Posted on 10/10/2013 2:35:18 PM PDT by xzins
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Since first writing about the conduct of the National Park Service yesterday, events have accelerated somewhat.
The Eagle-Tribune in New Hampshire reported on a local resident who went through something of an ordeal while visiting Yellowstone National park. I’ll let them tell it, just so you don’t think I’m making it up:
Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.
The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.
When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route. . . .
Rangers systematically sent visitors out of the park, though some groups that had hotel reservations — such as Vaillancourt’s — were allowed to stay for two days. Those two days started out on a sour note, she said.
The bus stopped along a road when a large herd of bison passed nearby, and seniors filed out to take photos. Almost immediately, an armed ranger came by and ordered them to get back in, saying they couldn’t “recreate.” The tour guide, who had paid a $300 fee the day before to bring the group into the park, argued that the seniors weren’t “recreating,” just taking photos.
“She responded and said, ‘Sir, you are recreating,’ and her tone became very aggressive,” Vaillancourt said.
The seniors quickly filed back onboard and the bus went to the Old Faithful Inn, the park’s premier lodge located adjacent to the park’s most famous site, Old Faithful geyser. That was as close as they could get to the famous site — barricades were erected around Old Faithful, and the seniors were locked inside the hotel, where armed rangers stayed at the door.
“They looked like Hulk Hogans, armed. They told us you can’t go outside,” she said. “Some of the Asians who were on the tour said, ‘Oh my God, are we under arrest?’ They felt like they were criminals.”
In San Francisco, there’s a restaurant called the Cliff House, which sits by the water on Ocean Beach. The restaurant itself is privately owned, but it’s located within the “Golden Gate Recreation Area.” The Park Service shut the Cliff House down and then, when the restaurant decided to try opening anyway—after all, the Park Service doesn’t do anything to affect their ability to function, and they have customers and employees who depend on them—the NPS came and shut them down again.
To the extent that there’s any argument for the Park Service denying the public access to public lands, it’s generally predicated on the notion that citizens are savages who loot, vandalize, and litter and that without the Park Service protecting them from the public, the lands will be desecrated.
But there hasn’t been any evidence of bad behavior on the part of the public yet. In fact, just the opposite. On Wednesday, a gentleman from South Carolina came to the National Mall with his own lawnmower and started cutting the grass near the Lincoln Memorial in an effort to help care for the grounds. The Park Service instructed him to cease and desist.
I’ve gotten some other anecdotal reports from readers. Leo Kucewicz, in Thornhurst, Pennsylvania, writes in:
[On Tuesday] I visited Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area just off Interstate 80 in New Jersey where the Kittattiny Point Visitor Center is located. As expected, the center is closed and the entrances/exits to the parking areas are blocked with sawhorses.
However, what I didn’t expect were the tree logs the National Park Service placed along the side of the entrance road to block even further people who, seeing the parking areas were closed, may have thought about parking on the grassy areas that run along the edge of the paved entrance road in order to just walk around for few minutes to view the spectacular natural splendor of the water gap created by the Delaware River that separates the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
If that sounds like outright spite, it probably is.
Another reader, Karen Trevett, in Newport News, Virginia, writes:
I was astounded [Wednesday] when I went to my doctor's office for some [lab work] . . . Across the parking lot, where there is a lovely little nature path [through the Lake Maury Natural Area] for patients, etc. to stroll . . . [and] there sits a park ranger in his car, lights on, blocking anyone from taking a stroll. There are no structures, water fountains, handrails—just a nice little area to walk around in for some fresh air. I cannot imagine how much it costs to have a ranger there 24/7 to keep this path closed. I rolled my window down as I pulled up beside him and asked him "Really? And you're not embarrassed?" He gave me an ugly go-to-hell look and rolled his window back up.
P.S. It was a bit chilly today, so he was keeping his motor running . . . polluting, spending money on gasoline . . . all on the taxpayer dime.
Finally, there’s reader Mark Morgan:
I'm a former NPS historian/supervisory interpretive park ranger from two parks (at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi and the Steamtown National Historic Site in Pennsylvania.). I’m now serving as a historian for another Federal agency. For years I've monitored NPS vacancies, just in case the opportunity arose to return to the NPS as a historian. No longer . . .
I have never been more embarrassed to admit that I'm former National Park Service and I will never return. The Park Ranger has long served as an representative of good government, someone who the public looked up to and admired. Through this calculated, politically-driven hackery and thug tactics, the image of the ranger and the NPS with the American public has been broken, probably irrevocably.
I’m inclined to agree, for the following reason. In some ways, the Park Service debacle resembles the IRS’s targeting of conservatives in the run-up to the 2012 election. But there’s a big difference: Whatever you want to say about Lois Lerner, at least she was only persecuting people and groups who she perceived to be enemies of the Obama administration.
The National Park Service has every man, woman, and child in America on its enemies list.
It’s a demonstrable case of a civil agency retaliating against the American public as a whole—on behalf of a single political party.
Just in case anyone still has any delusions that when the time comes, what side the vast majority of the military and local LEOs will be on. If you are still confused, here’s a hint, it is not on the side of the people.
