On "Against the Grain", EL G often talks about the empty rationale underlying bureaucrats' calls to garner tax money to support "public goods" such as parks. He has debated state representatives who want to take money from others in order to "save Temple Mountain from development", despite the fact that, when offered as a place for recreation in natural surroundings on a private basis, the mountain has consistently NOT garnered enough business to keep its owners solvent (this has happened more than once at the mountain).

Now comes this report from the Associated Press, in which the functionaries at the NH Dept. of Fish and Game are doing precisely what so many here have predicted. They are telling the politicians in Concord that they just can't keep operating by charging fees for those who use the services (plus the fees for people just to register their snowmobiles, boats, andfishing rods, even if they NEVER use them on state owned land!)

What do they want? Money from the "rooms and meals tax".

So if you eat at a Burger King, or sleep at a Motel Six far, far from a state park, you will be subsidizing the park system that cannot manage its own affairs through charging only those who use it.

Imagine if your local movie theatre came to you and said that they just can't keep going without forcing you to pay more at the news stand each time you got the paper, and they got the state to back them up? How would you feel? How would your news stand owner feel?

The idea that we "all" have a vested interest in state parks is already blown to pieces by the fact that the state parks cannot keep themselves afloat without plundering other markets. If we truly all felt that we had a vested interest in the parks, we could have voluntarily inVESTED in them.

Here is the article from the Nashua Telegraph and AP:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NH_XGR_FISH_AND_GAME_NHOL-?SITE=N...