Why are Canadians speaking out brilliantly and passionately against "privatization through public private partnerships" while we in the USA appear to accept this fate without so much as a whimper? Perhaps it is because the privatization agenda is several years further advanced in Canada than in the USA and because the Canadian man or woman in the street is already staring straight into the neoliberal abyss.  Here in the USA, that abyss is seemingly invisible except to those who are actively paying attention.

I have been paying attention. When I read the appended Canadian news release this morning, I saw a clear depiction of what is happening to our own National Park System, to the recreational policies affecting public lands management in general, and indeed to the transformation of America from a once-proud nation of citizens to a marketplace controlled by corporate interests and populated with passive, unthinking, consumers.

In the days ahead, pay careful attention to what the National Park Service is saying about "public private partnerships" "outcome-based management" and "client service culture". Pay careful attention to what the US Forest Service is saying about these things. Pay attention to what city, state and federal governmental agencies are saying about them. Pay attention to what the Wall Street Journal and Libertarian Think Tanks are saying and then think back upon what you've read in the news release which follows.

We are nearer to the abyss than you may think and as we approach, we are speeding up, rather than slowing down.

Scott 

PS... be sure to check out the Imagine Ottawa website. It is a wonderful example of people pushing back and actively working forward a positive and democratic future.

The CATO Institute requires little introduction. It is an  Libertarian think-tank with a mission to privatize the federal government.

Randal O'Toole, now a Senior Fellow at CATO and the author of the Forest Service "Reform Options" pasted below, may require some short introduction. O'Toole is a former environmentalist who switched sides. O'Toole was long been known for his efforts to transform outdoor recreation into a pay to play business for the USFS based upon the charging of recreation users fees and, more recently, for his almost maniacal support of sprawl.

The CATO Institute is currently running a campaign based upon a  CATO book titled "Downsizing the Federal Government." Downsizing the Department of Agriculture is part of that campaign and O'Toole has written the section on downsizing the USDA Forest Service.

In O'Toole's "Reform Options" he offers three suggestions presented in hierarchal order.

• The first is "to allow the agency to charge fair market value for recreation and other resources."
  
  
• The second is "to revive federalism by eliminating federal forest subsidies to the states and turning portions of the national forests over to the states."
  
  
• The third and final reform is "full privatization of the national forests."
  

For those familiar with the events of the last decade, it is clear that we are already two thirds of the way to that final solution.

Scott

From an Interview with O'Toole

FC asks: Why does the establishment environmental movement embrace government solutions to environmental challenges?

Randal O'Toole Responds: That is a really hard question to answer, because it is hard to attribute motivations to other people. But I think part of the answer is that the environmental movement has been taken over by the socialists who lost power after the fall of the Soviet Union, because it became difficult to justify being a socialist any more in any realm except for the environmental realm. Polls showed that Americans were opposed to socialism except that they believed in government intervention to protect the environment. So socialists were drawn to the environmental movement and that changed the movement to its own detriment. 

Almost daily I am hearing from or about people who having paid $30, $50, $80, $95 or more for a federally issued public lands recreation pass, and who have just discovered that their pass doesn't provide the access they expected. Let me explain what's going on.

Private concessionaires are not required to accept the America the Beautiful Pass or the Golden Age Pass, Adventure Pass, Tonto Pass, Red Rock Pass, etc. for general access or use — and they have no reason to do so.  When a land management agency privatizes a recreation site, be it a picnic area, a boat launch, swimming beach, etc. by turning it over to a concessionaire, that site is no longer freely accessible to citizens or visitors. The concessionaire, being in the business of providing recreation for a profit,  will demand payment for access and will expect payment in the form of cash, check or credit card. Passes issued by the government are not accepted forms of currency.

And as profitable recreation sites are being privatized,  unprofitable recreation sites are being closed or, as the USFS prefers to say, they are simply not being opened for the season.  I've blogged on this phenomenon already twice this week and, be assured,  this trend is rapidly accelerating.

Pasted below yet another, somewhat different, illustration of what's going on. In this example, a hiker who having purchased a Tonto National Forest recreation pass for $95 discoverers that site where he wanted to hike on Tuesday was closed and off-limits between sundown on Sunday and Friday at 4:00 PM.

