The best way to tell if someone is a conservative

Taft, whom Rosen calls “the only president to approach the office in constitutional terms above all.”

Wilson was the first president to criticize the American founding, particularly for the separation of powers that crimps presidential supremacy. Roosevelt believed that presidents are free to do whatever the Constitution does not forbid. Taft’s constitutional modesty held that presidents should exercise only powers explicitly granted by the document.

.. Romanticizers of Roosevelt ignore his belief that no moral equivalent of war could be as invigorating as the real thing

.. Taft“extended federal environmental protection to more land than Roosevelt” — and he created 10 national parks — “and brought more antitrust suits in one term than Roosevelt brought in nearly two.”

.. Roosevelt thought that, in industry, big was beautiful (because efficiently Darwinian) if big government supervised it.

.. Taft unsuccessfully resisted President William McKinley’s entreaties that he become governor of the Philippines (“I have never approved of keeping the Philippines”).
.. In 1912, Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” promised populism rampant and a plebiscitary presidency untethered from constitutional inhibitions: “I don’t think that any harm comes from the concentration of powers in one man’s hands.”
.. And “I believe in pure democracy,” the purity being unmediated, unfiltered public opinion empowered even to overturn state court decisions by referendums.
.. The 1912 strife between conservative and progressive-populist Republicans simmered until Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 sealed conservatism’s ascendancy in the party.

National Parks for the 1 Percent

But the Trump administration has proposed nearly tripling the entrance fees to select national parks, to $70.

.. Trump administration wants to jack up the price of admission to our most spectacular public lands while moving to cut the Park Service budget by almost $300 million. The new fees would add $70 million.

.. he also plans to take away land already protected in ways similar to national parks.

.. You’d pay $107 to get into Disney World. But national parks are not theme parks, market-driven to match the latest entertainment blockbusters.

.. In the bizarro world of this administration, taxpayers are being asked to subsidize a dying industry, coal mining, while their government is slashing the budget for a growing one that is responsible for four times as many jobs.

.. Trump’s budget would drastically cut money for historic preservation, and eliminate more than 1,200 full-time employees.

.. National parks are “as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical,

.. We could, for instance, not build Trump’s nonsensical border wall, which looks like it will cost upward of $20 billion, more than eight times the entire proposed budget for the Park Service. (Wait — wasn’t Mexico supposed to pay for that?)

.. Or we could keep the estate tax, which affects only about 1 out of every 500 people who die every year, and raises $20 billion as well. 

Interior chief wants to shed 4,000 employees in department shake-up

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told lawmakers Wednesday that he plans to shrink his department’s sprawling workforce by 4,000 employees — about 8 percent of the full-time staff — as part of budget cuts to downsize the government’s largest public lands agency.

.. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to shed more than 1,200 employees by early September through buyouts and early retirements. Secretary Scott Pruitt has pledged to cut a total of 3,200 positions, more than 20 percent of the agency’s 15,000 employees.

A similar plan is unfolding at the State Department, where Secretary Rex Tillerson wants to lose 2,000 Foreign Service officers and other staff through attrition over the next few years, a spokesman said.

.. “Those agencies are already pretty strapped, especially the Park Service,” Lyder said. “The Park Service itself says it will curtail visitor services and might cut hours of operation to compensate.”