DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Our National Parks

You're both welcome to your opinions. Not really the heart of the point that was being made. Just as I'm entitled to mine. So are the other 60 to 64% of the population that also support abortion rights.

And supplying weapons to kill thousands of children in Gaza?

But come on man, that's THEIR children.

Still refuse to blame Hamas!!! Shameful.

I don't blame Hamas for what Netanyahu did. I blame Hamas for what Hamas did. Hamas killed well over 1000 innocent people there is no excuse for.

Hamas didn't carpet bomb residential neighborhoods purposefully killing tens of thousands of innocent women and children in Gaza. Netanyahu did.

You still refuse to hold Netanyahu accountable and responsible for his own actions. Shameful.

If you have a grown son who comes to visit you and the guy next door comes out of his house and kills your son on the way to his vehicle when he is leaving, your neighbor committed murder. He is guilty of murder.

Now you may think that killing the guy next door for the action of killing your son is the proper retribution and that would make sense. But if you decide the answer is blowing up his home with his wife and children inside as a way of getting even you are no better and maybe even worse than your neighbor.

Netanyahu did what he had to do to make sure his people are safe. Blame Hamas for what happened to Gazans. I hope Netanyahu takes Gaza back it is part of Israel and the 2-state solution did not and will never work. Take it back under Israeli control and everyone in the region would be much better off. Maybe not the religion of hate that you support but who really cares.

Yes, in the land of trump everything someone you support does is always someone elses fault. He could have sent troops in there to get Hamas without the senseless slaughter of so many innocent lives.... on purpose. But he chose not to.

Would that have been your excuse for blowing up the neighbors house with his entire family in it for killing your son? That's what you "had to do to keep your family safe"?

You sound like you were the type of kid that every time he got in trouble you tried to blame what you did on your friends.

I just support my allies like Isreal. I do not support terrorists like bleeding heart libs do.

I support our allies right up until their actions are no better than the terrorists. At that point they're terrorists too. You are what blind loyalty no matter what someone does looks like.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" - Donald Trump

You are exactly the type of person trump was referring to.

And as shameful as that is you seem to wear it like a badge of honor.

and in all my years on this board I have never disagreed with anybody's right to their opinion, and y'all know I never have a problem giving mine

Exactly as it should be.

No, but accidents happen. What is your point?

Accidents?

When confronted, the first thing MAGA does is deny it happened., Then it wasn't us, then afters 3 or 4 more excuses, they never admit it was an accident.

Ask yourself, how many Middle East experts did Hegseth fire? Is it possible in your mind that one, just one of them might have known of the existence of that school and may have been able to inform the military to avoid that particular area?

You can't fire those that know this stuff then call it an accident.. It was incompetence.

Well it's not like he fired them on purpose. That was an accident too.

If I'm going to a national park, it's to get away from society and connect with nature. I'm not going to a national park to read about slavery or climate change. I've gotten plenty of that elsewhere. Less rent-a-cops is fine by me, too.

If they were bulldozing parks and putting in parking lots, I'd have a problem. Removing man made displays and people/"staff" is in line with how I'd prefer it. I'm not a huge fan of putting up new exhibits, but that's the world we live in, and if they are more "positive" I guess I'd prefer that when I'm trying to take a breather from the dark $#/7 of the modern world.

Are the changes to the parks damaging to the parks or to some overpaid "curator's" bank account?

I get the gut reaction response to reading something is "damaging to our National Parks." I'm just not really seeing the actual damage in the OP.

I have been to damn near every National Park and some of them many times.

The 3,000 lost jobs are necessary jobs that serve the function of how they operate.

Parks require maintenance. I have never seen a reference to slavery in a Park. Climate change maybe because there are impacts that can be seen.

What I have seen is information about the history of each Park along with old photos.

If we can spend trillions on interest to our National debt and dump money into a war that is ruining the economy.

I would much rather attend to our country and support what serves us all.

The Parks pay for themselves if they are run correctly. Every previous president has recognized their value and protected them.

Trump signed an executive order scaling back the borders of Bears Ears National Monument by roughly \(85\%\) (losing over \(1\) million acres) and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half (losing about \(800,000\) acres). This decision opened these formerly protected lands to potential commercial development, mining, and logging.

