Posted on 10/04/2013 6:50:53 PM PDT by chessplayer
When and how did the National Park Service become “the shock troops of the punitive bureaucracy”?
The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.
“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”
Sad to say, but there’s precedent here. The extent of the barricade mentality may have deepened over time, with some memorials being shuttered now that stayed open in ’95, but the NPS has apparently always been a lead actor in shutdown-theater pageantry. Andrew Stiles interviewed former Bush Interior Secretary Gale Norton about it, and she said it’s nothing new:
“The National Parks Service has a long history of dramatizing budget issues by inconveniencing the public,” she says. ”They often choose the most dramatic type of action in order to get their message across. It’s something I had to guard against when I was secretary — not letting them play budget games.“
NPS has engaged in such behavior for decades, Nortons says, recalling at least one occassion during the Reagan administraiton, in which she worked as an attorney for the parks service, when NPS decided to close Skyline Drive, a scenic highway running through Shenandoah National Park, in order to make a statement during an appropriations fight on Capitol Hill…
“Given the fact that they have closed so much, and acted so broadly, I imagine that decision was made at the highest levels of park service leadership, in cooperation with department leadership and the White House,” she says.
We’ll remember you. The shutdown won’t last forever. Have A nice day .... for a while.
Perhaps they need to shut down the service altogether and let the parks be monitored by volunteers.
What a spiteful little man he is.... not at all Presidential!!!
It's the 'barry'cade mentality with this shutdown.
Is it time to start congregating at park entrances and increasing the enforcement costs yet? When will people resist?
At the very least, they should revert to the States. Why we have national-level parks at all is beyond me.
These stories (including the cancer-stricken children story) are going to hurt Obama and his party even more as time goes by during the shutdown.
It’s getting more obvious to the American people who really wants and enjoys this government shutdown and it’s going to get more difficult for them not to accept what the House offers.
Teddy’s fault!
...someone must have told him Americans don’t like your change, and hope you’d just go away
Isn’t it strange that in a “shutdown” paid government employees man barricades to prevent the public from using public facilities, and private facilities as well?
The NPS has screwed the pooch on this one.
Went on that a lot of times in the 60s when my father was stationed at the Pentagon. We owned a couple of undeveloped lots in the mountains we used for camping. Carried in our water and dug our latrines. I still have the machete we used to clear each time we went.....Sheffield steel.
The NPS is committing Barrycide.
There are many properties now owned by the Federal government that would be better off owned by the State.
This shows me again how infiltrated all levels of government - military include - has become of partisan hacks.
No one who works for the federal government can be trusted, IMO. They are all brownshirts.
My thoughts exactly. The states should sue to take them by eminent domain.
>> “It’s disgusting.”
It is an Obamanation!!!
Jonathan B. Jarvis (born June 26, 1953)[1] is the 18th Director of the United States National Park Service, confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25, 2009.
He was serving as regional director for the Pacific West Region when, on July 10, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Jarvis for the directorship following the resignation of Mary A. Bomar on January 20, 2009, the day of President Obama's inauguration.
A career civil servant, Jarvis has been with the service for over 30 years.[2][3][4] Prior to his work as regional director, Jarvis served for three years as the superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park in Ashford, Washington. He was superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Service & Preserve in Alaska during the 1990s.[5] Jarvis graduated from The College of William & Mary, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, in 1975 with a degree in biology.[5]
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