Why Is the National Park Service Trampling on My Transage Rights?
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National Parks typically cost $20 per car (e.g., Mesa Verde) or $30 (Grand Canyon) to visit for a day.
However, if you are 62 or older, you can buy a lifetime senior pass for $10.
On Monday, however, this goes up to $80.
I want to buy one of those $10 bargains right away, but they won’t sell me one because they say I’m not a senior.
But I feel like one.
Serious question: Can you buy one now for $10 and keep it in your glove compartment until you are old enough?
Follow @steve_sailer
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I remember when entrance to National Parks was free. Our taxes support them, and we are citizens, so why should we have to pay to see something we own?
Everything sucks now. Here’s an idea: Do what I did the first time I hiked the Grand Canyon, in 1978 — hitchhike there.
This is just a sign, Sailer, that the decline of our country will ensure that our senior years will be as Mark Twain promised, “the wanton insult of old age.”
No, but don’t worry, because yet another senior-discount is just another incentive to ramp up the death panels. OTOH, if you are feeling womanly, Obamacare will cover that.
College Kids Say the Darndest Things.
“I feel that’s not my place, as like another human, to say someone is wrong, or to draw lines and boundaries” (approx)
What every perp wants you to think.
"He might not be interested in wrong, but wrong is interested in him."
The powerful get to choose their own labels (no matter how crazy), the powerless have labels applied to them (no matter how crazy). And the crazy is always in favor of the first group.
Or as my father used to say, "There's the Good and the Bad, and the Good make the decisions."
Do you have to input SSN or something? Just say you’re old enough on the form and buy one. The guys at the gate won’t check when you flash the pass, they’ll see a white haired guy with a senior pass they just wave you through.
Or you can keep it in your glovebox until you age in to cis-senior status.
I bought a year long pass to my local national park, I continued using it for years after it expired. I lost it, had to buy a new one, then used that one for several more years too.
(Don't get Steve in trouble to where we'll have to bail him out - I want my donations to go to his writing, not some National Park kangaroo court.)
For some parks, you can park outside the park, and hike in, around the whole gatehouse area. You're going hiking anyway right? You are a white guy? Or, will you ride in the car snapping pictures of stuff that's all over the internet anyway?
Nope, you can’t buy the $10 pass now and wait until you are enough of a geezer. What you *can* do is buy a $20 senior pass
four years in a row, and if you’re not yet dead you qualify for a lifetime pass–that you have, via that route, paid for.
FAQ :
https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/senior-pass-changes.htm
“Trump is going to destroy our national parks, a heritage that should be enjoyed by all! By the way, pay up or you don’t get access, pal.”
I don’t think so – they’ve been swiping them for the magnetic strip info for years now.
(Don’t get Steve in trouble to where we’ll have to bail him out – I want my donations to go to his writing, not some National Park kangaroo court.)
For some parks, you can park outside the park, and hike in, around the whole gatehouse area. You’re going hiking anyway right? You are a white guy? Or, will you ride in the car snapping pictures of stuff that’s all over the internet anyway?
An eight year old boy and I were looking at a field full of brown and white turkeys a couple of days ago. He asked me why some were one color and others another. I gave him an answer to do with selective breeding and Thanksgiving. And he said, “But we know they are the same inside, right? They’re not different because they look different.” “No,” I replied, “they both look different and are actually different. They behave differently and they grow to be different sizes.”
One wonders how far beyond concepts of racial and sexual categorization the urge not to discriminate carries. Must chipmunks and field mice, for example, also be the same on the inside? How much stupider will this kid be than he otherwise would have if his head hadn’t been primed with false equivalences?
Is it honorable to lie for personal advantage?
I like that.
Or as my father used to say, “There’s the Good and the Bad, and the Good make the decisions.”
They have a free annual pass for fourth grade students under the kid in every park program. Tell them one of your children self identifies as a fourth grader and you are home schooling. As long they continue to self identify as a fourth grade student, I don’t see how they could deny you free admission for the rest of your life.
Yeah, that’s something they don’t tell you when they “cure” you of cancer – that you will have follow on effects the rest of your life. Be grateful you never had the chemo/radiation joyride like so many of your fellow hematology/oncology patient peers. Aging sucks anyway, but doing it with the damages of cancer and massive chemical+radiation just make it so much more fun.
