Reader comments
Shore up national parks

This newspaper has been a prominent supporter of tax cuts. You can have tax cuts or you can have adequately funded national parks. You can't have both.

I'm sorry, but at a time when food prices are reaching all time highs, when foreclosures are on the rise, when growth is slowing rapidly and even going backwards in some parts of the country, now is not the right time to talk about putting more tax doallrs towards parks. I like parks as much as the next person, but I can't afford to visit them this year.

Honestly, we all know that all three of the candidates for president will treat the national parks with more respect than Bush does.

Neocons would call this "tree-hugger stuff."

Ridiculously stupid and angry necons they are.

Man is the only animal that poisons its own drinking water and destroys its wild places.

The tax cuts increased tax revenue to the Gov. Of course we could could raise taxes so that no one could afford to go to the National Parks, except foreign tourists.

I don't support tax cuts personally, but you can have tax cuts and increase funding to parks if you decrease funding to other areas of the government. Defense jumps out as the most likely candidate. The United States accounts for about half of the world's defense expenditures. Take a fifth of that and put it towards science, education, and the environment, like NPS, NSF, NASA, DoE, etc. People might complain about job cuts, but those jobs would open up in other industries that could flourish due to the increase in available funding to get research/industry started. The massive infrastructure changes needed for introducing hydrogen or solar power and any number of other radical, but useful technologies needs to be shouldered by the government because they will not be economically viable immediately.

Summary: I've hiked almost every trail in every national park in Utah, visited every national park/monument, and stand in full support of big budget increases for the park service.

I agree the National Parks need more funding and support. However, your statement that the visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument was closed due to lack of maintenance is not correct. The building was in imminent danger of collapse due to the shifting foundation of the building. The building was built over the famous sandstone wall of dinosaur bones, so the site was dictated by the location of the fossil deposit and was not chosen for building stability. The bentonite beneath the building shifted over the 60 years the building has been there, cracking the foundation and buckling the walls. There is no "maintenance" that could have prevented this. The building was closed for reasons of public safety. Almost immediately after the closure, the Park management began the process to identify the best option for replacing the visitor center and to take steps to seek the clearances and funding to replace it. What would speed up the process is the involvement of our Senators and Congressmen in obtaining the funding to quickly proceed with the plans that have already been made. How about it Senators? Are you going to step up and make this important National Monument a higher priority?

Bush promised to take care of the National Parks, just another Bush lie.

You can thank all the wacky neocons for voting in Bush/Cheney.

Don't blame me.