Friday, October 11, 2019

Trump advisory council recommends expanding private business in national parks


Trump advisory council recommends expanding private business in national parks





Campgrounds in national parks set to be privatized in new Trump plan

The Trump administration is moving forward with an ambitious plan to give private businesses greater access to national parks, according to a memorandum written by an advisory council for the Department of the Interior.

WASHINGTON — A Trump administration advisory panel is recommending an ambitious plan to give private businesses greater access to national parks, according to a memorandum written by an advisory council for the Department of the Interior.
Some price increases could also in the works for park visitors under the plan.
Drafters of the plan say it amounts to little more than a much-needed modernization of aging infrastructure, and that the goal is to make national parks accessible to a younger, more diverse audience. Critics, on the other hand, see corporate influence at work.


Yellowstone Campgrounds sign. (Photo: Getty Images)
Yellowstone Campgrounds sign. (Photo: Getty Images)

There are 419 national parks in the United States, from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska. All are overseen by the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department. That department is headed by David Bernhardt, a former Republican operative and corporate lobbyist who has made no secret of his desire to increase the presence of private enterprise in national parks.
Private businesses — including concessionaires and tour guides — already operate in many national parks, but Bernhardt and a number of his deputies have argued that the parks have $12 billion in deferred maintenance, and that such funds are much more easily found from outside the federal government than within.



Scenic view of Brooks Range, Dietrich River and the Dalton Highway, Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, Arctic Alaska. (Photo: Getty Images)
Scenic view of Brooks Range, Dietrich River and the Dalton Highway, Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, Arctic Alaska. (Photo: Getty Images)

Now that plan seems to be rapidly taking shape, despite opposition from conservationists who say it amounts to nothing more than a corporate giveaway. They argue that the Trump administration has exaggerated the need to raise funds in order to justify the sale and lease of public lands outside the national park system, as well as favorable terms for concessionaires inside the parks. Some of the nation’s biggest concessionnaires, such as Delaware North, are headed by significant donors to Trump and the Republican Party.
The Sept. 24 memorandum, which was written for the Department of the Interior’s Subcommittee on Recreation Enhancement Through Reorganization, says the plan should begin as a pilot program “in park units with low levels of visitor services.” But eventually that program would be exported to other agencies within the Interior Department that manage public lands, including the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The memo was subsequently posted to the internet, where it appears to have attracted no notice.
The topic of the memorandum is “campground modernization/expansion.” Although there is no author cited in the two-page document, a metadata analysis performed by conservationist groups that first came upon the file shows that it was written by Derrick Crandall, president of the American Recreation Coalition.
In a phone conversation with Yahoo News, Crandall confirmed that he was the “chief author” of the memo. He said it has been approved by the appropriate committee and will be endorsed by Bernhardt shortly. Interior officials disputed that characterization, telling Yahoo News, “We have not received formal recommendations from the committee for the department's consideration. We’ll review the report once we receive it and respond accordingly.” A staffer at Interior headquarters said that Crandall’s memorandum was set to undergo additional review and revision, including public deliberation.



Interior Secretary David Bernhardt speaks with park rangers. (Photo: Al Drago/Reuters)
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt speaks with park rangers. (Photo: Al Drago/Reuters)

Crandall in turn disputed Interior’s characterization of where the matter stood. He said that his memorandum had, in fact, been “unanimously approved” and will go to Bernhardt next week “in its current form.”
The American Recreation Coalition lobbies for private industry in public parks. Crandall worked in the Republican administrations of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. He is currently a member of the Made in America Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, which was started by Bernhardt’s predecessor, Ryan Zinke, who was forced from office for a variety of ethical lapses. Other members of the industry-heavy committee include Jeremy Jacobs of Delaware North, the nation’s most prominent concessions operator in national parks, and Bruce Fears of Aramark Leisure, another major operator in that industry.
Crandall forcefully disputed suggestions of a corporate giveaway while expressing an admiration for public lands.
“It is not privatization,” he said of his plan. He said that the “idea of cooperation” between the federal government and private enterprise has been integral to the national parks since their founding a century ago.
Crandall’s memorandum specifically focuses on the national parks’ campgrounds, of which there are 130 nationwide. Zinke said in 2017 that he did not “want to be in the business of running campgrounds.” Among the members of the recreation advisory committee he formed is Jim Rogers, who until 2015 was the head of Kampgrounds of America, the nation’s largest private campground operator.
Crandall also suggests changes that would greatly expand the footprint of private enterprises like KOA and Delaware North within the national park system. If leases and agreements are signed while Trump is in office, it would be difficult — if not impossible — for a subsequent Democratic administration to nullify or curtail such contracts, meaning that a plan the critics call privatization could become a virtually permanent feature of parks like Yellowstone or Shenandoah.



