{"id":6687,"date":"2018-04-08T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=6687"},"modified":"2024-09-23T22:49:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T04:49:33","slug":"corporate-giants-big-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/corporate-giants-big-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate giants buying big influence over national parks, monuments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Government cronyism has had a disquieting and steep upward trend during the Obama Administration. Whether it be ‘alternative’ or ‘green’ energy corporations\u00a0like Solyndra,\u00a0receiving hundreds of millions in subsidies, or outdoor recreation companies\u00a0getting rock star treatment by federal management agencies, these extra-constitutional\u00a0trysts\u00a0show disdain for\u00a0ordinary Americans and\u00a0their representatives.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

CORPORATE NATIONAL PARKS<\/h3>\n

The National Park Service (NPS)\u00a0is chronically in the red, not just a little over budget, but hundreds of millions in arrears with\u00a0over\u00a0$12 billion<\/a> in\u00a0maintenance backlogs alone.\u00a0As the National Park Service cries for more taxpayer funding, the American people wonder where their annual budget of over $3 billion is going. But the NPS isn’t just a leech\u00a0sucking cash out\u00a0the American taxpayer, it depends on thousands of volunteer hours and millions in donations from myriad foundations to keep the gates of\u00a0its parks and monuments from falling off their hinges.<\/p>\n

In what might seem like a\u00a0common-sense response to its chronic shortfalls, the\u00a0NPS has hatched a plan\u00a0to bring several global corporations onboard as sponsors of the numerous national parks, monuments and historic sites under its direction. But this plan is less a private\/government partnership than it is a scheme\u00a0to shield NPS from fiscal accountability\u00a0while\u00a0inflating the bottom lines of\u00a0participating global corporations.<\/p>\n

There is no effort to hide the crony entanglements between NPS and\u00a0big business.\u00a0Although\u00a0a few authentic philanthropic foundations have stepped forward\u00a0to\u00a0help,\u00a0news came out<\/a>\u00a0earlier in 2016 that NPS would be\u00a0using public spaces within its various attractions to feature the logos of\u00a0corporate sponsors. Outcry ensued, but NPS did not back off of the idea. A recent article in\u00a0Greenwire\u00a0reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…the agency moved to scale back from the draft plan ways in which corporate logos can be used in national parks.<\/em><\/p>\n

As in the original 2008 philanthropy policy, parks can still acknowledge companies’ support in printed material, audiovisual products, and temporary construction or restoration signs. But NPS removed a provision in the proposed overhaul that would’ve also allowed small logos to be placed on exhibits and waysides.<\/em><\/p>\n

The final order did not, however, remove language encouraging superintendents “to join philanthropic partners in meetings with prospective donors.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Critics of the policy change fear that superintendents will now be forced to follow the lead of Jarvis, who has flown across the country in search of donations from companies and people who they worry may not have the Park Service’s best interests at heart.<\/em><\/p>\n

For example, former Interior Department officials as well as environmental and consumer watchdog groups have been troubled by some of the deals Jarvis struck with an alcohol giant and foreign carmaker in support of the 2016 NPS centennial. During a 29-month period leading up to that event, the director took more than a dozen trips that were partially or entirely devoted to fundraising, an E&E News investigation found.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nonetheless,\u00a0the\u00a0final policy encoding NPS\/corporate\u00a0interbreeding, which carries the creepy title, ‘Director’s Order #21,” is all about creating a symbiosis between the agency and ‘philanthropic partners.’ The introduction of the order reads:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This Director’s Order (Order), together with the\u00a0Reference Manual to Donations and Philanthropic Partnerships<\/em>, supersedes and replaces Director’s Order #21: Donations and Fundraising, dated July 11, 2008, Policy Memorandum 14-04, and any other previous guidance on this topic. The change in title reflects the evolving nature of this field and the importance of philanthropic partners to accomplish the work of the National Park Service. The Department of the Interior Office of Policy,\u00a0Management\u00a0and Budget has reviewed and approved this Order, as required by the Department of the Interior donations policy\u00a0(374 DM 6).<\/p>\n

OUTDOOR RECREATION CORPORATIONS AND OBAMA’S NATIONAL MONUMENTS AGENDA<\/h3>\n

Big outdoor recreation corporations, calling themselves the\u00a0Conservation Alliance<\/a>,\u00a0have been\u00a0lobbying the Obama Administration to seize millions of acres for new national monuments.\u00a0Their talking points say ‘preservation,’ but their actions say ‘we’re creating vast new\u00a0recreation destinations\u00a0so millions of tourists will buy our stuff.’ The very moment Obama made\u00a0the\u00a0Christmas Eve declaration that 1.35 million acres in\u00a0SE Utah\u00a0would be\u00a0locked away to form the\u00a0Bears Ears National Monument, Patagonia launched\u00a0a\u00a0website ‘celebrating’ the land grab. The\u00a0website<\/a> has the look and feel of a political action organization\u2013which it is\u2013but behind all the environmental posturing is\u00a0a brazen quest for private profit\u00a0from public lands.<\/p>\n