As outdoor recreation on our public lands is transformed from being a benefit of citizenship to being a revenue generating commodity, optimized for profitability, please understand that if a recreation site or opportunity doesn't pay, chances are it is going away.

Scott 

I'm going to keep this introduction short. The article which follows is graphic. It provides perhaps the best illustration yet of things we've been warning against for a very long time.

  For more than a decade, Wild Wilderness has made the case that recreation fees would be used to bring about the privatization and commercialization of recreational opportunities upon national forest, national parks and other public lands. With the passage of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) in late 2004, the agencies were given the green light to proceed. Today you can see the results.

Pasted below is crystal clear description of how the fee authority of FLREA is being used to privatize access to, and management of, publicly owned National Forest resources.  Read it and discover that the new "America the Beautiful Federal Recreation Lands Pass" you just purchased for $80 (or your Golden Age Pass)  isn't going to get you into nearly as many places you had thought.  Once your favorite recreation site is taken over by a concessionaire, you may discover that it is no more "public" than is Disneyland.

Scott

I can't say exactly how many of my readers forwarded to me a copy of the wonderful piece written yesterday by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Timothy Egan — but it was many. And while this excellent and important piece is right on the mark with respect to the sentiment it conveys — a sentiment that explain how under the Bush Administration our public lands are being stolen from us —  it contains a large factual error that I'd like to correct. Egan writes that as he drove through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State he observed that many of the roads were closed, trails were washed out, campgrounds were frayed and, in general,  the place was in tatters. He compared what he experience to "the forestry equivalent of a neighborhood crack house" — and on all these points Egan was correct.

Egan concludes that the land management agencies are being  run by industry lobbyists and that they are "cashing out" our publicly-owned heritage — and on this point he is as right as rain. His piece was wonderful. So where did he go wrong???

Egan erred when he blamed the cashing out of our public lands upon the miserly budgets coming from President Bush. That is only part of the problem and for some agencies, such as the Forest Service, there have been no actual budget cuts.

Yes, the President would like to cut and has even proposed deep cuts in the Forest budget, but those cuts have not happened and, as a result of recent Congressional action,  will not happen this year.  Funding for outdoor recreation and resource management at the level of individual forests, such as the Gifford Pinchot, has indeed been cut to the bone but for the US Forest Service, declining allocations are not to blame.  So what is going on?

An article I shared earlier today spoke of a " 64-percent loss in maintenance funds and a 20-percent cut in operational funding" for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Service. Local forest managers said that this funding cut caused them "to shutter 24 campgrounds, three picnic sites and related services."  Sixty-percent cuts are being reported by several forests around the nation. These are massive cuts, but they did not come from President Bush, nor did they come from Congress.

Let me repeat. The funding cut DID NOT come from either President Bush or Congress.

The Washington DC office of the US Forest Service is bleeding the recreation budget to death. The Regional Offices are ensuring that money received from above DOES NOT get to the ground and IS NOT available to maintain public recreation facilities.

Yes, it is true that the ideology of the Bush Administration is responsible for the cashing out of our American commons and yes --- there is a massive and destructive privatization agenda in play on our public lands today that is based upon the old Reagan concept of "Starving the Beast".

Yes, local forest managers on the Pinchot and on the Rogue and indeed upon all of America's National Forests are having to make do with less.

YES, the upshot will be the parting-out of our once proud tradition public lands. But the destroyers of the public lands do not all reside within the White House nor do they all serve within the Bush Administration a political appointees.

Where Egan erred is in failing to acknowledge that high-level career bureaucrats within the land management agencies, both in the Washington DC offices and within the Regional Office, are largely responsible for executing an agenda presented to them by the Bush Administration and by certain elements within the recreation industry. I call the agenda "The Corporate Takeover of Nature and the Disneyfication of the Wild" and unless stopped, "This Land is Your Land, This Land is my Land" will only be hollow lyrics from a once-popular, once relevant, song. 

Scott

 "We're going to have to do more with less until we do everything with nothing."
- Cid Morgan, USFS District Ranger, California, 2005 

The USFS is rapidly moving to privatize the operation of it's most popular, highest revenue producing, campgrounds.  Less-developed campgrounds and those incapable to producing a positive revenue stream will be closed or their seasons of operation severely curtailed. Those facilities that will be privatized will in many cases be heavily developed by the concessionaire in an effort to maximize revenues.

