The Bush Administration's Assault on our National Parks

[Makalakumu]

Apparently the Bush Administration has some secret plans for our national parks. What do you think of this???

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/opinion/29mon1.html?ex=1125979200&en=0bc8

Most of us think of America's national parks as everlasting places, parts of the bedrock of how we know our own country. But they are shaped and protected by an underlying body of legislation, which is distilled into a basic policy document that governs their operation. Over time, that document has slowly evolved, but it has always stayed true to the fundamental principle of leaving the parks unimpaired for future generations. That has meant, in part, sacrificing some of the ways we might use the parks today in order to protect them for tomorrow.
Recently, a secret draft revision of the national park system's basic management policy document has been circulating within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service experience.

Within national park circles, this rewrite of park rules has been met with profound dismay, for it essentially undermines the protected status of the national parks. The document makes it perfectly clear that this rewrite was not prompted by a compelling change in the park system's circumstances. It was prompted by a change in political circumstances - the opportunity to craft a vision of the national parks that suits the Bush administration.

Some of Mr. Hoffman's changes are trivial, although even apparently subtle changes in wording - from "protect" to "conserve," for instance - soften the standard used to judge the environmental effects of park policy.

But there is nothing subtle about the main thrust of this rewrite. It is a frontal attack on the idea of "impairment." According to the act that established the national parks, preventing impairment of park resources - including the landscape, wildlife and such intangibles as the soundscape of Yellowstone, for instance - is the "fundamental purpose." In Mr. Hoffman's world, it is now merely one of the purposes.

Mr. Hoffman's rewrite would open up nearly every park in the nation to off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and Jet Skis. According to his revision, the use of such vehicles would become one of the parks' purposes. To accommodate such activities, he redefines impairment to mean an irreversible impact. To prove that an activity is impairing the parks, under Mr. Hoffman's rules, you would have to prove that it is doing so irreversibly - a very high standard of proof. This would have a genuinely erosive effect on the standards used to protect the national parks.

The pattern prevails throughout this 194-page document - easing the rules that limit how visitors use the parks and toughening the standard of proof needed to block those uses. Behind this pattern, too, there is a fundamental shift in how the parks are regarded. If the laws establishing the national park system were fundamentally forward-looking - if their mission, first and foremost, was protecting the parks for the future - Mr. Hoffman's revisions place a new, unwelcome and unnecessary emphasis on the present, on what he calls "opportunities for visitors to use and enjoy their parks."
There is no question that we go to national parks to use and enjoy them. But part of the enjoyment of being in a place like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon is knowing that no matter how much it changes in the natural processes of time, it will continue to exist substantially unchanged.

There are other issues too. Mr. Hoffman would explicitly allow the sale of religious merchandise, and he removes from the policy document any reference to evolution or evolutionary processes. He does everything possible to strip away a scientific basis for park management. His rules would essentially require park superintendents to subordinate the management of their parks to local and state agendas. He also envisions a much wider range of commercial activity within the parks.

In short, this is not a policy for protecting the parks. It is a policy for destroying them.

The Interior Department has already begun to distance itself from this rewrite, which it kept hidden from park service employees. But what Mr. Hoffman has given us is a road map of what could happen to the parks if Mr. Bush's political appointees are allowed to have their way.

It is clear by now that Mr. Bush has no real intention of living up to his campaign promise to fully finance the national parks. This document offers a vivid picture of the divide between the National Park Service, whose career employees remain committed to the fundamental purpose of leaving the parks unimpaired, and an Interior Department whose political appointees seem willing to alter them beyond recognition, partly in the service of commercial objectives.

Suddenly, many things - like the administration's efforts to force snowmobiles back into Yellowstone - seem very easy to explain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/opinion/29mon1.html?ex=1125979200&en=0bc8

 

[Blindside]

Hoffman again, he's the guy who ramrodded the AFA agreement on the National Bison Range down the Refuge systems throat. I certainly don't have anything against the tribes, but that agreement is just unworkable.

