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It is the largest landholder in America, overseeing nearly an eighth of the country: 258 million acres located almost exclusively west of the Mississippi River, with even twice as much below the surface. Its domain embraces wildlife and wilderness, timber, range, and minerals, and for over 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management has been an agency in search of a mission. This is the first comprehensive, analytical history of the BLM and its struggle to find direction. James Skillen traces the bureau's course over three periods—its formation in 1946 and early focus on livestock and mines, its 1970s role as mediator between commerce and conservation, and its experience of political gridlock since 1981 when it faced a powerful antienvironmental backlash. Focusing on events that have shaped the BLM's overall mission, organization, and culture, he takes up issues ranging from the National Environmental Policy Act to the Sagebrush Rebellion in order to paint a broad picture of the agency's changing role in the American West. Focusing on the vast array of lands and resources that the BLM manages, he explores the complex and at times contradictory ways that Americans have valued nature. Skillen shows that, although there have been fleeting moments of consensus over the purpose of national forests and parks, there has never been any such consensus over the federal purpose of the public lands overseen by the BLM. Highlighting the perennial ambiguities shadowing the BLM's domain and mission, Skillen exposes the confusion sown by conflicting congressional statutes, conflicting political agendas, and the perennial absence of public support. He also shows that, while there is room for improvement in federal land management, the criteria by which that improvement is measured change significantly over time. In the face of such ambiguity—political, social, and economic--Skillen argues that the agency's history of limited political power and uncertain mission has, ironically, better prepared it to cope with the more chaotic climate of federal land management in the twenty-first century. Indeed, operating in an increasingly crowded physical and political landscape, it seems clear that the BLM's mission will continue to be marked by ambiguity. For historians, students, public administrators, or anyone who cares about American lands, Skillen offers a cautionary tale for those still searching for a final solution to federal land and resource conflicts.
A stunning breakdown of the modern military-industrial complex—an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives. From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, national security expert Nick Turse explores the Pentagon’s little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. He investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon’s collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with Marvel Comics and Nascar, and he spotlights the disturbing way in which the military, desperate for fresh recruits, has tapped into the online world by “friending” young people on social networks. A striking vision of a brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny. “With a combination of wit and number-crunching, Turse gives a multidimensional picture of the biggest elephant in every room: the Pentagon.” —Foreign Policy in Focus “A brilliant exposé of the Pentagon’s pervasive influence in our lives.” —Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback Trilogy “A deeply disturbing audit of the Pentagon’s influence on American life. . . . If Nick Turse is right, The Matrix may be just around the corner.” —Mike Davis, author of Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
The six studies in this volume represent investigations into aspects of the management of government enterprise. For the most part the concern is with those governmental units or agencies that provide products having nongovernmental counterparts. In each case the enterprise is taken as given, and there is no attempt to justify the participation of government in the production of goods. Instead, these studies attempt to define the positions and the functions of the decision makers, to evaluate product and pricing decisions and to specify appropriate mechanisms for providing the adequate and timely information required for efficient control. The first two studies examine the managerial role. James Suarez defines an enviornment in which the typical public or private sector classification does not apply. Given the monopsonistic position of the government in the armaments market, many managerial marketing decisions are not available to private firms. Thus the objectives of the participants in this market appear to be confounded. Suarez investigates this interdependent relationship. 8 STUDIES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF GOVERNMENT ENTERPRISE In "A First Approach to the Economic Theory of College Management," Barry Bressler addresses the problem of resource allocation within the college establishment. Bressler draws on utility theory to define the manager's objective function and on the imposed budget reductions suffered by units of the City University of New York to suggest some of the implications of this managerial construct. The third and fourth papers concentrate on the products of two government enterprises.