In this week’s “Can Government Get Any Stupider?” entry, it will soon be illegal to take pictures in certain national parks. The U.S. Forest Service has announced that it will begin fining photographers $1,000 for snapping photos of nature. Akin to taxing the air we breathe, this is just another boneheaded idea for a government agency to rake in more money.
If the Forest Service is so bored that it’s found it necessary to target nature photographers—and violate the First Amendment in the process—maybe it’s time to have a discussion about whether the agency needs to exist in the first place. And for those environmentalists who claim this is a wise approach to “protect” public lands, I have two responses.
First, the lands are public because we taxpayers forked over the dough to make them so, thus we’re entitled to traipse all over them and take as many pictures as our SD cards can hold.
And second, if you really want to preserve land from “the public,” un-hug that tree, get a job, and buy it yourself. Once it’s your land, you can stop people from “exploiting” it. Until then, don’t try and convince some government bureaucrat to tell us what we can and can’t do with our land.