A bison crosses the road in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. (Photo: Getty Images)
A bison crosses the road in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. (Photo: Getty Images)

The memo opens by asserting that campgrounds are “excellent candidates for partner management under concessions and leases.” It then approvingly cites KOA research that people find visiting campgrounds “rewarding and desirable.” Crandall proceeds to argue that federally operated campgrounds suffer from “inadequate and outmoded visitor infrastructure.” As one example, he cites the lack of wireless internet service, as well as a dearth of places to shop.
The document also recommends that campgrounds on national parks permit food trucks, which have become highly popular in urban settings but tend to be rare in the wilderness.
Other proposals that Crandall floats include ending senior discounts during certain times of the year; a “market pricing” model that would have an adjustment for inflation and, in all probability, raise prices for all users of campgrounds in national parks; opening up more of the campgrounds to private concessions; and giving concessions operators free housing in the public parks.
In explaining his plan to Yahoo News, Crandall said it was only “logical” to invite experts in recreation to update national parks to suit 21st century needs. He said that federal park employees had “little expertise” in areas like food and housing services, and that privatizing such operations would free up staff to focus on their work.
Conservationists were aghast at the plan, which has not been finalized but does appear to be moving briskly toward implementation.
“David Bernhardt and President Trump won’t quit until the American people are left totally empty-handed and private special interests own our outdoor heritage,” said Jayson O’Neill, the deputy director of the Western Values Project, a conservation group that has been a frequent critic of the current administration.
“Privatizing America’s public campgrounds,” O’Neill continued, “and jacking up national park fees to appease private concessionaires and powerful corporate campaign donors is just the administration's latest egregious attempt to rip public lands out of public hands.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the advisory council’s memo is a recommendation to the Trump administration, and has not been adopted as policy by the Department of Interior.
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RUINS: The Foundations of Ethics: Marx on Epicurean Mate...

RUINS: The Foundations of Ethics: Marx on Epicurean Mate...: Originally published in Found Object , Winter/Spring Issue, Number 2 ( January/February 2001) The Origins of Ethics in Marx&#39...

Monday, October 07, 2019

TECHNOLOGY NEWS
OCTOBER 7, 2019
Paralyzed man hails 'feat' of walking again with robot exoskeleton




GRENOBLE, France (Reuters) - The French tetraplegic man who has been able to walk again using a pioneering four-limb robotic system, or exoskeleton, said walking was a major feat for him after being immobile for years.

The French scientists behind the system, which was publicly unveiled last week, use a system of sensors implanted near the brain which send signals to the robotic system, moving the patient’s legs and arms.

Speaking to media on Monday in the French city of Grenoble, the 28-year-old patient, who was identified only by his first name, Thibault, said he had to re-educate to use his brain when he started to try the whole-body exoskeleton.


“As I hadn’t moved for two years I had to re-learn to use my brain,” he said.

“At the beginning, walking was very difficult. Now I can stand up for two hours in the exoskeleton and I can do walking cycles for a very long time”, he also said. “This is a feat for me.”

In a two-year-long trial, two recording devices were implanted, one either side of Thibault’s head between the brain and the skin, spanning the region of the brain that controls sensation and motor function.


Each recorder contained 64 electrodes which collected brain signals and transmitted them to a decoding algorithm. The system translated the brain signals into the movements the patient thought about, and sent his commands to the exoskeleton.

