Federal cuts disrupt repairs to iconic U.S. trails

And, remove the tax exemption for churches and religious organizations. It's out of control. A friend of mine told me her church bought a five-story office building. They dedicated the minimum amount of office space to "religious services", and they rent out the rest of the offices. They pay no taxes on anything related to this office building.

The largest fraction, totaling about $300b itself, is military retirement programs and funding. The other largest fraction is internal spending on healthcare for active duty members and their families.

The individual agencies collectively spend only around $100b.

Likewise the other large fraction of the total budget outside the DoD is healthcare spending. We spend a huge amount of money and we don't seem to have healthcare outcomes which justify these costs.

Right now 1 out of every 5 dollars of spent GDP comes from the government. 85% of that money comes from individual tax payers and only 7% from businesses. The system is flailing from top to bottom.

The military is not a third of the budget, it's about 13% of spending this FY so far which is a lot, but almost 3x lower than you suggest (closer to 1/8th than 1/3rd).

Say what you will about Clinton, but slashing the military budget is what made the math actually work, and lead to a budget surplus. The austerity and efficiency stuff was peanuts in comparison.

Clinton's cuts were ultimately only temporary, since the military-industrial complex got fat again in the post 9/11 gold rush. A correction is long overdue.

That this isn't really even considered is pretty telling about the real motivations of the current regime.

To be fair- Hegseth has said he wants to cut 8% a year for five years from the pentagon. I strongly disagree, the military should be getting more money. Now is not the time for cuts.

I'm not sure they have the authority to do this anyway they lack power of the purse and all that.

What do you reckon is the right amount to spend on defense?

military bases are also a carrot.

theyre stocks to the neighbors but not the host

22.4% of the US Military budget goes to salaries of military personnel. Civilian contractors are part of the separate operations budget but I can’t find the breakout of their salaries. So there’s a lot of consumer spending and economic activity supported by military spending.

All the while not prosecuting anyone for all the "fraud" you're finding.

That's right from the dictator's basic playbook:

They never say 'I'm jailing / prosecuting these people to suppress my enemies', they accuse them of fraud, corruption, etc. Xi Jinping did it in China, the new dictator in Saudi Arabia did it, ... it's an old one.

Note that dictators are vulnerable - they still need to justify themselves to the public.

>it shouldn’t be surprising

The current flavour of politics is not pragmatic. It’s a luxury belief system.

The left wing excesses of the 2010s were luxury beliefs, the current thing is all just luxury beliefs too.

Basically, when people are economically comfortable and have no real problems, they’ll blow something out of proportion or just plain invent issues in order to feel something.

I have luxury beliefs of my own, many people do. We are free to hold them in North America. But there’s a cost, and that cost shouldn’t be surprising.

We are living in a post-argument rhetorical landscape. Untruths aren't stated openly, they're baked into words via the constant abuse of of the english language.

It's sad to see how many are utterly defenseless.

Sub out “who hates hiking trails?” and sub in “who hates having popular government programs?”

Answer: people who don’t want constituents to believe that the government can be effective and deliver good services. That’s the ideological component.

“Government bad” is amazing platform to run on because it’s pretty easy to deliver.

Other countries are issuing travel advisories for the US and I know at least two Canadians who have said that not only are they not buying anything made in the US, but everyone they know has declared they will be crossing the border - both because of the danger but also as part of their boycotting the states. Lawful border crossings between the US and Canada have plunged. Canadian tourism is a significant part of the economy, though the effect won't really be felt until summertime.

I don't blame them in the slightest for either.

The tariff situation is a disaster that will only further increase the tax burden and cost of living on the poor and middle class. For rich people, a 30-50% increase in their grocery costs is barely a drop in the bucket of their budget they won't feel beyond getting annoyed.

The low income energy assistance program LIHEAP just got shut down, not even with any notice so states can try to spool up something. If this had happened a month or two ago we'd be seeing news stories about seniors freezing to death in the midwest and northeast. Soon we're going to see hyperthemia stories. In some areas AC isn't a luxury, it's a necessity as much as heating is in the cold winter states, if not more so. You can't "bundle up" from the heat.

For a large swath of America, this will mean people going hungry. And turning to property crime to try to make ends meet....or to get into jail where conditions might really suck, but at least their most basic needs are (kind of) being met.

