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It is not the government's business what I choose to voluntarily ingest into my own body. As long as I am not harming other people it remains a victimless act, no worse or better than sitting down this afternoon and belching my way through six cans of beer while watching the Georgia-South Carolina game.
Let's start to save the wild places from illegal cultivators by allowing everyone the right to grow the stuff in their own yard or apartment window box. As long as it remains illegal it will always attract criminals, because the artificially high market price created by its illegality is too much of lure for those wishing to cash in (just like the prohibition of alcohol created the greatest crime wave in U.S. history).
Let's go after real criminals and leave the personal decisions of adults about what they choose to ingest up to their own discretion. By the way, hemp is a wonderfully renewable and adaptable resource that is being unfairly restricted just because some finger wagging nanny-state power mongers are afraid someone might grow a little smokable bud out in the green fastness of their hemp field. God forbid! It would be just like restricting the cultivation of corn because some folks make some moonshine from it. Oh the HORRORS!
Is it too much to ask to be left alone and not have the government trying to regulate every aspect of people's personal behavior. Unfortunately I think most of you out there support Big Brother and his crusade to save us from ourselves.
There are ONLY 20 million daily pot smokers???? I have a feeling that is a count of the people who ADMIT to a daily habit and not a realistic number of all daily pot smokers. I am going to guess that the number is much higher, at least double that figure. The solution to the problem lies with us and we are the only ones who have any chance of coming up with a sloution. Past experience has proven that the issue is too volatile for any politician to want to get involved. A candidate who publically takes either side of the issue is committing political suicide. If we wish to be responsible citizens, we have only two choices: 1 - stop smoking pot unless we are growing it illegally for our own consumption (which is never going to happen...daily pot smokers tend to be lazy and not all that industrious) or 2 - legalize marijuana. The latter option seems more feasible. I am not here to promote the use of marijuana, simply to say that illegal usage of marijuana is here to stay unless we change the laws and remove its illegal status. To be honest, as intoxicants are concerned, I think marijuana is probably the least toxic and poses the least threat to the general public, unless of course, you find shelves stripped of Oreos and milk and the general apathetic attitude of the user to be of major concern or threat to our society.
Sherry
kurt- maybe i missed something in the previous posts, but how is the overall population of black bears doing in the area, at least before the drought hit, good or bad?
all those people should be fined. in drought years, educational enforcement just isn't enough.
Steve,
Me? Tired of you sharing your stories here? No way! I'm so glad you have added the link. You are correct, it is very on-topic, and it really helps tell the story here. I didn't discover your program until about episode 50, so I wasn't aware of that particular audio program.
Exactly correct about the citations. The reason these bears are being put down is directly related to the easy access of food due to carelessness of visitors, campers, and backpackers. The NPS needs to get serious with the fines. I'm talking $200 minimum for carelessness, $500 for outright feeding of bears. It's the only way people will learn that their are serious consequences to their seemingly innocuous actions.
I do find this upsetting. So, the assumption that those upset with the government aren't also upset with private industry is not much of an argument. Do you think I like getting tons of junk mail, like having my name and information sold so that others can try to sell me stuff? It's all ridiculous. How is it an argument in favor of federal ID requirements that private corporations do the same thing? It's unbelievable that the world divides so neatly for all of you. Also, that governments do this already ... so what? That we all in some way comply in order to survive, so what? Is it right? If not, is it worth resisting? And, to me, this is a no brainer. Anything that gives the government more of an excuse to force people to defend their identity is more onerous than not doing so. I think that's true everywhere, whether we are talking about anonymous postings on a private blog or proving your identity to make a purchase with your credit card at a store. And, yes, there are some drastically radical consequences of being so laissez-faire about identity that I doubt too many people have the guts to embrace. The world we live in now is worse.
Where are people willing to draw the line on these sorts of intrusions? I think people would draw a line for instance if we thought of forcing all the Jews in the country to wear Stars of David. But, what principle guides this? If it's always going to be the case that we'll justify another intrusion because it exists in some form somewhere else, we are fast on that road. And, if you ask a lot of immigrants in this country, especially people of color, then we are already pretty far along that road. Already, there is a trend against racial diversity in the national parks; do you suppose this helps matters? Instead, it makes us all assumed enemies of the state until our ID proves otherwise. That's really very, very sad.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
"private companies have been collecting more information about us than the government has for years, yet we keep signing the sheet or clicking the OK button that says we understand their privacy policy without reading it, we waive our rights on a regular basis just to get the goods or service we're standing in line for"
Merryland you are so right on. I too have often wondered why people get so upset over showing their driver's license to a government official when they on a weekly basis allow a greedy corporation to know how many condoms, beers, and tamons they buy.
