A perfect place for the next Red Robin franchise?

Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven details some Mormons’ practice of “bleeding the beast”: namely, marrying multiple wives who, with children in tow, extract money from ogrish governments via welfare.

The GOP seems to have picked up the same trick: spend, spend, spend, and when there’s no money left, cut those programs that you wanted to cut in the first place.

Think: why is it that Bush et al. are spending so wantonly? Simply, in 5, 10, 15 years, when cuts must be made, they can decimate or privatize those programs that they have targeted for years (meanwhile, they can fund all those wacky crusades). This is how they explain today’s rapid waiver for Florida to privatize their Medicaid program. According to compassionate Jeb, “there’s not a source of revenue in our state” to help those dastardly poor. (Sadly, the increasingly rightist AARP can do very little, as it has made itself quite impotent after siding with the GOP on earlier prescription drug plans… only to later back away).

Closer to home, Mt. St. Helens will soon privatize. Perhaps this will mean your very own rental tract home bordering wilderness? Or ripping and roaring on snowmobiles? Hey, since Weyerhaeuser maintains a Batesian mimic of an actual forest service interpretative center with their “forest education center”, perhaps they can just take over the entire visitor center? After all, that’s available. (But don’t worry, the Forest Service “expects [they will] maintain some presence” … perhaps a little booth?)

This is the wave of the future. With debt and more purposeful debt, we will see pushes to privatize all of those programs we hold sacred, from education, to health care, to our public lands:

Scott Silver of Wild Wilderness, a Bend group opposed to privatization of public lands, said Congress guaranteed the monument’s financial failure by constructing expensive visitor centers with no mechanism to pay for them over the long term.

“The next solution is to call in the private sector,” he said. The new prospectus for commercial activities allows almost “any possibility.”

“This is a megatransformation,” he said. “I just hope people don’t allow the slip to take place without realizing what is changing.”

Please be aware of the slip. Public lands, especially, should remain free from the rank commercialism that has infected 99% of our lives. (I remember visiting the “national park” of Ko Samet in Thailand… it is a tropical island whose beaches are covered 100% with bungalows and other private concessions. Such is the fate for every national park in Thailand. Do we want the same?)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 12:04 am and is filed under Environment, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.