LITTLE BO PEEP as EVIL

 

Little Bo Peep hasn’t lost any sheep and

She’s always getting more of ‘em.

 

She can’t take care of what she has nor

Can she afford to do anything with ‘em.

 

Still,

She wants more sheep, whatever the cost

And she knows just how to get ‘em.

 

 

Q. How could anyone call Little Bo Peep, “evil”?

A. When the image of innocence is used to mask evil actions, it is evil.

 

Little Bo Peep is a fairy tale image similar to the image cultivated to disguise evil actions of the National Park Service.  The following is about the National Park Service but it applies equally to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, The US Forest Service, The Bureau of Land Management, and all the other federal land “managing” (actually “owning and closing”) agencies from the Department of Defense Base managers to the Bureau of Reclamation.  All of them cultivate an image of “saving” land and “saving” animals” and “saving” plants and “saving” ecosystems and “saving” resources and “saving” whatever gets them more land and bigger budgets and more power.  How could anyone that does such wonderful things be “evil”?

 

The National Park Service has brazenly become more open lately about its future plans for taking more private property and American citizen rights.  The reason for this is the upcoming election.  They and their federal (brother?, sister?, brother/sister?, whatever) land owning agencies smell blood in the water as never before.  Agency gains in numbers of Parks; acres of land controlled; schemes concocted involving “view sheds”, “bypasses”, “Heritage Areas”, road closures, wolf introductions like Yellowstone and soon Olympic etc., and assorted regulatory tightenings of the past 30 years have established a pattern of growth that will not stop until nearly all of rural America is owned or controlled by federal bureaucrats.  Add to these precedents two of the “greenest” Presidential candidates ever and an anticipated large liberal US House and Senate majority seeking pleasant (“bread and circuses”) diversions for the voters and you have a surefire recipe for federal bureaucratic excess.  The Park Service smells it and all their “partners” and “fiduciaries” from The Nature Conservancy to the Universities (grants) and state parks (grants) to the retiree organizations and historical societies and archeologists and anti-land & anti-natural resource use groups smell it too.

 

What have they done lately as they lay the groundwork for their own growth and further diminishment of private property and viable rural communities that could be called evil?

 

Well for starters, National Park Service retiree organizations and a herd of retired and ex-National Park Service Directors recently testified before Congress that state gun laws should not apply on any National Park.  The National Park Service has prohibited any guns on any National Park for years.  Why?  Why because it is a “Park” and Parks are what?  Sacred?  Special?  These former and pensioned federal employees have not only written and enforced federal regulations prohibiting “the right to bear Arms” on federal land, they actually lobbied Congress to deny 2^nd Amendment rights to all Americans ON LAND WE BOUGHT AND PAID THEM TO MANAGE!

 

Of course this gesture of solidarity with the Mayors of San Francisco and Chicago and New York was concocted and played before an anti-2^nd Amendment US House of Representatives WHILE the US Supreme Court was considering the illegality of the Washington, DC gun ban.  The National Park Service, both the active employees and these “junkers”, were emboldened to justify their unjustifiable gun ban with the hope of influencing the Supreme Court!  Park employees have long been notorious anti-gun and anti-hunting zealots but even more so of late while taking advantage of the opportunity to signal the anticipated Democrat majorities in the Congress that they support them and look forward to their (Congress’) support for Park “programs”. 

 

A few examples of their vision of things to be done to the American society in the next four years are emerging.

 

