Posted on 04/19/2005 11:06:14 AM PDT by tomball
Then one day, the government decided it would take (buy) the taxpayer's land for public use, under the guise of "preservation." Soon, the government realized that by taking land that was being taxed, it was no longer collecting property taxes on the land that was once owned by taxpayers.
Then the government decided it would obtain funds via taxation to draw the public to the parks they would create with this land. With federal funds obtained by the taxpayers, the government created design-build projects to "maintain" and "preserve" the park land for public use. The government then decided it would charge the public fees to enter the public parks to help fund their park projects. The government also taxed citizens for land maintenance and public use.
Then one day, the government decides it isn't getting enough money to maintain the land, so it decides to close all the sites it deems necessary to save money. Meanwhile, the taxpayers are still paying for land taken by the government that is supposed to be available for public use, but it now cannot use.
Then the government gets an idea: Let's lease back the land to private citizens for a fee, and still collect the tax dollars to maintain the land that is being leased. This will allow the government to not only maintain all other park land, but to continue to force additional tax payers to get off private property targeted for "park land" via a buy out for public use, as well.
geeze.....just quit giving discounts & lifetime passes to seniors.
How about Washington DC and the states quit paying for illegal aliens -- we could double the size of the Forest Service!!!!
Gonna happen?
"....and we all lived happily ever after"
Great synopsis!
If the Forest Service jettisoned all its programs and departments which have very little to do with forestry, they could do forestry better. If people knew how many federal agencies operate programs and departments just barely related to their actual mission, they would be stunned.
Perhaps they can stop running speed traps on the highway that runs through the national forest near my house.
Only if we make it happen.
Huh?
You have just described perfectly what has been going on at a County level in Erie County, NY. They ran out of money to give away to the freeloaders and now want a fee for this and a fee for that. They even have refused to give closed park land back to some towns as the scum sucking union thugs won't allow it.
The idea that the govt can close a forest due to budget cuts is stupid.
Geeze....what is it with some FReepers and seniors, you act as if they were born seniors and never paid a tax dollar in their lives and just want to use up your hard earned dollars, get a life.
Anyway, what I want to say is that if the Clintons hadn't demolished logging in the western states they would still be getting that money to run the forest service but of course they are blaming Bush policies for it. Bring back logging, sell the timber, make some revenue instead of just spending it all the time, or better yet, give the land back to the people they stoled in from and let them get the profits off the timber.
You do realize govt and stupid in the same sentence is redundant!.
Erie County, NY has closed all its parks. They want to reopen the golf courses for a higher user fee. Even though we still have a parks department, they refuse to open the other parks.
Forestry (logging and replanting trees) isn't what the FS does much of any more, in part because of environmentalists' law suits. It runs recreational lands, maintains roads and trails for recreational use and does lease land allotments for herding.
Most of the lands in the FS were never in the private sector. They were part of the large stock of government lands owned by the GLO, and turned over to the FS ca. 1910ish.
You might not remember this, but most land in the US belonged first to the US government, and then was sold to the private sector. The forest preserves were created to protect watershed and to safeguard forest lands, and the lands were taken out of the lands for sale...the BLM lands were lands the GLO couldn't sell, for the most part, and were stuck with.
Various things happen:
In counties that are largely dominated by FS lands, the FS pays the county monies to make up for these lands being in the government sectors. When they are loggable, the value of the lands is higher, and the counties make more, if I remember right.
Forest service lands have until recently been mainly free to use for recreational use, except that it costs money to hire people, maintain trails and roads, take care of campgrounds.
You might be amazed at how much of this is done by volunteers because there is not enough money in the FS budget to hire people to do it.
Most of the FS budget goes into fire. Money they would use for other things has for decades made up the deficet for fire fighting, money congress has consistantly under budgeted.
Firefighting has gotten a lot more trickier, too, because of all the people who move into the woodlands and don't want their properties destroyed, but build in fireprone areas.
Don't roll up the Forest Service, the Park Service, and the BLM into one thing in your head. The Forest Service is fast reaching the point where one person I know thinks they'll just close shop. CAn't afford to do the recreational activities, aren't allowed to do the logging, and no money for firefighting management.
That will be an interesting day for western areas.
Leftist organizations like the Nature Conservancy use taxpayer money through various channels to "buy" private lands under the ruse of preservation. This land is removed from the tax rolls too. The Nature Conservancy and other similar groups should be assessed property tax on this land. If they were required to pay property tax like any other private property owner, the practice of stealing private property using taxpayer funds would slow or halt.
A Dept of Parks that doesn't oversee any parks? THAT's gubmint in action, there.
The govt shutting a forest makes about as much sense as it closing the sun, or the oceans.
BTTT Ping
I do know it's been a tough row to hoe for the FS over the past few decades, but I also know historians, archaeologists, architects and other specialists employed by the FS in positions that are really quite tangential to the mission, and in any case could be easily done by the private sector.
You'd be amazed how fast it's private sectoring...sometimes it'll end up costing the government more in the long run in absolute cost, but the money will be spent in the private sector...computer help is a good example of where this is successful. But some it will be next to impossible to farm out...either the cost is exorbitant (like some of the satelite sensing they do to track forest fires - private sector doesn't want to touch it) or there's no one else to fund them (like archaeologists - mandated for some things, but nobody but the government hires them. They tend to be low ranked, though, so the cost isn't bad).
The real problem coming up for the forest service is that the people who manage fires used to come up through the FS, and there just aren't replacement people coming online. 5 or 10 years from now, trying to find an IC for a fire might get really tricky. Guys working line are easy to get. Guys who can manage a big fire are rare.
The National Forests are full of natural resources, above and below ground. Properly managed, they could produce enough revenue to fund the entire government.
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