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.Not only are they closing off scenery and oceans, but they also shutting down facilities by force that they don’t even run:
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
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.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.
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?
Go hereto 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.
