Remember President Alzheimer's Interior Secretary, James Watt? The Secretary brought down by an off-color joke, I believe? He had originally proposed this, the selling off of National Park and Forest Lands to the uber-rich individuals and corporate contributors of the President Bonzo. You know, those lands held in trust for the rest of us, by Teddy Roosevelt and many, many others. Well, guess what? The America-hating 1600 Crew want to carve it all up for their special interest buddies.
Two former secretaries of Interior blasted the Bush administration Tuesday for a "radical ideology" that will ultimately privatize public lands and resources by selling them to the highest bidder.
Bruce Babbitt, who served under President Clinton and Stewart Udall, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, sounded alarms at the Bush administration's plan to outsource National Park and Forest Service jobs to private for-profit companies during a teleconference with reporters.
"They're going to dismantle the National Park Service as we know it," said Babbitt, who served as the governor of Arizona before his years heading the Interior.
Udall said that for the first time in a century, Washington has an administration that is emphatically "anti-conservation" and has done nothing positive for the environment.
...
Babbitt and Udall praised the men and women of the Park Service, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for their selfless dedication, stewardship and esprit de corps. Both said that under the Bush administration, morale at those agencies "is at an all-time low."
Udall, who said Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was "my hero," said the Bush administration's assault on the professionalism of federal workers was "not just an assault on civil service, but on the stewardship envisioned by Roosevelt" and Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the national forest system.
Babbitt said the drive to outsource federal jobs was part of a radical agenda that ultimately aims to sell public lands and resources "to the highest bidder."
This total privatization of public land is an idea advocated by Terry Anderson, executive director of the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Mont.
Here's the hook to get the radical wingnuts onboard, provide endless talking points for the carping conservatives and basically make it all seem like a "good deal".
Anderson believes in giving each American a deed to a proportionate share of the 600 million acres of land now managed by the federal government over the next 20 to 40 years. Share holders could homestead, sell, trade or donate shares as they see fit, Anderson has said.
Privatization, of public jobs or lands, flies in the face of a long-standing consensus which states that public lands are in the public interest and are best protected by public servants, Babbitt said.
Isn't that special? How many folks would turn down a free-and-clear deed to some tract of (possibly) saleable land somewhere on say the rim of the Grand Canyon, or in the Painted Desert or on Kauai? Tell me the greed meters would not ramp up in nanoseconds within the corporate offices of land developers looking to purchase as many of those deeds as possible for the lowest price to defile what has been up until now a National Treasure.
Look for this to go further with some cutesy-republican program name, like the "Citizen's Land Conservation Delivery" program. Kinda like the ever-malignant "Clear Skies" (or whatever) program.
Oooh, even better name: "Your Land is Your Land" program. Advantages: cutesy and it gets to slam Woody Guthrie and they'd probably use the song to promote it. Am I getting too cynical? Nah.
posted by Jo Fish on 07.31.03 at 10:16 PM
Comments:
The Bush Wrecking Crew nigtmare continues. let's just do away with democarcy, turn the Whitehouse into a board room, appoint a CEO , change our name from the United States of America to Wing-Nut Nation Incorporated. Every person, object, animal, tree, body of water could be price tagged and we could have a annual clearance sale.
posted by: Theo on 07.31.03 at 10:40 PM [permalink]
Shit like this is usually announced late on Friday afternoons, when the presstitutes are having their assholes resurfaced after a long week of heavy Karl Rove usage.
Could the Fascists actually have mistimed their latest outrageous assault on the America the Founding Fathers fought and died to create?
posted by: Lurch on 08.01.03 at 01:47 AM [permalink]
Will the free market do to nature what it is doing to globalization? What we need is an even broader futures program that will incorporate just about everything connected with life on earth. Will short sellers be our salvation in the long, or short, run? I would not bet on it.
posted by: Shag from Brookline on 08.01.03 at 06:57 AM [permalink]
Hang on, there are two separate things going on here:
(1) A prospect of privatizing a lot of the services in the NPS system. Not something I'm for, but I'm happy to hear the case for it.
and
(2) The idea of one guy who lives in Bozeman who wants to give away all public land. He's not working for the administration, he's not writing policy, he's just blowing hot air.
I don't see that (2) has much to do with (1), except that people who support (2) are likely to support (1).
If this were a true "free market" endeavor, that would be one thing. But what almost always happens INSTEAD when public resources are privatized is that the private interests obtain the resources for far BELOW market value, usually because of political connections, so the taxpayers get screwed.
posted by: Lex on 08.01.03 at 02:43 PM [permalink]
I have been doing some research into this lately for a Commonweal Institute project (http://www.commonwealinstitute.org) - supporting a statement that the Republicans even want to privatize parks, for potential funders that think I must be a wild-eyed radical extremist to ever say such things! - and here are some of my notes:
Privatize public parks http://www.perc.org/publications/publiclands.html - Center for Free-Market Environmentalism
http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/Publications/ToThePoint/2000/032100.htm - Embrace Proposal to Privatize Public Lands
http://www.cato.org/new/12-99/12-09-99r2.html - Privatized Federal Land Would Yield Better Environmental Quality
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj1n2-6.html - PARKS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE PRIVATE LAW
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj1n2-3.html - THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTEREST IN WILDERNESS PROTECTION
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj2n3-1.html - THE PRIVATIZATION DEBATE: AN INSIDER'S VIEW
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-363es.html - How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands
http://www.enn.com/enn-features-archive/2000/04/04232000/landauction_10537.asp - Land privatization plan sets off alarms
http://www.law.ukans.edu/jrnl/anderson.htm - ENVIRO-CAPITALISM VS. ENVIRO-SOCIALISM
http://www.liberalslant.com/bw042103.htm - The Strategy To Privatize The Public Domain
http://www.wildwilderness.org/wi/privatize.htm - Privatization of America's Public Lands
http://www.altaliberals.ab.ca/news/news0619.htm - Government Proceeds with Privatizing Provincial Parks and Recreation Areas
