Great news for the mostly furloughed IRS, now mostly out of sight, out of mind.
The new rallying cry across the nation is “Don’t Barrycade me, bro!”
Great news for IRS – National Park Service now most hated federal agency
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 9, 2013
(Video added h/t Hot Air)(see our prior post for background):
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Do the agency heads understand what they have done? People didn’t like or trust the IRS to begin with but say National Park Service and the image that used to come to mind was a family vacation to Yellowstone or a class trip to a historic site. Now the image is that of men in brown shirts and sunglasses manhandling nonagenarians, closing down private businesses and standing school kids. How is it no senior person at Interior or the National Park Service managed to scream No! This is a really, really dumb idea.
Just imagine the trouble Obama could make with the Dept of Homeland Security.
Who’d have thunk it.
Smokey the Bear in Brown Shirt and Swastika emblazoned armband.
Or is that an Obama armband? No diff.
I’ve already learned to think of the National Park Service as the agency that’s trying to expel humans from coastal areas and various other places that are scenic and pleasant.
“For the moment, it’s mostly petty despotism. But despotism rarely stays petty for long.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360744/america-your-vacation-wonderland-mark-steyn
People will either NOT stand for this…
or they will.
IF they do, I say, “Let it burn”.
The damage that Obama is willfully inflicting on the private sector is vast. IRS won’t answer questions about their tax forms…no big deal except for the software developers trying to program for the upcoming year. The park closures are killing local mom-and-pops who are dependent on tourist business to survive.
Lord Acton’s line about absolute authority is spot on. Now, Obama is feeding that terrible human trait by encouraging federal employees to take his cue and abuse their authority.
I won’t predict when/where, but I won’t be surprised if someone gets seriously injured or killed before this is over. Some normally mild-mannered federal employee, prompted into overly zealous aggression, will confront or be confronted by an exasperated citizen and the situation will escalate. This won’t end well.
No conscience.
Personally, I’m hoping for a very public escalated situation. Very public and very escalated. As per Rahm, we must never let a crisis go to waste.
Does anyone really believe Obama cares how Joe Citizen views the National Parks Dept? Obama is concerning himself with one thing – power and control. It’s been this way for 5+ years now – don’t expect it to change. The only way to hurt Obama is to remove some of his power and ignore his control. Provoke this ox until he gores some liberal badly – then the political climate will change.
No, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. What he’s doing is driving the wedge deeper. Rich vs. poor, productive vs. lazy (NOT unemployed), big-government supporters vs. small-government supporters. This charade pits the last groups against each other. By making this as ridiculously inconvenient, Obama demonstrates how much we need Big Brother on a daily basis. The meanies in the GOP have been cast as the bad guys who are responsible for people’s vacations and leisure activities to be interrupted. The MSM is only too happy to play along.
Maybe obama has misplayed this, and his efforts to demonstrate the need for government instead demonstrate how many areas the federal government has pushed into where it is not needed. Maybe more Americans will figure this out.
Barrycade has grossly overplayed his bluff on this!
This is the perfect time to demand the National Parks to be passed to the States for jurisdiction.
Yes, and a bill to that effect should be introduced in the House. Moreover, federal lands should be put up for sale, with the proceeds being used to pay down the debt. I can’t see that happening unless we have a conservative president and a conservative congress. Who knows if even then those in charge of the federal government would act to reduce its size.
Rick: You have proposed a good and Constitutionally correct action. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution limits ownership of land by the federal government to the following: “[T]o exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings.” Somehow, though, the federal government now owns about one third of all US land. Our military bases must be ginormous to justify that much land — unless, of course, government has gone hog wild in breaking out of the Constitutional limitations of enumerated powers. I know, hard to believe they would do such a thing.
As Chris Edwards wrote on the Cato at Liberty blog early last year: “During the nation’s first century, the federal government focused on selling and giving away its lands to individuals, businesses, and state governments. In the 20th century, the government reversed course and began grabbing more land, but federal ownership has not led to sound economic or environment stewardship. A revival of federalism in land policies is long overdue.”