They're called "visitor centers".

Are the jobs necessary? Which jobs were lost? Is how they operate ideal?

Might people have to volunteer to pick up some of the slack? Sure. Should people be doing that anyways? To me, yes. National parks cover millions of acres. 3,000 on the ground maintenance workers aren't putting a dent in that. Do we know that the jobs were in maintenance? I'm guessing most were not.

If we don't service the debt our economy will collapse entirely. I'm not a huge fan of wars, either. I'd much rather the federal government cut down on spending everywhere.

It would seem to me that the run correctly has been more at issue than you are willing to admit. In the OP link it talked about all the private group fundraising they used, so paying for themselves doesn't appear to have been the case.

Bears Ears was a highly controversial issue. Obama had just proclaimed it right before leaving office and Trump took over (2016/2017). It wasn't some long established park. Trump campaigned on the topic and won the vote in Utah. Should he have listened to the voters or not? It since was re-expanded by Biden. Did Trump reduce it again?

Again, I agree with most of your sentiments. It just feels a bit like you're jumping to conclusions that I'm not seeing evidence for. Not necessarily bad conclusions, but they read more as fears than facts to me at this point.

Let's be clear here.
trump targeted national park and monument regulations to open protected public lands to fossil fuel extraction, mining, and commercial use—and to reshape how American history and environmental science are presented in federal educational exhibits.
Lobbyists are nothing more than part of a corruption network. That begins with the money from those who benefit. In the end who goes along reaps the rewards.


Interior Department orders directed reviews of public lands with the intent to increase drilling, fracking, and commercial logging in areas previously safeguarded from development. Downsizing Monuments: Using the Antiquities Act, Trump drastically reduced protected areas like Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments to exclude them from federal land regulations.

trump attacks anything Obama did. He is consumed with hatred for him. He has targeted removal or censoring of displays detailing the historical realities of slavery, the Civil War, and the mistreatment of Native Americans. The removal of references to climate change and climate science from park materials. Hell he attacked the displays at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
He had installed the controversial deployment of QR codes instructing park visitors to report signs or exhibits deemed "anti-American."

He has attacked free speech almost daily. His game is more than obvious with Comey or anyone who opposes him.

I despise partisan politics. When something is obviously wrong I could care less what party is doing it.

trump will go down as the worst president this country has ever had. Not because he is republican but because of him and who he is.

I could get on board with this argument if there was at least a shred of consistency. Looking back over this admin, saving money and promoting efficiency has largely just been words. Accumulation of federal debt has accelerated since the beginning of this admin. OBBBA is adding significant debt that will continue to accelerate, costs of this war that shows no signs of slowing or stopping (quite the opposite at this point), repercussions of the tariff nonsense, so on and so forth. It appears that the outcome of DOGE (this feels like decades ago) is going to end up being a cost with having to hire back significant portions of the federal workforce laid off.

But your comment only applies if you are [1] Paying attention to details. [2] Not trying to come up with contrarian angles on every topic.

1. Saying what I would like was not referring to what those in power are doing. So it really depends on if the details being paid attention to are the ones being talked about.

2. When every topic is presented from one extreme or the other, I guess trying to look at things rationally seems contrarian.

Thinking people are going too far towards one extreme on a specific topic does not mean I agree with everything the entity they are arguing against does.

I wasn't arguing for the government's (lack of) "efficiency." I agree with you, oober, that the current administration's approach has been a mess. Still, I think less big government is ultimately good if done correctly. Yes, slack would have to be picked up locally in many instances. Yet, I think most issues are better handled with local knowledge than through sweeping bureaucracy. Just because the government is doing a horrible job of something doesn't mean the original/underlying idea was wrong. Efficiency is good, everything else being equal.

I think the idea of national parks is great. I think I have different ideas than others what that should look like. I'd do away with the commercialized/touristy stuff altogether. That's my preference. I don't need shrines to America or someone's version of a history lesson. I prefer being able to appreciate things as they are rather than being told what I should be taking away. Others are welcome to feel differently.

