How about a modern CCC?
The selfishness of modern society and lack of willingness to contribute to the common good always amazes me. That thought struck home last week when I covered the 75th anniversary celebration honoring the Civilian Conservation Corps. See the story here.
The program, funded in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, employeed 3,463,766 men who built 125,000 miles of road, 13,100 miles of food trails, did erosion control on 40 million acres, revegetated 814,000 acres of range, developed 900 state parks, worked on 52,000 acres of public campgrounds, and planted between two and three billion trees.
With unemployment increasing in the U.S. and much of the infrastructure of national parks and public land trails and campgrounds deterioating plus much of the West needing revegetation after devastating wildfires, why wouldn’t it be a good time to create a smaller, modern version of the CCC or perhaps a Student Conservation Corps where high school and college age students could be given summer jobs?
“I’d like to see things like that in this dayk and age with some of the crisis we face,” said Julie King, a district forest ranger for
the Heber and Kamas districts, two of the most used recreational areas in Utah if not the U.S.
I couldn’t agree more. The problem is that Americans would rather see their taxes cut than to have any beneficial government programs funded. After all, we funded the Iraq War on the cheap, asking no sacrifices of any American other than military families to pay for this misadventure. Why should we expect taxpayers -- who would probably be the first to
complain if campgrounds are not to their liking or, worse, closed -- to pay for improvements? None of us like to pay taxes. But we sure enjoy the benefits those taxes bring us, don’t we?
Tom
The program, funded in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, employeed 3,463,766 men who built 125,000 miles of road, 13,100 miles of food trails, did erosion control on 40 million acres, revegetated 814,000 acres of range, developed 900 state parks, worked on 52,000 acres of public campgrounds, and planted between two and three billion trees.
With unemployment increasing in the U.S. and much of the infrastructure of national parks and public land trails and campgrounds deterioating plus much of the West needing revegetation after devastating wildfires, why wouldn’t it be a good time to create a smaller, modern version of the CCC or perhaps a Student Conservation Corps where high school and college age students could be given summer jobs?
“I’d like to see things like that in this dayk and age with some of the crisis we face,” said Julie King, a district forest ranger for
the Heber and Kamas districts, two of the most used recreational areas in Utah if not the U.S.
I couldn’t agree more. The problem is that Americans would rather see their taxes cut than to have any beneficial government programs funded. After all, we funded the Iraq War on the cheap, asking no sacrifices of any American other than military families to pay for this misadventure. Why should we expect taxpayers -- who would probably be the first to
complain if campgrounds are not to their liking or, worse, closed -- to pay for improvements? None of us like to pay taxes. But we sure enjoy the benefits those taxes bring us, don’t we?
Tom
posted by Brett @ 10:06 AM |
1 Comments:
The CCC did great things but are we willing to turn America's future to the people who say that global warming is the single greatest threat to mankind? Are we ready to have this kind of doctrine regurgitated into our homes? Are we ready to surrender the upbringing of our children to the nanny state? Unemployment is a product of our own making. Reviving the CCC will backfire into a new front for assailing the values we have replaced with consumerism and instant gratification.
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