POLL: Spending on Parks

[What Would Jesus Do?]

National parks and historic sites need almost $12 billion in upkeep - or about four times the National Parks Service's annual budget. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans proposed a budget that would slash spending by $5.5 trillion in 10 years.

So why the backlog? The NPS claims that stingy funding from Congress has forced park employees to make tough decisions about which repairs to perform and which to put off. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and many conservationists place most of the blame on the government, which has bought up new land instead of spending money maintaining the sites it already administers. "We spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to acquire additional federal lands, but none of that funding is applied to the maintenance backlog," she wrote in a 2013 op-ed in the Hill.

Read more at MoJo

 

[naturalmwa]

We should get TransCanada to pay for the parks in exchange for the Keystone pipeline. There's a deal to be made here. There are tourists ads on MSNBC from Utah advertising their national parks. Maybe the state's that get the parks should chip in a surcharge for all the economic activity the federal parks generate? We could restart the CCC. How about we let all the nonviolent criminals out of prison in exchange for trail maintenance? Time to get creative.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

So who exactly are we buying this additional land from?

I had the sense that the Federal Government already owned zillions of acres of land throughout the West.

Are we moving money from the National Parks Service to the BLM? or to state governments such as Alaska?

In exchange for more park land?

................

I think that we should renege on a few pension obligations to federal government pensioners before we buy more land,

... since it appears that we do not have enough money for either one, perhaps we should cut pensions by $2 for every dollar spent on land aquisition.

 

[HallofFame]

I love the outdoors but I hate government so that's a tough one for me. Also Iowa is like the worst state in the nation to live in if you want to see a national park. God we suck. Can we cut entitlement programs instead of money for the parks?

 

[aflachawk]

Originally posted by What W...us Do?:
National parks and historic sites need almost $12 billion in upkeep - or about four times the National Parks Service's annual budget. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans proposed a budget that would slash spending by $5.5 trillion in 10 years.

So why the backlog? The NPS claims that stingy funding from Congress has forced park employees to make tough decisions about which repairs to perform and which to put off. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and many conservationists place most of the blame on the government, which has bought up new land instead of spending money maintaining the sites it already administers. "We spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to acquire additional federal lands, but none of that funding is applied to the maintenance backlog," she wrote in a 2013 op-ed in the Hill.

Link: Read more at MoJo[/URL]

Every part of government needs billions more. That's an old story. The part of the economy that's really massively underfunded is the wages of the middle class and that's gotten worse under both Republicans and Dems.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[LuteHawk]

May we use Rocky Mountain National Park
outside of Estes Park, Colorado as an example
.
Obviously, there is no upkeep on the mountains
themselves. But there are costs involved in
maintaining the roadway system throughout the
park. As cars climb the roads we have safety
issues connected with the conditions of the roads.

There are also the costs associated with the park
rangers and their salaries. Costs for the different
programs which the park offers. And the list goes
on.


Bottom Line: You can raise entry fees for cars to the
park and you can cut back on staff and programs.
Either way someone pays the price to keep our parks
open and safe.

 

[naturalmwa]

Originally posted by aflachawk:
Every part of government needs billions more. That's an old story. The part of the economy that's really massively underfunded is the wages of the middle class and that's gotten worse under both Republicans and Dems.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

Now you're putting your finger on the problem, how would you fix that?

 

[Titus Andronicus]

Right now there is no money for the parks and still they are building themselves an empire at the NPS.

I would put a ten year freeze on new additions to the system and kind of muddle along with the current portfolio.

I went through the 2014 list of additions to the system and there were clearly a handful that were questionable.

... Some Harriet Tubman Underground RR stuff and the purchase of an additional building for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum?

They also bought some additional land in the area of Little Round Top. Maybe that is OK, but maybe not.

Too much of this stuff is related to civil rights and the civil war.

This nation needs to move on.

..................

I really doubt that our foreign visitors after visiting Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon have much of an interest in visiting a tenement building in NYC.

Lets eliminate the empire building at the NPS, get caught up on our bills, and take it from there.

 

[naturalmwa]

Originally posted by Titus Andronicus:
Right now there is no money for the parks and still they are building themselves an empire at the NPS.

I would put a ten year freeze on new additions to the system and kind of muddle along with the current portfolio.

I went through the 2014 list of additions to the system and there were clearly a handful that were questionable.

... Some Harriet Tubman Underground RR stuff and the purchase of an additional building for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum?

They also bought some additional land in the area of Little Round Top. Maybe that is OK, but maybe not.

Too much of this stuff is related to civil rights and the civil war.

This nation needs to move on.

..................

I really doubt that our foreign visitors after visiting Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon have much of an interest in visiting a tenement building in NYC.

Lets eliminate the empire building at the NPS, get caught up on our bills, and take it from there.

We should move on from civil rights? I disagree.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

Originally posted by naturalmwa:

Too much of this stuff is related to civil rights and the civil war.

This nation needs to move on.

..................

We should move on from civil rights? I disagree.

After many years of slowly, gradually improving our record on this front, we have ended up by using civil rights as a kudgel. Civil Rights is not even about Civil Rights any longer. It has become a political tool to advance the cause of any special interest group that can be categorized as a voting block and as a result EVERYTHING is now a civil rights issue.

We need a rest from this stuff. Let's get back to letting people make it on their own.

And yes ... President Obama and Eric Holder are in many respects the culprits.

 

[naturalmwa]

Originally posted by Titus Andronicus:

Originally posted by naturalmwa:

Too much of this stuff is related to civil rights and the civil war.

This nation needs to move on.

..................

We should move on from civil rights? I disagree.

After many years of slowly, gradually improving our record on this front, we have ended up by using civil rights as a kudgel. Civil Rights is not even about Civil Rights any longer. It has become a political tool to advance the cause of any special interest group that can be categorized as a voting block and as a result EVERYTHING is now a civil rights issue.

We need a rest from this stuff. Let's get back to letting people make it on their own.

And yes ... President Obama and Eric Holder are in many respects the culprits.

I'm open to the idea that this might apply to some topic, but I don't think it applies to Harriet Tubman Underground RR stuff. That seems very worthy of spending money to preserve some old farm house with a secret celler and building a museum where the story of brave people who risked it all to be free is told. Thats kind of like preserving the very best of America IMO. Those people were trying to make it on their own, the underground railroad wasn't a government program.