It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => The Police State => Topic started by: Pandora on October 10, 2013, 01:18:57 AM
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Advance Editorial From Our Forthcoming 10/21-10/28 Issue (http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/park-police_762277.html?page=1)
The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate?—?this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.
Even so, consider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”
The closure of the World War II Memorial was just the start of the Park Service’s partisan assault on the citizenry. There’s a cute little historic site just outside of the capital in McLean, Virginia, called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm. They do historical reenactments, and once upon a time the National Park Service helped run the place. But in 1980, the NPS cut the farm out of its budget. A group of private citizens set up an endowment to take care of the farm’s expenses. Ever since, the site has operated independently through a combination of private donations and volunteer workers.
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.
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?
We’re not done yet. The parking lot at Mount Vernon was closed by the NPS, too, even though the Park Service does not own Mount Vernon; it just controls access to the parking lots from the George Washington Parkway. At the Vietnam Memorial?—?which is just a wall you walk past?—?the NPS called in police to block access. But the pièce de résistance occurred in South Dakota. The Park Service wasn’t content just to close Mount Rushmore. No, they went the extra mile and put out orange cones to block the little scenic overlook areas on the roads near Mount Rushmore. You know, just to make sure no taxpayers could catch a glimpse of it.
It’s one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater. It’s another thing entirely for a civil bureaucracy entrusted with the privilege of caring for our national heritage to wage war against the citizenry on behalf of a political party.
This is how deep the politicization of Barack Obama’s administration goes. The Park Service falls under the Department of the Interior, and its director is a political appointee. Historically, the directorship has been nonpartisan and the service has functioned as a civil, not a political, unit. Before the current director, Jonathan Jarvis, was nominated by President Obama, he’d spent 30 years as a civil servant. But he has taken to his political duties with all the fervor of a third-tier hack from the DNC, marrying the disinterested contempt of a meter maid with the zeal of an ambitious party apparatchik.
It’s worth recalling that the Park Service has always been deeply ambivalent about the public which they’re charged with serving. In a 2005 Weekly Standard piece about the NPS’s plan to reconfigure the National Mall, Andrew Ferguson reported:
The Park Service’s ultimate desire was made public, indiscreetly, by John Parsons, associate regional park director for the mall. In 2000 Parsons told the Washington Post he hoped that eventually all unauthorized traffic, whether by foot or private car, would be moved off the mall. Visitors could park in distant satellite lots and be bused to nodal points, where they would be watered and fed, allowed to tour a monument, and then reboard a bus and head for another monument. “Just like at Disneyland,” Parsons told the Post. “Nobody drives through Disneyland. They’re not allowed. And we’ve got the better theme park.”
Yes, yes. They must protect America’s treasures from the ugly Americans. No surprise then that one park ranger explained to the Washington Times last week, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.”
“To make life as difficult for people as we can”?—?that would be an apt motto for the Obama worldview. And now even the misanthropes at the National Park Service have been yoked to his project. This is the clearest example yet of how the president understands the relationship between his government and the citizenry.
Okay, is that clear? These people think what they're paid to maintain should be off limits to us unwashed masses, just as Pinky Reid would rather not have all those smelly tourists stinkin' up his Capitol building.
A whole bunch of somebodies need lessons in exactly who works for whom.
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“The photos show the attempted delivery of Port-A-Johns by Don’s Johns." (http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/10/park-rangers-refuse-truckload-of-porta-potties-for-ww-ii-veterans/)
The NPS Ranger would not allow the Port-A-Johns to be left at the WWII Memorial site on the grassy area (where the National Park Police have parked 10+ vehicles!). The NPS has not opened the bathrooms at this Memorial site so there are no open bathroom facilities onsite at the WWII Memorial.”
(http://4-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/372x541xranger.jpg.pagespeed.ic.KnGjhPFT6m.jpg)
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Make sure you listen to the entire audio. (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360744/america-your-vacation-wonderland-mark-steyn)
The choicest detail is when the lady explains that, during the hours they were stuck in the hotel and prevented by armed guards from walking next door to see Old Faithful, every hour-and-a-half throughout the day, just before the geyser was due to blow, your supposedly “closed” government dispatched a fleet of NPS SUVs to ring the site just in case any of those Japanese or Canadian tourists had managed to break out and was minded to take a non-commissar-approved look at it.
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For some reason I envision bags of flaming feces flying through the air at DC Fedcoats...
And while I do not expect a bunch of foreign tourists to rise up in indignation and force the Fedcoats into committing a Boston Masacre moment at Yellowstone, where the heck are red-blooded American's?
Anywhere where this is going on people need to get out there and confront and defy these clowns...these are our Tiananmen Square moments and we're wussing out!
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/national_park_service_wolves_in_service_dog_harness.html (http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/national_park_service_wolves_in_service_dog_harness.html)
I can never look at these clowns again and not know they are progressive tools...as is pretty much 99% of the people in Fedcoat bureaucracy....I will never trust them...they execute illegal executive orders without thinking...they are one goosestep away from being an unapologetic fascist punk!
::mooning::
I want every bureaucrat to go!
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Libertas, I am going to merge this thread with one already begun for the purpose of chronicling the militarization of the NPS. It's in "Police State" category.
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Fine with me.
I can only think of one clown that would object... (http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss291/libertasinfinitio/Obama%20Admin/picture-103254_zpsc4da86db.gif) (http://s585.photobucket.com/user/libertasinfinitio/media/Obama%20Admin/picture-103254_zpsc4da86db.gif.html)
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If you ever go camping, you'll notice that among the younger rangers, an inordinate number of females are obviously lesbians, and the remainder - male or female - are inordinately tree-hugging hippies.