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/downsizing-the-interior-department/
Random Nuclear Strikes posted a map showing the extent of federal ownership of land at the following page:
http://www.softgreenglow.com/wp/2012/03/has-anyone-read-molon-labe/
Good idea, Rick. Let’s sell off our national parks to China, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, whomever. Then we could pay oil sheiks and foreign land developers for entrance into Yellowstone… exactly what the founders had in mind.
What the Founders had in mind, Gadfly, was state and individual ownership of land. I don’t speak for Rick, but what I think he had in mind was a return or sale of land to the states. Utah and Arizona are already working on lawsuits to reclaim their land from the feds. Clinton, for example, swiped state lands by declaring national monuments without “the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be,” an unconscionable and unconstitutional land grab.
I would advocate the sale of federal land to individuals as well. Remember the Oklahoma Land Rush? Actually, there were seven land runs in Oklahoma from 1891-1895. Land was given to settlers on specific terms — see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Run_of_1889 for an interesting account of a successful redistribution of land to the people.
I like the idea of a free people using undeveloped land to build something of value, whether a factory or a city or a nature preserve. Individual determination worked very well for Oklahomans in the late 1800s. Private ownership beats out government ownership in all ways all the time, which may be one reason the Founders were so explicit in their defense of private property rights. State governments today have spurred much of what little boost our economy has seen by not preventing private businesses from using land for fracking and other activities banned on land the federal government controls. A case can be made that land controlled by states and by individuals is more productive and more profitable than land held under federal stewardship.
Note, too, that the federal government owns a great many buildings that are unused — a drain on resources. Government need not maximize the utility of its possessions, nor account for their failure to do so. Private individuals, including business owners, seek to turn unprofitable liabilities into profitable assets. Again, we would all be better off if the federal government did not own one third of all our land.
The Oklahoma Land Rush is a bit dated of an idea, J Motes. So is Manifest Destiny. And no, private ownership does not beat out govt ownership “in all ways, all the time”. That’s a, forgive me, rather simpleton notion though one I know is rabidly popular on the TP sites. Private ownership in itself indicates use or misuse of lands or other property in the sole interest of the private owner. So if the owner of 500 miles of the Colorado River decides to dam the damn thing and charge everyone else for water, that’s not good for anyone but the private owner. That is why there are federal laws and state laws. State laws are not in themselves superior to federal laws. Federal laws are useful in order to balance or temper the possible overreach and self-interested creation of new legislation that can come into being (and often has) in states whose interests are better served (often at the expense of other states) by doing things in a way that primarily or only benefits that particular state. So, in energy-producing states in the mid West, lands “released back to the people” would instantly be bought up and/or leased (and quite cheaply, I’m sure) by oil companies who would set to work taking mining, fracking, drilling, polluting to a level never seen before. Whatever environmental regulations the state had on the books could quickly be removed in the next election cycle by all those smart lobbyists with wads of cash and soon, camping in our national parks gets a little harder when blasting starts up and the new “park owners” start relegating camping areas to a smaller and smaller portion of the national oops state oops privately-owned park. Sounds lovely.
No, the Feds should return the land to the States. No sale. The Feds should have no jurisdiction over any state land to permit or prohibit citizen access to it. The Feds did not buy the land from the States, and they should just give it back to them. There should be one caveat, though, no land that was formerly federal land should be sold to any foreign entity or to any personage not a second or third generation American citizen.
Heartily agree. The federal government should own no land and should not be allowed to increase any debt. In this way, the size of government can shrink, the tendency of government to tyrannize is reduced, government will have to live within its means, and the states will have the power that the the Constitution intended them to because they can be more responsive to the people than the bloated behemoth that is the federal government.
One last caveat: no Hollywood types should be permitted to buy any formerly federal lands greater than one acre.
The NPS at the Grand Canyon have their pawns out front, giving the Democrat talking point “Only Congress can fix this”.