While I think natural /"historical" areas should be preserved, I don't think giant blocks are necessarily the best way to do it. They do need a certain minimum size, but 1.36 million acres in one go seems overkill to me. I am for creating more smaller, protected natural areas. I don't mean that we should just make them all smaller, but that we should go back towards populated areas and create/designate more, but with an eye towards balance and locality over sweeping, near impossible to manage monstrosities.

I just feel like focusing on a percentage reduction doesn't really tell me anything without knowing the specifics of what the numbers actually represent on the ground. If the actual Buttes were no longer in the park that would be a problem for me. If the outlying area that possibly shouldn't have been included in the first place which blocked pre-existing commercial traffic was reduced, I'd feel differently.

If the OP had focused on the fossil fuel extraction, mining, and commercial use aspect, I'd likely have taken a different approach.

I agree with you on lobbyists.

I think you are more consumed with hatred for Trump than Trump is consumed with hatred for Obama at the moment. Trump is playing politics. Trump is too busy counting his money to hate an individual that acts as a useful political tool/target. Honestly, I get your hate. I'm not a fan. I just think your hate bleeds into a negative bias that has an effect on your objectivity at times. But negative biases are a part of the human condition.

Unfortunately, Trump going down as the worst depends on when the history is written. Could get worse. (That's probably my bias towards politicians.)

Since when did protecting and funding federal lands and our national parks become a matter of "extremes"? People of all religions and all political viewpoints share equally in the enjoyment and reward of those lands and protecting them and preserving our natural wonders. Maintaining them have been continued and carried out by every president and administration for decades.

Now it's an extreme issue? Maybe you need to pause and ask yourself why it's now an extreme issue when it never was before? None of this is as complicated as you're trying to make it sound. I think even you know that.

LOL. Good one

When an argument is based more on emotions and headlines and numbers without context than actual specifics, I consider that an extreme approach to a topic. (i.e, saying something happened because someone allegedly hates someone else and bringing up how one despises something.) You're the only one that said extreme issue in here.

If gas prices rise to the point where many can't afford travel to parks or the economy craters because we defaulted on our national debt, are the parks still being shared equally?

Most things aren't as simple as you try to make them. One might only understand a simplified version of something, but that doesn't make it the realistic version. There's more than one side to every story. I get the propensity for declaring every move Trump makes as horrible (many are), but it's just not that black and white. I'm not a fan of presupposition. I like to drill down to what the actual move is rather than just declaring it's horrible and evil because Trump did it (or someone claims some number means something.)

It could be horrible. (It could be much ado about not all that much.) I'm trying to figure out the actual changes beneath the seeming histrionics.

If someone gives an example of some irreplaceable natural feature being destroyed or horribly contaminated or even something meaningful being removed from a designation, I'll agree that's awful. If someone can give a non-biased cost/benefit analysis of the actual jobs being lost, I could form an opinion on how I felt about it. A biased article from an organization losing funding with a few surface numbers and inflammatory language doesn't actually tell me a whole lot. It does give me pause, so I ask questions and look for clarification.

The next president, as he's leaving office, says your home and business and/or all shipping routes to and from are now in a national park and you have to leave and/or can no longer use the roads/water. Eminent domain, here's a lowball check. Nothing you can do about it. Are you okay with that? Or would you like the incoming president to take a look at whether that actually makes sense? (Not that I have faith in Trump/future politician actually being able to make a good decision there.)

Allowing lame duck politicians to make irreversible decisions just seems like a horribly short sighted policy to me.

Bone has given you plenty of specifics.

You posted this, not me.


None of this has been presented from an "extreme" other than the current White House because it's never been an issue until now.


If a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass every time it landed. You can come up with "ifs" all day. And none of that has anything to do with this. I know you reach on some topics but this is a Stretch Armstrong move.


So your idea is wait until something collapses or suffers obvious, tangible harm to address it? Because until then you have no idea if the moves made will harm it?


Hmmmm. What you've done to this point certainly doesn't appear that way.


So the man running around the neighborhood with a hatchet screaming at the top of his lungs isn't a danger until he kills someone? Wait until major damage is already done and then let's talk about it?


That seems like quite the dichotomy. Admitting you have no faith trump can be making a good decision while saying let's give the man you have no faith in masking a good decision.