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=448

Lamont

 

[michaeledward]

Not President Bush!! Weakening standards of protection for our National Parks! Can't be, I mean, look how well he has husbanded all of the other resources of our country during his tenure.

well, nevermind.

 

[Makalakumu]

What do you think about this concept of "impairment?" Do motorized vehicles impair your experience in the National Parks? Should snowmobiles, ATVs, jet skis, motorized boats, etc be allowed?

Should national parts "protect" resources or "conserve" them?

btw - I hope everyone realizes that the change of THAT word opens NPs up resources trapped in national parks for a certain amount of development...

Other changes...Do you think that religious materials should be sold at NPs? For example, should a creationist explanation of the Grand Canyon be sold at the Dept. of Interior gift shop?

It's no wonder why the Bush Administration made these plans secret. You can bet that any DoI employee who gets in the way will be fired...even those who have dedicated their careers to this public service, the best of the best. This type of political skullduggery is the hallmark of how they run things.

 

[michaeledward]

When gasoline reaches $8.00 per gallon, I will have fewer objections to ATV's and Snowmobiles in National Parks ... provided that a significant portion of those fuel costs are taxes, and not profits for exxon mobil ... ( I really need to drop my objection to buying their stock ).

In reality, the rules are a disaster for the National Parks, and they are a gift to corporate America. But, this is the government we elected. We get what we deserve.



Post Script ...

Somebody didn't like my first post on this thread. Must be a holder of Exxon Mobil stock, or maybe Halliburton.

The local fly-fishing only pond recently endured a 'fish-kill'; some 150 rainbow trout died after a rainfall. It seems the rain contained too many contaminants for the fish to continue to live. While environmental concerns like this can't be specifically laid at the foot of the Bush administration, simply erasing the years of work on the Kyoto protocols certainly sent signals around industry (and the globe) about how the Bush administration views 'Environmental Protection'.

 

[Jeff Boler]

I think.....you're obsessed. A little psycho-therapy is recommended.

 

[Makalakumu]

I think.....you're obsessed. A little psycho-therapy is recommended.

:feedtroll

 

[Makalakumu]

See this article...

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Published by the December 11, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone [/font]​

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Crimes Against Nature [/font]​

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.[/font]​

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.

[/font]

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1120-01.htm

Environmental concerns are everyone's concerns. They effect every single citizen in this country. They are more important then foriegn policy. They are more important then jobs. They are certainly more important then someones right to marry whom they wish and to bear arms. Environmental concerns are concerns for your health, your family, and your quality of life and this President is the absolute worst President we've had regarding these concerns in decades.

Our national parks are our nations heritage. Long ago, we put the land aside to preserve what our country used to look like. Their is wonder in nature, beauty to be enjoyed and perhaps worshipped. This is our birthright as Americans. To the Bush Administration, this is just another dollar sign. Michael may be right...we get what we voted for, but this administration is so secretive no body had a chance to vote on this stuff or a hell of a lot of other stuff.

The fact that the Presidents numbers are dropping so low indicates to me just how much people are beginning to find out about these guys. In 2008, I predict anyone who voted for the current administration will harbor some regrets...especially after they see the mess these jet skiing idiots will make of their precious little vacation time.

 

[michaeledward]

I think.....you're obsessed. A little psycho-therapy is recommended.

Fishing is therapy.

I will be pleased to take you out, any time, and teach you to present a fly. It is a wonderful way to connect to the environment and many of its interconnected parts.

Or, if you prefer, I will be pleased to guide you through the creation of an artificial fly that will catch the quarry of your choice; trout, bass, walleye, striped bass, or whatever else.

 

[Makalakumu]

Fishing is therapy.

I will be pleased to take you out, any time, and teach you to present a fly. It is a wonderful way to connect to the environment and many of its interconnected parts.

Or, if you prefer, I will be pleased to guide you through the creation of an artificial fly that will catch the quarry of your choice; trout, bass, walleye, striped bass, or whatever else.

