Last summer, the American Recreation Coalition was pushing hard in support of a what was universally denounced as a radical, anti-parks, pro-motorized-wreckreation rewrite of the National Park policies. ARC's intense lobbying caught the attention of the national media including Vanity Fair and the New York Times which, on June 10, editorialized as follows:

 [What's most worrying about this last-minute lobbying - besides the fact that recreation seems limited to activities involving an internal combustion engine - is the suggestion, put forward by the American Recreation Coalition, that the Park Service revise the management policy regularly. There is only one reason for a suggestion like that: to give "recreation leaders" a regular chance to pressure the park system for increased motorized vehicle access.]

One might expect that with all of that bad press, ARC's  political wings would have been clipped and the threat they pose to the National Park System would be much reduced. Almost nothing could be further from the truth.

In the past 6 months, ARC has re-worked their message and is continuing to push the same basic agenda they have pushed for more than two decades.  Whereas their old, classic wise-use, message ran into a massive roadblock, their new healthy-kids message is gaining almost unbelievable traction.

In February, ARC's President, Derrick Crandall, met with President Bush,  Interior Secretary Kempthorne and NPS Director Bomar. One month later Crandall and several top-level recreation industry executives met again with Secretary Kempthorne, presumably to follow up on the previous meeting and to nail down loose ends.

Pasted below is a News Release issued today by the ARC and here's an excerpt. If you didn't know what the ARC is, what they seek to accomplish and who they represent, one could almost read this and think that ARC was a friend of the parks.  Nothing, absolutely nothing at all,  could be further from the truth.

 [American Recreation Coalition (ARC) President Derrick Crandall said that ARC will continue to work vigorously with its recreation community partners and the National Park Service to develop strategies for reversing the continuing decline. "The issue isn't numbers of visitors -- it is that the national park system has the potential to provide more Americans with more benefits and more memories while still being protected for future enjoyment," said Crandall.]

Scott 

Time Magazine said last June "the Kiwi is becoming the canary in the coal mine of the new global economic order."

Quoted from appended article from today's New Zealand press:

[In New Zealand there was "an ingrained social expectation that access to the public conservation land will be provided free of charge", and that was backed by legislation banning park-access fees.]

In the following article, the government rhetoric and/or lies will seem very familiar to those who've been following the user-fees issue in this country.

Following the article, it a stark assessment of how the New Zealand canary (aka, the Kiwi) has been fairing.

Simply stated, the creation of a free-market based "ownership society" dictates that every good, every service and every thing (tangible or intangible) which can possibly be valued in monetary terms must be valued in those terms. Long ingrained social expectations and the rights of citizenship are, unfortunately,  have no value in the marketplace and therefore are given no place in the new global economic order.

Scott 

For several years now I've been writing about the increasing use and abuse of inmates as a source of cheap labor --- labor which can be used as a recreational resource on public lands for the purposes of outsourcing, privatization and increased fee generation.

The American Recreation Coalition in conjunction with the National Park Service, Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers and InterActiveCorps have actively pursued this idea and have gone so far as to offer up the use of inmates as a tool in their jointly prepared "Toolbox for the Great Outdoors".

 Here's a short quote from that source:

[Description -Federal and state courts are a source for community service labor, including skilled labor, and penalties and fines can provide project funding.
Purpose -Identify persons and organizations with specific talents and capabilities and with a debt to society to augment the resources of federal recreation and resource agencies.]

In today's free-market obsessed world, the chain-gang concept is old fashioned and in my numerous blog entries on this topic, I've done my best to share today's state-of-the-art thinking on what some now consider to be the appropriate use of an underutilized resource.
Search the Wild Wilderness blog for the term "inmates" and you'll see how valuable a resource prisoners are becoming -- especially as federal recreation budgets are slashed and as paid employees are let go.

Pasted below is an article which extends this thinking to it's next logical level, that being using prisoners as a source of body parts. After this, there is only one more level possible. Someday, someone will suggest killing prisoners and paying the prisoner's family a cash benefit in exchange for their lives. That's as far ad the free-market system can go.

Scott 

For a decade you've heard me speak of "The Corporate Takeover of Nature and the Disneyfication of the Wild". Some may have even read my 1998 essay titled "The Commodification of Nature"  in which I detailed who was taking over America's outdoor recreation policy and what they intended to do with it once the transformation was complete.

What I've never done in all these years is put a face upon those who have come to own/ dominate/ control/ dictate federal public policy. Let me do that now.

