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Pasted below is an article published today on "Liberal Slant" that, in my opinion, does a most outstanding job of linking the (some might suggest) seemingly inconsequential issue of recreation user fees with the larger strategy to privatize America's Public Domain. This article provides excellent background and is worth reading whether or not you are already familiar with the issue!
Since it's introduction in 1996, the highly contentious and exceedingly unpopular recreation fee-demonstration program has been a harbinger of privatization yet to come. What follows provides is an important warning siren / wake-up call.
Scott
---begin quoted---
The Strategy To Privatize The Public Domain
By: Bill Willers - 04/21/03
"The organizing principle of this paper is one of ascending
radicalism from reform through volunteerism and privatization of
services to the outright abolition of public ownership and the transfer
of the parks to private parties." - James P. Beckwith, Jr., 1981.
"Virtually everything President Bush is doing to America is, at some
level, related to privatization of our commons. Today we are witnessing
the middle game portion of the Corporate Takeover of Everything Agenda.
It scares me to imagine what the end-game will look like." - Scott
Silver, 2003
The coordinated and decades-long effort to privatize the public lands
of the United States, nearly a third of the nation, is now bearing
fruit. The Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s that sought to transfer
power to states and local units, and that provided the Reagan
Administration with James Watt as Interior Secretary, morphed into the
Wise Use Movement that sprinkled antigovernment grassroots
organizations across the nation. Wise Use, in turn, has given rise to
so-called "free-market environmentalism" that consists largely of a
network of corporations and conservative foundations and think tanks
intent on gaining control of the public domain.
This collective is using all of its political clout, every legal
loophole, every economic argument, and all of the public relations and
media spin its billions can buy. Privatization, the word, is frequently
avoided in favor of code terms such as "public - private partnerships",
"competitive outsourcing" and "stewardship contracting". Platoons of
Bush appointees, right out of industry, are now rewriting regulations
to move the privatization agenda rapidly forward.
Beckwith, 1981
The architects of free market environmentalism have been candid. The
quotation above, from an essay written by law professor James P.
Beckwith, Jr. and published in the Cato Journal in 1981, dealt with the
privatization of public parks, but its principles are applicable to all
public lands. In brief, the stepwise strategy has been to begin the
privatization process with volunteerism, and then to transfer to the
private sector positions now held by government employees. Finally,
public ownership would simply become a memory.
Beckwith argued that public ownership of parks is a "monopoly [that
allows for] suboptimal pricing". He acknowledged that low fees exist
because federal law requires that they be "fair and equitable" but
claimed this is simply a political ploy by legislators to win votes
from "voters who consume recreation." Parks should not belong to all of
the people, he argued, but only "to those who use them, and that is
only some of 'the people'". His plan to privatize was simple: "Existing
public parks could either be given away or sold to the highest bidder."
Without doubt, major corporations and the very wealthy would quickly
become the new owners. In the world Beckwith set forth, we who are
presently the owners of the land, become known variously as
"customers", "clients" and "consumers".
Beckwith understood that a sudden takeover of public land would quickly
trigger reaction and proposed that privatization be introduced by
degrees, with the "most tentative step" being recruitment of volunteers
and later "the contracting out of support services to private firms
operating for profit". Governmental bureaucrats, he argued, have no
incentive to economize, and with low-bidding private companies
providing services, the system would function with maximum economic
efficiency.
A shift in this direction is now advancing rapidly in the Department of
Interior. Just a year ago Interior Secretary Gail Norton reported that
some 3,500 positions in the U.S. Park Service would be marked for
privatization. Now, as of January, 2003, Interior, after hiring (for a
reported $5 million) the firm CH2MHill to produce a "competitive
sourcing" plan, has expanded the plan to privatize 11,807 of the 16,470
positions in the U.S. Park Service - nearly 72%. According to Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the contract was
simply given without any bidding process to CH2MHill, a company that is
anything but neutral, since it does billions of dollars in business by
maintaining federal facilities. CH2MHill is free to bid on positions
that have been privatized through its recommendation.