If I was the GOP house, when they finally settle this “Shut Down” I would only single out and NOT FUND the federal parks department for some long, painful, drawn out period of time.
Lets see all the traitorous, garbage, park employees and their families SUFFER with no income for real.
I know - never happen...
The park cop sitting there and blocking the path probably had to pass some sort of “Loyalty to Obama” test at some point...
I have a visceral dislike for tree cops.
Sounds like a candidate for a differetial cabling.
“Just in case anyone still has any delusions that when the time comes, what side the vast majority of the military and local LEOs will be on. If you are still confused, here’s a hint, it is not on the side of the people.”
You paint with a very broad brush, FRiend. These are police. The military is not involved.
Obama’s Brownshirts.
Our very own Stasi.
it would be a shame if those park rangers got rear-ended off a few scenic view cliffs they’re blocking people from being able to see.
i mean think of all the fedgov cars we’d lose.
Here we are eleven days in. I have not seen a single solitary resignation. Perhaps I am a chump to have hoped for at least one NPS employee with integrity.This feels ominous, as far as the long run.
Cops: Protect and Serve? or Follow 0rders?
We have to make it more unpleasant for these jerks to pull this cr@p than it is for them to ignore their 'superiors'.
Don’t underestimate the power of mass civil disobedience. It brought down the tyrant Morsi when practiced by the brave people of Cairo, and it forced the Brits out of India.
It might first be better to go over, get the Parks guy’s badge number, and ask him where he lives. That might give him pause.
National Park Nazis: right up there with the BATF, whose motto was “Babies And Toddlers First”...(Ruby Ridge, Waco, Elian Gonzalez.)
As far as LEOs, for many years, in most departments, the applicants have to undergo psychological testing.
Does anybody here think that "willingness to obey orders" is NOT part of the testing, and that departments will hire people who are likely to have independent ideas of right and wrong?
“This feels ominous, as far as the long run.”
It does. Here is some police history courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
“Himmler also centralized the German uniformed police forces, known as the Order Police (Ordnungspolizei), within the Order Police Main Office (Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei) in Berlin under the command of SS General Kurt Daluege. On September 27, 1939, four weeks after Nazi Germany invaded Poland to initiate World War II, Himmler fused the Security Police and the SD into the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA), the agency that would be tasked with implementing the Holocaust in 1941-1942.
Himmler’s intent was a complete fusion of the SS and the German police. He aimed to utilize the executive authority of the police to implement ideological policies deemed by the Nazi leadership to be essential for the survival and expansion of the German race. These included smashing political opposition and expelling or eliminating “undesirable” racial groups at home (such as Jews, Roma and Sinti, and people with hereditary disabilities), initiating a program of military expansion, and establishing permanent rule of a German “master race” in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The security of this “thousand-year Reich” would be guaranteed by the elimination of “enemy races,” such as the Jews — wherever they lived — and the enslavement of other “inferior races” such as Poles, Russians, and other Slavic peoples, after physically annihilating their intellectual, cultural, military, and political elites.
To implement these policies, Himmler and his SS leaders, on the other hand, by tying it to the SS, removed the police from the framework of the administration and judicial system of the German state. Police operations ordered by Hitler through the SS-police chain of command would no longer be constrained by judicial or administrative review. Hitler as Führer could authorize all such actions, including individual and mass murder, on the basis of his “will” to ensure the survival of the German race-nation. Such an authorization was not subject to the laws of the state or international law.
Himmler never succeeded in completely amalgamating the SS with the police. Nevertheless, virtually all leadership posts in the uniformed police and the police detective forces were held by SS officers; by 1938, SS control over the police was unchallenged. Few German police officers objected to the change in their status related to the state and the justice system. Many police officials joined the SS willingly; the overwhelming majority of police officers welcomed this broad expansion of their policing powers that association with the SS brought them.”
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007401
But surely, our police would act differently?
I do have to say I’m a bit surprised that the NPS police haven’t shot anyone yet. Holiday weekend coming up, though.
Congress needs to investigate the all actions by Obama in response to the “shutdown.” The Park Service actions are particularly visible and egregious - they have taken under orders from above to “make life as difficult for people as we can”.
1. What is really going on in this administrations reaction to “the shutdown” - which is vastly different from any prior “government shutdown.” Comparisons should be made.
2. Who gave what orders to Park Service employees (and now contractors)?
3. What has been spent to implement this punitive shutdown, compared to maintaining operations of the facilities? This is just another example. WW2 memorial, Mt. Vernon, other DC Mall open air areas, outlooks for Mt. Rushmore... This is ridiculous.
Obama is just being vindictive, trying to use his “gun” for the knife fight. He and his idiots send emails, Zero’s guns are smoking right now - Congress just has to find them.
The really scary thing - what hopefully will cause a backfire they never contemplated - is the now valid perception of abuses possible with health care under a federally run system? People will literally die for lack of care when he tries to pull this kind of cr#p next time he doesn’t get his way and he forces a shutdown.
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