Here's a photo of a recent meeting of recreation industry kingpins with their long-time ally, Interior Secretary Kempthorne. The man on Kempthorne's left is Kym Murphy of Walt Disney Attractions and board member of the American Recreation Coalition. ARC's president, Derrick Crandall appears in the foreground on the left hand side of the photo.



Here's another photo of Crandall speaking with Kempthorne and Kempthorne's boss, President Bush. It was taken exactly one month before the meeting photo pictured above 

Pasted below is Crandall's description of what transpired at this second meeting.

I'll just add that the President's National Park Centennial Initiative is a fraud being perpetrated by the men you see in the pictures above. The Centennial Initiative is an ambitious campaign intended to accomplish two tasks -- to burnish the President's extraordinarily tarnished reputation by presenting the illusion that he is doing something good for National Parks and to advance the Corporate Takeover and Disneyfication of America's Crown Jewels by the people you see in these photos.

Scott 

In recent days, I've been focusing a great deal of attention upon highways and road congestion and perhaps some might find that strange, especially for the director of an organization focused upon wildness. But please consider this. Ten years ago I began speaking of the recreation fee demonstration program as being "the thin edge of the wedge"  and today we can see in a growing number of places, the thick end of that same wedge.

Ten years ago I began speaking of a transformation I called "The Corporate Takeover of Nature" and today we are, on a daily basis, being confronted with "The Corporate Takeover of Everything". It just so happens that in that battle, the fight has turned particularly HOT.

I'm drawing your attention to the appended article because it draws attention to the efforts of the "Reason Foundation" to bring their pay-to-play war to this new battle front.

Have a look at what the Reason Foundation's founder Robert W. Poole Jr. is saying below. Then understand that the Reason Foundation's most recent past-President is today the second most powerful person in the Department of interior. Here's how Lynn Scarlett is described on a government website:

 The Assistant Secretary - Policy, Management and Budget (PMB) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) discharges the authority of the Secretary for all phases of management, budget and other administrative activities and serves as the principal policy advisor to the Secretary. She co-chairs the Recreation Fee Leadership Council, an interagency group to coordinate recreation fee policy and practices.

 Prior to joining the Bush Administration in July 2001, she was President of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, a nonprofit current affairs research and communications organization.

The point I hope to convey is that the thin edge of the wedge about which I used to talk has now deeply cleaved the fabric of our democratic republic and our nation is now far along the path to becoming a plutocratic ownership society. If the issue of recreation fees never interested you, then perhaps the issue of road privatization will. And if not that, then perhaps the privatization of Social Security, or Medicare, or the military, or...

If you've already been actively fighting on the right side of this issue, then please consider sharing these thoughts with those who may not have yet made these connections. Thank you.

Quoted from the appended article from the Spokane Spokesman Review:

[ Fee-for-use is a growing trend. Outdoor recreation is a booming industry, and timber companies are looking for ways to cash in.]

Fee-for-use has long been the Libertarian movement's fondest dream and their dream is rapidly become reality.

It costs $5 to walk in your local National Forest or $25 to enter a National Park BECAUSE ideologues have succeeded in bringing nature into the marketplace and turning recreational access into a priced commodity.  Timber companies, such as the Potlatch Corporation, are now able to charge for recreational access BECAUSE citizens can no longer access their public lands without paying a fee-for-use.

One of the primary motivations for transforming public lands from a publicly funded good into a privately funded commodity (accessible only by those willing and/or able to pay-to-play) was to create for industrial landholders such as the Potlatch Corporation opportunities to cash in on outdoor recreation. By pricing the traditionally free public alternative and creating scarcity of access, private recreation alternatives would become increasing valuable and profitable,  or so the Libertarians and Free-Marketeers have long said.

Have a close look at what the Potlatch Corporation has planned and know that the management of public lands is actively being manipulated so as to blur and eventually eliminate the differences between recreational opportunities on public and private lands.

In the "Ownership Society" towards which we are rapidly falling, there will only be fee-for-use. Every use of every conceivable resource --from the air we breath to the water we drink-- will be priced and offered for sale.  For the rich, life will be one happy potlatch.  Welcome to the Land of the Fee.

Scott

 "To minimize unfair competition from public lands in the county, all public agencies should begin to charge fair market value for recreation on their lands. The returns from recreation fees will give both public and private landowners an incentive to protect the amenity values of their lands."
- Randal O'Toole (head of the Libertarian Thoreau Institute)

A few days ago I shared an article that focused upon road privatization and which highlighted the President's rigid ideological commitment to endless privatization. I wrote: "Just for fun, you might try to mentally transpose this composition from the key of 'roads', to the key of 'parks' ... this song plays in all keys."

