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National Parks Face Years of Damage From Government Shutdown (nationalgeographic.com)
When the government eventually reopens, park experts warn reversing damage won't be as easy as throwing out the trash. From a report: National parks are America's public lands, but right now they're America's trashcans. That's because the U.S. federal government, embattled over funding for a border wall, has shut down, leaving national parks open and largely unattended. Since the shutdown began, brimming trashcans, overflowing toilets, and trespassing has been reported at many parks locations. "Never before have I seen the federal government tempt fate in national parks the way we are today," says Diane Regas, president of the Trust for Public Land. "It's not about what has happened already. It's about what could happen if you don't have the appropriate staffing."
According to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), staffing varies by park, but some 16,000 parks service employees are furloughed, leaving a small number active for policing and security. The government shut down three times in 2018, but only three days last January and less than a day that following February. As of Friday, the government had been partially shut down for 13 days. Further reading: Government Shutdown is Putting a Damper on Science in Seattle and Elsewhere.
According to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), staffing varies by park, but some 16,000 parks service employees are furloughed, leaving a small number active for policing and security. The government shut down three times in 2018, but only three days last January and less than a day that following February. As of Friday, the government had been partially shut down for 13 days. Further reading: Government Shutdown is Putting a Damper on Science in Seattle and Elsewhere.
I'd expect something like this out of a third-world nation, not a world-leader.
How quickly you've fallen from your world power high in the mid 1970s.
SAD. But a few Boomers got rich so FUCK YEAH!!!
Fund the wall :^)
Or you know, don't hold the running of the government hostage for a hair brained scheme that literally won't do anything positive for the country.
Ask for that money to fix actual existing failing infrastructure. I heard Flint still doesn't have access to clean water locally.
So let me get this straight... you're miffed that people didn't take YOUR feelings into account while you don't care for the feelings of others on this matter whom you'd be disturbing.
Yeah, I have a hard time feeling sorry for you.
makes me sad that a great piece of nature can't stay clean for a few days unless there are paid people who clean up after the visitors - the real trash are the humans leaving their trash behind.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Lamfrom says the full scale of the problem is yet to be determined but clean up timelines will range in length.
If we can't afford to authorize funding for a border wall for basic security, then how the hell can we afford to authorize funding for a multi-generational cleanup?
Lamfrom says the full scale of the problem is yet to be determined but clean up timelines will range in length.
If we can't afford to authorize funding for a border wall for basic security, then how the hell can we afford to authorize funding for a multi-generational cleanup?
It's not a question of "afford", it's a question of, "Must not let Trump get what he wants! ORANGE MAN BAD!"
ORANGE MAN BAD! is not a policy.
yep but because it was something tump wanted there going to fight it. even tho they did it themselves.in the past.
Because convict slave labor isn't already a thing.
Ironic that the cleanup will most likely be done by convict labor that is by and large young urban poor black.
These are not the crowds that are abusing the national parks because there is no oversight. The ones doing it are running around in their redneck crap mobile bush whackers. Just wonder how many redneck junk mobiles are getting stuck and left to rot off road. In British Columbia Canada the numbers of redneck mobiles left out in the bush on crown land is astonishing these days, so the poison from the redneck revolution is by no means isolated to the US where it originates.
I have no doubt the Trump supporting assholes with guns and wheels are currently doing the majority of the damage in US national parks with impunity and no worry about being held to account for their stupidity and moronic exploits.
The majority of damage being done to the environment is by offroad vehicles just about everywhere they go these days. Take away the oversight and government employees who maintain control the back road access and presto these assholes will just make new trails and chew up sensitive habit everywhere. The truth is these are the same largely white redneck assholes who could care less about the country that supports them or the environment that sustains us all.
Over the past decade, Democrats have supported billions of dollars in funding for physical barriers. In 2006, the Secure Fence Act passed with bipartisan support requiring the construction of physical barriers along 700 miles of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Sixty-four Democrats voted the measure in the House and 26 in the Senate.
The current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer voted for it, so did Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama praised the bill in a floor speech saying it would "certainly do some good" and "help stem some of the tide of illegal immigration in this country."
In 2013, all Senate Democrats and most House Democrats backed comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the so-called Gang of Eight bill. It included $46 billion for border security and around $8 billion to repair or reinforce barriers along the 700 miles of the border as required under the Secure Fence Act.