I was thinking as the girl was answering the bathroom question- now, mind you, I don’t have a problem with transgender people using whatever bathroom (though I think it’s weird that this is deemed to have high importance now) but if she isn’t allowed to mind that guy using the women’s bathroom then what would be her argument for having a women’s bathroom?
I think we may momentum ourselves into seeing that you can’t really argue for to different kinds of bathrooms. Of course the actual answer is that right thinking women can claim to approve of all this because they think in reality it will hardly ever happen. If your place of work decided to make all bathrooms gender neutral everyone would quickly tire of it.
Senior discounts, like defined-benefit pensions, 65+ income tax deductions and 55+ property tax exemptions, are a generational transfer of wealth from the young, insecure and passive (Gen Xers and Millennials) to the old, secure and assertive (Greatest Generation and Boomers).
They’ve already taken defined benefit pensions away from Xers and jacked up the SS retirement age. The day the first Gen Xer retires will be the day you start seeing headlines like “Have Tax Breaks For Seniors Been an Unjust Mistake?”
I think that the Magick of Compound Interest (TM) has a leeeetle comething to do with how much money people over 65 have.
Especially where they started saving in their teens and 20s rather than spending it on porn, video games, weed, coke, internet bandwidth, $6 coffee drinks, iCrap, artisan cocktail fixins, and studies studies studies studies degrees.
I'm punk generation, btw--between Boom and X. We're taking it at both ends, paying for ALL your asses. Which is bad enough, but your whining isn't to be borne.And school taxes, subsidized health care, income taxes, low interest rates, and bailing out the feckless and arithmetically ignorant from their school and home loans are a generational transfer of wealth from the functional older to the biggest bunch of snowflakes south of Svalbard.
Experiencing unfairness or difficulty doesn't make you special. How you respond to it does.
National Parks and National Forests are great. WASPs noticing the effects of industrialization and sprawl set aside land to be preserved as natural spaces within the homeland of the American Empire. Even us Euromongrels who have some English ancestry, and are naturally somewhat suspicious of WASP intentions, can be pleased to be related by blood to the people who had the foresight to create the National Parks and National Forests.
David Brooks pissed me off this morning with his rancid rhetorical horseshit about the American wilderness and the American land and nature and how that shaped the American character. Lousy dope Brooks is a Jew. David Brooks will not admit that the reason the United States is a great nation is because of the British Protestants who colonized, settled and pioneered the wilderness that was America before the European Christians came here.
David Brooks is attempting to do to American history what the anti-White rats who are attacking statues and monuments are doing: Brooks is attempting to erase the founding ancestral stock of the United States.
The National Parks and National Forests are great, but David Brooks is a disgusting baby boomer rodent.
Thanks for the reference – I’m on my way shortly to a nearby National Park, where I will pick up my cheap pass.
https://atlast-retiring.blogspot.com/2017/08/deal-for-today-only.html
"I feel that's not my place, as like another human, to say someone is wrong, or to draw lines and boundaries" (approx)
What every perp wants you to think.Replies: @bomag
His way of giving everyone freedom.
“He might not be interested in wrong, but wrong is interested in him.”
And you’re still only 27!
C’mon Steve. Just borrow some id from any one of more than half of your fellow Unz.com writers. It’ll make you feel like a kid again.
If you have a handicap/gimp permit, that will get you in for free! No age limits.
Mt. Rushmore will let you in for free, then they get $10 to park, and you have to park in their lot.
If you feel old at 58 you really need to rethink your lifestyle.
It looks like being a late Boomer is not enough to get full Boomer (après moi le déluge) rights. Good to know 1955 is the cutoff.
Snark aside, $80 is still a deal (especially given other adults in the same car get in free!). And the reason for that price seems reasonable:
They also offer an annual pass for $20 with four of those convertible to lifetime.
Thanks for the heads up, Steve. Just turned 62 in May.
Same goes for the Smithsonian museums of African-American and Native American history. How about my income is not confiscated for amenities I may or may not value and people who enjoy these things can pay user fees for them?
If it makes people feel better, none of those people believed what get were saying.
“I’m seven!”
“Ok.”
“We just had sex!”
“Whatever.”
“You’re guilty of child rape!”
“NO, I’M NOT!!!”
“I’m Hispanic!”
“You be you.”
“I qualify for affirmative action!”
“Lucky you.”
“I’ve taken your spot in law school.”
“YOU’RE NOT HISPANIC!”