1. Studies of National Park “view sheds” are being initiated to expand land control authority and justify land purchases and bypasses and road closures.  The Park near me (Manassas Battlefield) is doing this right now to stop nearby power lines and commercial development and justify closing roads in the Park to expand the Park and build a bypass while closing historic and heavily used highways that bisect the Park.  Many other Parks are laying this sort of groundwork now to give the new Congress things to spend money on to expand federal ownership of land and to harm anyone living near or needing to travel through federal lands.
2. Studies of Olympic Park streams are “revealing” that certain trees are not abundant “because there are no wolves there”.  So wolves will be leapfrogged from the upper Rockies to NW Washington to make Olympic Park more like Yellowstone with its brucellosis-ridden bison and elk and deadly predators like wolves.  Can deadly grizzly bears be far behind? Human injuries, human deaths, and the destruction of human property from dogs to livestock will be the result in and around the Park, but “tree diversity” will be highlighted even though it is of no moment to anyone or anything.
3. The boldest display of evil chutzpah was a recent cynical “news” story concocted by National Park Service employees and their “cooperators”.  To wit, the National Park Service “needs to reach out to minorities”.  The tale went something like this, “visitors to Parks are nearly all white”, “National Parks are not meeting the ‘needs’ of minorities”, and “National Parks need to represent the ‘minority experience’ more”.  To this old bureaucrat (I was once the Operations Chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System) the hidden agenda here was stark, bold, and massive.  The National Park was telling President Obama and Representative Rangel and Senators Clinton and Feinstein and even Senator McCain that the Parks could BUY more Parks, HIRE more employees, and DESIGN more programs for the constituencies that will elect them.  What could be better than pleasing those that elect you with the property and tax money of those that were not enthusiastic about you?  Consider this – 20 to 25 years ago when the National Park Service and National Wildlife Refuges and National Forests began to charge “Entrance Fees” the worthiest objection was that the poor and elderly and minorities would effectively be barred from visiting the Parks and Refuges and Forests by such fees.  I always felt that new immigrants were also some of the folks we should have encouraged to visit battle sites and important historic sites but that the last things we needed to do was put blocks in their way such as proliferating entrance fees for lands that taxpayers already bought and paid for.  But no, Washington bureaucrats and all those soon to emerge “concerned” politicians put fees everywhere and increased them time and again.  But soon they will “see the light” and not rescind any entrance fees (of course) but buy more Parks and enlarge Parks and federal employee numbers and salaries as they hire minorities to reach out to minorities and grow the National Park Service even more than has been the case to date.
4. These things and much more are being enabled by the sly National Park Service/federal politician Relief Act known as “Heritage Areas” and “Trails”.  These funding devices allow politicians to tell urban constituents that “they” (the thoughtful politician and the Bo Peep Park agency) will spend millions in certain counties or states to “preserve” this or that site where horses were once tied or some folks once traveled.  Anything qualifies and the money is funneled through the National Park Service (with “administrative” deductions of course) to friendly historical organizations and archeological groups and plain old anti-development groups to stop rural development and build justification for eventual acquisition before “it” (whatever it may be) is “lost” to the uncontrolled vagaries of free men and women living in rural communities in a Constitutional Republic.

 

So you can call it what you will but I call it evil when someone is 1. trying to destroy my gun rights; 2. converting usable and productive private property into unmanaged and unused state-owned property; 3.excluding minorities and the poor from government properties for years and then cynically using minorities to curry political favor and money; 4. introducing and protecting large predators that are a threat to human life and private property where they do not belong; 5. inventing nonsense like “view sheds” to justify taking more private property from citizens; and 6. disguising future government land acquisition until funds are made available by disrupting rural economies through funding anti-development groups with tax dollars to soften them up for eventual government purchase.

 

What I have said here is true.  It no doubt angers public employees and upsets those that would build these “systems” (Parks, Refuges, Forests, etc.) until they control everything.  So be it.  We all need to be aware of precisely what is going on here and not be taken in by the Little Bo Peep image of these agencies.  Each year they whine that they have “backlogs” of every stripe and that hundreds of “needs” are going unmet unless they get “more” money, people, and higher salaries.  Add to this that every year they get “more” of all these things.  Then think hard about how they and their brethren bureaucrats are going to play the upcoming President (whichever) and the new Congress from scared Republican minorities to emboldened Democrats looking for “causes” and “programs” to name after themselves.  It is not a pretty site to contemplate and the end result will be not only evil but cumulative destruction when combined with other agency abuses that have emerged over the past 35 to 40 years like catastrophic fires and law enforcement that amounts to killing mosquitoes with a hammer.

 

Jim Beers

12 July 2008

- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others.  Thanks.

 

- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at

 http://jimbeers.blogster.com   (Jim Beers Common Sense)

 

 - Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak.  Contact:

jimbeers7@verizon.net

 

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.  He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.