posted on January 9, 2001 09:59:11 PM new
Hi all - just a minor political rant about the loss and "keep out" signs springing up all over "public" lands right now.
With a stroke of his pen - Clinton again takes away more land from public access and puts huge chunks of National Forests off limits to MOST of us.
"But Nutspec!"- they cry "It protects the land from roads and evil people" Um- well, yes it does, and keeps ordinary people like you and me out, and forces more crowds onto what is left.
Let's talk this "roadless" game - the Federal government eliminates funding for maintaining roads and makes it a crime to do it yourself. As roads break down and become impossible to cross - (duh) - they simply strike the "road" from the map and say "what road?" with their shoulder shrugged and palms up and another huge chunk of "roadless" land vanishes. "Multiple use lands" are now replaced by "stay the hell out"
In my local forest - they have a hateful thing called an "Adventure Pass" you have to pay a fee simply to enter the forest. The penalties are steep - People coming from LA can be fined 95 dollars for letting their kids play in the snow alongside the road at a turnout.
(What surplus? "Our budgets have been cut and we cannot maintain the forests without them" they cry)
I bought one of the horrible things to take some overseas visitors to the mountains to see snow for their first time - (they live 4 degrees above the equator) The roads and trails had not been maintained in the least in the past 10 years since I had last been on them and were terrible - but I did see that there were many, many, rangers in green trucks that seemed disapointed everytime that I got to show my "pass" - They never got to open the ticket books that they carried. Seems the money for the pass goes for Enforcement and tickets/fines and nothing is left over for the forest.
I have had less trouble clearing Customs than simply being a member of the public wanting to visit a national forest. I know that I never felt welcome to visit.
I know that this is possibly not politically correct for these boards - and I will likely be flamed - but so be it. I feel that these Federal Land grabs have gone way overboard.
posted on January 9, 2001 10:12:30 PM new
Nutspec,I wont flame you.We lost our public lands long ago to drilling.The parks are ok,But small to what you are talking about.
There is not much land that is not bob wired.
posted on January 10, 2001 01:59:00 AM new
No flame here. If the government could get away with making us carry internal passes to move from city to city they would. Sounds like one more small step that way. I would keep track of how often you are stopped. If it gets intrusive you can do what one fellow did in CA. He was black and wore dreadlocks
and lived in an expensive very white neighborhood. He found it was simply impossible to go out jogging along his own road without being stopped and ID'd and interrogated by the police as to why he was
in "their" town (I live here you dumb ass)
and what he was "doing" (sitting in a squad car when I want to be running) After he was stopped enough times he sued for a pattern of denied civil rights and won a multimillion dollar settlement. NOW the police seem to be able to remember him as a resident.
