Free Bus Stops (Or What a Difference a Million Dollars Makes)

Here in Bozeman we are getting new bus shelters with ultra sleek, modern solar panels and LED billboards -- no cost to the tax payer, zero, nada. Fully enclosed on three sides (when they finish installing the panels) and roofed, the bus stops are actually designed to protect riders from frigid winter winds and driving snow. KBZK TV reports:

Waiting for the bus in Bozeman could be getting safer and more comfortable. MTN's Keele Smith shows us what will make that happen.

First bus stop under construction out Huffine Lane. See the
link above to view the video.

Carrie Fabiano knows the routine of waiting for the bus as a regular rider.  

"Well the bus was running a little late and that 10 minutes felt like a lot. I mean I started getting frostbite," she said. 

Fabiano says, "I just think it's a matter of life and death sometimes. I've seen elderly people waiting out in the freezing temperatures and you just worry." 

That is part of the reason why Chandler Communication, out of Kalispell, is building bus shelters. They will be taking care of all the construction and maintenance at no cost to taxpayers.The shelters in Bozeman are unique - they are the first to have solar panels and LED billboards. Only two of these shelters have been built so far. Six more are in the works, including two more on Huffine, three in Bozeman and one in Belgrade.  

Transportation Director with the HRDC, Lee Hazelbaker said, "This is a huge step forward. This has been in the works for years and to finally see it come to fruition is just a great feeling." 

Riders agree.

"Being able to sit down is what's going to be good for me," Fabiano said. "I think it'll help because you can't even tell where some of the bus stops are. It's just a little sign hanging up on the side of the road it's not really a bus stop." 

Another regular bus rider, Amelia Denagy said, "It's going to be a lot more comfortable to ride the bus. It's not going to be such a hassle. It's just going to be a one stop deal, you can take a break, you don't have to freeze or get wet, just much better."

Bozeman weekday bus map.

Contrast this to the bus stops inside the Washington, DC Beltway serving the fiscally spoiled and coddled, profligate citizens of Arlington Virginia who, in the federal spending bubble, have the highest median family incomes nationwide. They are served by million dollar bus stops that don't even protect people from the elements. Their bus stops are financed primarily by the federal government, meaning you the taxpayer, and our children and grandchildren, who are being forced to assume the massive federal debt bomb. The spoiled brats pay not for their own waste. There are few clearer arguments for massive down sizing of federal government.

Coal in Our Offspring's Stocking

$17 trillion debt bomb

Looks like the Democrats and establishment Republicans are conniving around the Christmas Tree to gift the debt bomb down the road and to take joyous credit in keeping open an outsize, inefficient and incompetent government that they want, but are unwilling to pay for. It's so easy when they can pass the bill for the largess along to the children and grandchildren.

After more than two years of constant crisis, the emerging agreement amounts to little more than a cease-fire. Republicans and Democrats are abandoning their debt-reduction goals, laying down arms and, for the moment, trying to avoid another economy-damaging standoff.

The campaign to control the debt is ending “with a whimper, not a bang,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the bipartisan Concord Coalition, which advocates debt reduction. “That this can be declared a victory is an indicator of how low the process has sunk. They haven’t really done anything except avoid another crisis.”

Budget negotiators Paul Ryan and Patty Murray

And no doubt Dear President will sign the budget bill, offering encomiums to the, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, negotiators who avoided tough battles and difficult decisions.  

All to avoid "another crisis"?  If anyone bothered to notice the economy didn't even hiccup in October despite the extended government shut down.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released the coincident indexes for the 50 states for October 2013. In the past month, the indexes increased in 44 states, decreased in four states, and remained stable in two, for a one-month diffusion index of 80. Over the past three months, the indexes increased in 45 states and decreased in five, for a three-month diffusion index of 80. For comparison purposes, the Philadelphia Fed has also developed a similar coincident index for the entire United States. The Philadelphia Fed’s U.S. index rose 0.2 percent in October and 0.7 percent over the past three months.