How many people were displaced from their homes do to expanding those wildlife areas? I'll tell you. Zero. The expansions, which protected over 550 million acres of land and water (mostly marine), did not involve seizing private homes. The lands were already managed by the federal government and were placed under stricter conservation rules. You're just riff on things that aren't even true to make some fantasy story.


Maybe you should have looked at the details of those policies first. I'm 100% sure you had no idea those lands were already being managed by the federal government and all this policy did was to strengthen the conservation rules.

Telling me a first rounder has a 50/50 chance to succeed isn't specific to an individual player. Telling me there's an 80% reduction doesn't tell me what land was actually excluded. Telling me 3,000 jobs doesn't tell me which jobs.

We're talking about two different "extremes."

Yes, I reach for more information. You jump to a short sighted, over simplified conclusion and push away anything that contradicts it without even attempting to understand what any one else is saying.

Someone saying there is going to be harm, doesn't actually require that there actually would be irreversible harm. I'm for looking to see if there actually would be harm rather than taking the word of someone with financial motivations for their position. Someone losing funding is obviously going to be against their own losing funding.

Appearances can be deceiving when you don't know what you are looking at.

You are always a danger, Pit, whether you break out the tomahawk or not. We're already talking about it and trying to determine whether major damage is being done.

Yes, the world is full of dichotomies. I'm capable of holding two separate ideas independently. I'm not taking Trump's decision on faith, I'm saying let's look at it.

You're right. No homes were taken in this instance. That's why I included the part after the and/or. I was also using a hypothetical and not the exact cases we were discussing to make the idea more broadly applicable. I'm against government overreach in all its many forms. The home version hits closest to home for most people. Alas, trying to get you to think rarely works once you've dug in.

Your assumptions are wrong, as usual. The "policy" I was referring to was "allowing lame duck politicians to make irreversible decisions" rather than the antiquities act itself. The argument that later Presidents shouldn't be able to change designations sounds like a bad idea to me. I get why they are saying that in this instance, but things change.

You might have a point. Maybe.

Except there's two pieces of information - fact based intelligence gathering you could call it if you wanted to try and dress it up fancy like you like to try and do:

[1] This is Trump. It's Project 2025. We've seen it enacted. We've seen it written down. We've seen the results elsewhere. When things like DOGE - which no doubt you might well have embraced as a great idea to cut spending and reduce government costs -- was a complete sham. A hatchet job that may end up costing us money and certainly got no-where remotely close to saving Billions the it claimed (other than thru dodgy accounting and misdirection). ICE is effective but arguably they are/were masked unidentified agents with no transparency or accountability. The war in Iran is a cluster whichever way you want to look at it. . . . that's just scratching the surface. So we have history of what Trump says and does often has negative impacts on every day Americans or a negative impact on whatever the focus is - or in some cases it is simply a disaster.

[2] We have your own history of simply being a contrarian. You can type away at your keyboard and claim that you're being rational and it's everyone else that's extreme and unable to think critically, but that does not make it so. It's a steady, consistent and repeated pattern of behavior on virtually every post in the political forum. Instead of using logic and what's in front of us - you "What If" any topic to death. What if your Uncle had balls? What if Trump is an alien? What if the pattern we have seen from Project 2025 is not really a pattern and just a coincidence. What if the price of gas goes so high no-one goes to the National Parks any more?

For anyone paying attention - it is easy to draw a relatively straight forward argument and conclusion. That doesn't guarantee that it's the right conclusion. We are all in the opinion based stage of analysis. One side is following Occam's Razor - you are debating from the perspective of improbability while hiding behind "we don't know all the result/facts". That's fine - but it does not make you right and it does not give you the moral or intellectual high ground. And when Bone expanded on the environmental impact - you didn't address that, just said it wasn't a big enough focus of the OP. That seems like simply sidestepping a fact because it's too hard to counter .... so maybe I have had it wrong all this time, maybe you are less contrarian and simply more of a sophist.

Like all things - we'll find out what this all means eventually. But maybe it will be too late to save something precious. Personally because of the potential to do irrevocable harm I would lean on a more conservative (conservationist) approach - not the shrug your shoulders approach.

Our National Parks are geologic treasures.

Men of foresight recognized that. There was no political agenda.