I could guide him through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and show him what real quiet can do for one's spirit. We could paddle the lakes and portage without the Whips of Chronus and let our wills guide our way. We could work hard and catch fish and eat and sleep in an environment that has been put aside for our peace.

Or we could let jet skis run all over and hope the wakes don't swamp our canoes. We could let snowmobiles tear up the portages. We could cut ATV trails around the lakes. Perhaps even bring in some trucks to haul speed boats over portages. We could even mix the smell of gasoline with sunrise and entwine the whine of a two-cycle motor with the call of the loon.

That is the sick reality of what these guys are planning.

 

[Flatlander]

Well, in all fairness, if one has not experienced the power of pristine, untouched nature, one cannot fully appreciate its value. Having said that, it seems as though a reduction in the occurrances of pristine, untouched nature doesn't bode well for the future protection of what little remains to be enjoyed. Paradoxically, it also seems as though the enjoyment of nature is a significant factor in the destruction of it.

 

[Makalakumu]

Paradoxically, it also seems as though the enjoyment of nature is a significant factor in the destruction of it.

It doesn't have to be if managed properly. For that, it takes regulations and study and sacrifice. Anytime someone preserves anything, these things are demanded.

 

[Makalakumu]

President Bush on the Environment.

From the article linked above...

Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the federal Department of Agriculture has stopped work on fifty-seven standards, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has halted twenty-one new standards. The EPA completed just two major rules -- both under court order and both watered down at industry request -- compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years.

The White House has masked its attacks with euphemisms that would have embarrassed George Orwell. George W. Bush's "Healthy Forests" initiative promotes destructive logging of old-growth forests. His "Clear Skies" program, which repealed key provisions of the Clean Air Act, allows more emissions. The administration uses misleading code words such as streamlining or reforming instead of weakening, and thinning instead of logging.

Even as Republican pollster Luntz acknowledged that the scientific evidence is against the Republicans on issues like global warming, he advised them to find scientists willing to hoodwink the public. "You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue," he told Republicans, "by becoming even more active in recruiting experts sympathetic to your view."

The EPA's inspector general received broad attention for his August 21st, 2003, finding that the White House pressured the agency to conceal the public-health risks from poisoned air following the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. But this 2001 deception is only one example of the administration's pattern of strategic distortion. Earlier this year, it suppressed an EPA report warning that millions of Americans, especially children, are being poisoned by mercury from industrial sources.

In May, the White House blocked the EPA staff from publicly discussing contamination by the chemical perchlorate -- the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel. The administration froze federal regulations on perchlorate, even as new research reveals alarmingly high levels of the chemical in the nation's drinking water and food supply, including many grocery-store lettuces. Perchlorate pollution has been linked to neurological problems, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in some twenty states. The Pentagon and several defense contractors face billions of dollars in potential cleanup liability

In autumn 2001, Secretary Norton provided the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with her agency's scientific assessment that Arctic oil drilling would not harm hundreds of thousands of caribou. Not long afterward, Fish and Wildlife Service biologists contacted the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which defends scientists and other professionals working in state and federal environmental agencies. "The scientists provided us the science that they had submitted to Norton and the altered version that she had given to Congress a week later," said the group's executive director, Jeff Ruch. There were seventeen major substantive changes, all of them minimizing the reported impacts. When Norton was asked about the alterations in October 2001, she dismissed them as typographical errors.

Norton's Fish and Wildlife Service is the first ever not to voluntarily list a single species as endangered or threatened. Her officials have blackballed scientists and savaged studies to avoid listing the trumpeter swan, revoke the listing of the grizzly bear and shrink the remnant habitat for the Florida panther. She disbanded the service's oldest scientific advisory committee in order to halt protection of desert fish in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that are headed for extinction. Interior career staffers and scientists say they are monitored by Norton's industry appointees to ensure that future studies do not conflict with industry profit-making.

