"Ms. Pille cannot prove that we will ever need one more park than we have right now."
I am writing in regard to a Guest Column in the Community Recorder 10 May 2012, p. A-15, by Gayle Pille.
Ms. Pille tells us that if we are simplistic and narrow-minded we need to take a field trip. If that's what we are, what makes her think we would take her advice? The truth is simplistic and narrow-minded are words that cut both ways. How many parks does she think she needs? Enough to create a trails system? Some of us are so busy working to pay for the parks we have now, that we don't have time to use them!
The expanded park and trail system proposed by the current Judge-Executive was turned down overwhelmingly by the voters, and in fact there is not much support for parks among the taxed and taxable public. (We also suspect that Judge Moore intends to put the question on the ballot again in November, but cannot actually document this at present. Keep posted!) Nothing keeps Ms. Pille and her friends from pooling their money and buying their own parks. No, perhaps that is too American, or more likely public funding is the easy way of achieving their objectives. People like this always want to do things with public money, that is, other people's money.
The real question is not for and against parks. Everyone likes parks. Not everyone thinks that the much vaunted benefits are worth the very real costs in private job creation (yes, we really believe in the private sector; is that simplistic?), growth of the government sector (administration, maintainence, costs of bonds, and political boondoggling), and loss of tax revenue when private land is removed from the tax rolls. All of this becomes a drain on the taxpayers who must make up the loss when land is taken out of private hands and pay the new cost of administering it as well.
Furthermore, not everyone is thrilled with the vision that motivates the attempt to foist this off on everyone, the socialist Agenda 21, promoted by the U. N., designed to move everyone off the land into cities; but, it will allow us some government controlled parks and trails to compensate. Significantly, it is the acquisition of this land that is the key factor in gaining the control necessary to force the change. Ms. Pille and some others have "parks and trails" on the brain. Do they even know what the bigger issues are? We think they are issues like freedom and American sovereignty. We think freedom and liberty are more important than how many more parks we can accumulate in Boone County.
"In my opinion it is very simplistic to think that a few more parks, or many more parks, are going to solve our current problems."
Does Ms. Pille really think Hewlett-Packard will move here if our Fiscal Court buys a few more parks? Why would we want them here polluting and taking up green space? I think we have too many businesses here already. There is a real disconnect between what she wants and what she says she wants. (If we want more and better green space we should encourage our farmers. This should not be done through subsidies and grants. The current system of Agribusiness is nothing but agricultural welfare for the rich guys.)
Our current Judge-Executive, a millionaire building supply owner, has promoted the overbuilding and overpopulation of this county, and we see the result in urban sprawl, skyrocketting foreclosures, and empty commercial buildings. He admitted at the Republican debate that his own business now has 75 employees, instead of the 125 it had just a few years ago. His policies are not even good for his own business.
If there had not been this artificial boom, there wouldn't have been such a bust (which is very real); but the boom encouraged the buildup of population that created the illusion that we are going to need lots of parks in the future. Ms. Pille cannot prove that we will ever need one more park than we have right now; I would encourage our next Fiscal Court (and there is going to be a new one) to divest themselves of much of the land that they now hold in our name. We want it to go back to private individuals who know better how to manage it than the government. Some of that land can be purchased by private groups interested in maintaining it as green space, such as is now done with Dinsmore Woods, and other areas.
If the problem, as Ms. Pille states, is not parks, but paying for them, then she and people like herself need to look at creative ways to finance. Mr. Bruce Ferguson, a former county Judge, once told me the story of how school children donated their lunch money to buy the land that became the core of Big Bone Lick State Park. Maybe she could launch such an project: Why do the taxpayers have to do everything? Why is it necessary for the government to control huge land holdings?
Some of us, far from being narrow-minded, have a vision of freedom, rather than one in which the government in the end controls everything, including where we work, walk, and live. We can see how we will be talked to and treated if such people get what they want. We are "simplistic and narrow-minded" now; we will be terrorists in the future if we oppose their "complex and open-minded" vision of what the world should be like. That is fascism, the most closed system of government there is.
In my opinion it is very simplistic to think that a few more parks, or many more parks, are going to solve our current problems. If our country does not get control of the debt crisis, and stop the free-for-all government funding of corporate welfare, and other projects for the socialist élite (that is fascism), then we will probably need lots of parks, because most of us will be living in them!
James Duvall, M. A., an Archivist and Historian, is an elected Conservation Supervisor for Boone County. He lives at Big Bone, Kentucky, with his wife and eight children. He the Director of Big Bone University, a local Think Tank and Public Policy Center, and is currently researching and writing a history of Big Bone, projected to be published in twenty-five volumes. He teaches at Northern Kentucky University and the International Institute for Language Studies in Cincinnati.