Free Range Report\u00a0posted recently<\/a>\u00a0about the ruthless tactics\u00a0used by\u00a0the Conservation Alliance in achieving its goal of replacing resource-based local economies with tourism,\u00a0thus drawing millions to the wild West\u00a0who will\u00a0purchase gear\u00a0so they\u00a0may\u00a0properly enjoy their corporate National Parks experiences:<\/p>\n

From the get-go, big outdoor\u00a0recreation corporations lobbied the Obama Administration to designate Bears Ears (Utah), Owyhee Canyons (Oregon), and other\u00a0semi-wild places\u00a0as national monuments.\u00a0This coalition of big rec corporations calls itself the\u00a0<\/em>Conservation Alliance<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and includes the likes of The North Face, Columbia, Black Diamond, Patagonia, Petzl America,\u00a0REI, KEEN, and others, and it prides itself on the growing\u00a0number of acres gobbled up through federal proclamations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite their ‘conservationist’ talking points, it’s clear the companies pushing the creation of national monuments simply want to\u00a0boost tourism and outdoor recreation opportunities, which\u00a0balloons their bottom lines.\u00a0The fact that such federal designations\u00a0crush other resource-based economic activities, and destroy rural communities, is apparently\u00a0of no consequence to big rec.<\/em><\/p>\n

The incestuous relationships between federal agencies and global corporations\u00a0have also been covered\u00a0in recent investigative news reports. Pertaining to the designation of\u00a0the Bears Ears National Monument\u2013which was vehemently opposed by the locals and Navajo and Ute\u00a0tribes in San Juan County\u2013the Deseret News\u00a0reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In October 2014, a group of people sat around a table and discussed their campaign to bring a monument designation to southeast Utah for the region they called Bears Ears.<\/em><\/p>\n

This wasn’t a group of Native American tribal leaders from the Four Corners, but board members from an increasingly successful conservation organization who met in San Francisco to discuss, among other things, if it was wise to “hitch our success to the Navajo.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The reporter, Amy Joi O’Donoghue, went on to explain:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Support for a Bears Ears monument includes outdoor business leaders, who came together Thursday in a press conference at the Outdoor Retailer Show. In a packed room in downtown Salt Lake City, they outlined why 15 leading companies are in support of a national monument designation.<\/em><\/p>\n

“It is a place that is absolutely iconic in the form of recreational opportunities that are available such as climbing, hiking and water sports. It is an incredible treasure in the state of Utah,” said Hans Cole of Patagonia. “As an industry we rely on these protected places, and so for us it is an economic driver. But it is also deeply personal because of the landscape.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Behind the guises of environmentalism and tribal rights, these big corporations have ‘hitched’\u00a0themselves to a government-driven\u00a0opportunity to\u00a0grow\u00a0Utah’s customer base for their outdoor recreation products.<\/p>\n

The degree of capital and emotional\u00a0investment on the part of the outdoor recreation industry in Obama’s monuments push was made evident in a recent article published by the\u00a0Patagonia Blog<\/a>. The\u00a0author\u00a0castigated\u00a0Utah’s political leaders and residents for not sufficiently embracing\u00a0the outdoor recreation industry’s\u00a0land-grabbing objectives.\u00a0Stinging with rejection, it stated:<\/p>\n

You’d think politicians in Utah would bend over backwards to make us feel welcome. But instead Governor Gary Herbert and his buddies have spent years denigrating our public lands, the backbone of our business, and trying to sell them off to the highest bidder. He’s created a hostile environment that puts our industry at risk.<\/em><\/p>\n

Government cronyism has had a disquieting and steep upward trend during the Obama Administration. Whether it be ‘alternative’ or ‘green’ energy corporations\u00a0like Solyndra,\u00a0receiving hundreds of millions in subsidies, or outdoor recreation companies\u00a0getting rock star treatment by federal management agencies, these extra-constitutional\u00a0trysts\u00a0show disdain for\u00a0ordinary Americans and\u00a0their representatives.<\/p>\n

The greatest irony of all is that the\u00a0special interest groups\u00a0warning us that if states and local governments are given more control over lands and resources they will ‘sell off our public lands,’ are in fact, encouraging and enabling big corporations to buy influence and power within the agencies claiming stewardship over those public lands. As corporations and government cozy up\u00a0together\u00a0to expand by millions the number of acres under federal control, there is little, if any room left for the public to have a say\u00a0about what happens to\u00a0America’s most treasured places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government cronyism has had a disquieting and steep upward trend during the Obama Administration. Whether it be ‘alternative’ or ‘green’ energy corporations\u00a0like Solyndra,\u00a0receiving hundreds of millions in subsidies, or outdoor recreation companies\u00a0getting rock star treatment by federal management agencies, these extra-constitutional\u00a0trysts\u00a0show disdain for\u00a0ordinary Americans and\u00a0their representatives. CORPORATE NATIONAL PARKS The National Park Service (NPS)\u00a0is chronically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":6690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[398,8],"class_list":["post-6687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-environmentalists","tag-federal-lands","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16566,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687\/revisions\/16566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}