Recent comments

charge them for the costs of rescue. no wonder they are suffering from heat exhaustion, has anyone seen the weather in that area lately? i agree with your conjecture, kurt, people are using technology to overstep the boundaries of their abilities. it's similar to folks skiing in the backcountry without much avalanche experience simply because they have a beacon and a cellphone.

So you don't invest? You don't own stocks? Would you be ashamed to sell your house for twice the price you paid for it? I sort of doubt it.

We have to share not exploit! I guess our concept of exploitation are totally different. In capitalism all transactions are voluntary, while in government they are not. If you don't pay your taxes you go to jail. If you don't like the way the post office or the park service is run, well too bad because they are both government monopolies. Pay your taxes and shut up!

Now who's the real exploiter?

Why is reselling something dishonest? The person buying the campsite reservation on eBay is paying for the added value of not having to deal with the concessionaire or sitting on the phone with credit card in hand waiting to make the transaction. Obviously it was worth it to them to pay what they did, because they willing forked over the dough. In economics this is known as a "value-added" commodity.

This year I wanted to go to the Alabama-Georgia football game, so I went online to Stubhub (a ticket reseller) and found that tickets for that match were averaging about $350. I know the original price for these same tickets is around $40. Does the high the mark-up bother me? Not at all. That is what is known as the "market value" and I don't begrudge a season ticket holder for trying to capitalize on it. For Alabama football games, this season, it is a sellers market.

I will watch the game on TV and know that many of the people in the stands were happy to pay the market value for something that originally cost much less. Capitalism is a great thing.

I think that guy loves his job a little too much...

-- Jon

There are many locations in the NPS goody bag that aren't particularly scenic or memorable, but hold strategic positions of importance for one reason or another. Across the river from Mount Vernon is an otherwise boring piece of land run by NPS that does little more than preserve the view from Mount Vernon. Others are "scenic parkways" like the Baltimore Washington Parkway or the suburban Washington parkways in Virginia that are nothing more than a guaranteed road link between Washington DC and NSA, CIA, and other such places. In a national crisis, you can be sure these roads will be shut down to the rest of the world. Yeah, I bet a few NPS areas are even superfund cleanup sites waiting to be discovered. Some Gateway NRA locations are important migratory waterfowl spots, and because they happen to have some American history associated with them, I imagine they wound up with NPS as opposed to some other Interior agency. I often wonder what Greenbelt Park here in Maryland is really all about. It's a sorry little scrap of woods next to the DC beltway, within earshot of all the highway traffic at all times. Hardly NPS material. Not even state park material. I imagine Gateway NRA's New Jersey peninsula will always hold some potential military significance in a future crisis, but there's no reason the people living in Megalopolis can't enjoy a little escape from the daily grind now and then -- until that day comes.

-- Jon Merryman

The public HAS access. It's called two legs and two feet in motion, otherwise known as walking you fat lazy Americans! For those who can't walk, someone else can carry them or they can ride an ass.

Beamis, your post sheds the most clarity on the subject of 'em all! Bravo!!

What good is wilderness if nobody can see it? Wake up and smell the real world, enviropukes.

The bigger question is this: Is Fort Hancock a nationally significant historic site? For that matter is the Gateway NRA actually something that taxpayers in Oregon and North Dakota should be paying their hard earned tax money for? Why were these particular plots of ground made into a national park area in the first place? Answer these questions first and I'm sure that the rest of the "debacle" will become much clearer.

The park service has been put into an untenable situation by the forces of politics to be something that they definitely aren't. In the case of Fort Hancock, and many other places of similar type that are thrust into the system by politicians, park managers are forced to play the role of tenant landlord, commercial developer and contracting specialist for areas that most agency professionals would never target for national park status in the first place. Why wasn't the state of New Jersey or Monmouth County offered these "priceless" buildings of irreplaceable value? I know why, because they are nothing more than run down military facilities in a state of advanced decay. I bet your average Monmouth County resident couldn't even tell you where the place is on a map. It's no wonder this guy can't get private sector funding, his potential lenders must think he's crazy.

The ultimate question to be asked is why was the park service saddled with an urban park in the first place? Are the areas contained in the Gateway NRA "crown jewels" that require federal protection? Does the rest of the nation truly benefit from their continued federal administration? Would New York & New Jersey pay the freight for this park? If not, why not? Is Fort Hancock up there with Fort Sumter, Gettysburg and Ft. McHenry in telling the "national story"? I seriously doubt it. Here then are the seeds of your "debacle".

There are many nice sites in the Yosemite Valley campgrounds. There are no soda machines, and I've always gotten the site I've reserved, which I choose so it's not next to the bathroom. It's not wilderness camping, but many of us enjoy camping in the valley for various reasons. The $20 per night is similar to state park campgrounds in CA...a bit high, but I think worth it. There are no reservation fees. Sites are difficult to get during the summer months, so apparently others enjoy them also.

I think the ones who should be ashamed are the ones trying to capitalize off this, when they add nothing to the value, just grab them so others can't get them, then auction them at whatever the market will bear; I just can't see how anyone thinks this is "OK". If people are going to pay artificially bloated prices, why not have the NPS charge more, at least they give us something in return, which can't be said for ebayers.

As mentioned, it's simple enough to make reservations non-transferable and require ID when checking in, so I just can't see why there's "nothing they can do". Nonsense, they need to take care of this issue while it's still relatively small, or the greedy ones will get wind of it, and buy up whole blocks of summer reservations to scalp.

Carlsbad is the most fantatic adventure a citizen can take. Take your children and your grandchildren to Carlsbad caverns...