In the system Beckwith prescribed, where market demand is all-powerful
and cloaked as Liberty herself, if "customers" are not willing to pony
up what managers charge, what then? In such a scenario, lands "might
even cease to be parks at all because recreationists might not be
willing to pay enough to bid away the land from alternative purposes."
What "alternative purposes"? Toward what kind of future could this lead
Yellowstone and the rest of what are now the public's lands? Where
profit is king, one need only give free rein to the imagination.
And the situation with the National Parks is just a beginning. In the
February 5 issue of the Washington Post, Christopher Lee cites
President Bush as wanting federal agencies to compete out as many as
850,000 federal jobs.
Charging For The Sky
There is an errie quality to the mechanical cold-heartedness with which
Beckwith deals with our land. It's as if he were considering the fate
of plastic widgets or writing a doomsday scenario. "The gate fee", he
wrote, "could cover such hard-to-charge-for amenities as the sky, broad
vistas, and fragrant flowers." Specific fees would be charged for other
services and activities such as hiking, bird watching, and the like.
There is irony in that privatization of public domain would be pressed
so strongly at this particular time, just as the nation has been given
examples not only of rampant corporate fraud but also of the
spectacular failure of airport security as a for-profit enterprise, its
employees incompetent, ill-trained and underpaid for profit's sake,
this making it necessary for the government of the people to step in.
Former Forest Service supervisor Gloria Flora, writing for Headwater
News, put it this way: "What will our experiences be like when
services, professionalism and even wildlife are managed for
profitability? Can you picture former airport security guards stuffed
into Park Service uniforms -- disgruntled, unqualified, and underpaid
-- in charge of our national treasures? Will carnival rides be
installed next to Old Faithful to augment the income stream?"
Beckwith's essay, prepared for a 1980 conference titled "Property
Rights and Natural Resources: A New Paradigm for the Environmental
Movement", was sponsored by the Cato Institute and the Center for
Political Economy and Natural Resources of Montana State University at
Bozeman. He acknowledged the editorial assistance of Terry Anderson and
John Baden, both of whom now, two decades later, have become leaders of
the privatization agenda. Anderson is public lands adviser to President
George W. Bush.
Terry Anderson and PERC
It's difficult to overestimate the power of language manipulation. The
Political Economy Research Center (PERC), heads its website with the
note. "The Center for Free Market Environmentalism". This use of
"environmentalism" in connection with the language of free market
economics one now sees again and again, not only with PERC, but with a
host of similar groups, as if it were a valid form of environmentalism
rather than a tactic in the overall strategy for taking control of the
public's land. It's the principle of hitting the public mind constantly
with a falsehood until, in time, it has a ring of truth.
Go to PERC's website www.perc.org , click on "links", and one is led to
a list of 55 of the country's most powerful rightwing foundations and
organizations committed to deregulation of industry and to the
privatization of everything. PERC's basic premise is that ownership and
management of land by government is bad for the environment, and that
private property rights lead to better "stewardship of resources". Our
government is depicted not as an entity "of, by, and for the people"
but as something far, far away and characterized by faceless,
incompetent, bureaucrats.
PERC advances its agenda through policy analysis, conferences, books
and articles, and "education". Its funding comes from a host of the
country's most conservative foundations - Bradley, Sarah Scaife, John
M. Olin, JM, Lambe, McKenna, Earhart, Koch, Carthage and Castle Rock --
the guts of a force of roughly a dozen or so foundations that, since
the 1960s, have coordinated their efforts toward forging national
policy favorable to deregulation of industry and to privatization.
Terry Anderson, PERC's director (and a senior fellow at the rightwing
Hoover Foundation), landed in the consciousness of environmentalists in
1999 as lead author of an alarming policy paper published by the Cato
Institute, "How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands". The paper, in
which public ownership was painted "red" by being identified as a
"failure of socialism", was based on four assumptions: That a given
piece of land be "allocated to highest-valued use", that transition
costs (to private ownership) be kept to a minimum, that there be "broad
participation" in the divestiture, and that "squatter's rights" be
protected. The plan advanced was to allocate to each citizen "shares"
in what are now public lands. That's the "broad participation" part -
everybody gets "shares". But here's the rub: shares would be "freely
transferred", i.e., sold on the open market.