Nothing I've just said is new, as you will see below. What's new is that the pace of this privatization / commercialization has accelerated to the point where it is possible to see the process occurring on a almost daily basis.

Pasted below are newspaper articles published in the past two days. One is from Arkansas, the other from Georgia. They are explicit and they should serve as a warning to everyone.

Neither, however, mentions the Recreation Site Facility Master Planning Process --- the process now taking place nationwide and threatening to bring privatization, outsourcing, decommissioning, and/or shorter seasons of operation of your favorite Forest Service campground no matter where you live.

Here's the warning we offered in April 2005

If you currently hike, bike, hunt, fish, camp, float, bird, ride, climb, swim or engage in any other form of outdoor recreation on National Forest managed pubic-lands, the appended article from today's Oregonian is a MUST READ. It is more than a 'MUST READ'... it deserves ACTION.

Simply stated, opportunities to enjoy your public lands are about to be severely limited. The USFS will, in the months ahead, begin to close many of the places you now enjoy. They will be selling those resources they no longer intend to maintain. They will be privatizing those sites concessionaires wish to operate. They will be "improving" the places they choose to keep and doing so in order to maximize revenue collection and to better cater to a new customer base they hope to lure to the forests. They intend to cater to an entirely new class of forest users ... the kind that expect their entertainment pre-packaged, neatly presented and easily purchased.

The good news is that Congress is none too pleased with what the Forest Service is doing. The bad news is that the Forest Service's privatization efforts extend far beyond campgrounds and that soon enough you'll be paying a private concessionaire at a great great many publicly-owned recreation sites and facilities.

Scott

With some student/faculty exceptions, the Institute for Outdoor Recreation and Tourism at the Utah State University Extension is one of the bastions of inside the box, industrial-wreckreation, thinking. The work of many on staff contributes to the academic leg of the four-legged platform currently conspiring to transform random acts of outdoor re-creation into planned tourism consumption for fun an profit. Other legs are the land management agencies, political ideologues and  the travel-tourism / recreation industry.

Not too long ago, things were different. Before the incentives of pay-to-play warped the thinking of recreation managers and before the days of outsourcing, politically-motivated insourcing, unethical collaboration and rigged public-private partnerships sucked the democracy out of the public comment process, the US Forest Service (at least in theory) made an effort to listen to the American People and to rationally act upon what they heard.

No more. Today the FS and other agencies as often as not contract-out or use politically motivated internal entrepreneurial groups to obtain whatever justification they feel is required to execute an agenda created for them by external forces. Meaningful public input has largely been replaced with an illusion of public participation.

Pasted below is an article about an forest recreation listening session that will be held tomorrow evening at Utah State in Logan.  I have a bad feeling about this process...

Scott

Some weeks ago I ran across an item that caught my eye. It was the website of the Clayoquot Wilderness Resorts & Spa and it was unlike anything I'd ever before associated with "Wilderness"

Today I stumbled upon an article titled, "Clayoquot Resort Plans Trail Upgrades Into Strathcona Park" and my antennae twitched frenetically. The article was about a private resort's desire to spend big bucks to upgrade a wilderness trail associated with a Canadian Provincial Park. Local activists described this action  with these words - "We believe this is a first step in opening up the park to exclusive use by a private commercial interest."

Because the parks commercialization and privatization agenda is further advanced in Canada than it is here in the states, looking North provides a clear peek into the future that awaits our own National Parks and Wilderness areas.

THIS is the direction things are headed. And while this future has already arrived in Canada, it may yet be avoidable here in the USA.

Scott 

The issue of rapidly escalating National Park Service fees has recently begun to get consider media attention. 

What people have forgotten, is that less than a decade ago the big problem for the National Parks was that "people are loving them to death", or so we were told. People have forgotten that the SOLUTION proposed for the problem of over-use was to end what the fee-supporting folks at the Property and Environment Research Center called "welfare recreation" ---i.e., low cost opportunities for American taxpayers to enjoy recreation on their publicly funded public lands. The solution was to increase the price of a visit to the National Parks and other public lands sufficiently to drive people away. More particularly, the solution was to drive away the marginal income segment of the market and thus provide an improved experience for those wealthy enough to be unaffected by increased fees.