Over 24 months, the patient carried out various mental tasks to train the algorithm to understand his thoughts and to progressively increase the number of movements he could make. For now the exoskeleton is purely an experimental prototype.


The pioneering four-limb robotic system, or exoskeleton, that is commanded and controlled by signals from the patient's brain is seen following a news conference after Thibault, a 28-year-old man, paralyzed from the shoulders down, had been able to walk using it at the French research center Clinatec in Grenoble, France, October 7, 2019. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot








Wednesday, October 02, 2019

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Socialism and Planning Part 2: ‘Feedback’ (2019)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Socialism and Planning Part 2: ‘Feedback’ (2019): From the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard Link to Part 1 Socialism and Planning: The Need for Feedback Last month ...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Socialism and Planning: What Can Work (2019)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Socialism and Planning: What Can Work (2019): From the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard The impossibility of ‘One Big Plan’ In any kind of society, people need to plan...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: The Scale Of It All (2019)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: The Scale Of It All (2019): The Wood for the Trees Column from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard ‘We are going to die – and that makes us the l...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Rear View: So far, so good (2019)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Rear View: So far, so good (2019): The Rear View Column from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard So far, so good Faiza Shaheen in an article titled Th...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Not Changing the world (2019)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Not Changing the world (2019): Book Review from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard ‘ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World ’. By An...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Philanthrocapitalism IV: The Messianic Rich (2018)...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Philanthrocapitalism IV: The Messianic Rich (2018)...: From the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard Part Three The concluding article of our series on ‘philanthrocapitalism’ ...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Saving Capitalism (2018)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Saving Capitalism (2018): From the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard We begin a four-part series on the ‘philanthrocapitalism’ of billionaires such as Bi...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: The Myth of the ‘Self-Made Man’ (2018)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: The Myth of the ‘Self-Made Man’ (2018): From the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard Part One Part two of our series on ‘philanthrocapitalism’ One explanation...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Ecology and revolution (1991)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Ecology and revolution (1991): From the April 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard The world ecological crisis is on such a scale that many workers believe environ...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: What Does The IWW mean by "Abolition of the Wage S...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: What Does The IWW mean by "Abolition of the Wage S...: "Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their ban...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Engels on Ecology (1991)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Engels on Ecology (1991): From the April 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human co...

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Socialism v. Imperialism. (1923)

Socialist Standard Past & Present: Socialism v. Imperialism. (1923): From the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard What is the Socialist view of the Empire? What attitude would a revolutionary a...

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

ABOLISH WORK; ABOLISH THE WAGES SYSTEM IS THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE


Eliminating commodities implies abolishing work and replacing it with a new type of free activity, thereby ending one of modern society's fundamental splits, the one between increasingly reified labor and passively consumed leisure activity. Groups in the process of decomposition although supporting the modern principle of Workers' Power, continue to follow the path of the old workers movement on the central matter of trying to reform and "humanize" work. Today, work itself must be attacked. Far from being "Utopian," the abolition of work is the primary requirement for effectively superseding commodity society, for eliminating in each person's daily life the separation between "free time" and "work time"—those reciprocal sectors of an alienated life—that is the perpetual expression of the commodity's intrinsic contradiction between use-value and exchange-value. Only when this opposition is overcome will people be able to create out of their human activity something that results from desire and consciousness and to see themselves reflected in a world that they themselves have created. The democracy of workers councils provides the solution to all the separations of today. It makes "impossible everything that exists outside of individuals."


SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL (SI)



Sep 18, 2006 - they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!" (Quote from Karl Marx's Value, Price and ...
The abolition of wage labour means the abolition of production for the sake of production. The Marxist critique of bourgeois society is essentially the critique of wage labour. ... Wage labour can only be generalised if the majority of the population has no means of production and, in general, no property at its disposal.

... on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.


Jan 9, 2019 - Taylor died in 1915, and by 1913 the Ford system reduced the production time on the Model T chassis assembly line from 12.5 hours to 1.5 ...

