Somewhere back when That One was suckering people for their votes, he mocked McCain’s proposed summer gas tax holiday because it would only save “about 25, 30 dollars“.
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Now that he’s President, he’s offering a National Park Fee holiday, where – on three select weekends this summer – you won’t have to pay to get into any National Park.
Fees range from $3 to $25.
Now, I hate slipping the government even the thinnest of dimes for anything, so I’m all for ANY instance of not having to render unto Caeser. However, I’d like to point out that this program is utterly useless, other than as a political publicity stunt.
I’ll explain.
It’s like those schemes to punish oil companies for high gas prices by not buying gas on some particular day. People don’t actually use less gasoline, they simply shift the date of purchase to a day earlier or later than normal. The same amount of gasoline is sold either way, so oil companies don’t lose any money.
In this case, nobody’s going to make a special trip to a National Park on “no fee” day. All that will happen is that some people who were going to visit National Parks this summer anyway (mostly tree-hugging, Obama-voting liberals who only like nature when somebody else pays for its upkeep) are going to re-schedule their visits for the free weekends. Total visitorship won’t increase. Tourism won’t increase. And the government will go deeper into debt because it still has to pay National Park staff the same wages whether it collects fees or not.
So what he SHOULD do is permanently double the fees on all National Parks.
Why?
Because going to a park is a choice, just like smoking, and he raised taxes on that, even though it disproportionately affects the po’ folks who vote for him.
Also because park-goers are a HUGE burden on our health care system. They get lost, need rescuing, starve, dehydrate, break legs, get eaten by bears, and get itchy bums while being naughty in the poison ivy.
I think it’s about time they paid their fair share.
Hmm, just like the mayor of Milwaukee, WI, here and his mandatory unpaid work “furloughs”. So now the city employees–all of ’em, sans cops, fire, EMS–will have four day weekends for Independence day and Labor Day Weekends to save the city money by having them off work. If we can save money by having them not work, is their job really that necessary? I mean, it’s service, right? So then if it isn’t done now, it must be done later. Which means it still must be paid for…eventually. If the services can be accomplished in a compressed amount of time later, then that means the workers are too slow, work isn’t being done when it could be otherwise, or the work isn’t that necessary in the first place.
I can’t believe we’re paying for this.
When did we begin to allow the government to run our lives? Can we go back to that moment and punch someone?
And now those park-visiting tree huggers will all be carrying Uzis and killing children with semiautomatic machine guns!
Also because park-goers are a HUGE burden on our health care system. They get lost, need rescuing, starve, dehydrate, break legs, get eaten by bears, and get itchy bums while being naughty in the poison ivy.
That there is what you call comedy gold!
But how is it a strain on our health care system when an annoying yuppy gets eaten by a bear? I mean, the bear takes care of everything.
Marko – because if the bear accidentally leaves a bone behind, the FBI has to call in Dr. Temperance Brennan, and she ain’t cheap.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0529895/
“But how is it a strain on our health care system when an annoying yuppy gets eaten by a bear? I mean, the bear takes care of everything.”
It is a strain, dear sir. SOMEONE has to pay for the bear’s upset tummy.
If the hippies go during the free weekends, more people may go during the pay weekends knowing the filthy hippies won’t be there… dads can take their kids out without the risk of exposure to patchouli and folk music
Why this ain’t nothin’ but a Stimulus for The One’s Propaganda Machine.
“We care!!! Oh, how we care!!! Did we mention we care???!!!”
!!!!11!!!1!!!!11!1!!11!!!1!!!1!!1!!!11!!1!!!1!!!!111!11111!!!!!1!!!
(That’s Jimmy code for up the Obottom.)
One gate will be marked “FREE”, and all the hippies will enter through that gate.
The other gate will be marked “FREE RANGE HIPPIES – ALL YOU CAN PUNCH FOR A DOLLAR”, and that gate will cost a dollar. I’ve got a dollar, it’ll be time well spent.
Soon they’ll be shooting each other, too. When will the madness end?
The other gate will be marked “FREE RANGE HIPPIES – ALL YOU CAN PUNCH FOR A DOLLAR”, and that gate will cost a dollar. I’ve got a dollar, it’ll be time well spent.
That’s one of the best money making idea’s I’ve heard this week.
Since when couldnt we carry a gun in the woods? Only an idiot goes into the woods without a gun. You can call the woods whatever ya want, never stoped me from carrying…. I dont obey “rules” that could easily get me killed. I declare an open hunting season on hippes, the hunt has rules in order to claim a “bag”. Two man teams must stalk the hippie in his unatural environment and one must successfully punch the hippie while the other captures a image of the event. No bag limit.. he with the most punches and pics wins.
Im kidding Im kidding…..I dont actively support punching hippies unless they are in my eyesight.
From the article:
I’d also like to throw three more dates out there: May 25th (Memorial Day), July 4th, September 7th (Labor Day).
Notice how the three weekends fall in between the three holidays? Now if I was some kind of high paid blogger, I’d go do some research and gets some actual facts to support my theory, but since I’m just a poor old commenter, I’ll just wing it and
make stuff upspeculate. I would bet that those three weekends have lower traffic than the holiday weekends. By offering a deal on the slow weekends, they can balance out their traffic so that they don’t get quite so slammed on the holidays. Also, as far as whether the rates would really make the difference between someone taking the trip, or just doing without, well if you are talking about the $3 fee, I’m with you on that. But, if you are talking about the $25 fee, for a family of six, that’s $150. I think that might make the difference to some families out there.All that being said, I’m with you when you say:
And here I thought all the state parks were being destroyed by the Bush administration so we could drill for oil. That’s pretty much all I f**king heard about state parks in the media for the last eight years…
Anon – I admit that I could be very wrong about how the “no fee” days will affect park traffic. How many families for whom $150 is a deal breaker habitually vacation in parks?
Anyway, maybe Obama should consider selling off some of those national parks to private companies who know how to make money in the tourism industry, like the folks who run DisneyLand, Six Flags, or Busch Gardens. As long as there’s a restrictive covenant in the sale regarding the development of the land, what’s the difference?