Pasted below is an Op-Ed opposing road privatization and written by a former Republican governor of Kansas. You'll find the tune instantly recognizable.

Just for the heck of it, you might try to transpose this trucking composition to the key of outdoor recreation --- it's easy to do.  Once you get this tune in your head, you'll hear it being played everywhere and in every key. The tune's called "The Corporate Takeover of Everything" -- though many of you have long know it as "The Corporate Takeover of Nature".

Same song. Different key.

That said, and as valid are the actual points made in this Op-Ed, considering the motivation of the writer I suspect this could be the most insincere piece of writing I've ever read.

Scott

 "A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe."  - Euripides  485-406 B.C.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please - Mark Twain

Before we get too giddy about the President's proposed 2008 budget, with regard to the Park Service's management of Crater Lake National Park, why don't we look at a few facts first.

Of the $230 million "increase" in park operations, $211 million is actually at the expense of other Park programs. The old “shell game” is done today with a spreadsheet. You may have three shells, but in the end, still only ONE pea! A closer look at this budget shows that maintenance and construction, historic preservation, state assistance and land acquisition will be reduced to MOVE money, not increase overall benefits.

Our second concern is a proposal that would match POTENTIAL private contributions with tax dollars, dollar-for-dollar, up to $100 million a year for ten years. This drastically alters the way we have funded our national parks for over 100 years. This forces the Park Manager into a role of “panhandler”.

With a mandate to reach the annual goal of $100 million in donations, managers may seek donations from sources beyond the appropriate philanthropic ones. This could open the door to less altruistic “investors” in our National Parks. Over time, this could result in parks being far less public, and far more private.

Public Television now replaces vanishing government funding with commercials, so too might sponsors advertise themselves in the parks. These donors might also feel they have the right to dictate how parks are to be maintained and operated.

Philanthropy could quickly turn into philandering.

<continues>

Farley by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

{"The American Recreation Coalition} ARC could produce a dynamite free National Park Service guide if we could sell advertising. But the federal government does not endorse specific products. Even photos of any federal employee in an agency uniform with an identifiable product brand concern federal ethics officers."]

So wrote the American Recreation Coalition's President, Derrick Crandall, in 1991 in an extraordinarily enlightening article titled "Brokering Partnerships."

Today, if you visit Death Valley National Park and ask the volunteer behind the information desk for a Backcountry Roads travel map, and if they've not run out, you'll get the map depicted here. This map can also be downloaded from the National Park Service's website.

   

Notice the NPS shield on the front page and the Jeep in the photo. Notice the Jeep name at the bottom?

Fifteen years ago, corporate interests were still only trying to gain control of outdoor recreation on America's public lands. Today THEY write the rules.

Here's another of those pay-to-play schemes intended to provide superior services for the rich and to do so based entirely upon pricing lower income persons from of the market. Whether or not this scheme provides environmental benefits is yet another matter. The issue I raise here has only to do with the mechanism, and not the intended results.
 
When this pricing scheme is applied to roads and traffic, it is called "congestion pricing". When applied to National Parks and crowing, it is called "value pricing" or "differential pricing." In both instances the concept is to reduce the level of use by increasing prices until the marginal user is booted from the system. In this free-market approach, the fate of the displaced users is of no interest and of no consequence.  In this plutocratic approach, the right of citizenship is discounted to zero.
 
Have a look at a the sampling of comments I've provided below and you'll recognize many of them as having been said about the every unpopular Recreation Access Tax and our own government's handling of that controversial issue
 
Scott 

I've said it a million times. I'll say it again. Our neighbors to the North began the process of privatizing their National Parks several  years before we began the process. In Canada the combination of defunding parks, outsourcing park operations and paying for it all with higher entrance and user fees, has failed. It has failed, failed, failed. And as the appended article from Canada states, "The government is getting greedy, greedy, greedy."

The failure of the privatization process in Canada is now universally recognized. The failure of the privatization process in the USA is being increasingly understood with every passing day. It's not just the National Parks that are threatened. All public open spaces, from the smallest of city parks (such as Bryant's Park in New York City), to largest of iconic National Parks (such as Yosemite) are threatened.

The appended article is to the point and should serve as a warning to everyone, everywhere, who cares about parks.

Scott

This article from the Washington Post is so revealing that's I'm not going to hide it away by saying "it's appended" or "see below" . It's right here and it deserves to be read. BUT when you read it, please don't think it pertains only to roads and road fees. It is a pure statement of the rigid ideology the current Administration applies to everything. Just for fun, you might try to mentally transpose this composition from the key of 'roads', to the key of 'parks'. After you do, try it again in a key or your choosing. This song plays in all keys.

