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.