I do remember this kind of fiasco with the MCA Corporation. They actively and shewedly screwed the NPS with there Yosemite Concessions and made millions, while kicking in a measly 2% to the Parks coffers! MCA is gone, but talk about a sweetheart deal with back room corruption. This trend still continues till this day! I'm deeply set against any privatization in the National Parks..."give them an inch, they will take a foot"!

I have deep concerns about privatizing the amminites of the NPS. The next maybe a company from Spain gains the bid for these concessions. Then the 80% of the profits are not even invested in the US. Also once this profit making system is estiblished what next? Will they start to place private security forces in place of forest rangers. We're doing that to fight our wars. To me the land of the free and the home of the brave is forgetting it's first priority- the land! Perhaps it's beneith us, it's more important to deal with lease agrements.

Let's be a little clear hear. In the parks where companies like Xanterra and Delaware North are running concessions, they are already to that extent privatized - regulated, in many cases monopolized (in Yellowstone, there is some competition for some services between those two concessions, for instance), but raked in by a corporation. When Mather and Albright ran the parks, their policy was to monopolize concessions to the greatest extent possible for a lot of reasons, too many to go into right now. What's interesting, though, is that this arrangement actually comes much closer to the true meaning of fascism than most of the popular uses. Mussolini himself defined fascism as corporatism, which by that he meant the melding together of government and corporate interests. While we see this to a much greater degree in the military industrial complex (coined by a conservative - Eisenhower), it's just as prevalent in the National Park System. Perhaps, that's why those ranger uniforms actually tend to give me the creeps (but maybe I just don't have that fetish).

However, is the answer to open up competition, like say the competition that exists in the gateway communities outside of parks? On the one hand, I'm sure people don't want Jenny Lake to look anything at all like West Yellowstone or Jackson or Gatlinburg. (And guess what! Jenny Lake used to look like that! - which is in large part why Rockefeller and Albright worked in collusion to scam people out of their land in Jackson Hole and then give it eventually over to the Park Service). Competition for gas does make it cheaper outside of Yellowstone than inside (see http://www.yellowstone-notebook.com/news.html). I no doubt can find cheaper rooms and a wider variety outside of the park than inside of it. I may or may not be able to find a cheaper campground. Certainly, I can find cheaper food, better food, and a whole host of other amenities outside the park than inside. People I used to work with thought nothing of driving 70 miles to the K-Mart in Jackson because it was sometimes worth it to them to get things they needed.

And, yet, I don't know that many people that wanted Grant Village to look anything like Jackson. If anything, people felt that these areas were already over-developed. No one expected life to be easier as a worker outside of the parks than inside of them.

All of this would seem to argue not really toward opening up competition in the parks - there's an assumption that would lead to more construction (more buildings for more competing services, leading to more workers, leading to more infrastructure needed to support those workers). It would seem to argue for socializing the parks and having the government take over services with mandated price controls that are taxpayer subsidized. But, from fascism, we slip into a kind of socialism. Yet, if equitable, fair, affordable, while maintaining the other values that this conversation is so far missing (environmental integrity, unimpaired landscapes, something different from the gateway towns) is what you want, then how do you get it with the current concessions system? With this systme, profit will still be the main motive driving services, no matter the amount of regulation (since presumably, you need a reason to attract contractors and those who will take leases on concessions).

Yet, in a country that's becoming increasingly centralized around the power of the federal government, where branches of government are threatening to use things like the Real ID, to control access to public lands, where the government is strapped for money in large part because of the rising costs of maintaining its global economic empire, the use of the government to control public lands is also quite dangerous and comes with peril. We see that repeatedly in the discussions around the parks, around public lands, around anything that the government has a stake in (roads and bridges come to mind).

Thus, I think at most, a government takeover of amenities at parks where concessionaires control those things could never be an ideal or a permanent solution, only a better one than turning the parks into the gateway towns no one wants them to be. Or, worse, private fiefdoms that arise as the competition system fails - private communities, or exclusive towns. However, all of this again calls for seeing nothing but doom if we continue to view issues through the continuum of government control of property versus private control of property (and its various hybrids). If we don't escape that way of viewing things and challenge the fundamental premises, we won't have a way of dealing with the fouled up and lousy choices that are before us, choices that are only getting worse as we crumble under the weight of our economic and political system. Again, we are dealing at a grain size that is too fine for us to make a difference dependent on too many other considerations. Isn't that what ecosystem science has taught people? That, you can't simply tinker atomistically with complex systems? Yet, we think if we adjust the private v. public continuum like we adjust pH balances, that we can somehow find a happy equilibrium. Ummm...come on! Can't we see that neither the emperor nor the billionaire is actually wearing any clothes (and neither are we thanks to them!)

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World

I had the privelege (not the right) to spend about 30 days camping in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone when I was about 12 years old. My dad and mom took me there (from Cheyenne, FE Warren AFB) and it was what I talk about over 50 years later to my grandchildren. I am also lucky enough to have some old black and white browney pictures to show them. I plan on returning to take them there.
Please - Please - take care of "GODS COUNTRY"

You get what you pay for. If I want to stay in a clean, beautiful, classy place with excellent amenities, I will fork over the money for it--even if it means saving up for months in advance.

In order for a place to be truly clean, good maid service is needed, and good maid service costs money. In order for a place to be classy, people who can and will deliver good service will need to be employed, and they will cost money. Nice linens cost money. Good food means high quality chefs. Beautiful grounds mean expensive gardeners and landscapers. Well-maintained buildings mean paying for their upkeep.

It's nice that there are choices.

djhouston: I get it that you have many grand memories of camping as a kid with your folks in these grand places. Most of us do and I for one repeated these experiences by camping at and visiting the NP with my kids and my grandkids. I know from their comments they experienced the same joy as I did as a kid and still do as an adult.

What I am trying to understand is why you stated: "I had the privelege (not the right) to spend about 30 days camping..."? I think we are privileged to have these places available but I also feel that as citizens of this great nation we have every right to visit and use them. We have the obligation that goes with those rights to use them and take care of them in a responsible and sustaining way.

Part of the problem I have with the pricing with many of the facilities in the NP is that I can't afford them. I know,...duh. But I can't help but feel that it isn't only corporate greed or whatever catchphrase you want to use here...It is also a way to keep the rift-raft out for the people that can afford it. But then that by definition is what makes it "exclusive". Not being a hob nobber and with my own definition of the "good life", I will stick to my older motorhome and tents and enjoy the great outdoors the way my ancestors ancestors did. Of course they didn't have Sirius radio or DVDs or etc,etc....Ah the good life!