Re: This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land
Here is an article that was written by liberal slant - although i beleive they frame the issues pretty well. This commodification of our public lands is getting worse by the day. Last week I saw where the national park service was outsourcing/privatizing up to 70% of their services.<br /><br />This article does an outstanding job of linking the (some might suggest)seemingly inconsequential issue of recreation user fees with the larger<br />strategy to privatize America's Public Domain. This article provides excellent background and is worth reading whether or not you are already<br />familiar with the issue!************************************************<br /><br />The coordinated and decades-long effort to privatize the public lands of the<br />United States, nearly a third of the nation, is now bearing fruit. The<br />Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s that sought to transfer power to states and<br />local units, and that provided the Reagan Administration with James Watt as<br />Interior Secretary, morphed into the Wise Use Movement that sprinkled<br />antigovernment grassroots organizations across the nation. Wise Use, in<br />turn, has given rise to so-called "free- market environmentalism" that<br />consists largely of a network of corporations and conservative foundations<br />and think tanks intent on gaining control of the public domain.<br /><br />This collective is using all of its political clout, every legal loophole,<br />every economic argument, and all of the public relations and media spin its<br />billions can buy. Privatization, the word, is frequently avoided in favor of<br />code terms such as "public - private partnerships", "competitive<br />outsourcing" and "stewardship contracting". Platoons of Bush appointees,<br />right out of industry, are now rewriting regulations to move the<br />privatization agenda rapidly forward.<br /><br />Beckwith, 1981<br /><br />The architects of free market environmentalism have been candid. The<br />quotation above, from an essay written by law professor James P. Beckwith,<br />Jr. and published in the Cato Journal in 1981, dealt with the privatization<br />of public parks, but its principles are applicable to all public lands. In<br />brief, the stepwise strategy has been to begin the privatization process<br />with volunteerism, and then to transfer to the private sector positions now<br />held by government employees. Finally, public ownership would simply become<br />a memory.<br /><br />Beckwith argued that public ownership of parks is a "monopoly [that allows<br />for] suboptimal pricing". He acknowledged that low fees exist because<br />federal law requires that they be "fair and equitable" but claimed this is<br />simply a political ploy by legislators to win votes from "voters who consume<br />recreation." Parks should not belong to all of the people, he argued, but<br />only "to those who use them, and that is only some of 'the people'". His<br />plan to privatize was simple: "Existing public parks could either be given<br />away or sold to the highest bidder." Without doubt, major corporations and<br />the very wealthy would quickly become the new owners. In the world Beckwith<br />set forth, we who are presently the owners of the land, become known<br />variously as "customers", "clients" and "consumers".<br /><br />Beckwith understood that a sudden takeover of public land would quickly<br />trigger reaction and proposed that privatization be introduced by degrees,<br />with the "most tentative step" being recruitment of volunteers and later<br />"the contracting out of support services to private firms operating for<br />profit". Governmental bureaucrats, he argued, have no incentive to<br />economize, and with low-bidding private companies providing services, the<br />system would function with maximum economic efficiency.<br /><br />A shift in this direction is now advancing rapidly in the Department of<br />Interior. Just a year ago Interior Secretary Gail Norton reported that some<br />3,500 positions in the U.S. Park Service would be marked for privatization.<br />Now, as of January, 2003, Interior, after hiring (for a reported $5 million)<br />the firm CH2MHill to produce a "competitive sourcing" plan, has expanded the<br />plan to privatize 11,807 of the 16,470 positions in the U.S. Park Service -<br />nearly 72%. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility<br />(PEER), the contract was simply given without any bidding process to<br />CH2MHill, a company that is anything but neutral, since it does billions of<br />dollars in business by maintaining federal facilities. CH2MHill is free to<br />bid on positions that have been privatized through its recommendation.<br /><br />In the system Beckwith prescribed, where market demand is all-powerful and<br />cloaked as Liberty herself, if "customers" are not willing to pony up what<br />managers charge, what then? In such a scenario, lands "might even cease to<br />be parks at all because recreationists might not be willing to pay enough to<br />bid away the land from alternative purposes." What "alternative purposes"?