Today the BIG PR spin coming from the NPS, Department of Interior and recreation industry is the need to attract "less represented populations" to the parks.  The segment of the population targeted by this campaign is most likely comprised of people in the mid- to lower income brackets... i.e., the very people who are most likely to be dissuaded from using public lands because of new and higher fees.

 PERC and others said that higher fees would reduce visitation. Fees were increased and visitation fell. The concepts espoused by PERC and the American Recreation Coalition, which has long been a supporter of "differential pricing", worked. Yesterday's hot-button problem of loving our parks to death has been solved. Free-Market Economics drove visitors away, as any thinking person knew they would!

Today the PR message that is on everyone's tongue focuses upon trying to increase visitation by a wider segment of the public -- a segment likely to poorer and thus more heavily impacted by steep entrance fees. How are these mid- and lower income folks going to be attracted to the parks if  higher fees have been keeping them away??? The answer is frightening! It's what I've been saying all along.

The plan is to DISNEYFY the parks and make them more commercial, more alluring and more fun. The plan is to privately fund the construction and operation of new and high-profile recreation attractions and then aggressively market the parks and their new attractions.

If allowed to happen, this would be the one-two knockout combination for the parks long sought by the free-market ideologues and recreation industry buccaneers.

PERC's SOLUTION was fully documented by PERC researcher J. Bishop Grewell in a 2002 article titled "All Play and No Play: The Adverse Effect of Welfare Recreation" from 2002. Grewell's paper unabashedly explains the concept of pricing people out of the parks with higher fees.

Pasted below are two short sections from this comprehensive treatise. The full and original paper can be read at the link provided.

Scott
 

There appeared an interesting article on forest volunteerism in Sunday's Seattle-PI under the headline "Volunteers fill void in repair of hiking trails." Here is a short quote:

"Volunteers have always been part of the Forest Service, but the government is now relying on donated time to do jobs that were once solely the domain of professional crews. It is a paradigm shift for a bureaucracy that for more than a century has depended on trained staff and federal taxes to take care of the woods."

A paradigm shift is taking place and for the past decade I have attempted to expose the reality of that shift so that citizens could have some input as to whether, or not, this is a desirable shift.

Today's emphasis upon volunteerism is, I would offer, really not about filling a void as the headline implies. Volunteerism is primarily a mechanism for change. It is being used as a tool by those responsible for advancing the underlying ideological paradigm shift.

Had the public understood that an ideologically-driven paradigm shift was, in fact, being forced upon the Forest Service (and upon all branches of, and services provided by, government), many of today's volunteers might have choose NOT to facilitate the shift. They might have chosen instead to actively resist the shift and fight for the preservation of government of, by and for the people.

Volunteerism is at its roots,  a wonderful thing. Volunteerism is being used as a tool by those whose have been manipulating the dominant America paradigm and creating in its stead, an "ownership society" in which the government provides few if any public benefits and which exists largely to transfer the wealth and labor of citizens into the pockets of the wealthy and into corporate coffers.

Volunteers are doing their best to fill the void created by those who are bringing about this paradigm shift. To the extent that they fill the void, their efforts confirm the underlying belief of the privatizers that government simply is unnecessary and that government need not provide for the needs of citizens.

Personally, as much as I appreciate the work of volunteers, I wish they better appreciated what is happening and how they are being used and abused by those who are seeking to shrink, and eventually drown-in-the-tub, government.

Scott
 

Appended is a speech given earlier this year by Associate Forest Service Chief, Sally Collins in which she speaks of the increasing tight coordination developing between the USFS and the American Recreation Coalition.  It is a revealing and important document.
 
Virtually all of the messages presented in this speech (about technology, Richard Louv's book, partnerships, funding, the importance of recreation for health, etc.)  were fabricated by the recreation industry and its PR consultants. If one didn't know Sally, upon reading this speech one might easily conclude that Associate Chief Collins is little more than a ventriloquist's dummy miming the industry's lines.

Here is a short excerpt from the speech: 

   "We are facing tough budgetary times in our country for obvious reasons, mostly having to do with 9/11 and its aftermath. Many domestic programs are affected, including our recreation program. We are looking hard for the most effective means of utilizing our funds, reducing impacts on natural resources, diversifying our funding sources, and building new partnerships. None of this should be interpreted as retrenchment or retreat from providing outdoor recreation on the national forests and grasslands. I look at it as strategic repositioning. We are laying the groundwork for meeting contemporary demands, expanding recreation opportunities and benefits into the future, and shifting our program to meet the needs of the ever more diverse and technologically unique generations to come."

