Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
My most memorable Obama Presidency episode
I’m a supporter of the US National Parks. Looking back on the Obama Presidency most memorable for me was the episode of “Yes we can!” shut down the US National Parks – with brute force. Here’s what I remember. The Obama Admin spent more effort, money, and manpower shutting the parks down than was used in keeping them open. This was done to try to score political points during a hardball budget negotiation with Reps. It was a first for me to hear about park visitors being cited for “illegal recreation” and “trespassing on public lands” and stopped from unauthorized nature photography.
There was a standard sign that read “Because of the Federal Government SHUTDOWN, All National Parks are CLOSED” that government workers were ordered to put up along with the construction of barriers. This was to drive home the point. Even walking in open space in the Mall was verboten. War Veterans were told by bureaucrats following orders that they had no business visiting memorials honoring fallen servicemen. If not for veterans the memorials and the parks wouldn’t even be there, but that didn’t stop officials from trying to shoo them away like some varmint on your back porch. Meanwhile a place was reserved on the Mall for approved political partisan advocates, illegal immigrate right as I recall (or undocumented immigrants if you prefer).
Government officials were deployed to stop visitors from entering or using the parks. Apparently the Park Service has a specialized tactical team dedicated to ruining people’s vacations and blocking or photo-bombing photographs. In Yellowstone for example an apparatus was constructed to block the view of Old Faithful geyser for visitors who couldn’t be removed. Japanese who moved to the side to get an angle were scolded. Officials in tactical gear that looked like SWAT were brought in. I guess the Admin thought they needed a buff guy sporting an AR-15 with a 20 round magazine to keep in line that retired Iowa couple touring the country in a RV. Or what nefariousness is that fit couple in Patagonia clothes and Oakley sunglasses doing, oh no they have a hiking map, now they’re filling up water bottle with clips at a fountain… better call in for back up they might resist. And if you’re a foreigner visiting not knowing the inner US political maneuvering and not understanding orders barked at you in English, well that’s no excuse for non-compliance in the immediate termination of enjoying the National Parks. One could literally be arrested and fined by armed officials.
I remember seeing these things on TV and in print at places I had visited and locations that I knew. I had a hard time believing that is was even happening and it got my blood pressure up. Using hardline coercion and injecting politics into otherwise non-political agencies will be something I remember from the Presidency of Mr. Obama. They could’ve simply closed the park facilities and hung a sign that read “no services, enter at your own risk”, but that wasn’t the point. The intention was to harass people and make people angry about the Administration having to negotiate a budget with opponents.
Published in General
Sigh. Yet another Obama disgrace.
This incident upset me too, for all of the reasons you list.
In midst of his many sorrows toward the end of his second term, Bush 43 took some time out of his war-dominated days to set aside a fund of $10 million for the country to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the National Parks. The anniversary came and went on August 25, 2016, with little fanfare. Because it was a Republican who put it together, the Democrats completely ignored it. But I hope some of the money was used to add some park benches and biking and hiking trails.
It’s a reminder that public land is actually the king’s land in modern America. The Magna Carta is a fond legend.
Here’s hoping legislation is finally passed to privatize most federal lands. If private buyers want to allow the public to roam freely on their properties, all the better.
State governments should do likewise.
I recall the road being blocked to Mount Rushmore. Perhaps the departing president really wanted it closed until it had true diversity (himself as #5).
I live in Texas far from any NPS site. Had I lived near Washington, I would have gone to one of the blocked-off sites, entered it, and defied the Park Service to arrest me.
Then I would have filed a false imprisonment suit, if they did. I will bet I would have won.
Seawriter
And so many NPS employees were happy to administer the punishment decreed by The Glorious Leader.