With 280 million citizens, what would an individual's shares be worth?
$5,000? $50,000? Whatever the value on the open market, the poorer a
citizen, the greater the inducement to sell quickly. But even the
middle classes, bombarded with college tuition, mortgages, medical
bills and the like, in time would be needing the cash their "shares"
represented. In the wings, corporations and the very rich would be
waiting to vacuum shares up. There would be a great sucking sound of
the sort Ross Perot once described, and within a generation or two what
is now the priceless heritage of all U.S. citizens would gravitate into
the ownership of the wealthy.
Actually, Anderson's vision is for a process that would take place over
a 20-40 year span - about two generations. As the push to privatize
heats up, our common assets, held for us by a government of the people,
are drifting into the control of the private sector, no longer for
public benefit but for private profit. And we are failing to notice.
Anderson writes that his plan "provides opportunities and incentives
for environmentalists and their organizations to participate directly
in the ownership and management of amenity resources by bidding for
surface rights to parks and wilderness lands." But surely he knows this
is nonsense, for how could the environmental community ever compete
with global corporate interests, extractive industry and the
billionaire set? For those who love the land it would be panic time and
a scratching together of any available funds to save a few revered
spots.
And the language! "Amenity resources" indeed! A soulless concept
dripping with dollar signs and devoid of any deeper sense of connection
between humans and the natural world. Calling this kind of economics
"the dismal science" is much too kind. It says "Here's a piece of land.
Take a hike and enjoy. $50 please, in the interest of free
marketeering. Thank you, and have a great day. Nature, Inc."
Terry Anderson became George W. Bush's adviser on public lands issues.
In May of 1999, as reported by Mark Hertsgaard in the February, 2003
issue of The Nation.
Anderson was one of a group that met with Bush at the Texas Governor's
mansion. Bush was advised, as Anderson explained, to "devolve some
responsibility for meeting environmental standards to local levels".
Bush was also advised at that time to give private property rights
precedence over public interests and to replace governmental law and
regulation with the laissez-faire principles of the free market -
exactly what the privatization lobby has worked toward lo these past
four decades.
First The States and "Local" Interests
In a 1995 report, "Conservative Foundations and their Activist
Grantees", the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP)
wrote that Ronald Reagan's 1980 election, and his Administration's
efforts to increase the authority of states, gave the conservative
collective opportunity to establish state power bases from which it not
only crafted and pressed legislation in all states but also mobilized
for impacting national policy. Don Eberly, a principal in the
conservative movement, was quoted as saying "We simply will not have
power on the national level until we declare war on state legislators".
Indeed, it has been run as a war, and one strategically so well
organized, and with such an extensive support network, that elements as
diverse the Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Association
appear as part of a united front. And because the conservative
foundations have been joined by large corporations such as RJ Reynolds
Tobacco, Shell Oil, Pfizer, Phillip Morris, etc., the conservative
collective, now with billions of dollars at its disposal, has been able
to outspend progressive efforts many-fold in its mission to redesign
national policy. It's propaganda campaign disseminates information to
media and supports a wealth of "educational" literature for all levels
of consumption, including school newspapers. It is within this vast
network that PERC rests.
John Baden and FREE
As with PERC, so with FREE (the Foundation for Research on Economics
and the Environment, www.free-eco.org . FREE , also based in Bozeman,
Montana, has received millions of dollars from roughly the same profile
of foundations that funds PERC, and is a prime engine for free market
environmentalism in the area of "education". Preaching reliance on
market mechanisms and private property rights, rather than on
environmental law, for protection of the environment, it's chairperson,
John Baden (a past member of the National Petroleum Council), stresses
decentralization - a shift of control from what he calls "Green
platonic despots in D.C." to "local interests". He has written,
apparently in all seriousness, that the agenda of FREE is "the norm
among progressive, intellectually honest and successful
environmentalists".