Not to mention we told you so and so. We are living on false premises and borrowed time. Good luck to all.

Get A Map

We blogged last month about tourists trapped in Cooke City, Montana by early season snows and Dear President's Federales. Now that the shutdown is past and one of the eastern routes clear of snow, there is a new problem exiting Cooke City -- taking a wrong turn. The Missoulian reports,

CODY, Wyo. — By the end, they had just eight pieces of bread and a half tank of gas left.

It was Sunday night, Nov. 3, and Mark and Kristine Wathke, missing since Oct. 28, were sitting in their Kia Forte trapped in a foot of snow above 10,000 feet on the Beartooth Highway. They had come to the realization that probably they weren't going to be found, that this was likely the end.

It had dropped to 7 degrees below zero that night; Mark's water bottle, sitting in the back window, froze solid in a matter of hours.

The night before, on Nov. 2, when the idea first truly set in that they might not make it off the mountain, they decided to write goodbye notes to their loved ones and make a recording giving their farewells.

Beartooth Pass closed for season 

Up until that point, they'd been pretty sure someone would come looking for them.

The couple, from Wisconsin, had just finished a weeklong vacation touring national parks in South Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming. The grand finale was Yellowstone, and by Monday afternoon, Oct. 28, they were headed out of the park, turned for home.

"This was the return trip," Mark said.

"We were headed home," Kristine said.

They had reservations for a hotel in Miles City and so they punched the address into their cellphone's mapping application. The route it gave them took them out of the Northeast Entrance of Yellowstone National Park on Highway 212 over the Beartooth Pass.

"Thank you, Google," Kristine said.

A week passed.

On Saturday night, Nov. 2, with supplies running low, they began to talk about freezing together in the car and never returning home. They decided that, while they still could, they'd write down their goodbyes and leave a message for their families recorded on their cellphone.

Sunday night was as cold as they'd been the whole week, and that's when they finally accepted their fate. "We were like, 'Alright, we're going to die,' " Kristine said. And then Monday morning dawned a couple hours later, and Mark thought he heard an engine.

Beartooth Pass in June

"Mark heard it first and he was like, 'Kris! Kris! Kris!,' " she said. "We saw him coming up the road and I was just crying."

Rancher Troy Barnett had decided Sunday night, Nov. 3, that he'd check the highway after hearing that a couple had gone missing from Yellowstone earlier in the week. He found them first thing, put them on his snowmobile and drove them down the highway.

Where were Obama's Federales when it was time for a rescue? Let's hear it for the intrepid rancher who was bold, creative, took the initiative and saved the couple!

It's Over

The government shutdown was temporary but the impact of the White House's and Democratic Senate's insistence on new unfunded and underfunded programs and increasing debt burdens is permanent. With today's so-called bi-partisan deal, there goes out the window the momentum of fiscal discipline and decreasing deficits during the last couple of years. The will is lost. 

We are turning a corner of no return, I take little solace from my now almost sure to be accurate prediction of "a head fake just below a trillion dollar deficit in FY 2013." Sometimes I hate to be right. Going forward, an unrestrained, incompetent and out of control government will succumb to the demographic and entitlement tsunamis and resulting debt load, swamping the economy and crowding out expenditures for fundamental government functions.  

Obamacare is designed to control costs and reduce deficits by reducing choice, throwing money at the healthcare system, requiring additional "free" services, bringing into the health care system services that people currently purchase out of their own pockets, outlawing a wide range of low cost health care insurance policies, and pushing massive subsidies into the laps the middle class. Obamacare is driving full time jobs out of the economy and penalizes businesses working to grow. So, of course, the exact opposite of the intended cost and deficit impacts will occur. And the lies about keeping your doctor and maintaining your policy have been exposed. This was all quite predictable from the beginning. People will pay more, the government will spend more, the economy (and tax receipts) will grow less and the national debt will grow, without real restraint. 

