"Disneyfication"

By the Disneyfication of public spaces, we are referring to the conversion of wildness into commodity. Disneyfication involves making the unexpected predictable and homogenizing experiences. The public is seen as customers.

Yellowstone Park?

This summer, for the first time ever, Disney will begin operating tours in Yellowstone National Park. Tours will cost between $5600 and $7800 for a family of four.

That's an awful lot of money to spend on a generic vacation of our own public playground, but it is only part of the Bush plan to privatize everything in the public domain.

When Ronald Reagan's budget director called for de-funding National Parks, it was part of a concerted effort to "Starve the Beast" -- the "Beast" being the government. The Bush Administration is completing Reagan's agenda. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and unbounded military expansionism all but ensure that there will not be adequate funding for the maintenance of public spaces. Without adequate funding, this administration will be able to say -- with a totally straight face -- that there is no money for education, Medicare, Amtrak, interstate highways, National Parks, etcetera, and everything will, of necessity, have to be privatized.

"I think we'll come up with a long-term solution to the Amtrak problem," said Burns spokesman James Pendleton.

"Essentially what this says (to the Bush administration) is 'We don't agree with you,'" Rehberg said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "We think you're wrong in Montana. The state of Montana realistically couldn't afford (to help pay for Amtrak.) There's just no way we could do it."

Sure they didn't know that throwing our money away on all that unnecessary war and giveaways to the wealthy would put us in a tight spot. Right. Max, who overplayed his own hand to our great detriment had this to say

"over my dead body."

"We have our work cut out for us, but we're going to do whatever it takes to keep Amtrak in Montana," Baucus said in a prepared statement.

I made an awful lot of contacts with all three of these fellows over the years, at best, I would say they are out of touch. At best.

Conrad, Max and Denny have all played their parts setting the system up this way, and they have a lot of nerve grandstanding for the home folks when they have done nothing but clear the way for the takeover of our public spaces.

Attractions that catch your eye and would otherwise draw you to them will, quite literally, be off-limits unless you have purchased the required pass or booked in advance.