What I remember is the surrealism of his election. I was out of country on a cruise at the time, we were ported in St Martins. The morning after he was elected we woke to all the ships horns in the harbor going off. The ships next to us was out of Britain and Italy and had Obama signs hanging all over them, blowing their horn and everybody dancing on it because of Obama. We went to port in both the French and Netherlands sides of the island. Still the celebration, dancing in the streets, songs about Obama everywhere. Seems they believed that Obama was going to give them lots of money. Pay off their mortgages, free schools, etc. All sorts of weird stuff. Bus driver told us anybody that did not like Obama could get off his bus, got told the same by several vendors and restaurants. I asked a few why they cared, him not being their leader and all, I did not care who their president, king or whatever was. They could not tell us, just that Obama was going to save them from whatever. My little group of Americans felt like we wondered into an alternate reality. Not sure what the foreigners were told about Obama but they believed he was there to save them.
@fakejohnjanegalt And he would have saved everyone if it weren’t for those darn Republicans!
I was on a 6k mile road trip at the time. I got to see the Theodore Roosevelt Natl Park, but later missed Truman’s library. Fortunately, I visited the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, so not aware if that was closed on the US side. What is great about our country is that there is so much worthwhile to see beyond federal facilities.
Thanks for posting this Eb Snider. I too was frustrated by the additional efforts being expended for the sole purpose of scoring political points. The most interesting thing about Obama’s partial shutdown at government facilities during the budget showdown with the Republican House though was how it was viewed by the Dems and the Media (basically either ignored or cheered on) and comparing that to the brouhaha surrounding the Christie bridge shutdown incident which was treated by those same groups as one of the greatest political scandals of all time. If one of these shutdowns/closures was wrong so was the other.
I remember that; it was beyond disgusting. They went through extra effort to prevent people from using things that were already there. (I get the idea of, say, not initiating a renovation of the National Mall during a shutdown, but you don’t have to put up barricades.)
My favourite part was when the Park Service put up a bunch of barricades around the open-air WWII memorial, and a busload of WWII veterans just stormed the thing. You had octogenarians moving barricades and storming their memorial, and reminding us all why America was on the winning side of WWII. Meanwhile, this whole thing is orchestrated by a then-President who can’t even throw a freakin’ baseball in the prime of his life, and these guys in wheelchairs and walking with canes are showing him up.
It would have been hilarious if it weren’t so vicious and petty.
That damn Senator Cruz and his government shutdown. If he had just learned his place like a good little freshman Senator, Obama wouldn’t have had to order tactics like this.
I’ve said elsewhere that Obama was as petty and spiteful as the media perceives Trump to be, if not more. This is proof. He didn’t just do this to try to make the GOP look bad for the shutdown, he did it to punish us for daring to elect Republicans into Congress against his wishes. The sheer absurdity of the lengths that were taken to “shut down” the national parks should be proof enough of that.
I was stationed at Naval Hospital Twentynine Palms when the parks were closed in the late 90s. We went up into Joshua Tree anyway (usually about 2 degrees cooler than on base which can make a big difference when running). Then they sent someone out to but chains across the entrance roads. . .
The parks fiasco during the shutdown should’ve been like the Christie Bridgegate scandal times ten — intentional inconvenience imposed on citizens to make a political point. Sixty Minutes would’ve had material for a thousand Sundays under Obama if they only looked.
And I hope, as an encouragement to future bureaucrats, that everyone in that department responsible for that policy action is brought to heel, and their pensions put at risk. Tim
I lived in Indonesia for 5 years of the Obama administration. As a Catholic in a Muslim country I never felt threatened discussing religion or politics (although most of my time was spent in Jakarta, a large international city). But whenever I criticized Obama, I was called a racist. When I would dig deeper I would find out that most Indonesians I talked to got their US news from CNN – to me, this shows the power of the media. Those good Indonesians were brainwashed by the fake news teams at CNN.
Sorry for veering into the ditch.
Now to the OP:
Shutting down those US parks was a disgrace. Well stated Eb Snider.
But get ready for more.
If/when Trump tries to downsize any federal government agency we will see the same scenario play out.
My FB feed runneth over with maudlin farewells to Obama, “the classiest, kindest, most dignified” bestest President ever!!!
“Classiest” President MY A . . . . unt Fanny!
