If you’re dropping nukes on another nation I doubt the biggest international outcry will come from destroying some trees you weren’t supposed to.
Chimera
September 29, 2016, 7:56pm
22
jtur88:
When one visits a national or state park, one has no way of knowing whether the administrative agency has subcontracted the hands-on visitor facilities to a private firm. Most, if not early all visitor facilities in National Forests are in the hands of private subcontractors.
Wasn’t that privatized by the Republicans? I want to say under Reagan.
wevets
September 29, 2016, 9:19pm
23
jtur88:
I has it happen to me twice, and I entered into correspondence with my congressman about it, and he dug deeply into it, and gave me the explanation I stated upthread.
The two in question were both designated as National Recreation Areas (as I recall), which are administered by the National Parks, and included in the facilities in which Golden Access privileges would normally apply. One in Colorado and one in South Carolina. It’s been ten years, I can’t recall exactly which ones. In both cases, entry requires a “parking fee”.
When one visits a national or state park, one has no way of knowing whether the administrative agency has subcontracted the hands-on visitor facilities to a private firm. Most, if not early all visitor facilities in National Forests are in the hands of private subcontractors.
There are no National Park Service units designated as National Recreation Areas in South Carolina , and the only one in Colorado is the Curecanti National Recreation Area, which does charge a fee (entry fee, not a parking fee) at the East Portal Ranger Station where it adjoins Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, but not at other entrances .
The claim in the OP sounds an awful lot like the claim somebody posted over on the official World of Warcraft forums yesterday, that Obama was handing control of the Internet over to the U.N.
Chronos
September 29, 2016, 9:36pm
25
Obama never had control of the Internet to begin with. Nobody does.
Controlling DNS is exerting a lot of power over the web. Saying otherwise is like saying that controlling roads isn’t controlling land travel. Technically that’s true because people can travel off-road or fly but for the majority of modern day people it’s pretty close to the truth.
On the other hand many of the concerns about the transition are overblown and based on misinformation.
silenus
September 29, 2016, 10:00pm
28
4chan is going to be very disappointed.
Chronos
September 29, 2016, 10:02pm
29
Sure, DNS is a big deal, but no one entity controls that, either.
mbh
September 29, 2016, 10:16pm
30
wevets:
Maybe you were actually in a National Forest? There are a number of National Forest areas where you’re much more likely to run into only concessionaire employees and never a USFS employee - as you have noticed judging from your last paragraph, the Forest Service’s concessionaire policy is very different from NPS’s.
National Parks are under the Department of Interior. National Forests are under the Department of Agriculture, and they are under cultivation, just like a cornfield. National Forests are used for hunting, fishing, livestock grazing, logging, and mining. Profiteering is not only allowed, it’s their reason for existence.
Unless I’m mistaken they control the TLDs (.com, .net, etc.) and how public IP addresses are allocated. Look at the “notable events” section of ICANN’s Wikipedia page for some of the influence they’ve had.
“Waiter…? No more wine. Thanks…!”
It was more like more wine please.
I didn’t wanna be that dick who whips out his iphone and fact checks this kind of thing and when I had the time to google that shit there was almost nothing there. I’ve been a news junkie for about 30 years and I’m pretty sure Newt and the Contract for America crowd would have raised a stink. Plus who would do that and why? When I asked why the answer was that Bill got kickbacks for giving away the parks for free.
It was a great night overall apart from that head scratcher
Monty:
How do you figure that?
If I may speculate, if one enters into a treaty in which the signatories agree “None of us will do X ”, then each of them has agreed to not do X .
Any interpretation beyond that slips past the reasonable, as best I can figure.
Monty:
How do you figure that?
Woosh, I think.
I was going to make the same comment. It is very unlikely that the US would want to nuke its own national parks.
jtur88:
Some national parks have been subcontracted to private concessionaires, to administer visitor activitiy, such as parking, trash collection, campground maintenance, etc… and in retyrn, the get to collect the use fees. They operate them as if they are the owners. The private concessionaires even refuse to honor Golden Access cards, and refuse to admit holders of such cards unless the daily fee is paid, to which cardholders are supposed to be exempt…
It is possible that some of these private concessionaires are foreign-owned interests. It is the federal government’s way of contracting with the American people, and then reneging on the contract.
It got so bad at Yosemite that the private contractor, after having its contract revoked, sued in federal court and won the right to the ages-old names for park concessions and places like the hotel and the campgrounds that have always been there, the park has had to change the names.
wevets
September 30, 2016, 8:16pm
40
Rick_Kitchen:
It got so bad at Yosemite that the private contractor, after having its contract revoked, sued in federal court and won the right to the ages-old names for park concessions and places like the hotel and the campgrounds that have always been there, the park has had to change the names.
That’s quite a mess - and one of the reprehensible practices of the Delaware North Corp, which I mentioned upthread.
The Patent Office and the courts have yet to resolve the case, though. It looks like some form of legal judgement can be expected in 2017:
The park’s new concessionaire has gone as far as halting sales of “Yosemite National Park” T-shirts because of its predecessor’s claim to the park title. The name “Yosemite” is being used instead.
But the Park Service hasn’t given up. The new signs are purposefully temporary, and officials are waging what’s likely to be a prolonged battle to get the names back.
The patent office is scheduled to take up the park’s petition to cancel the former concessionaire’s trademarks through the middle of next year, while a parallel fight in federal court is yet to begin.
Some legal experts say the Park Service would be wise to stay the course, as it may have an edge over Delaware North — especially now that the concessions contract has changed hands.
Ex-concessionaire’s case
“This company can no longer make a case (that it’s connected to national park products) because they no longer have the concession,” said Mel Owen, a San Francisco attorney specializing in trademark law.
Delaware North faces the additional challenge, he said, of proving it was entitled to register trademarks of federal property in the first place. A licensing deal with the park might have been more appropriate, Owen said.
Park Service officials, meanwhile, have taken steps across the country to make sure contractors don’t try to take ownership of other historic names.
“The National Park Service has added language to all new contracts restricting a concessionaire’s ability to trademark park names, facilities, features and the like without the consent of the National Park Service,” spokesman Jeffrey Olson told The Chronicle.