Why is it that the loony-Left always lays claim to the beautiful natural places of the country?
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If you ever go camping, you'll notice that among the younger rangers, an inordinate number of females are obviously lesbians, and the remainder - male or female - are inordinately tree-hugging hippies.
Why is it that the loony-Left always lays claim to the beautiful natural places of the country?
So they can protect them from the likes of you icky campers.
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I dunno...
I got an urge to take a gal out to the woods and engage in some heterosexual activity and maybe slay a tree or two!
;D
Who gonna stop me!
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At Independence Hall, Philadelphia: a dozen armed guards w/SUV's.
Hired Goons at Independence Hall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N078jMaPA5M#)
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On Jon Jarvis:
He's not your typical Obamacrat. (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/10/jon_jarvis_gute_amerikaner.html)
Far from it: a career National Parks employee who worked his way up from ranger status straight to the top.
... Yet at the same time he is diligently and obediently, without protest as far as we know, carrying out the most obnoxious, detestable, and perhaps even illegal orders ever given a man in his position, exactly as if he was a swag-bellied, unqualified precinct captain dragged out of some Southside Chicago ward.
But that's the way it is with career bureaucrats --
... like Lois Lerner, John Brennan, Keith Alexander and ten thousand others. We know from the historical record that bureaucrats will avidly commit the most horrendous crimes if ordered by the people at the top of the heap. There's a clear and distinct selection process in operation in bureaucracy. People who progress are those who will do what they're told without blinking. and Jarvis is perfect example.
Obama and his minions have effectively declared all Americans the enemy ... (http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/08/the-little-eichmanns-of-the-government-shutdown/)
... in an attempt to make the impact of the government shutdown artificially painful. This could not succeed without the assistance of a corps of facilitators, Little Eichmanns, if you will, who are willing to abuse their fellow citizens in order to better serve their master. The most prominent of these is a yob named Jonathan Jarvis who runs the National Park Service.
H/T American Digest for both links and the blurbs
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I'd be curious to know how the rank and file Park Ranger feels about this. The ones we're being exposed to don't seem to have much of a problem following the directive. But then, we wouldn't really hear about the ones who are complaining or resisting.
So far I've seen one single photo of a park police guy actually helping to remove barriers. Wonder what his employment status is today?
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I think most of them are just fine with it. I think we need to be careful not to delude ourselves into thinking there's a substantial but silent portion of "the Federal Family" that is quietly on our side about anything at all.
My personal standard these days is that if you're a government employee, you're complicit, you're hostile to the private citizen. I'll approve exceptions on a case by case basis with adequate proof to the contrary.
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I'll say the same damn thing I said on that thread about the woman-beating cops...
There are only two answers here, either one disagrees with what these Little Eichmann's are doing or you condone it overtly or by your inaction to stop it or not participate in it, there is no fricken middle ground! If you fail to speak out or fail to refuse to carry out these orders, you may not like it but you are no better than a Nazi who merely "followed orders"! But people are made of lesser stuff this age, a job means more to them than right or wrong, legal or illegal...these people are automatons...and what they better get through their petty little heads is that that kind of attitude cuts both ways! Treat me as an enemy, treat me as a threat or a nothing...honestly, how does that attitude bode well for YOUR future?!
Ye be warned.
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At Independence Hall, Philadelphia: a dozen armed guards w/SUV's.
Hired Goons at Independence Hall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N078jMaPA5M#)
I don't know why, but it just dawned on me. Exacly WHY do NPS rangers need to be ARMED?
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At Independence Hall, Philadelphia: a dozen armed guards w/SUV's.
Hired Goons at Independence Hall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N078jMaPA5M#)
I don't know why, but it just dawned on me. Exacly WHY do NPS rangers need to be ARMED?
To intimidate your cracker Tea Party anarchist ass, obviously!
Yeah, I'd like to test their mettle...walk right past them, just pretend they ain't even there and walk into the place...
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At Independence Hall, Philadelphia: a dozen armed guards w/SUV's.
Hired Goons at Independence Hall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N078jMaPA5M#)
I don't know why, but it just dawned on me. Exacly WHY do NPS rangers need to be ARMED?
'Cause there be lions, tigers and bears, oh my.
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because otherwise you might as well be a mall cop
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because otherwise you might as well be a mall cop
I've always equated park rangers as guides, not enforcement. Silly me.
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http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/16/video-national-park-service-director-admits-white-house-was-involved-in-closing-memorials/ (http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/16/video-national-park-service-director-admits-white-house-was-involved-in-closing-memorials/)
National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis takes “full responsibility” for the NPS closing memorials, parks and the sea to enforce the government shutdown. He admits that he presented “his decision” to enforce these closures to the White House. Supposing that what he says is accurate, the Obama White House knew that World War II veterans would be shut out of their memorial, but did nothing to stop it. The Obama White House knew that self-sufficient parks like the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in Virginia would be shut down, and privately managed parks on federal lands would be shut down, but did nothing to intervene. None of these sites were closed during previous shutdowns. The barricades actually cost more more money than simply allowing some sites to remain open.
Vid at link.
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Since the Executive Branch runs the general operations of government not specifically controlled by Congress or nominally the Courts...uhh, duh, NPS clownboxer admitted what was already known. The real headline is the media malfeasance in failing to properly identifying the same authority and actions taken...being they are as eager as the Regime to pass all blame on Congress and the wicked Republicans. But the Republican capitulation in the budget/debt battle means the agreed to take the blame that wasn't theirs to begin with for all the shutdown pain Obama caused.
Stupid...insane...suicidal.
Yep, that's the Pubbies.