These are natural wonders that should be available for all to see and enjoy. They must be protected from commercialization.

We are in a war that is costing billions.

As of May 2026, the Department of Defense (now called the Department of War) has asked Congress for a massive expansion in defense spending, totaling a $1.5 trillion, 44% increase in overall defense spending for Fiscal Year 2027, following a $1 trillion topline in FY2026.

The National Parks budget is roughly $3.5 billion, national parks generate an estimated $55 billion in economic impact, with visitors spending nearly $29 billion in surrounding communities in 2024.

trump is attacking a profitable resource that pays for itself and only requires what it needs to remain profitable.

As of May 2026, the U.S. national debt is approaching $39 trillion, with annual interest payments projected to exceed $1 trillion ($1.039 trillion) in fiscal year 2026. The Treasury is currently paying roughly $3 billion per day to service this debt.

trump is a business man?

Increasing protections on land already owned and controlled by the federal government has no "financial gain" involved. And unless you think the National Park Service has some kind of slush fund that their employees are taking for themselves I have no idea what kind of financial gain you think there is in that department.

If it was just reversed how can you call it irreversible? The only thing you've been able to maintain in all of this has been made up possibilities and scenarios. Even after showing you that nobodies property was taken and nobody had to be relocated now you pivot in yet another direction. This harmed no one and only served to help forther protect land owned by the federal government. But since Obama did it, Trump had to undo it.

Or is that an obvious pattern you have missed in all of this? and since you're always searching for the truth, why don't you look at least far enough into the topic to see the reasoning of why they did this?

And it's quite odd that you raised a false flag about people having their property taken by eminent domain, which never happened, you then take issue with me asking if we should wait until irreversible harm is done to take actions to prevent it?

Here's the issue. You haven't actually presented anything the actions of Obama did to harm anything. You haven't shown anything to show it hurts the land or harmed any people. But there is certainly a chance that if protections are taken away from our federal lands and cuts made to our national parks things may very well be harmed.

It's as if you have just made things up as you've gone along that hold no substance.

The initial post was about budget cuts. Someone that works for an organization (the person that wrote the linked article) that is getting its budget cut has personal financial considerations.

I didn't say it was irreversible. People are arguing that designations should be. I disagree with that. Existing roads and sites are/were/will be no longer accessible. It's not all past history. Some had active practices (religious significance) from the locals. No longer being able to drive to sites deeper in the area makes them essentially impossible to get to in anything resembling a reasonable time frame. The Trump did it because it was Obama's is a lame narrative, and keeps taking us further from the initial post that was on budget cuts, work force reduction, and changing displays.

Where exactly is the reason "they did this" written out? Not some biased op ed or your made up opinion.

You haven't shown anything that shows the harm Trump is doing in this instance. Saying something "may very well be harmed" isn't evidence, it's conjecture and speculation.

Are only you supposed to be allowed to make up hypothetical harm?
I'd argue that promoting tourism is as likely to cause damage as leaving things as they were.

The history of federal mismanagement of national parks is its own separate issue.

Look I'm for preserving nature. I'm not a big fan of agenda driven narratives and selling knickknacks.

Personally, I'm weird and find the whole idea of owning land that the "owner" hasn't actually walked distasteful. Yes, claiming things is what governments do, but I don't have to like it.

Why would anyone, much less myself put thought into a manufactured falsehood? That's a pretty lame narrative.




Allow me to explain to you what a "lame narrative" sounds like. When a man has been displaying an obvious pattern over a long period of time showing a propensity to do something and when someone points that fact out to you, you try and dismiss it and belittle it as a "lame narrative". You're welcome.


That is how they were. Visitors centers have been around for decades. Promoting people visit our national parks has been happening for decades. WTH are you talking about?


So let's see if I have this correct. You want less government spending. Yet at the same time you oppose selling "knick knacks" at visitor centers which raises a lot of money for the park service which means they need less money from the government?

And "agenda driven narratives"? Is that what you call telling the entire history of a region where a national park is located? Let me explain what that really means. What that means is people simply want to remove the part of a regions history they want to hide and don't like. This allows them to selectively show what they like and erase what they don't like. That's the very definition of an "agenda driven narrative".