This past July, EPA scientists leaked a study, which the agency had ordered suppressed in May, showing that a Senate plan -- co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain -- to reduce the pollution that causes global warming could achieve its goal at very small cost. Bush reacted by launching a $100 million ten-year effort to prove that global temperature changes have, in fact, occurred naturally, another delay tactic for the fossil-fuel barons at taxpayer expense. Princeton geo-scientist Michael Oppenheimer told me, "This administration likes to emphasize what we don't know while ignoring or minimizing what we do know, which is a prescription for paralysis on policy. It's hard to imagine what kind of scientific evidence would suffice to convince the White House to take firm action on global warming."

After one meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Cheney dismissed California Gov. Gray Davis' request to cap the state's energy prices. That denial would enrich Enron and nearly bankrupt California. It has since emerged that the state's energy crisis was largely engineered by Enron. According to the New York Times, the task-force staff circulated a memo that suggested "utilizing" the crisis to justify expanded oil and gas drilling. President Bush and others would cite the California crisis to call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Energy companies that had not ponied up remained under pressure to give to Republicans. When Westar Energy's chief executive was indicted for fraud, investigators found an e-mail written by Westar executives describing solicitations by Republican politicians for a political action committee controlled by Tom DeLay as the price for a "seat at the table" with the task force.

While peddling influence to energy tycoons, the White House quietly dropped criminal and civil charges against Koch Industries, America's largest privately held oil company. Koch faced a ninety-seven-count federal felony indictment and $357 million in fines for knowingly releasing ninety metric tons of carcinogenic benzene and concealing the releases from federal regulators. Koch executives contributed $800,000 to Bush's presidential campaign and to other top Republicans.

Southern Co. was among the most adept advocates for its own self-interest. The company, which contributed $1.6 million to Republicans from 1999 to 2002, met with Cheney's task force seven times. Faced with a series of EPA prosecutions at power plants violating air-quality standards, the company retained Haley Barbour, former Republican National Committee chairman and now governor-elect of Mississippi, to lobby the administration to ignore Southern's violations. The White House then forced the Justice Department to drop the prosecution. Justice lawyers were "astounded" that the administration would interfere in a law-enforcement matter that was "supposed to be out of bounds from politics." The EPA's chief enforcement officer, Eric Schaeffer, resigned. "With the Bush administration, whether or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who you know," Schaeffer told me. "If you've got a good lobbyist, you can just buy your way out of trouble."

Cheney wasn't embarrassed to reward his old cronies at Halliburton, either. The final draft of the task-force report praises a gas-recovery technique controlled by Halliburton - even though an earlier draft had criticized the technology. The technique, which has been linked to the contamination of aquifers, is currently being investigated by the EPA. Somehow, that got edited out of the report.

Coal companies enjoyed perhaps the biggest payoff. At the West Virginia Coal Association's annual conference in May 2002, president William D. Raney assured 150 industry moguls, "You did everything you could to elect a Republican president." Now, he said, "you are already seeing in his actions the payback."

The energy-task-force plan is a $20 billion subsidy to the oil, coal and nuclear industries, which are already swimming in record revenues. In May 2003, as the House passed the plan and as the rest of the nation stagnated in a recession abetted by high oil prices, Exxon announced that its profits had tripled from the previous quarter's record earnings. The energy plan recommends opening protected lands and waters to oil and gas drilling and building up to 1,900 electric-power plants. National treasures such as the California and Florida coasts, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the areas around Yellowstone Park will be opened for plunder for the trivial amounts of fossil fuels that they contain. While increasing reliance on oil, coal and nuclear power, the plan cuts the budget for research into energy efficiency and alternative power sources by nearly a third. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," Cheney explained, but it should not be the basis of "comprehensive energy policy."