> Looking at it another way, the cuts are actually decreasing overall efficiency since they're cutting things that deliver decent benefits given that they only cost a small fraction of federal spending.

And especially when they're targeting the IRS. What use is it cutting 1% if you lose 10% of your revenue because you don't have the resources to pursue outright cheats or lawyered-up people.

> See that's the part I really struggle with. Cratering foreign aid has an obvious ideological component, but who hates hiking trails? Like I'm sure there are a few people who hate the outdoors and a handful of oligarchs who want to privatize everything, but where's the constituency for it?

They don't care about constituency. They could pass these cuts as part of a deal but choose not to specifically because it wouldn't be popular. They are trying to sell national parks to oligarchs.

Let's also pool some money to help the sick pay for health care, the young pay for education and those affected by layoffs tackle the transition. Heck, we could even start our own government.

Such a nonprofit exists, it's called the federal government.

Maybe the super-rich can create their own nonprofit to fund commercial space tourism or whatever absurdity they've deemed so important that it needs spending elsewhere to be cut and diverted to them.

At this point why don’t we just go back to the Articles of Confederation.

If we accept the federal government can’t do anything what are we paying taxes for? Get rid of social security too, I’m not going to make it to whatever stupidly high age they raise retirement to.

I used to be a big government liberal, but the problem is eventually people you disagree with start running super government.

There are many local, and not-so-local, groups that do this volunteer trail maintenance, and they could definitely use some monetary donations. There is the PCTA, mentioned up-thread ( pcta.org ). I volunteer for Trailkeepers of Oregon, based in Portland, and is active in many parts of the state. trailkeepersoforegon.org . There is also the Washington trails Association, and many more.

This feels like the trend of Americans having to start GoFundMe campaigns for surgeries and health care. (!) I mean, do what you feel you have to do in the urgent moment. But come on. What's the plan? This is not civilized.

I’ve read some exchanges from an American friend with their other American friends on social media years ago. I noticed that many of the people were very against the idea of people they don’t think are deserving from benefiting from them. Even in abstract ways. For example people getting welfare who are actually scamming the system. Or having an outside benefit, like poor people getting free healthcare even if they can’t pay taxes. Trails would have been a good example for this group, “why am I paying for trails I don’t use?”.

I have a hypothesis that Americans are so scared of others benefitting from themselves that they miss that many, many more people are deserving and it makes for a better society. But they don’t see that and would rather punish the deserving and themselves, if it means the undeserving will hurt more. I think this thinking also bleeds into your social justice movements.

Yeah, let’s make road users spend a couple days a year pouring asphalt as well. It’s only fair

if we’re going to suggest silly stuff like that, let’s also suggest that cities stop subsidizing suburbs and their expansive infrastructure. sound good?

let’s take it a step further, let’s cut spending to anything that brings people joy! let’s all be crabs in a bucket together. convert public beaches to private beaches, public parks to private parks, make every school in the country a private school.

this will surely increase the well being of our society (sarcasm).

where does this crazy fallacy end? Taxes (and life) is not about min-maxing what benefits YOU personally. It’s about min-maxing your community and society. Kind of like how there is no “I” in team…

We do.

- Moped

GA-ME 2010

Volunteer maintainer Smarts Mountain Ranger Trail (AT side trail) 2021-present.

Landowner and volunteer maintainer on the Cross Rivendell Trail (CRT) 2023-present

My wife, who also thru-hiked the AT, before we met is on the CRT board.

We spent three days of our vacation in 2023 helping to re-roof Jeffers Brook Shelter on the AT.

We are also members of the ATC, GMC, MATC, and PCTA and have been for some combination of those between us since before we met.

ETA:

Oh yeah, also two weeks ago we helped hump a 200 pound bear box in to Velvet Rocks Shelter on the AT.

I kinda like the idea that people don’t have to pay for public land access.

Yes. That's how it works. They're called taxes.

Yes, it's a prisoners dilemma. But solidarity is pretty important here no matter what. We forget that the best case scenario in such a dilemma is to all work together. They know already that they cannot literally fire every employee in order to keep operating.

>It notably excludes law enforcement. "Police and firefighters will continue to collectively bargain

I hate this timeline.

But yea, we are well overdue for a reminder on why we made unions to begin with. For their sakes they better hope all these lawsuits save them from much more disruptive actions.