 
Scott

PS.... In this speech you'll read of the ARC/ NFF / Forest Service joint listening sessions. The final session will take place on April 30th in Washington DC. 

Sally Collins in on the left, ARC's President, Derrick Crandall on the right 

When you privatize the process of taking public comment, you severely limit what gets heard and permit the filtering of that which gets passed on. When you privatize democracy, you get something very different.

On April 30th (see below for details), the pro-motorized American Recreation Coalition as the lead partner and the US Forest Service as the subservient partner will be taking comment on the topic of future management of public outdoor recreation.  The event is being put on by, and in effect for, the American Recreation Coalition. The Forest Service will be along for the ride, giving the ARC greater authority and credibility.

The recommendations report will be written by the ARC and if the past predicts the future, ARC's recommendations will be faithfully executed by their subservient partner. The result will be further commercialization, privatization and motorization of the People's public lands.

Scott

 ARC President Derrick Crandall speaks at US Department of
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns

Every now and then a top-notch journalist writes an unusually good feature article for a national magazine detailing what's honestly happening with respect to federal pay-to-play recreation policy. In the current edition of FlyRod and Reel, conservationist / outdoor writer Ted Williams has done exactly that.

Pasted below is Williams' "Robbed by RAT's." The article starts by saying "You're losing more than money when you have to pay to fish public water" and goes on to explain what, exactly, we've all been losing as a result of radically shifting outdoor recreation policies.

For those unfamiliar with this issue, Robbed by RAT's is an excellent primer. For those who believe they're being good conservationists and/or citizens when they pay to play, Robbed by RAT's may cause you to question that belief. For those who already understand what is wrong with  pay to play  and wrong with how it is being executed, you're likely going to find it feels good to discover that more and more outdoor recreationists are coming to understand these issues as you already do.

Scott 

Last June, I posted an entry titled "Recreation Takeover Toolbox went live today" and did the unusual thing of prefacing it with the words "!!!THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!" 

Obviously, I thought this was unusually important. I then went on to say:

I STRONGLY encourage people who care about America's Public Lands to explore the new www.tools4outdoors.us website and to familiarize yourself with the privatization tools being used to bring about this transformation.

My introduction was followed with a news release from the American Recreation Coalition. It began with these words.

The Toolbox for the Great Outdoors Second Edition is now available online at www.tools4outdoors.us. The Toolbox is the result of cooperation between six federal agencies, ReserveAmerica and the American Recreation Coalition (ARC).

In my desire to provide a heads-up about a major new threat, I missed what was quite possibly the most important part of the story. I missed the scandalous part and I am now in a position to share a new discovery that will likely make you angry.

It turns out that the ARC's privatization toolbox, although created by and for the benefit of the commercial industry, was funded by the TAXPAYERS.  We the People paid dearly so that we could be screwed by industry.

Searching the website FederalSpending.org (a project of OMB Watch) I have discovered that since the year 2000, American taxpayers have paid the ARC more than $450,000 for its efforts. Our money was awarded in 19 separate contracts involving six federal agencies. Approximately half of this money was paid to the ARC for its creation of the Toolbox for the Great Outdoors. In addition the ARC has been awarded at least five federal grants worth, in total, more than $40,000.

It is one thing for a lobbying organization, such as the ARC, to spend it's own money in an effort to influence public policy. It is something altogether different when governmental agencies pay an lobbying organization, to advance their own anti-public lands agenda.

Pasted below is a sampling of what I have discovered and a link where full information can be found.

Scott 

You might look upon what follows here as an guest blog on the Wild Wilderness website by Linda Profaizer, ARVC President and CEO. Alternatively, you might accept it for what it is —a short excerpt from Profaizer's "President's Message" as it appears in her organization's April 2007 Newsletter.

In either case, if you continue reading, you will be treated to an insider's look at what the American Recreation Coalition has got cooking in their never-ending effort to frame and control the discussion about the management of America's National Parks, forests and other public lands.

