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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
Fire the NPS Twitter team. Today. All of them.
That would be like Reagan and the air traffic controllers.
As another pol once said, you have to break eggs to make an omelette.
You need to go watch the BBC sitcoms Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
But don’t view them as sitcoms. Consider them documentaries.
http://gizmodo.com/national-park-service-banned-from-tweeting-after-anti-t-1791449526
This park shutdown was quite the eye-opener for me. I was wondering how the NPS would shut down the San Francisco portion of the GGNRA, with literally thousands of entry points. They did not even try. But the Marin Headlands access points were blocked off with the white Park Service trucks blocking the roads. Every time I see one of those trucks now I viscerally recognize it as “enemy”. That event was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have since viewed the Federal Bureaucracy as my enemy. This was almost shocking to me. I imagine the petty hearts of the rangers enthusiastically shutting the peoples parks down. I do not look favorably on them now. Now they are the enemy.
Since the PC Leftists consider it a slur, I prefer “Illegals”, thank you very much.
Amazing gizmodo reported on something tech related. The have not done that for a while. Also I think this is the first gizmodo post that does not have curse words in it for several months.
Exactly. I started visiting National Parks around 1970. For a couple of decades, I enjoyed meeting and talking with Park Rangers. They always had good suggestions (especially if you had already seen the basic features and wanted to go further), and were always helpful. Somewhere along the line park employees turned into either cops or bureaucrats, and the conversations became entirely warnings and rules discussions. I ceased seeking them out for help.
The capper was seeing rangers during the shutdown working hard to prevent people from using (or even seeing) parks. You put it well when you described them as the enemy.
I think it was intended to be more than an “inconvenience.” It was a show of force. And, in case a citizen wasn’t directly affected by the shutdown, it was meant to be a visible/tangible reminder of what otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Can’t have that. We must be made to believe in our dependence on a fully functioning bureaucracy at all times and costs.
Of course, the media collaborated by hysterically reporting the effects of the shutdown. Oh, the humanity!!
I was hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail at the time and a group of us hiked up to a pass in the snow in Washington state from a trail head with a pit toilet. We turned around at the top of the pass due to the snow and when we got back to the trail head after a few hours the pit toilets were locked and wrapped in yellow tape with this sign:
Closing the toilets were a priority, to protect our health and safety.
Ah, yes. I had forgotten about that. I do recall it now. I wish I can forget the entire Obama presidency. I guess that might be the only benefit of getting Alzheimer’s. LOL.
Based on my experience, too many of the rangers in Yellowstone have become and remain badge heavy jackasses since the shutdown.
I did not realize the Obama administration was quite this belligerent in shutting down the national parks, so I appreciate the new information.
I’m a bit conflicted about what to emphasize, though. This time and the last time the government pulled the School Band Ploy(TM) I wished the message from conservatives would have beens more along the lines of, “Go ahead and shut them down. We don’t like it and we think it’s the wrong thing to do. But we’ll accept the sacrifice of ruined vacations and will put up with this spiteful behavior if it means we’ll get the federal budget under control. The sacrifice will be worth it.”
School Band Ploy(TM): Every time time a school district doesn’t get the funding it wants, it threatens to cut back the school band. School bands have large constituencies of vocal parents, who then fight to get the school the funding it wants.
Interesting. I’ve always called it the “you’re all going to die” ploy. When a city has spent all the taxpayer money they can get their greedy hands on and need more, do they threaten to not build more walking trails or biking trails or stuff like that? No, they always say they are going to have to cut the Police force or the Fire Department force. Thus, if you don’t let them raise your taxes, “you’re all going to die” becomes the chant from the City Council.