Jeremy is right too. We can choose to get "off the grid" in many cases if we are willing to lie about our personal information and do without certain conveinences. Still, if you use a credit card to pay for purchases and give grocery stores your real name on their "savings" cards, then the government already has many ways to track where you are and what you are doing. The Real ID is superfluous. Another 14 billion down the drain.
You don't have a 'choice' as to whether or not to disclose your bank accounts, pay statements, dependents, etc. etc. to the IRS. And unless you want to travel to the National Parks by hitchhiking with cash only as your payment method, your movements are being tracked by somebody. Homeland Security has so much too do right now tracking potential terrorists, criminal illegal aliens and other lawbreakers (and doing a poor job of that) that I really don't think they'll be checking on whether little old me visited a national park or not. And if they did, I really don't care. It's not an activity that I'm ashamed of or trying to hide.
Yes, we waive our rights on a regular basis, but, it is a choice we make. We have the choice to accept the privacy policy or not. If I choose to, in this country, I have the choice to have on official address that includes a P.O. Box (a no-no under the Real ID), I have a choice to own a driver's license, I have a choice to move about the country and not have anyone know where I am. All of these things could potentially be *forced* on me under the Real ID. I can appreciate those of you who don't have a problem with this, as a few have said, we do this already in many instances. But as I see it, the potential of this program represents a big change in the definition of freedom in this country. In many cases, 'choice' gets thrown out the window and is replaced with 'must'.
The purpose of Real ID is to keep foreign terrorists who wouldn't be able to get a valid Real ID off airplanes and out of potential terrorist targets like federal buildings. Off hand, I don't think any of the National Parks would be prime targets for a terrorist attack, so I concur that the government is unlikely to have park visitor's show their Real ID. But if park rangers did check Real ID at entry stations it might help in stopping the entry of illegal aliens who are manning the marijuana growing operations inside the parks.
This is all kinda silly, because private companies have been collecting more information about us than the government has for years, yet we keep signing the sheet or clicking the OK button that says we understand their privacy policy without reading it, we waive our rights on a regular basis just to get the goods or service we're standing in line for. The fact that I'm posting on this website is somehow known by a lot more people than I'd care to know about.
At both Yellowstone and Badlands last week, the gate rangers wouldn't let me in using my National Parks Pass without showing some form of ID. One of them even made me re-sign the back of the pass using a permanent marker. I love it when other dishonest people try to scam their own government by sharing their parks pass and I have to suffer for it as a result -- absolutely love it.
I made reservations at White Wolf and Curry Village in Yosemite over the Labor Day weekend. In order to verify that I was the reservation holder, I had to show my driver's license. Delaware North, which runs the Yosemite accommodations has my name in its computers showing all my stays from previous years. Who cares? If the government as well as Delaware North know that I like to visit Yosemite, I really don't care. The government already knows my Social Security number, they issued it! The government post offices know my address! It's far more of an intrusion that I am required every April 15 to supply the government with all my personal financial information or else. What's really odd is that those who rant against Real ID, have no problem with proposals that the government run the entire health care system and then have access to everyone's personal medical history. Compared to that, knowing that I like visiting national parks is nothing.
Anonymous, before you call me out for having got my facts wrong, would you mind doing your own fact check? In March of this year, DHS announced a 20 month delay, pushing the time of enforcement from May 11, 2008 to the end of December 2009.
On the other hand, Mission 66 was quite the mess in Yellowstone in particular. I worked five summers in Grant Village - a Mission 66 debacle.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
Thanks Jeremy for the refreshing sound of natures symphony at Bandelier Natinal Monument. What a nice treat to start the day!
@Anne Mitchell Whisnant:
Thanks for your links and book recommendations. So everyone agrees, that the centennial initiative is nothing like Mission 66. That's sad.
The Real ID Act takes effect May 11, 2008, not "in just over a year," as this article states. At least get the date right!
Also, any DHS directive about how to enforce this law can be changed at the pleasure of DHS. Just because they say right now that they won't enforce it to the hilt -- which of course they WOULD say in order to deflect criticism and opposition to the law -- nothing prevents them from changing their minds next year, tomorrow, or right now.
I agree with Jim. This about the larger context of who is in ultimate control and how they use their power in the context of park management.
This subject warrants further inquiry. Thanks for bringing the issue to light.