“I’m black!”
“NO YOU’RE NOT!!!”
Steve,
Thanks for the heads up. I just purchased my pass online, I do meet the age requirements.
They've already taken defined benefit pensions away from Xers and jacked up the SS retirement age. The day the first Gen Xer retires will be the day you start seeing headlines like "Have Tax Breaks For Seniors Been an Unjust Mistake?"Replies: @Olorin
“They.”
I think that the Magick of Compound Interest (TM) has a leeeetle comething to do with how much money people over 65 have.
Especially where they started saving in their teens and 20s rather than spending it on porn, video games, weed, coke, internet bandwidth, $6 coffee drinks, iCrap, artisan cocktail fixins, and studies studies studies studies degrees.
I’m punk generation, btw–between Boom and X. We’re taking it at both ends, paying for ALL your asses. Which is bad enough, but your whining isn’t to be borne.
And school taxes, subsidized health care, income taxes, low interest rates, and bailing out the feckless and arithmetically ignorant from their school and home loans are a generational transfer of wealth from the functional older to the biggest bunch of snowflakes south of Svalbard.
Experiencing unfairness or difficulty doesn’t make you special. How you respond to it does.
David Brooks pissed me off this morning with his rancid rhetorical horseshit about the American wilderness and the American land and nature and how that shaped the American character. Lousy dope Brooks is a Jew. David Brooks will not admit that the reason the United States is a great nation is because of the British Protestants who colonized, settled and pioneered the wilderness that was America before the European Christians came here.
David Brooks is attempting to do to American history what the anti-White rats who are attacking statues and monuments are doing: Brooks is attempting to erase the founding ancestral stock of the United States.
The National Parks and National Forests are great, but David Brooks is a disgusting baby boomer rodent.Replies: @Olorin
Not sure where you’re talking about exactly…but there was nowhere in Britain that any cultural complex existed for wilderness settlement as seen in the mid-Atlantic and diffused/radiated out from there.
Jordan and Kaups have a summary table on p 249 that should interest you.
Reviewer Gregg Urbanas raises questions of material culture that have been followed up by Frank Eld on an avocational basis and mostly with reference to the later period of Finnish immigration to the West:
http://roseberrygeneralstore.com/book.html
Diffusion of earlier log construction methods was studied by Jordan and Kaups. Both studied/published on the topic, q.v.
Snark aside, $80 is still a deal (especially given other adults in the same car get in free!). And the reason for that price seems reasonable:They also offer an annual pass for $20 with four of those convertible to lifetime.Replies: @Anonymous
Get even. Buy the pass and buy a JFK/MM era Chrysler Imperial. You can stick eight or nine people in in that thing.
Sounds like restraint of trade. If you can trade in future pork bellies, wheat, or oil, why are they restricting your future access?
Try crowdfunding a legal challenge?
I’m going to file a Federal civil rights lawsuit against the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, since they would not permit me to vote in the 1984 Presidential election. At the age of 14, I already identified as a grown adult.
I’m 57.
Tried talking my way into the pass at the East Gate of Yellowstone today. Used your argument Steve.
The cute little rangerette in the booth was not amused.
Either I was the 50th iSteve reader trying the same tactic today, or people drawn to become Park Service rangers are scolds.
I know which way I’m leaning. Especially after listening to the ass that was policing the viewing area around Old Faithful.
Tried talking my way into the pass at the East Gate of Yellowstone today. Used your argument Steve.
The cute little rangerette in the booth was not amused.
Either I was the 50th iSteve reader trying the same tactic today, or people drawn to become Park Service rangers are scolds.
I know which way I'm leaning. Especially after listening to the ass that was policing the viewing area around Old Faithful.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I’ve gotten into more trouble over the years with park rangers than any other kind of official.
One park ranger out in the forest out west told me I couldn’t keep a small piece of wood I happened to like. There were about 2 million acres of nothing but trees (and rivers), and this fool said I couldn’t take a small piece of wood. I did anyway and then did a number of spin-outs with my truck on the gravel/dirt road out until I calmed down.
Then White Sands in New Mexico had a sign on the 100 ft. high dunes that go for miles telling you to not take any sand with you! Ha, one quick back-o-the-envelope (in my head) calculation later and I filled up a paper sack without any worry about people bringing all the dunes home with them. Well sure, if I came to the park in my front-end loader ….
They know a Dissenter when they see one.