But Republicans have passed all sorts of clean funding bills. The parks are of course used as a means of exacting pain, held hostage by Reid at Obama’s demand.
But if you are an illegal alien petitioning Congress for American largesse … all the doors are open to you.
At least the Claude Moore Colonial Farm got a response. They can open, as Obama’s Death Star misfired. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/344023.php
That illegal alien rally especially ticks me off.
This idiot administration barricades the open-air WW II monument and tries to prevent elderly veterans in wheelchairs from seeing it, on a trip that will probably be the only trip to the monument that these men will ever be physically able to take. At the same time, the administration bends over backwards to make the “closed” national mall open and easily accessible to thousands of law-breaking foreigners so that they can demand to have their lawless behavior rewarded with the privilege of citizenship in the country those elderly veterans risked their lives fighting to defend.
It is beyond parody, and beyond sickening. Obama is a disgrace.
Thanks Midwest.
“October 09, 2013
NPS Shutdown Theater Update: Claude Moore Colonial Farm To Reopen
The Administration had cited the shutdown, claiming it had no choice but to shutter the Claude Moore Colonial Farm. Well, that is, until yesterday.
Funny, that. The National Park Service, threatened with political pressure and legal action, has decided that its act of barricading a privately-funded, privately-operated business was unnecessary. Let that sink in: for a week, the Obama Administration closed down this living history museum, costing it thousands of dollars, and now concedes that it didn’t have to….”
If I were an ambitious young Republican with an eye toward the presidency, I’d be pushing an initiative to put the national parks under state management. I don’t know how realistic that is, states already manage state parks so at least on the surface it looks like it would be easy to bring all the national parks under state control/management. The only parks the federal government would have any business to stick its nose would be in D.C.
I’ve noticed the threads on conservative sites are extremely long on these stories. They are full of new names and almost troll free. Twitter is full of pics of people ignoring the barriers and even putting up comments, even taunts on the Park closed sign.
People are not standing for this. They aren’t going out of their way to force a confrontation, but they are letting it be known that they are ticked off.
They are even outraged in San Francisco over the closure of the popular Cliff House restaurant, It’s a concession on federal land. The owners tried to reopen, then closed again. It is suspected they were threatened with the cancellation of the concession. 170 people are out of work. Many of the comments are what you’d expect in San Francisco with all the blame on the GOP, but some do get it.
I agree. My guess, however, is that obama will figure this out and change course, and the old press will continue not to cover what is going on. I hope I am wrong.
Mr. President, tear down those Barry-cades!
and BarryCade your face Pre-sent Barry!
Snark Snark
Park Arresters (’round these here Smokies) proudly park their vehicles, where they live. Wonder how they like their morning eggs, over easy or over vehicles?
He-He-He..
Don’t forget where orders to the NPS originate. NPS belongs to the Executive Branch.
As for the NPS, they better stop playing politics. The “chief” or whatever they call him at the Grand Canyon effectively blamed Congress for the park’s closure. Whether or not he’s correct, it isn’t his job to assign blame. Federal employees are expected to remain outside the political fray as a matter of professionalism.
In the 1950s, my dad, who was an army officer, told me that he did not think that he should vote in presidential elections. Being 10 years old, I told him he was nuts.
Also, the federal government is only the titular owner of our public parks. The real owners are the American people.
By denying Americans access to their own lands, in order to serve the partisan (and petty) political interests of one Barry Obama, the Park Service is breaching its fiduciary duty to the American public.
Dammit, I don’t have time right now to drive to the Outer Banks (nearest fed parks) to civilly disobey. But I want to. Bad.
I’m overseas, HH, do it for me and you. Take a chainsaw to a barrycade.
We just circumvented the closures to visit Red Rocks National Park along with hundreds of other civilly disobedient folk. F-’em I say. I dare them to arrest me.
Barry’s gestapo were at the main entrances enforcing the Barrycades, so apparently there are enough people working to try to stop you from getting into the park, but not enough people working to let you in… /sarcoff
Super. Thanks for doing that.