Scott

--- begin quoted ---

February 12, 2007
White House slams carpooling, new road fees better
By Tom Doggett - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Carpooling won't do much to reduce U.S. highway congestion in urban areas, and a better solution would be to build new highways and charge drivers fees to use them, the White House said on Monday.

"It is increasingly appropriate to charge drivers for some roadway use in the same way the private market charges for other goods and services," the White House said in its annual report on the U.S. economy.

While some urban areas have designated roads for vehicles with two or more passengers, those high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are often underused because carpooling is becoming less popular, the administration said.

Based on the latest data supplied by the White House, only about 13 percent of motorists carpooled to work in 2000. That compared with 20 percent of daily American commuters in 1980.

"This trend makes it unlikely that initiatives focused on carpooling will make large strides in reducing vehicle use," the White House said.

Building more highways won't reduce congestion either, unless drivers are charged a fee, according to the administration.

"If a roadway is priced -- that is, if drivers have to pay a fee to access a particular road -- then congestion can be avoided by adjusting the price up or down at different times of day to reflect changes in demand for its use," the White House said. "Road space is allocated to drivers who most highly value a reliable and unimpaired commute."

Critics of such fees argue that road tolls would make new highways reserved mostly for wealthy drivers, who are more likely to travel in expensive, gas-guzzling vehicles.

But the White House said urban road expansions should be focused on highways where drivers demonstrate a willingness to pay a fee that is higher than the actual cost of construction, allowing communities to avoid raising taxes on everyone to build the roads.

The administration argued that congestion pricing is already used by many providers of goods and services: movie theaters charge more for tickets in the evening than they do at midday, just as ski resorts raise lift prices on weekends. Similarly, airlines boost prices on tickets during peak travel seasons and taxi cabs raise fares during the rush hour.

Just a thought -  I have heard from some people I respect very much that it is better to let corporations convert historic structures to business purposes, than to let them rot away.  That approach bothers me a bit.  If it is true, why does NPS operations have a role in it?  Why not exclude from park and let the historic preservation group deal with it like they do other private properties with historical values. 

What if???..... we found that maintaining the bison herd at Yellowstone National Park was costing too much, yet if we didn't do anything, the herd would die off.  So someone gets the bright idea that Buffalo Candy Products, Inc would be interested in accomplishing what the park can't afford.  All they want is credit for "saving the herd" (and a  little ear tag with the company logo).  They will also want a representative to be sitting at the table when biological decisions are being made for YELL.  What would we think about that?

Read on...

 Art Allen

Pasted below is a link to a brochure worth exploring in depth. It's for the Association of Partners for Public Lands conference coming up on March 18, 2007. I've also provided a description of two panels amongst the dozens organized.  I selected these examples because they speaks to the upcoming NPS Centennial Celebrations and give some hint as to what the President's Initiative is really about.

I read this brochure and it appeared as if the whole of the great outdoors is being turned into one big, money-grubbing tourism/recreation cathouse. Every federal land management agency is forging partnerships aimed at commodifying nature and making a buck at your expense and to the detriment of the traditional recreational opportunities you have long enjoyed.

I do not wish to sound melodramatic, but the transformation being planned for public lands will likely purge a great many outdoors men and women from lands they've loved their entire lives. It will greatly undercut existing support for public lands -- of that I am quite certain. One need only look at the declining visitation to our National Parks and forests to appreciate the damage this strategy has already done.

The big unknown is whether a new crop of recreation consumers can be induced to fill the void and provide the tourism industry with the monetary rewards they hope to reap as purveyors and marketers of outdoor experiences.

Scott

This week,  President Bush held a media event at Shenandoah National Park. He used the opportunity to distract attention from his horrendous budget proposal and to, instead, touted both his National Parks Centennial Initiative and his plan to provide additional funding to the National Park Service.

Several journalists as well at the National Parks Conservation Association took the President's bait, hook, line and sinker. One veteran New York Times reporter who should have known better, went so far as to compare President Bush to Teddy Roosevelt. Two days later, the New York Times followed up with an editorial in which they made it perfectly clear that no such comparison was warranted.

Fortunately, the nation's most credible National Parks organization, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees was not fooled.  CNPSR saw the hook and has, in the appended article from today's press, drawn attention to it.

Unfortunately, this outstanding article did not run in the New York Times. It's possible that it may only be read by a small, local, audience. Your help in sharing this important information would therefore be much appreciated.