There's a new layer of bureaucracy between you and your doctors. The faces of it are Barack Obama and Kathleen Sebelius.  I can guarantee the quality of medical care won't grow because of it.

Good luck to all!

Picture of the Day

Double amputee DV Segways Barrycade from WW II Memorial to White House.

Washington, DC October 13, 2013

At this point he has crossed Constitution Avenue and is rolling up 17th Street along the Ellipse.

Route from WW II Memorial to White House

Way to go Dude!

Debt Ceiling Proposal

I don't know if I can keep anyone's attention long enough to consider this, but  I want to lay out a proposal.  It goes like this:

1. Stop running deficits.
2. Start paying off the $17 trillion debt.

You wouldn't need to raise the debt limit anymore.  There, that wasn't so hard after all.

We Have Become a Nation of Suckers

Dear President sucks on a joint.

And the biggest suckers are the supporters and proponents of the massive deficit spending and debt skyrocketing regime of Dear President. Now the price of keeping the government going is to cave to Dear President's rants and ravings by dropping the sequester and accelerating the trajectory of growing debt. Unbelievable.

The depths to which this man has descended to are particularly obvious to many who have been around for decades and can judge the deviousness of the person and his regime against that backdrop. Take what Len Downie, a 44-year veteran of the far right wing publication, The Washington Post, has to say.  It's Nixonian.

Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press." The report notes President Barack Obama came into office pledging an open, transparent government after criticizing the Bush administration's secrecy, "but he has fallen short of his promise." 

"In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate."

In the Nixon era it was the man and his tactics that caused a Constitutional crisis. Modern era unblinking sentiment blames political opponents when Dear President's lies and false claims don't bear out and Constitutional stalemate results. Style counts and truth is the victim.

In Dear President's administration, questioning, probing and opposite points of view (i.e., true diversity) are not permitted. Take for example Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. In a remarkably prescient statement, considering her use of Gestapo like tactics to shutter National Park Service lands, easements, through routes, scenic views and private facilities during the appropriations lapse, Jewel said "I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior." No disagreement? There is plenty of reason to question, even reject the single variable, manufactured data, straight line extrapolation "findings" of global warming proponents, just as there was to question the global cooling proponents who emerged during the 1970's. But not in Dear President's control freak mind meld administration. Workers of the world unite; you must obey.

Intimidation and control are the rules,

"There's no question that sources are looking over their shoulders," Michael Oreskes, the AP's senior managing editor, told Downie. "Sources are more jittery and more standoffish, not just in national security reporting. A lot of skittishness is at the more routine level. The Obama administration has been extremely controlling and extremely resistant to journalistic intervention."

To bypass journalists, the White House developed its own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images. In some cases, the White House produces videos of the president's meetings with major figures that were never listed on his public schedule. Instead, they were kept secret — a departure from past administrations, the report noted.

Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who is now director of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, told Downie the combined efforts of the Obama administration are "squeezing the flow of information."

"Open dialogue with the public without filters is good, but if used for propaganda and to avoid contact with journalists, it's a slippery slope," Sesno said.

Sesno is someone else who has been around for a very long time. Yes, people, go with Dear President and keep that government going that you are unable and unwilling to pay for. See how this works out. As I've said, "Suckers!"

Facebook On Fire

We've been pinging Facebook more often than usual the last week or two. Here's a sampling, with commentary following each.

Edit

Grady Foster
October 2 at 9:05am near Bozeman · 
The House of Representatives is taking up 5 separate spending bills today, proceeding like it was done for a couple of hundred years, before we descended $17 trillion into debt. My, isn't that horrible?

And avoided sucking the future away from generations to come.

Grady Foster9 hours ago near Bozeman

Better than 9 out of 10 people who crow about how horrible and dysfunctional is Congress think their last vote for the House and Senate was spot on.

People love their letter carrier, hate the Post Office.

Grady Foster shared Drudge Report's photo.10 hours ago

And the government is going to provide you lower cost medical care. 