<br />Toward what kind of future could this lead Yellowstone and the rest of what<br />are now the public's lands? Where profit is king, one need only give free<br />rein to the imagination.<br /><br />And the situation with the National Parks is just a beginning. In the<br />February 5 issue of the Washington Post, Christopher Lee cites President<br />Bush as wanting federal agencies to compete out as many as 850,000 federal<br />jobs.<br /><br />Charging For The Sky<br /><br />There is an errie quality to the mechanical cold-heartedness with which<br />Beckwith deals with our land. It's as if he were considering the fate of<br />plastic widgets or writing a doomsday scenario. "The gate fee", he wrote,<br />"could cover such hard-to-charge-for amenities as the sky, broad vistas, and<br />fragrant flowers." Specific fees would be charged for other services and<br />activities such as hiking, bird watching, and the like.<br /><br />There is irony in that privatization of public domain would be pressed so<br />strongly at this particular time, just as the nation has been given examples<br />not only of rampant corporate fraud but also of the spectacular failure of<br />airport security as a for-profit enterprise, its employees incompetent,<br />ill-trained and underpaid for profit's sake, this making it necessary for<br />the government of the people to step in. Former Forest Service supervisor<br />Gloria Flora, writing for Headwater News, put it this way: "What will our<br />experiences be like when services, professionalism and even wildlife are<br />managed for profitability? Can you picture former airport security guards<br />stuffed into Park Service uniforms -- disgruntled, unqualified, and<br />underpaid -- in charge of our national treasures? Will carnival rides be<br />installed next to Old Faithful to augment the income stream?"<br /><br />Beckwith's essay, prepared for a 1980 conference titled "Property Rights and<br />Natural Resources: A New Paradigm for the Environmental Movement", was<br />sponsored by the Cato Institute and the Center for Political Economy and<br />Natural Resources of Montana State University at Bozeman. He acknowledged<br />the editorial assistance of Terry Anderson and John Baden, both of whom now,<br />two decades later, have become leaders of the privatization agenda. Anderson<br />is public lands adviser to President George W. Bush.<br /><br />Terry Anderson and PERC<br /><br />It's difficult to overestimate the power of language manipulation. The<br />Political Economy Research Center (PERC), heads its website with the note.<br />"The Center for Free Market Environmentalism". This use of<br />"environmentalism" in connection with the language of free market economics<br />one now sees again and again, not only with PERC, but with a host of similar<br />groups, as if it were a valid form of environmentalism rather than a tactic<br />in the overall strategy for taking control of the public's land. It's the<br />principle of hitting the public mind constantly with a falsehood until, in<br />time, it has a ring of truth.<br /><br />Go to PERC's website
www.perc.org , click on "links", and one is led to a<br />list of 55 of the country's most powerful rightwing foundations and<br />organizations committed to deregulation of industry and to the privatization<br />of everything. PERC's basic premise is that ownership and management of land<br />by government is bad for the environment, and that private property rights<br />lead to better "stewardship of resources". Our government is depicted not as<br />an entity "of, by, and for the people" but as something far, far away and<br />characterized by faceless, incompetent, bureaucrats.<br /><br />PERC advances its agenda through policy analysis, conferences, books and<br />articles, and "education". Its funding comes from a host of the country's<br />most conservative foundations - Bradley, Sarah Scaife, John M. Olin, JM,<br />Lambe, McKenna, Earhart, Koch, Carthage and Castle Rock -- the guts of a<br />force of roughly a dozen or so foundations that, since the 1960s, have<br />coordinated their efforts toward forging national policy favorable to<br />deregulation of industry and to privatization.<br /><br />Terry Anderson, PERC's director (and a senior fellow at the rightwing Hoover<br />Foundation), landed in the consciousness of environmentalists in 1999 as<br />lead author of an alarming policy paper published by the Cato Institute,<br />"How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands". The paper, in which public<br />ownership was painted "red" by being identified as a "failure of socialism",<br />was based on four assumptions: That a given piece of land be "allocated to<br />highest-valued use", that transition costs (to private ownership) be kept to<br />a minimum, that there be "broad participation" in the divestiture, and that<br />"squatter's rights" be protected. The plan advanced was to allocate to each<br />citizen "shares" in what are now public lands. That's the "broad<br />participation" part - everybody gets "shares". But here's the rub: shares<br />would be "freely transferred", i.e., sold on the open market.<br /><br />With 280 million citizens, what would an individual's shares be worth?