I don't support privatizing the parks, but I find this onerous. It raises other issues in respect to the way laws are enforced in the parks and the general way that parks are managed. A long time ago, Alston Chase argued about Yellowstone that the park was managed on the basis of law enforcement considerations - he went so far as to argue that the natural regulation policy that the park adopted was essentially a law enforcement concern. He said that in part because he could not explain the contradiction he saw between the hands off policy toward elk and the hands on policy in managing grizzly bears (except when they were starving). While Chase obviously had some axes to grind, I think the notion of control and public lands is an essential concept. It finds a more extreme expression in the Real ID program. If the parks aren't going to be checking for IDs, that doesn't change the basic ideas.
I don't see privatization as a check on this; in fact, it might prove to be more onerous, excluding people for any reason the owners deem acceptable. The only check I can think of as possible is popular grassroots resistance to these kinds of policies; if people aren't complying (already some states have refused to comply), then the program will be moot. However, if enough people do comply, then it won't be long before the parks will find a way to comply as well.
So, this is serious to me even if the info that Jeremy found out is true because of the issues it raises in general about identification requirements in any context (including the park context). It's also serious because of what it might suggest about management philosophy in parks at large.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
We did a story in 2005 on what it took a volunteer group to clean up one relatively small marijuana garden in a California state park: The WildeBeat number 19: Restoring a Park Gone to Pot
(I suppose that Kurt and Jeremy are going to get tired of my pointing out shows I've done in their blog comments, but this is on-topic.)
---
The WildeBeat "The audio journal about getting into the wilderness"
Download the MP3 programs or subscribe to the podcast at...
www.wildebeat.net
This is not about a particular agenda to privatize the NPS but IS about an out of control totalitarian federal Leviathan that calls the shots for all of the agencies under it's militaristic wings including the one that runs our parks.
I have no doubt that the NPS will never be able to follow such an onerous dictate from the heavy-handed Homeland Security thugs, they can barely keep up with all of the pot growers and bone thieves. The dialogue, to me, is all about deciding what is the best way to care and protect these precious places and how to provide moral and ethical leadership free of the taint of politics and a massive self-perpetuating bureaucracy. In my view Mary Bomar and crew are failing. Many out there think more money will solve everything. I don't believe that for a minute.
As long as the parks have to even have to respond to the ideas and proposals of people like Michael Chertoff and Dick Cheney there is little hope that the institutional framework is in place to do the job that is needed to be done. There are better containers out there to nurture the parks and I'm determined to keep the discussion going until we come up with something better that the current model of dysfunction and waste.
"A reliable source" in Lassen Volcanic National Park told me recently that it costs them close to 150% as much to staff the entry and exit gates as they take in admissions revenue. And they only staff those gates in the summer during office hours.
For those of you who have an agenda to privatize the parks, this isn't going to be your tea party. For those of you worried that big brother at the DOI is going to track your camping partners, or your work-day fishing get-aways. I have it on good authority that the NPS has much larger fish to fry.
---
The WildeBeat "The audio journal about getting into the wilderness"
Download the MP3 programs or subscribe to the podcast at...
www.wildebeat.net
This is still a point that needs clarity. In some states and the District of Columbia, you are not required to show an ID to anyone for any reason when stopped by a law enforcement official (you do need IDs for verification for employment). In some places, even if you are arrested, you are still not required to show an ID. You will be processed in the system as a John Doe. In other states, this is not true. What are the rules on federal public lands? How is it different in the parks? Are there parks where state law is used as the enforcement mechanism?
I think people could use a legal primer on what the law currently is so that they can make informed choices on how to avoid showing identity. When and where people are and are not required to show ID is important. It's not terribly important to me as an individual, but there are a lot of populations where the ID requirements are used to intimidate and harrass. During Bush's second inaugural, we had numerous reports from homeless people that the Metropolitan police here in DC were requiring them to have IDs or be escorted from the streets. This was a harrassment technique, not a legally sound maneuver, but what are you going to do? The same certainly applies for people visiting national parks for whom English is not a first language and a host of other groups.
There's a lot more that can be said about this. In some parks, even the animals it seems need to wear identification.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
Wanted to let folks know, I've made an important update to the original story. We've heard from the National Park Service today. Upon further study, it appears as if revealing a Real ID to park rangers would not be a requirement of admittance into our national parks. More details are at the end of the original article above.
It is whacko; are people serious about organizing a movement not to comply? Why do I get the sense that if this happens and a boycott is organized that people will still find themselves putting themselves through this absurdity?
Just brand us now; that would save the government a lot of time and money.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World