The National Park Service during this phony government shut down has distinguished itself by its willingness to prostitute itself for the Obama administration and to use thuggish tactics to inconvenience the American people for whom they are supposed to be “public servants”, and isn’t that becoming a deeply ironic phrase in contemporary America? Maetenloch at Ace of Spades gives us the details:
There’s not having money to continue your services and then there’s going far out of your way to deliberately inconvenience people and spitefully deny them any pleasure whatsoever. Apparently the NPS has chosen the latter.
As we reported last Thursday, the historic Cliff House Restaurant – a privately owned profitable business which sits on land controlled by the National Park Service – was suddenly ordered to close by the Obama administration on October 3.
Then on Monday, October 7, with little fanfare, Cliff House’s owners Dan and Mary Hountalas decided to defy the government’s closure order and instead re-open for business, to the delight of the hundreds of tourists and locals who dine there every day. When word leaked out that the Cliff House had re-opened, the local National Park Service office consulted with Washington DC and then issued a second (and apparently firmer) order to the owners to re-close the restaurant -who were then forced to unwillingly comply for a second time last night at midnight
Not only are they closing off scenery and oceans, but they also shutting down facilities by force that they don’t even run:
The Park Service told Claude Moore Colonial Farm to shut down. The farm’s administrators appealed this directive?-?they explained that the Park Service doesn’t actually do anything for the historic site. The folks at the NPS were unmoved. And so, last week, the National Park Service found the scratch to send officers to the park to forcibly remove both volunteer workers and visitors.
Think about that for a minute. The Park Service, which is supposed to serve the public by administering parks, is now in the business of forcing parks they don’t administer to close. As Homer Simpson famously asked, did we lose a war?
Bookworm doesn’t mince any words in her post, Is The National Park Service The New Gestapo? Which includes an account of how armed NPS employees held a group of senior citizens prisoner for several days when they had the temerity to show up for their pre-paid pre-scheduled tour and stay in Yellowstone national park.
Go here to read the rest. This contemptible behavior of the National Park Service is symptomatic of a wider problem. Although there are many public spirited and good people who work for government, the people who run these agencies, and too many of the employees also, have an attitude that they are entitled to run rough shod over the taxpayers luckless enough to have anything to do with them. It is one thing to be the victim of arrogant and high handed behavior, it is another thing to realize that you are paying for the “privilege” of being so abused. The Founding Fathers would never have put up with this and neither should we.
Fellow parishioner Rosslyn Smith has a very good piece on the same topic at http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/national_park_service_wolves_in_service_dog_harness.html
Though there are strong, though not (yet) exact echoes of the creation of the German Ordnungspolizei from the merger of the various Landespolizei during the period of Gleichschaltung in the Germany of the 1930s, this is primarily a case of the politicization of law enforcement in an existing national institution. It has been seen in this country before in municipal, county, and even statewide settings, but never this openly on a national scale.
Here’s hoping that what it amounts to is another example of the devil coming down in great wrath because he knows his time is short, and that when some form of sanity is restored, there will be a general housecleaning at the levels of upper and middle management at NPS.
Some sharp lawyers should be working on gathering these mistreated lessees into a large class action suit. Unprecedented Park Service protocol and I’m sure many contracts were broken.
I posted this story on another forum:
http://www.eagletribune.com/local/x1442580353/Gestapo-tactics-meet-senior-citizens-at-Yellowstone
and got this in reply:
So the public-friendly staff are all gone and the LEOs who are trained to “follow orders” are the only ones left. Even so, I wonder if they aren’t open to charges of kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, civil rights violations or what have you.
Last, I did see an article (unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it) that the head of NPS came up with a plan to handle the shutdown with the least convenience possible for the public but was overruled from the White House.
Public land is only administered by the administration. Government does not own its citizens or the lands the people live on. What floored me is that the people were prohibited from “recreation” as though the government had run of their private lives, owned their time and their space, and their souls. In an atheistic government, persons’ souls ought not to be inpinged upon for any reason except for crime. The government criminalized “recreation” as well as persons owning a retaurant on public park land. The government criminalized peoples’ lives and peoples’ business. The abused must make the government put up or shut up and pay up. The guards must state the crime, the severity of the crime and the penalty for the crime. I believe it is no longer required to read the people their Miranda rights.
I am sure glad the guards did not let the vacationers take pictures of “Old Faithful”. The pictures might have worn out the geyser and faded the trees.
Let us face it: Joy in America is a thing of the past. You know, the guards were just following orders.
and the hits just keep on coming:
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/10/07/tourists-trapped-in-small-montana-town-as-government-slimdown-cuts-off-road/?intcmp=HPBucket
If anyone dies because of this criminal shutdown of the pulbic roads, the present administration must answer for causing their death.
Autumn generally heralds tourism by older folks, often more easily badgered and abused. Someone’s gonna get punched, though. Hopefully no one will get shot. That gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is sadly widening.