<br />$5,000? $50,000? Whatever the value on the open market, the poorer a<br />citizen, the greater the inducement to sell quickly. But even the middle<br />classes, bombarded with college tuition, mortgages, medical bills and the<br />like, in time would be needing the cash their "shares" represented. In the<br />wings, corporations and the very rich would be waiting to vacuum shares up.<br />There would be a great sucking sound of the sort Ross Perot once described,<br />and within a generation or two what is now the priceless heritage of all<br />U.S. citizens would gravitate into the ownership of the wealthy.<br /><br />Actually, Anderson's vision is for a process that would take place over a<br />20-40 year span - about two generations. As the push to privatize heats up,<br />our common assets, held for us by a government of the people, are drifting<br />into the control of the private sector, no longer for public benefit but for<br />private profit. And we are failing to notice.<br /><br />Anderson writes that his plan "provides opportunities and incentives for<br />environmentalists and their organizations to participate directly in the<br />ownership and management of amenity resources by bidding for surface rights<br />to parks and wilderness lands." But surely he knows this is nonsense, for<br />how could the environmental community ever compete with global corporate<br />interests, extractive industry and the billionaire set? For those who love<br />the land it would be panic time and a scratching together of any available<br />funds to save a few revered spots.<br /><br />And the language! "Amenity resources" indeed! A soulless concept dripping<br />with dollar signs and devoid of any deeper sense of connection between<br />humans and the natural world. Calling this kind of economics "the dismal<br />science" is much too kind. It says "Here's a piece of land. Take a hike and<br />enjoy. $50 please, in the interest of free marketeering. Thank you, and have<br />a great day. Nature, Inc."<br /><br />Terry Anderson became George W. Bush's adviser on public lands issues. In<br />May of 1999, as reported by Mark Hertsgaard in the February, 2003 issue of<br />The Nation.<br /><br />Anderson was one of a group that met with Bush at the Texas Governor's<br />mansion. Bush was advised, as Anderson explained, to "devolve some<br />responsibility for meeting environmental standards to local levels". Bush<br />was also advised at that time to give private property rights precedence<br />over public interests and to replace governmental law and regulation with<br />the laissez-faire principles of the free market - exactly what the<br />privatization lobby has worked toward lo these past four decades.<br /><br />First The States and "Local" Interests<br /><br />In a 1995 report, "Conservative Foundations and their Activist Grantees",<br />the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP) wrote that Ronald<br />Reagan's 1980 election, and his Administration's efforts to increase the<br />authority of states, gave the conservative collective opportunity to<br />establish state power bases from which it not only crafted and pressed<br />legislation in all states but also mobilized for impacting national policy.<br />Don Eberly, a principal in the conservative movement, was quoted as saying<br />"We simply will not have power on the national level until we declare war on<br />state legislators".<br /><br />Indeed, it has been run as a war, and one strategically so well organized,<br />and with such an extensive support network, that elements as diverse the<br />Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Association appear as part of a<br />united front. And because the conservative foundations have been joined by<br />large corporations such as RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Shell Oil, Pfizer, Phillip<br />Morris, etc., the conservative collective, now with billions of dollars at<br />its disposal, has been able to outspend progressive efforts many-fold in its<br />mission to redesign national policy. It's propaganda campaign disseminates<br />information to media and supports a wealth of "educational" literature for<br />all levels of consumption, including school newspapers. It is within this<br />vast network that PERC rests.<br /><br />John Baden and FREE<br /><br />As with PERC, so with FREE (the Foundation for Research on Economics and the<br />Environment,
www.free-eco.org . FREE , also based in Bozeman, Montana, has<br />received millions of dollars from roughly the same profile of foundations<br />that funds PERC, and is a prime engine for free market environmentalism in<br />the area of "education". Preaching reliance on market mechanisms and private<br />property rights, rather than on environmental law, for protection of the<br />environment, it's chairperson, John Baden (a past member of the National<br />Petroleum Council), stresses decentralization - a shift of control from what<br />he calls "Green platonic despots in D.C." to "local interests". He has<br />written, apparently in all seriousness, that the agenda of FREE is "the norm<br />among progressive, intellectually honest and successful environmentalists".<br /><br />One of FREE's current projects is the "Charter Forest" scheme, in which the<br />national forests would no longer operate under the "multiple use" mandate.<br />Rather, each forest would be are managed by whatever industry would be able<br />to realize the greatest profit.<br /><br />For more than ten years, FREE has been offering expense-paid seminars in its<br />philosophy to federal judges (It's invitation can be seen, at least at the<br />time of this writing, at<br />
