Government Shutdown: National Parks... Have you noticed?
Depending upon your age this may or may not make sense to you. It is something I've noticed for a couple of decades now, but it is starting to make sense.
I was born in 1970.
With the exception of a few admission based National Parks like Mesa Verde, and places where there is a lot of foot traffic and camping on preplanned trails, with some concern for damage to the structures VERY FEW national parks had these big gates you had to go through to enter them. Most of them were national parks that you could just drive, hike, walk, bike ride, etc onto without a worry for a gate. They would have park rangers that would patrol them daily, but for the most part they didn't need manned structures. They also did not charge you admission to see your national parks.
Why not? Well perhaps because they are already taking taxes from you that are supposed to pay for that. Charging you admission is much like taxing you for something you already paid taxes on.
That is one issue. In the not national parks, but just the backwoods forests there used to be many old roads and paths you could choose to walk and drive on. Many of these have increasingly had barriers put in the road or path so no car or anything can go that way. You could still get out and walk. In some of these cases it could be because, the road is dangerous and in enough disrepair that people would be in danger. In others though there is no obvious reason other than perhaps they don't want to have to patrol those areas or check them every so often.
What made me think of this most recently though is based upon what happens every time a government shutdown is imminent. Instead of reducing spending in many other wasteful areas they tend to shut down the national parks.
Have you wondered why that is where they decide to make the shutdown obvious?
Remember, not too long ago these didn't have gates and you could just enter them whenever you wanted.
Yet when the government is about to shut down because they have maxed out their credit cards, their first reaction is to shut down access to national parks. There are plenty of very stupid government programs that are funded. There are plenty of places to make cuts. If it were your house and your credit card that is what you and I would have to do. We would have to look at our budget and make cuts to things we LIKE but in a pinch could live without.
Our government should have to do the same.
So why go for the National Parks?
Because, it puts pressure on the average person. They make the discomfort obvious to the people. They are denying you access to something you already paid for and that several decades ago often didn't even have a gate.
It's about making people feel inconvenienced, so they can begin whining for the government to do something.
"Well, I am sorry citizen because we're kind of stalled on this debt ceiling thing..."
"WHAAAAA I Want my parks. I don't care about the debt ceiling."
"Well, citizen we can fix this by getting them to raise the limit on our credit cards."
"Just do it! I don't care, it is just wrong I can't get in my national park. Stupid Republicans..." (some may do the same and say stupid Democrats)
"Okay, we will do this."
So they increase the debt ceiling and they start incurring more and more debt. People get their parks, they get their other not critical things, while they are selling the souls of the future generation.
They also put quite a bit of money and effort into the websites explaining WHY they are shut down. Too bad some of their other websites don't get similar treatment. NOT TO MENTION all the money they had to spend to make these signs that say it is closed due to the budget. I used to do IT for a company that made such signs. They are NOT inexpensive. Not to mention they often have dates on them. So do they just reprint new signs everytime they need to do this? Are you beginning to see why they keep having debt problems? Should we keep letting them be stupid in their spending and yank us around by emotions, or should we tell them to make it work with what they have? They already have park closed signs all over the place. So printing more talking about budget and worse listing a date is incredibly stupid considering why they are closed in the first place. Or is it? If their goal is to manipulate your emotions and get you to yell to increase the debt ceiling then it is brilliant.
EDIT: P.S. They are going to patrol them anyway so they can tell anyone that tries to sneak onto them to leave, because they are closed.
One of their websites on this:
Great content. I'm following you now!
There afraid of Big Foot!! Just kidding...
That's okay less chance of bigfoot anyway...
They have to pay all the patrols to patrol the closed parks to tell the people that try to enter them anyway that they can't enter them because the park is closed.
Ha! There's no such thing as a debt ceiling. That's just more smoke and mirrors for the ignorant. They have a digital printing press that runs 24/7. Problem with taxes, especially tax on tax on tax is that no one should be paying them to begin with. The issue is that not enough of the people will inform themselves of "why taxes are wrong" and stop all together. So the individual who does has men with guns showing up to their house taking them away to be put in a cage. Because that's what happens when you don't pay your taxes.
Yeah, different issue... didn't want to turn the post into a book with all the OTHER related things. It likely wouldn't get read. I talk about those things in other posts. :) Gotta choose which content to talk about in a short space... and my posts probably are not generally considered SHORT by most. :P
I kind of covered that topic a little bit in my post from last night about the government not being able to give you free shit. :)
I'll check it out. I do enjoy your posts and subject matter. Thanks for the link.
This stuff always makes me mad. It's so friggen obvious to me, but it seems like most people don't notice or don't care. Great summary here:
Yeah it is madness. Yet we see madness every direction we look these days.
That's nothing a Good old Boy with torches aboard can't fix, maybe even sell the scrap metal to pay for the gas, We have a park in Canada that they put a parking meter in, problem is, its always welded shut ? go figure hehe
Nice for you to point it out ! It makes sense. It's just another way to control or to create the illusion of control.
Shutting National Parks is just another demonstration of how U.S. Government doesn't work for the people. National Parks are no high ticket item for the Fed, but they provide vast amounts of happiness to millions. Closings are a blatant abuse of the common man for the ends of the politicians. Politicians don't need National Parks, anyway. They go to their million dollar homes on Cape Cod or the Hamptons, or on a junket to the south of France at taxpayer's expense.
This is so crazy ......i hope it wont hapend in my countrie :)
Interesting to see someone else point this out.
I have noticed the pattern and changes (born 1960) over the years, and always considered the shutdown of park to be a case of very cleverly placed "Public Histrionics." Most people don't care that much about some agency in an old building where they have to stand in line for 90 minutes... but shut down parks hits us in our previous vacation time, while we have a car full of whining kids. What better way to sway even semi-awake citizens towards going "Oh, WHAT-ever..." and exert pressure for a new round of meaningless spending...
National parks are great places for families on a budget to vacation and explore. Who are they really hurting when they close off access to these areas? The average US citizen. Gets me so pissed with the prepackaged scams that the government employs to motivate citizens to approve their ill conceived budgets and spending waste.