Scott

written by - Don Tryon

In late 2004, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) replaced the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program launched in 1996.  Both programs emerged from legislation attached to appropriation riders by Ralph Regula (R-Ohio).  FLREA, more commonly known as the Recreation Access Tax (RAT), requires fees of those recreating on Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service or Bureau of Reclamation administered public property.

The trend in our society is replacement of tax funding with fees.  Government has used the strategy to flatten corporate and private income tax.  New World Order, twenty-first century America is evolving into a substantially different creature than last century America.

RAT advocates act as if dramatic increases in public land recreation have created intense burdens on public land agencies, requiring substantial new sources of funding.  America just can’t afford to provide these free services anymore, they insist.

America isn’t getting poorer.  It is absurd to argue the federal government cannot afford to provide federal services it could afford to provide fifty or thirty years ago.  The greatest period of public land recreation related construction in US history occurred late in and shortly after the great depression.  It is silly to argue we can’t maintain trails or facilities today that the country could afford to build and maintain seventy years ago, when America was at her poorest.

<CONTINUES>

Perhaps there's hope after all.  It appears that the general public is not merely paying attention, they are questioning the lies they are being told. In spite of the mass-media now extolling the wonders of the President's almost entirely FRAUDULENT National Parks Centennial Initiative and even with such newspapers as the New York Times now going so far as to actually compare President Bush's environmental legacy with that of Teddy Roosevelt, the man in the streets smells a rat and knows things are not as they are being presented!

On the WashingtonPost's website there's a lively exchange of reader comments about an article titled "Bush Seeks Public-Private Funding Boost for Parks".

A sampling of reader posts appear below and I invite you to add your own thoughts using the link I have provided. To learn more about this fraud, explore recent posts on this blog.

Scott 

CLICK TO VIEW THIS SHORT VIDEO 

In 1988 the fledgling Wise Use movement created it's famous 25 point agenda. Item #11 called for handing the operation of America's National Parks over to the Walt Disney Corporation. The document also stated that "possessory interest of the private concessioner firms now serving the visiting public should be maximized".

With each passing day, and especially since the announcement last August of the President's entirely fraudulent National Park Centennial Initiative, smooth progress is being made in transforming America's National Parks into theme parks and giving the private sector increasing power over the parks, their funding and their operation.
 
  "Now, I want you to imagine a fabulous theme park called America."
 
I didn't say that. Those aren't my words. I was merely quoting from a recent speech given to the Travel Industry Association by the Chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts (see appended).
 
  Perhaps we all should try to imagine our beloved country as a theme park. Imagine America as a nation in which citizens have been transformed into mere customers and/or consumers. Imagine a nation run as a public-private partnership and as a merger of state and corporate power.
 
Frightening thought, isn't it?
 
Scott 

The American Recreation Coalition has whipped the "Last Child in the Woods" public-relations frame into a stiff, self-serving, lather. They have done so with the full (though perhaps unwitting) support of the conservation community -- even though the outcome sought by the ARC's is antithetical to the interests of the conservation community which, no doubt, truly seeks the worthy objection of connecting children with nature.

The Outdoor Industry Association has likewise brought it's non-motorized access groups into the fray, while The Nature Conservancy went so far as to pay two statisticians to point out a NON-causal, and thus possibly meaningless, correlation that many are now saying actually links increasing video gaming by kids to declining visitation to the Great Outdoors.  The researchers never claimed a linkage. They clearly stated that their protocols were incapable of linking cause and affect -- and yet the spinners of this yarn spin on.

THIS FRAME IS A RECREATION INDUSTRY-CREATED FRAUD. It is one great big put on -- one worthy of spinmeister Frank Luntz.

The "We need to make public lands more relevant to youth" frame was created by and for anti-environmental, anti-wilderness, pro-industrial tourism forces.  Its purpose is to RADICALLY TRANSFORM how public lands are managed and to refocus the emphasis of outdoor recreation from one set of traditional values to a replacement set created by industry for industry.

Its purpose is to ESTABLISH THE NEED for public land managers to bring the recreation industry into the day to day management of public lands --- because only the private sector can provide recreational experiences that kids will find relevant (or so we are being told).

For 25 years the ARC been working to replace wildness with mildness and nature with artifice. To accomplish their mission, they've used every trick in the book. They've even created a new toolbox for this purpose www.tools4outdoors.us , doing so in partnership with Ticketmaster Corporation and seven federal agencies.

Please do not be fooled by the ARC's new "Youth - Outdoors - Technology" campaign described in the appended January 26, 2007 ARC News Release. Once you realize it's smoke and mirrors, the fraud becomes quite transparent.

Scott

PS... Since 1999 I have been blowing the whistle upon this fraud. Learn more.