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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.
Like Roosevelt did, create a new CCC, or you could use community service sentences to do the work.
If there are arrests for trespassing... sentence them to work in the parks.
Since the National Park service changed their policies since 2013's shut down, they've been tracked pretty heavily throughout the news cycle. It's one of the bigger and more understandable parts of the shutdown facing the public, especially during the holidays.
They've covered the parks staying open, the lack of maintenance, volunteers cleaning Joshua Tree, Joshua Tree getting overwhelmed and shut down, Yellowstone's access roads closing (although not technically the park) because of snow, the deaths that have occurred in the various National Parks, etc.
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But it won't save any money. It will lose the federal government money when it needs to start up everything again. There is also the tax on the rest of the economy due to not being able to access the government services they need, such as the courts. And that doesn't count the gov. employees not getting paid but having to work regardless, and the gov. employees simply not getting paid. If they are living paycheck to paycheck, they are SOL. Then there are the government contractors. Ever since Reagan, the Fed. Gov. was forced to contract out for some of its functions to the private sector. Those contractors are not getting paid. So their businesses get a hidden tax due to the disruption.
The last gov. shutdown cost the federal government $20 Billion. All become some dolt from Texas (Ted Cruz) got up one morning and decided to be even stupider than normal for him.
Much of the damage is from illegal pot grows,
Uh....what? Look, California and Oregon had a lot of illegal grows in the wilderness many years causing diesel damange to water.... But it hasn't been a problem in national parks ever. There is a big difference between BLM land, state forests, national forests........and national parks.
Who would try to grow weed in Yosemite?? that's just asking for trouble. There's so much empty (and more accessible) places nearby where people actually live and grow it.........
The units of the NPS, the Smithsonian, and other cultural institutions simply will not continue to tolerate shutdown after shutdown. Many of them already have private foundations which assist their operations, and because they're so under-funded by the gov't to begin with (e.g., Smithsonian is the only Federal agency actually allowed to fund-raise because of their pathetic level of funding) and with the gov't continually using them as a political football, it's not a stretch for them all to go fully public-private and just opt out of the whole broken system. For example, Gettysburg National Military Park has done this for years now, and while their NPS staff have indeed been furloughed, the Visitors Center and battlefield are both open during this current shutdown, paid for by the Gettysburg Foundation. Some foundations at other NPS units are actually paying ranger salaries so they can keep working.
Oh yeah, and it's time for Smithsonian to start charging an entry fee. Discount / waive it for the poor if you wish, but well-off and middle-class visitors can and should pay *something*. Even our friends in Europe charge admission fees to their museums.
comic book superhero bland cgi fests
Comic book, superhero and cgi, yes. But bland? Not really.
Bland? Yes. There are no stakes, no threat of anything actually changing. So half the people died in endgame, pretty fucking ballsy move on their part but how many of those are coming back? Marvels problem is they refuse to let anyone actually die and there's never any real possibility of the good guys actually losing unless it's to set up a bigger win later on.
Unless you mean visually in which case they are quite impressive but there are only so many times you can watch cgi army a fight cgi army b before it gets boring.
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Well a lot of the existing border fencing does need repairs/upgrades so it would be an infrastructure project.
And the Dems are offering $1.5 billion for upgrades to border security and infrastructure. But Trump has to have his Great Wall of Trump. All this shut down is going to do is cost us more money. All the people who worked during the shutdown will still get paid. All the people who didn't work over the shutdown will get paid (there's no way Congress will let hundreds of thousands of government workers go a month without pay). And then we will have to pay for the overtime for every department to clear weeks worth of backlogs.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
Yeah but there are already walls and fencing where they're needed, just buy some surveillance drones to patrol the rest of the border and you're done. A Great Wall is dumb.
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.
If you see the examples in TFA about the National Mall, it's not that people are trash for leaving trash behind, it's that the dedicated bins to leave said trash are actually being used as expected by normal decent people, but are not being emptied and thus are overflowing with garbage.
Yeah there's some grubs out there, but in this case the people attempting to do the right thing are unable to do it.
You know it's funny. When Obama was president every one of these Democratic party leaders in congress and the senate voted for border security measures which included a wall. Hundreds of miles of wall and fencing was built and maintained by agencies of the Obama administration and nobody called it immoral. No one was against it.
Now all of a sudden becasue it would be a win for Trump and the Republicans they're against a wall. Meanwhile a border crisis is happening and rather than commit funds to deal with it the Democrats want to give up national sovereignty rather than give Trump a win.
As for the National Parks, if there's a problem a group of citizen should come together and take up the slack. If people want to use the National Parks while they are unstaffed, because they are not closed, then they should pack out their trash, just as they would do in any other wilderness areas. And lets be clear the parks are not closed. They are the opposite of closed. Parks which normally charge for entrance have had their gates left wide open and are free to enter now. One might almost be thinking that someone has deliberately created a situation where trash would accumulate and bad actors would come in and create problems. If the parks were closed the gates would have been locked and signs posted telling visitors that the parks are closed. This has not happened.
As I say. If you are going to visit the parks now be a responsible user and pack your trash out. If you really want to help take you pickup over to a nearby park and bag the trash and cart it off. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.
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.
If you see the examples in TFA about the National Mall, it's not that people are trash for leaving trash behind, it's that the dedicated bins to leave said trash are actually being used as expected by normal decent people, but are not being emptied and thus are overflowing with garbage.
Yeah there's some grubs out there, but in this case the people attempting to do the right thing are unable to do it.
It's already being cleaned up voluntarily:Libertarians step in to clean up Washington during government shutdown
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Illegal immigration doesn't cost money. It's probably a net overall GAIN to the US economy (https://clas.berkeley.edu/research/immigration-economic-benefits-immigration).
I'm not sick of it. I want more immigration. I have friends that are here illegally, and they contribute a lot socially and economically.
I don't respond to AC's.
They're all the same fucking party. That's what alot of people don't understand. It's why 3rd parties aren't allowed to get anywhere when they run, because it would show off the hypocrisy of the "2 party" system. It got worse after Bill Clinton. He pushed the Democrats so far right they became Republicans.
I just find it hilarious to watch you Americans bitch about a paltry $5B border wall, but look the other way when an audit of the Pentagon (which itself costs a billion a year, for the past 28 years) confirms that indeed, trillions of dollars are unaccounted for and in fact they have no idea exactly how much money is unaccounted for.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The conservative Cato Institute published a response to that FAIR report.
Key quote:
I've come to the conclusion that Iron Man and Captain America have reached the end of their arc and are getting in the way of new characters. I expected them both to die in Infinity War. That they didn't but everybody else did (including Spiderman and Black Panther, most notably) was clear evidence that all those deaths will be reversed, but I still think Iron Man and Captain American will be sacrificing their lives to make it happen.