Scott

Excerpt from the Profaizer's President's Message
At the national office, we are gearing up for the season of conventions and trade shows with our affiliated states and industry partners. It is also a time for meetings in Washington and in the past two months either I or a representative of ARVC has attended the Partners Outdoors Conference that focused this year on introducing the outdoors to urban Americans (a concept that we can embrace); the first Board meeting of the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) which again focused on increasing support for outdoor recreation via a national public relations campaign and expansion of the Wonderful Outdoor World (WOW) program...

(details follow) 

I have previously explained that:

"Next to the American Recreation Coalition, the Western States Tourism Policy Council is as well connected as any lobby organization gets when it comes influencing the management, control, pricing and access of both recreation and tourism on America's public lands."

The recreation and tourism issues that are of greatest importance to WSTPC have long been given a central location upon Wild Wilderness' radar screen. I've made a point of watching WSTPC like a hawk, and was most disappointed when, last October, they stopped posting their monthly insider updates.

Today I consider myself  fortune to have located their March 2007 Issue Bulletin posted on the Wyoming Business Council's website.

Pasted below are highlights on such topics as the President's National Parks Centennial Initiative, funding of the National Parks Tourism Office, the American Recreation Coalition's USFS listening sessions, Lyle Laverty,  Recreation Site Facility Master Planning Process, and their efforts to make Gateway Communities full partners with the land management agencies.

If you want the inside scoop... read on!

Scott

Today's Washington Post includes an article titled "Fox in the Henhouse Government," the gist of which is summarized in this short quote from that piece:

 (If your faith is more in the operations of the private sector than in the capacity of government, if you have scant commitment to the laws you are pledged to enforce, if you see government less as a trust to be administered than a force to be used for the benefit of political and ideological allies, then this kind of behavior is the inevitable result.)

Two years ago, a book was published with the title "The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threats Democracy" (by Kahn & Minnich 2005). I'd like to introduce today's Washington Post article with the following passages, quoted from this book. These come from the section titled "Tactics for Privatizer Wannabes".
 
 
PREPARATION:

First, you must undercut the people's respect for and trust in their government and public employees...

Say that the public goods, services, protection that you want to run for your profit are 'failed systems, 'broken,' 'in crisis.' Repeat as often, as unambiguously, as publicly as possible. You want people to believe that providing adequate funding, effective job training, and more incentives for public employees to do better can't possible succeed. You want people to believe that the reason provisions and protections for the public goods have problems, and problems at all, in that they are run by public agencies, staffed by public employees.

ACTION:

Meanwhile, go ahead and break those public systems. Many of the public services you want to take over were underfunded to begin with, so cut their fund even more and they'll barely be able to function. That will make the public get really mad at the people and agencies that provide those services, which is what you want. At the same time, impose costly new requirements on them. Support private, for-profit alternative, offer to reward people for using these services, and of course, do not make up for the fund this takes away from the public services. In short, starve them of money while requiring more of them.

Offer yourself as the only possible savior of what you have broken. Stress your efficient and accountability. If problems in your own operation are exposed, put more money into image advertising.

If people still refuse to believe that the public system you want to run for profit needs rescuing by your, tell then that your takeover plan is really just a responsible effort to find a better way to run public services. Float possible fix-it plans that privatize at least some aspects of the system. Back off (but only temporarily) from anything that arouses significant opposition.

Continue creating facts on the ground by privatizing whatever you can. The more little bits you get, the easier it will become to get bigger bits later.

To read how this is being applied of outdoor recreation management on Federally managed public lands, click here and read an article written in 1997 and titled "The Future of Public Lands Recreation."

Welcome to the future.

Scott

This afternoon, several federal land management agencies held a press conference, the subject of which was: "Federal Partners to Launch One-Stop Website for Recreation Reservations."

Anyone listening in would have been treated to a magic show in which top government officials performed illusions for the assembled press corps. It was not until the Q&A session was it revealed that the new recreation.gov website, which was at the center of this hoopla, was anything but new. It was NEVER revealed that this governmental website is actually the creation of TICKETMASTER corporation.

And it should almost go without saying that the truth behind today's press conference is very different than the charade performed.

If you want to read the official story about the government's new online outdoor recreation website,  you can wait until tomorrow's news is published. If, however, you want to discover the rest of the story — a story that is extremely important and not at all pretty, I've provided helpful links below.

Scott