Monday, September 16, 2019


THE CHINESE REVOLUTION OF 1949 WAS A WAR OF NATIONAL LIBERATION 

Starting with the Bolshevik Revolution then followed by the Chinese, these Leninist events were not revolutions*** but battles of national liberation (for as Stalin famously suggested; socialism in one country) China did not have a proletarian revolution because like Russia the proletariat was vastly outnumbered by the rural peasantry.

This was a war of national liberation by Mao and the CPC against their old allies in WWII the KMT Kuomintang under the man who would be king, Chang Kai Shek the KMT lost and were drive out of the mainland to Taiwan.

All peoples struggles after WWII were not revolutions but wars of national liberation against colonialism, a reason to support them, but they were not bourgeois revolutions for liberty, equality, fraternity, nor were they proletarian revolutions, they were military campaigns resulting in coups not unlike that of the Leninist’s in 1918 these were as Lenin called them the war communism of Otto Bismarck, by no means a socialist or communist. The State socialized all functions in the nation to one cause; War.

The conditions for the transformation of capitalism into socialism were not yet fully realized on a global level until production met the conditions of advancing technology and mass production to create a proletarian consumer culture.
The real social revolutionary movements began in 1968, in Europe in particular France but it failed the conditions left it localized. Next was Chile in not long after where a mass revolutionary movement resulted in a real social revolution within the confines of a Bourgeois revolution of Allende, but it foretold the future more than any other struggle had then or since. It looked at socialism as not just State Capitalism and Electricity as Lenin famously quipped, but rather mass production coordinated with AI , the first cyber revolution. This then showed the future of socialism more so than Cuba. But a computer monitor made a less revolutionary symbol than Che, at least in 1973.


Until globalization is complete and the whole world is developed into Fordist production moving the peasantry to the cities to create a work force there will not be and cannot be a world revolution.


Hong Kong protests: The date which has Beijing on the edge
For months, October 1 has loomed over the mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, as a whispered deadline for the ruling Chinese Communist Party to take action to end the unrest
*** I do not include the Spanish Civil War and Revolution 1936-39 here because it was far more a precursor to Chile 73 than it was a Leninist coup, though the Stalinists attempted that, the Spain was a social revolution led by Anarchists and Left Communists uniting the City with the country. Proletarians with Peasants against the Catholic Church and the Feudalistic State and its Fascist leader France, it was not seen as a war of National Liberation, because it too looked at itself as a broader revolution hoping to spread across Europe against the rising of Fascism, it was more than a war of National Liberation or even a premature Anti Fascist war. It was a true social revolution, ahead of its time.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

RICARDO MIRANDA WAS AN LGBTQ AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CHOICE FOR HIS EMPLOYER PUBLIC SECTOR UNION #CUPE, WHOM HE WAS A REP THEN A RESEARCHER.
THEN FOR THE NDP GOVERNMENT WE WAS MINISTER OF CULTURE AND TOURISM LIKE HIS CUPE MEMBERS HE WAS REP FOR, ALBERTAN'S NEVER HEARD FROM HIM AT ALL THEN NOW THIS
WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED BY THIS UNPRINCIPLED OPPORTUNIST
Malcolm Azania
Why did former Alberta NDP cabinet minister Ricardo Miranda endorse any Conservative, let alone Michelle Rempel? Jessica Littlewood writes, "Michelle Rempel is a xenophobic candidate who pedalled a story to Fox News that Canada is over run with asylum seekers. After hearing a story of a gay man who lost his fingers to the cold fleeing USA for fear of being deported to face execution, she can pound sand."
SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=LGBTQ

Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout: Seventy Years Ago in Peekskill—When White Folks Ri...

Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout: Seventy Years Ago in Peekskill—When White Folks Ri...:



White rioters attack a car of people who attended a heavily guarded Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York in 1949. *Note: **The riot in Peekskill, New York to protest the appearance of Paul Robeson was organized by the Ku Klux Klan in cahoots with the American Legion and local police. Think it can’t happen again? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.* It should have been a pleasant Sunday in the country. But on September 4, 1949 the residents of *up-scale, White suburban Westchester County New York* got together for a *well-planned* *riot. *It was the second one in a we... more »