To lobby for the plan, more than 400 industry groups enlisted in the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, a coalition created by oil, mining and nuclear interests and guided by the White House. It cost $5,000 to join, "a very low price," according to Republican lobbyist Wayne Valis. The prerequisite for joining, he wrote in a memo, was that members "must agree to support the Bush energy proposal in its entirety and not lobby for changes." Within two months, members had contributed more than $1 million. The price for disloyalty was expulsion from the coalition and possible reprisal by the administration. "I have been advised," wrote Valis, "that this White House 'will have a long memory.' "

Like Gale Norton, Leavitt has a winning personality and a disastrous environmental record. Under his leadership, Utah tied for last as the state with the worst environmental enforcement record and ranked second-worst (behind Texas) for both air quality and toxic releases. As governor, Leavitt displayed the same contempt for science that has characterized the Bush administration. He fired more than seventy scientists employed by state agencies for producing studies that challenged his political agenda. He fired a state enforcement officer who penalized one of Leavitt's family fish farms for introducing whirling disease into Utah, devastating the state's wild-trout populations.

America's most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in the depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, "I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most." Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power."

Corporate capitalists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush competition by controlling government. The rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930s offers many informative lessons on how corporate power can undermine a democracy. In Spain, Germany and Italy, industrialists allied themselves with right-wing leaders who used the provocation of terrorist attacks, continual wars, and invocations of patriotism and homeland security to tame the press, muzzle criticism by opponents and turn government over to corporate control. Those governments tapped industrial executives to run ministries and poured government money into corporate coffers with lucrative contracts to prosecute wars and build infrastructure. They encouraged friendly corporations to swallow media outlets, and they enriched the wealthiest classes, privatized the commons and pared down constitutional rights, creating short-term prosperity through pollution-based profits and constant wars. Benito Mussolini's inside view of this process led him to complain that "fascism should really be called 'corporatism.' "

Today, George W. Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for the robber barons, doling out the commons to large polluters. Last year, as the calamitous rollbacks multiplied, the corporate-owned TV networks devoted less than four percent of their news minutes to environmental stories.

This is deplorable, dispicable, and probably will spell the end for real democracy in this country. As Michael said earlier, "You got what you voted for..."

 

[Makalakumu]

Here some more...

One of the worst examples is the rewriting of New Source Review. I have three sons with asthma; one out of every four black kids in New York City now has asthma. Asthma attacks are triggered primarily by ozone and particulates, and the major sources of those materials in our atmosphere are 1,100 coal-burning power plants that are burning coal illegally. The Clinton administration had initiated investigations and prosecutions against 70 of the worst of those. But this is an industry that donated $48 million to President Bush and the Republican Party in the 2000 cycle and has given $58 million since. One of the first things that Bush did when he came into office was to order the Justice Department to drop those lawsuits. The Justice Department lawyer said that this had never happened before in American history, where a president accepts money from industries targeted for investigation and prosecution, and then orders the Justice Department to drop those investigations once he gets into office. There were 70 utilities involved here and, according to EPA, just the criminal exceedences from those 70 plants killed 5,500 Americans every year. Then the administration went and rewrote the Clean Air Act, gutting the New Source rule, which means those plants will be able to discharge ozone and particulates forever.

Today, one out of every six American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases, including autism, blindness, mental retardation and heart, liver and kidney disease. My own levels of mercury are so high -- I had them tested recently -- that a woman with the same levels would have a child with cognitive impairment. The Clinton administration had classified mercury as a hazardous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, which triggered a requirement that those utilities remove 90 percent of the mercury within three and a half years. It would have cost less than 1 percent of plant revenue, and the great thing about it is that it works; we now know that when the utilities stop discharging mercury, that the fish downstream clean up almost immediately.

Does anyone ever wonder why so many of our children are being born learning disabled? Does anyone ever wonder why so many of our children need to take medication to control their behaviors? Did anyone ever imagine that the way they could vote would endager their children?

As Michael said, "you get what you voted for..." problem is that, so do I.

 

[Phoenix44]

Just came back from Arches National Park in Utah. I was explaining to my kids that this beautiful land was OUR land, it belongs to the American people, and that when we read about the threat of developing the parks, THIS is what they're talking about.

Damned if one of the first newspaper articles we saw when we returned home wasn't about plans to raid the parks...

 

[Rich Parsons]

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