If he’d ever even once been truly challenged by his adoring acolytes — in the press, the populace, the Congress — then perhaps we’d have been treated to more than just the brief flashes we got now and then of the ugly underbelly of this silver-tongued charmer’s true “character.”
Starting with his first campaign, I believe he has continuously shown himself to be a peevish, preening, perfidious, petty little man.
Good riddance.
I want the Obama’s to go away, and I want my hatred for them to go away. I no longer have any use for either.
This gets to the one of the greatest problems I had with the Obama administration. Generally there are only a handful of governmental agencies generally respected for their non-partisan focus and dedication to their mission.
The National Park Service is the classic example. People associate the park rangers with being helpful and conserving national treasures. Obama turned them into enforcers for his political goals, going beyond leaving the place unstaffed and actively attempting to ruin the enjoyment of parkland.
The IRS, as much as we don’t like paying them, was all about the rules over any political considerations. Obama made them a weapon against conservative groups.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are the premier public health organization in the US, and have stopped outbreaks cold. The CDC director did a horrible job responding to the Ebola outbreak, giving misleading advice on national TV. Then there was the horrible mishandling of Risk Group 3 Select Agents at CDC labs. The CDC LITERALLY wrote the book on biosafety, and they screwed up massively. This was while they were focusing on non-infectious illness and general wellness programs.
NASA, while partly replaced by private aerospace, managed to shoot itself in the foot when the director claimed that its mission was to reach out to Muslims, as opposed to reaching for the stars. (1/2)
Perfectly said, both of you. Thank you and well done.
(2/2)
The Chemical Safety Board is a non-partisan investigation group like the NTSB, except they focus on chemical industry accidents, and I have read many of their reports. They also have a library of safety videos on Youtube that are quite informative. They kept up a steady stream of useful videos and reports, then stopped dead. Later I found out why.
The CSB’s director Raphael Moure-Eraso ran the place like a dictator, forcing the agency to focus scarce resources on the Deepwater Horizon spill and mandating the use of a specific “safety case” strategy in every investigation. He also used investigators with close union ties in factories that had rough labor disputes. It was so bad that most of the Board left, and the House Oversight Committee got involved. Moure-Eraso refused to change, and even the ranking democrat told him he needed to leave. This press release was the final straw, and Obama canned him.
In agency after agency, Obama and his minions made the government politicized, incompetent, or both. No libertarian could have asked for a greater barrage on the trust of citizens in their government, and nothing Trump could do would cast more shame and disrepute on the civil service. (Chester Arthur, father of the Civil Service system, is turning over in his grave like a steam turbine) Obama imported the Chicago political culture to the Federal Government, and I can only hope Trump is up to the task of draining this swamp.
A poor simple couple I know were in West Yellowstone at the park closure time. They took their car toward outside the park but turned around before the exit. A ranger came up and said they had to leave and my patient said he had to go get his trailer and his dog. The ranger refused and my patient said it wasn’t a negotiation when another ranger came up and waived them on.
Fire every last one of them. From Politico (I know, I know):
National Park Service tweets pics of Obama vs. Trump inauguration crowds
By LOUIS NELSON 01/20/17 04:47 PM EST
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/obama-vs-trump-inauguration-attendance-nps-233937?lo=ap_e3
From the article:
And this:
Is this what We the People want of our Park Service? And on Inauguration Day? The Swamp is wider and deeper than we can imagine.
Yes. This. So sad so many are still so blind to this. Several federal agencies need to first be purged, and then populated with persons of integrity.
Don’t forget the pure, unadulterated narcissism. That will always be his primary characteristic in my mind. In a year or so, we’ll be treated to a “bestseller” filled with it, plus petty vengeance.
With Trump’s ascension, can we finally put to rest the myth that government shutdowns hurt Republicans? Backing down from a fight with the Democrat/media complex is what hurts Republicans.
This need not be. The NPS was spiteful because Mr Obama wanted them to be spiteful. Mr Trump can appoint managers who will bring a different point of view.
One can only hope…