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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Selective Outrage


A few days ago the Victoria Advocate Editorial Board wrote an article voicing their displeasure over the conduct of national park personnel during the recent shutdown.

The story stated that the closing of national parks and monuments had caused outrage across the nation. I'm waiting for the article expressing  outrage of the shutdown itself and the damage it caused to others. The national parks bring in $76 million a day.

I saw people cursing the park rangers ,dismantling barricades and taking them and placing them adjacent to the front lawn of the White House. I don't think being a WWII veteran gives anyone the right to make more work for the park personnel who weren't getting paid. I can only imagine the outrage if the Occupy Wall Street people would have done that. 

I'm still not sure why a local resident's unpleasant experience  with park rangers at the Aransas National wildlife Refuge was worth mentioning. I'm pretty sure tourists and park rangers have butted heads before but this incident was exploited as part of a national story. 

 There's  no doubt that some park rangers may have gotten out of hand and they should be punished.   I saw Texas Congressman, Randy Neugebauer lash out at a park ranger for doing her job,saying she should be ashamed. No Congressman,you should be ashamed for taking part in closing down the government in the first place and then appearing at the memorial for a photo-op.

The article states that the maintenance of the parks are part of the budget but the land itself belongs to the American people. That doesn't even make sense , you cannot separate the two. Think about that on the local level;Guadalupe Park belongs to us but  there is a gate at the entrance and exit for a reason. I would hate to see the national parks after two weeks of unsupervised visitation. 

The editorial makes the often repeated dumb remark about the park service paychecks coming from the taxpayers. The park personnel are also taxpayers and the public sector employees get their paychecks from consumers,so what's the point? We are all beholding to our customers in one way or the other.

 Excuse me if I don't buy into the hysteria; a manufactured crisis followed by misplaced outrage. 


9 comments:

Edith Ann said...

Excellent. I agree. Sharing.

Mike said...

Speaking of public events…I always enjoyed visiting the Alamo, but I never thought it would be used for a political demonstration.

Texas has the most liberal gun laws in the nation but that's not enough for a few hundred open-carry advocates.

For the first in the Alamo's history as a tourist attraction,it was used as prop for several gun rights activists.

The demonstration featured the same old " Don't tread on Me " and " Come and take it " flags saying that the SA police will no longer harass them.

These people must wake up every morning and grab their gear.."pants.shoes,socks, AR-15."

Legion said...

I guess some people didn't understand what a government shutdown meant when they backed it.

Oh well, maybe they will live and learn.

Legion said...

OT but what happen to Juanitas blog? I thought she was moving it a few weeks back.

Mike said...

Legion I copied this from her Oct 18th blog

juanita said:

No, I did not forget to pay the bill.

My website holder got an email from some folks who were claiming that I had violated their copyright two years ago with a cartoon. They have been claiming this a couple times a year but my geek would always catch it because it came from company that does jewelry to put created remains in and that’s not something I generally write about.

We always asked them for more specific information and since they never followed through with any of their threats to sue me, we started ignoring them.

Then I switched domain servers. I forgot to tell them about this. They got one of the emails and shut my butt down. We got it fixed and we’re back in business.

I truly appreciate all the emails to tell me about it and almost got teary-eyed with people offering to pitch in a couple of bucks to help pay the bill. We’re able to make payroll right now but if the gerbils ever need food, you’ll be the first to know.

Mike said...

Unlike Carl Bankston,who is exgheratting again,at least one person is sorry for his actions.

" The Tea Party congressman who went after a National Park Service ranger during the 2013 government shutdown has apparently had a change of heart.

CNN reported Friday that a little more than two weeks after an altercation at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) issued a formal apology to the director of the National Park Service. The letter did not go to the ranger directly, as that person requested to stay anonymous, a Neugebauer spokesperson said.

In the letter, Neugebauer admitted that he put the park ranger in an "uncomfortable position" with a tone that was "inappropriate."

"I regret how I handled that situation, and I would like to offer you my apologies," he added, according to CNN.

Back on Oct. 2, Neugebauer accosted the park ranger for refusing to let veterans have access to the memorial. The exchange went as follows, per NBC Washington:

born2Bme said...

All the "stuff" that went on was just to make sure that the uninformed fox news watchers had something to latch onto. None of it would have happened without cameras there.

Edith Ann said...

And just when I was wondering what Jeaneal Jackson and Rosalie Sykora were thinking...BOOM! there they are!

I won't do that again!

Mike said...

Jeneal letter reminds me of Sarah Palin's ramblings .What's amazing he thinks North Korea and Russia are trying to get nuclear weapons....lol

Yes,the GOP shutdown the government to take our minds away from the non scandals they accused the Obama administration of....And the president is arming Al-Qaeda.

Did he mention that the president is black,

I have no idea what Rosalie is talking about....professional football does not recruit chior boys.
If you can play ...you can stay.