America is failing everywhere you look. If you care to look. I’m writing this on my blog that I own instead of contacting(again) government employees about issues on government land that I’m having because I am afraid of retaliation from the people I am asking for help.
Due to no fault of my own, I am a homeless veteran. I have been coming to this particular parcel of BLM land for five years because there is no where else I can go and survive. For those of you in the eastern United States, BLM stands for the Bureau of Land Management, a federal government branch that “manages” large tracts of open space in the American west. Where I live in the Pacific Northwest, it would be hard to find anyone with a good thing to say about them. Commonly known as the Bureau of Land Mismanagement, I never had a problem with them until recently.
To camp on this BLM land, you need a permit. Being the Federal Government, there are plenty of permits. When I tried to buy the permit I needed and had purchased at this same spot the previous five years, I was told that there were no permits available. If I wanted to use the area by the river or the showers, included the the permit I originally wanted to purchase but was “unavailable”, I would have to pay $75, in cash, for a different permit. It wasn’t my fault the permits weren’t printed in time, why was I being held personally responsible for some incompetent government worker? No information on the BLM website and when the “volunteers” told me to call the local BLM office, I got a recording. I came to go fishing, so I paid the $75 cash, no receipt, to camp on public land to a person who is not an employee of the BLM. After the original permits arrived a month or so after the park was technically open, campers with those permits, the one I originally tried to purchase, are allowed to use the areas I had to pay an extra $75 to use and buy the original permit as well.
This BLM land is “managed”, and I use that in the loosest possible connotation, by “volunteers” with connections to the local BLM office. They are not government employees or volunteers, they live on federal land, rent free, utilities paid, no property taxes. A nice, free place to live on the backs of American taxpayers and the citizens who pay to use public land. Aside from the one “volunteer” who cleans the area’s three small restrooms, the other “volunteers” run the all cash permit business. That’s where I had a problem today.
A friend came to visit me here at the BLM area. The park office was closed at 2PM in the afternoon so nobody to ask about permit prices. I took the $75 permit I didn’t want to buy and put it in his window because the “volunteer” who sold me the pass told me I could use it on different vehicles.
This morning, another “volunteer” came over to tell me and my guest the $75 pass was not valid and when I asked him questions about the pass, he told me an entirely different story than the “volunteer” who sold me the pass. My guest stepped in and offered to pay the fee. The “volunteer” grabbed the pass out of my hand and said something to the effect that “this was his pass”. This guy, who has lived in his 50′ motor home twenty yards away from me for the past five years, free of charge, whose wife came over to give me Christmas cookies “because I was such a good neighbor”, after selling me a $75 pass I didn’t need, came over from his palatial land yacht to work his good neighbor, a homeless veteran, for another $15. Give you cookies and take the first opportunity to stab you in the back. Pretty much sums up this day in America.
I called various BLM offices, working from the local office up to the national headquarters to try and find out what the rules, regulations and official permit prices are with no response other than to call the office I just called and told me to call there. Like the “volunteers”, nobody knows anything and nobody is responsible for anything. The threat of retaliation and being kicked out of the park is real. Last year I saw and elderly retired couple kicked out of the area because their small dog was attacked by an unleashed dog. The other dog owner was kicked out as well, but the message is clear.
Long story short:
Had to pay $75 due to a mistake by a government employee. Be financially responsible for another person’s actions.
The $75 pass was not what the “volunteer”, who lives for free on federal land, who sold it to me said it was.
Another “volunteer” who lives for free on federal land 20 yards away, told me the $75 pass was invalid and I needed to pay $15 for another pass.
There are plenty homeless veterans in this country who would be thankful and do a far better job than any of these “volunteers” who live on public land and collect fees from homeless veterans to earn their free vacation home. Give these government jobs to Americans that have already served the country. That’s not how America works. Even a remote patch of nothing in the desert, there’s corruption on every level of government. One thing, then another, then another. Before you know it, there’s nothing.