http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/free.htm ). Seminars, held<br />primarily at resorts and private ranches in Montana, with good access to<br />trout streams and golf courses, include such topics as "The Environment: A<br />CEO's Perspective" and "Liberty and the Environment: A Case for Judicial<br />Activism" [emphasis added]. In the late nineties, FREE boasted that nearly a<br />third of the federal judiciary had either attended or was seeking to attend<br />its seminars, this as the Bush Administration now strives to pack federal<br />benches with rightist judges. The group also offers expense-paid courses for<br />university faculty and students, these reportedly taught on the campus of<br />Montana State University.<br /><br />User Fees<br /><br />User fees as tools for controlling use and "rationing access" to public land<br />is a central aspect of the privatization agenda. Here, the American public<br />that in its ownership capacity has for generations supported public lands<br />with its taxes, transforms into a population of paying customers. Beckwith,<br />in his 1981 landmark paper, underscored that user fees are feasible only if<br />nonusers can be excluded from users. Then, "if the price of recreation is<br />raised", he writes, "less of it will be demanded by consumers, and<br />overcrowding in the parks will be reduced". That this excludes lower income<br />citizens is not a factor of interest for free marketeers.<br /><br />The public ownership model that American citizens presently enjoy makes it<br />impossible to exclude "non-users", and this impedes the path to the fee<br />system envisioned by the free market establishment. For this reason,<br />Beckwith wrote, "it is essential that property rights in the parks be<br />defined, transferred, and enforced..."<br /><br />In fact, the ongoing diminishing of federal funding of land management<br />agencies (under the guise of "streamlining" government) strongly assists the<br />privatization agenda, since it makes user fees ever more necessary for the<br />operation of land management agencies.<br /><br />The Bush Administration is forging ahead in this direction. Grover Norquist,<br />the key rightwing strategist and White House advisor who spearheads the<br />immense Bush tax cut, was widely reported in 2001 as saying his goal is to<br />shrink government so that it will fit into a bathtub where he can then drown<br />it. This really is nothing less than to a plan to kill government of, by,<br />and for the people.<br /><br />With market incentives introduced into land management, data can be<br />collected and analyzed regarding customer preferences within the menu of<br />uses and services. Because income and ability to pay are not reliable<br />predictors either of taste or of understanding about the biological aspects<br />of natural landscapes, the door is opened to the most mechanized,<br />destructive and vulgar of activities, if those are what provide the most<br />dollar votes. What is presently managed for an entire population of owners,<br />and in the best interests of the land itself, would quickly become geared<br />toward the interests of those "users" providing the greatest profit.<br /><br />There is indication that there is much money to be made in "industrial<br />recreation". The American Recreation Coalition (ARC) represents every<br />conceivable snowmobile, jetski, ATV, 4-wheeler, off-roader, motorcycle and<br />RV interest, whether manufacturer, dealer, or user group, as well as<br />petroleum interests and Disney Corporation<br />
http://www.funoutdoors.com/members.html ). Even with the public domain<br />under its present public ownership, ARC's immense financial, political, and<br />public relations clout allows it to exert considerable control on public<br />land management. Despite the wishes of an overwhelming majority of<br />Americans, ARC has been instrumental in keeping Yellowstone Park, the very<br />crown jewel of the nation's parks, open to snowmobile traffic. A privatizing<br />of management would simply demolish any remnants of the public interest<br />presently holding at bay a total industrial takeover.<br /><br />Beckwith, PERC, FREE, ARC ... these are just parts of a massive and<br />massively-funded, interconnected system and long-term strategy dedicated to<br />the transfer of public domain into private hands. It is so vast and<br />multifaceted that it's difficult to keep tabs on it, and given the politics<br />and obligations of the present Administration, it is advancing with<br />frightening rapidity, largely unnoticed by a citizenry focused on terrorism<br />and foreign wars.<br /><br />Bill Willers is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant
