposing us and supporting the agency or supporting the private sector. I've not figured out why this is happening, but I've seen it happen so frequently and it has interfered with my own work to the extent that I've been forced to seek answers.

What's going on? I want your input.

Scott

PS.... the link below will get you into the series. There are 5-6 articles and ALL are worth reading. 

Pasted below is the final language related to fee-demo recently passed in the Interior Appropriations Bill HR 2217 plus the relevant language from the Conference Report. There is an unexpected zinger in the conference report that I'd missed until a fellow activist brought it to my attention this morning.

You might want to read the short Conference Report, paying special attention to the explicit instructions to implement the fee-demo program "work(ing) closely with local communities and the recreational industry..."

In this language it should be recognized that "the recreation industry" obviously refers to the American Recreation Coalition.  "Local communities" equally obviously refers to the National Association of Gateway Communities --- a newly-formed tourism/business-oriented special-interest group that has extremely close ties to both the American Recreation Coalition and to the BlueRibbon Coalition. The interests of NAGC are primarily to commercialize Gateway Communities and to provide enhanced private management control of neighboring public lands. Keeping SNOWMOBILES in Yellowstone National Park is one of their primary stated objectives. Making fee-demo permanent is a second of their stated objectives and passing ARC's absolutely atrocious National Recreation Lakes program is yet another of their objectives.

It should also be pointed out that the ARC/Norton/Rey cabal have every intention of introducing permanent fee-demo legislation long before the most recent two year extension of this program expires.

Scott

Do California's State Parks really need a "Brand Identity" --- especially one provided for they by Jeep? And is the following article really about HELPING California's Parks or is it about a $2.5 million dollar advertising campaign for a brand of SUV/off-road vehicles --- a campaign wherein Jeep gets to promote itself (and off-roading?) at the expense of the good name of California's State Parks?

Notice that this is referred to as a "pilot" marketing project.  Presumable if this pilot program is successful, other similar projects will follows. With fee-demo, the promoters of that scheme called it a "demonstration" project.    ---   Same thing!

Is this the right thing for California's State Parks to be doing?

And what do you think of Jeep as the official SUV of Earth Day 2002?

Scott 

The following was in yesterday's Duluth paper. I believe it has very direct ties to the soon to be introduced Radanovich Gateway Community Bill. I expect that the implications of things stated in this article will apply to all National Parks.... things such as establishing "quasi-governmental" local board to have input on park management.  (Note, Voyageurs is the backyard of International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association. ISMA President, Ed Klim, has become a lead spokesman for the motorized rights community. I think there is a direct link between Klim and the events in Voyageurs and with the Radanovich bill itself.).

It is disappointing to see yet another Democratic Senator lining up on the wrong side of the industrial recreation/tourism issue.

... and this will also be an interesting first test for Fran Mainella.

Scott

When the Baca Ranch was recently purchased by the people of America, there never was any secret that the ranch, once publicly owned, would be required to pay it's way. That was the deal. And so there never was any doubt that this would become a public property managed upon an entirely new paradigm.

It's a new paradigm, all right, but it's unlikely to apply uniquely to this one property for very long. In fact, the quasi-public, quasi-commercial Baca Ranch is likely to become the very model for future management of many "public" lands.

And, for now, .... it's playing to a Sell Out crowd.

Scott

As quoted in the following article from Saturday's Salt Lake Tribune, Interior Secretary Norton is encouraging American's to become "self-motivated stewards of the land". She ( just like Senator Slade Gorton who was the most recent legislative sponsor of the American Recreation Coalition's "Take Pride in America" volunteer initiative) .... is promoting "volunteerism" as the solution to public lands management.

And what a terrible solution volunteerism will prove to be...

Gale Norton's concept of partnerships and volunteerism is simple. Whoever brings the most money and labor to the table will get to control/ dictate/ privatize the use of the public lands.

If you are, for example, an ATV club and you would like to build a hundred miles of new recreation  trails and have lined up funding from private sources and/or the Federal Highway Department  -- and if you also agree to then pay recreation fees for the use of those new trails ---  then, by golly, you are the kind of "steward" Norton wants to do business with.

In this case Norton will say: "BUILD whatever infrastructure you want  -- partner!"

If, on the other hand, you are a wilderness advocate who wants no new development and wants only to keep public lands wild and free, then you have NOTHING TO OFFER.

That being the case, you will get NOTHING and the lands you seek to protect/ preserve  will be offered to more highly motivated stewards.

Call it "compassionate conservatism", "free-market environmentalism" or whatever you wish ---- but the scenario I've just described is how the Bush Administration will PERVERT the concept of volunteerism and turn it into a tool for privatizing the management control of America's public lands.

Scott

Quoted from appended Denver Post Article....

   "While differences remain between the present Bush plan and the wish list that national-park-oriented environmentalists have regarding park issues, there's still plenty of time to craft compromises, (NPCA's) Voorhees said. "

When NPCA is allowed to represent the American People and to craft compromises with Gale Norton and President Bush --- it will be the national parks, the environment, the environmental movement and the general public who will lose. It will be only the park concessionaires, the Bush Administration and NPCA itself who will win.

NPCA's Phil Voorhees needs to look beyond and behind the money that Bush is offering. Five billion dollars spent unwisely (as the President proposes) can build a lot of inappropriate infrastructure and can do an enormous amount of harm. The damage done by allowing further commercialization and privatization of the National Parks will be of incalculable magnitude and will be virtually irreversible. And one mustn't forget, the money that Bush intends to use is coming mainly from increased user fees and royalties from off-shore drilling. The money is absolutely dependent upon packing more paying customers into the parks and upon continued drilling the coastal shelf. And that, of course, is what this initiative is all about!

NPCA is wrong when it continues to support fee-demo. NPCA is wrong when it gives the President's proposal the extremely GENEROUS Grade of "D".   NPCA's idea of compromise is to improve the current proposal to the point where they can give it a "C" and call it a win-win.....

If that is allowed to happen, all interests other than the very special-interests of a few "key players" will lose.

Bush's Initiative is a lose-lose proposition. It proposes using increased user-fees and money from off-shore oil drilling to turn America's Crown Jewels into Outdoor Disneylands.

Scott

Pasted below is an unusually good article that speaks of the state of America's National Park System and of George W. Bush's proposal to supposedly "FIX" it. It is heartening to see the environmental community unified in its belief that the President's Initiative is all "Smoke and Mirrors".

There is one point of view expressed in this article that I ask you to take special note of. It is the privatization position expressed by George Bush Senior's Director of the NPS, James M. Ridenour.

You might also check out the Ridenour - American Recreation Coalition connection. 

... and this most informative piece titled: "Inadequate Funding Facing the National Park Service and the Impact of the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program." http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~mamitche/Hewlett%20Paper%20Page.html

... or read more of Ridenour's views about privatization at: http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/ocm/tips/famfoc09.htm

.... and finally, I ask you to PLEASE read the Partnership contract(s?) James Ridenour has with the National Park System. Info is appended at the end of this message.

 The following article states: "Even Ridenour acknowledged the position was "extreme and controversial," but said the time for extreme measures had come."

And that should serve as a WARNING to one and to all!

President Bush's National Park Initiative is a fraud. It it is but a prelude to privatization of the management control of the National Park System.

So please pay attention to what Ridenour is saying, because President Bush has been listening attentively to Ridenour ever since George's daddy was
President.

Scott

The Idaho Mountain Express has, once again, hit a Grand Slam Home Run with the following Editorial titled:  "Forests for Fat Cats?"

The editorial says "Lawmakers and the U.S. Forest Service should re-think this greed ..." and I agree whole heartedly.

However, having allowed the public-land-management free-market-genie out of the bottle,  it is going take an heck of a lot of dedicated hard work to coax/force it back in.... especially when there are folks such as Gale Norton, Terry Anderson, Derrick Crandall and Randal O'Toole feeding this genie steroids by the bucketful.

Scott

PS...For those unfamiliar with the "Fair-market value" issue,
here is an extremely helpful link.

You might want to have a look at the following recent announcement from the Federal Register. It is obviously directly related to the ongoing flap over the NPS/Diversa agreement regarding the commercial value of micro-organisms extracted from Yellowstone NP hot springs/pools.

I fear that this could easily become yet another example of how, by allowing local federal land managers to KEEP fees/commissions generated from the use/privatization of public resources, that these managers will become even more motivated to enter into such agreements.... and thus privatize even larger portions of the commonweal.

Some would see this a beneficial and speak of it in terms such as "cost recovery" or extracting "public benefit" from private companies. Others I expect, will see it differently.

Scott 

Seems as though the National Park Foundation has recently become quite
interested in studying (and now implementing) National Park fees of all
kinds (see below).

Scott

(please see additional comments after quoted material)

I recently made the that case that Fran Mainella would be a dreadful Director of the National Park Service. I pointed to her many connections with the American Recreation Coalition and to her support of public-private partnerships and her support of the construction of inappropriate commercial infrastructure within the Florida State Parks System (which she currently oversees). I suggested Ms. Mainella was guilty through association with ARC as well as guilty through her past actions. Some environmentalists found my "guilt by association" arguments a stretch and rallied behind Ms. Mainella in support.

Pasted below is a recent Press Release in which Secretary Gale Norton rallies behind Ms. Mainella saying she "will be invaluable in carrying out the President's commitment to restoration of our national parks."

So...getting back to "guilt by association"  ---

---We know that the President has NO commitment to restoring the National Parks. We know that his National Park Initiative is a dreadful scam intended to promote additional infrastructure development and privatization. We know that Bush intends to fund his initiative with increased User-Fees (authorized under the authority of fee-demo) and through off-shore drilling royalties. And we know that Ms. Mainella has a proven record of being directly tied to the American Recreation Coalition and to their commercial interests.

This being the case, can there be any doubt that Ms. Mainella's job will be to  facilitate the Corporate Takeover of Nature and the Disneyfication of the Wild?

I think not.

Scott