One of FREE's current projects is the "Charter Forest" scheme, in which
the national forests would no longer operate under the "multiple use"
mandate. Rather, each forest would be are managed by whatever industry
would be able to realize the greatest profit.
For more than ten years, FREE has been offering expense-paid seminars
in its philosophy to federal judges (It's invitation can be seen, at
least at the time of this writing, at
http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/free.htm ). Seminars, held
primarily at resorts and private ranches in Montana, with good access
to trout streams and golf courses, include such topics as "The
Environment: A CEO's Perspective" and "Liberty and the Environment: A
Case for Judicial Activism" [emphasis added]. In the late nineties,
FREE boasted that nearly a third of the federal judiciary had either
attended or was seeking to attend its seminars, this as the Bush
Administration now strives to pack federal benches with rightist
judges. The group also offers expense-paid courses for university
faculty and students, these reportedly taught on the campus of Montana
State University.
User Fees
User fees as tools for controlling use and "rationing access" to public
land is a central aspect of the privatization agenda. Here, the
American public that in its ownership capacity has for generations
supported public lands with its taxes, transforms into a population of
paying customers. Beckwith, in his 1981 landmark paper, underscored
that user fees are feasible only if nonusers can be excluded from
users. Then, "if the price of recreation is raised", he writes, "less
of it will be demanded by consumers, and overcrowding in the parks will
be reduced". That this excludes lower income citizens is not a factor
of interest for free marketeers.
The public ownership model that American citizens presently enjoy makes
it impossible to exclude "non-users", and this impedes the path to the
fee system envisioned by the free market establishment. For this
reason, Beckwith wrote, "it is essential that property rights in the
parks be defined, transferred, and enforced..."
In fact, the ongoing diminishing of federal funding of land management
agencies (under the guise of "streamlining" government) strongly
assists the privatization agenda, since it makes user fees ever more
necessary for the operation of land management agencies.
The Bush Administration is forging ahead in this direction. Grover
Norquist, the key rightwing strategist and White House advisor who
spearheads the immense Bush tax cut, was widely reported in 2001 as
saying his goal is to shrink government so that it will fit into a
bathtub where he can then drown it. This really is nothing less than to
a plan to kill government of, by, and for the people.
With market incentives introduced into land management, data can be
collected and analyzed regarding customer preferences within the menu
of uses and services. Because income and ability to pay are not
reliable predictors either of taste or of understanding about the
biological aspects of natural landscapes, the door is opened to the
most mechanized, destructive and vulgar of activities, if those are
what provide the most dollar votes. What is presently managed for an
entire population of owners, and in the best interests of the land
itself, would quickly become geared toward the interests of those
"users" providing the greatest profit.
There is indication that there is much money to be made in "industrial
recreation". The American Recreation Coalition (ARC) represents every
conceivable snowmobile, jetski, ATV, 4-wheeler, off-roader, motorcycle
and RV interest, whether manufacturer, dealer, or user group, as well
as petroleum interests and Disney Corporation
http://www.funoutdoors.com/members.html ). Even with the public domain
under its present public ownership, ARC's immense financial, political,
and public relations clout allows it to exert considerable control on
public land management. Despite the wishes of an overwhelming majority
of Americans, ARC has been instrumental in keeping Yellowstone Park,
the very crown jewel of the nation's parks, open to snowmobile traffic.
A privatizing of management would simply demolish any remnants of the
public interest presently holding at bay a total industrial takeover.
Beckwith, PERC, FREE, ARC ... these are just parts of a massive and
massively-funded, interconnected system and long-term strategy
dedicated to the transfer of public domain into private hands. It is so
vast and multifaceted that it's difficult to keep tabs on it, and given
the politics and obligations of the present Administration, it is
advancing with frightening rapidity, largely unnoticed by a citizenry
focused on terrorism and foreign wars.
Bill Willers is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant
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- Privatization 