Yes, and if $46 billion couldn't do it, Trump's wasteful $5.6 billion boondoggle won't do anything but inflate his ego. We're lucky he didn't want it big enough that his Space Force could see it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Maybe that's because they perceived this as a sufficient and adequate response. Maybe the ROI on continuing to invest in walls and fencing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Maybe America doesn't actually have an immigration crisis, and justifying continued investment in fencing to filter out hypothetical Mexican rapists is an immoral act of unfounded prejudice.
Your entire model of hypocrisy leaves out of the possibility that the previous response was a proportional response, and the proposed response is a disproportionate response. There's no two ways about this: Americans want to buy Californian fruit at a price you can only have if the fruit is picked by undocumented immigrants, without actually having the immigrants.
So you disparage the immigrants so that they have no rights whatsoever in the country where the work and reside, until you've got a de facto caste society.
Once upon a time, India did not have a caste society as rigid as the one they have now. But for some reason, there caste system solidified. Was it the people on the bottom who wanted to become permanently consigned to an underclass? Or was it the people at the top, who wanted something akin to slavery (all the benefits, few of the costs) without turning people into actual property (which is problematic, and always has been).
America's Deep South has never quite forgotten the wonderful heroine hit of being a gentrified ruling class, where you can sit in your drawing rooms and perfect your manners (and mannerisms), while some other group of people is baking in the hot sun for long hours doing the scut work. Gosh, what if you could have that without slavery? What if you could hem and howl until the immigrants had a status below dirt, and do everything conceivable to pretend to stop this, while actually still providing the immigrants with all the same work opportunities? (All the better to sate one's enormous appetite on cheap, local fruit.)
The wall then becomes a permanent monument to the notion, "well, we did what we could" and the immigrants are still showing up to do the same nasty jobs as the same low, low wages (with few benefits), well that just proves that they're lowly and incorrigible and deserve what they get.
Voila: caste system. All of the benefits, few of the costs.
I'll gladly believe otherwise once there's a vigorous enforcement effort to arrest businessmen who routinely look the other way over worker documentation (with the prospect of serious jail time for repeat offenses). Rounding up the first 1000 would be like gathering windblown apples off the ground. That would slow undocumented immigration down to a trickle at way less cost than Trump's giant monument to caste-society lust.
Problem: a sudden wave of orchard bankruptcies among hard-working, tax-paying Californian orchard owners (mostly white) would shine a harsh spotlight in the evening news cycle for many months on the actual hypocrisy here. We wants them in one way (cheap prices), but we don't wants them in the other way (affording them dignity and civil rights).
A hugely expensive wall (that still won't actually work) is just a giant branding exercise in justifying this extremely un-American division between labour and civil rights. This is not so different from the extremely un-American division between taxation and representation that once lead to a giant tea party.
But times change, and tea party rebrand themselves. Now we're more like the British society from which we once sought refuge, than we are like our forefathers (and foremothers) who bravely endured the back-breaking labour of setting up shop in a giant land of opportunity, theirs for the taking.
But Trump was very clear on numerous occasions that Mexico was going to pay for the wall. Consequently he has no electoral mandate for getting USA tax payers to pay for the wall. Heck at the last set of elections he lost control of the House so one could argue legitimately there is an electoral mandate to oppose him trying to get USA tax payers to pay for the wall. a break from his election promise of 2016.
And the Dems are offering $1.5 billion for upgrades to border security and infrastructure.
They won't allow any of that for infrastructure, it's for "technology" (that is, they plan to had it to Google and Facebook and a couple of other Dem-friendly tech companies, not sure how it improves "security," but it does improve certain Democratic congresspersons' campaign finance potential).
Anyway, $5.7 billion is needed.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yes, illegal immigration costs money. Provably so. I guess if you think otherwise, you'll willingly let anyone who desires to move in with you for free, you can feed, clothe, educate, protect, and provide healthcare for them, and their services as an occasional maid or cook would more than offset the costs?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Much as I hate Trump, this quote was never meant literally.
He didn't intend for the budget of the Wall to be paid for by Mexico. He intended the budget to be matched by trade gains. Mexico paying for the wall means the US gains enough money on trade that the wall is figuratively paid-for.
Of course that trade increase is also complete hyperbole with no backing in reality or even economic theory. The wall would be funded by US taxpayers, to no one's surprise. But no one should truly believe Trump expected Mexico to hand out cash for Trump's big ego project. That's just a strawman.
I don't recall this level of fear mongering when the government was shut down for 16 days in 2013, or the 21 days between 1995 and 1996.
"Irreparable damage"..? FFS, government sure thinks highly of itself. Nature can't get by for a few weeks without it?
The parks still look way better than the mess left behind by the "environmentalist "protesters who camped out over the Keystone pipeline.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.