Obamacare website cost more than FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, INSTAGRAM...
'How can we tax people for not buying a product from a website that doesn't work?'
$634,320,919

Surprised the enrollment system doesn't work? We blogged in April HHS bureaucrats responsible for this mess couldn't tell the Sports section from the Style section in the Washington Post (both start with S). You don't want to trust these people with a major computer system or your health. When you can't get real time treatment for your disease, Dear President will send regrets.

Grady Foster shared a link.
10 hours ago

Happy days are here again The skies above are clear again So let's sing a song of cheer again Happy days are here again

Obama’s national debt rate on track to double
www.washingtontimes.com
President Obama likes to say that raising the nation’s borrowing limit “won’t add a dime” to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office.

Nothing like a good tune to set you straight. For LIV's out there, "Happy Days" was FDR's campaign song. Roosevelt ended the Great Depression by entering WW II? So, how do you think that Dear President and Hillary will end the Great Recession?

Please Do Tell Dear President

An open letter:

Dear President, 

National forest is to the left of us, national forest is to the right. National forest is straight ahead of us, it's a sight, sight, sight.

Gallitan National Forest
 Ranger Districts.

The Gallitan National Forest is north, east and south of our home, in view, when looking out the picture windows or hanging out on our wraparound porch or deck. The Bridger Range, the Crazy Mountains, the Madison Range, the Gallitan Range and the Abasarokas are USFS properties. Cooke City is surrounded by the national forest. Bozeman's water supply comes primarily from Bozeman/Sourdough Creek and the Hyalite Reservoir, flowing out of Gallitan National Forest. 

We are not unique in Montana, where the Federal Government owns 29 percent of the total land. We may not be your subjects quite to the extent of Alaska (60 percent federal ownership) or Idaho (61 percent), but we also are also not quite the ignorant flatlanders that you made us out to be, during one or your petulant piques, earlier this year.

We have a simple question Dear President. That is, when are your US Forest Service rangers going to catch up to their dear colleagues in the National Park Service in the race to implement the federal government shutdown? We are scheduling a little get together. For the comfort of our guests we want to schedule for a date before homeward passages will be barricaded, the water supply cut off and views verboten. 

Please do tell, Dear President, please do tell.

Sincerely,

Bozeman Comrade

In Heaven There Is No Beer

But this is not heaven, particularly for brewers who need to get nanny state regulatory approval for beer packaging and labeling.

The government shutdown reveals a federal bureaucracy riddled by ridiculous regulatory apparatus. Brewers can't pop a top without checking in with the Treasury Department's currently shuttered Alcohol, Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). 

TTB Shield, View Purloined
During Government Shutdown

Tony Magee, owner of Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petaluma, Calif., posted messages on his Twitter account this week ripping the shutdown.

"(Expletive) Feds are gonna shut down the already incompetent .Gov while hundreds of small breweries, including us, have labels pending. Nice." That was followed with "Wanna regulate? Perform or get out of the way."

Lagunitas Chief Operating Officer Todd Stevenson called the TTB shutdown a "headache." He said the company was planning to submit an application to package its autumn seasonal Hairy Eyeball in 22-ounce bottles instead of 12-ounce bottles but can't move forward.

Little did we know that control freak Michael Bloomberg's beverage size control regime was already alive and well within the bowels of the federal government. Like we need to pay someone (the compensation cost for the typical federal employee is over $100K per year) to decide whether it's OK, for every brand, concocted by every brewery, to market a 22-ounce can? The boys who pick up a cold one on the way home from work can and do decide on size for themselves.

As is so typical, the regulatory regime sticks it to the little guy and favors the big businesses that Obama loves so much,

The closing isn't expected to have much effect on industry giants such as MillerCoors or Anheuser-Busch. They can continue to produce existing products as usual. But the shutdown poses a huge problem for craft brewers, who build their businesses by producing quirky, offbeat flavors and introducing new seasonal beers, sometimes as often as every quarter.

Rotators are brewery versions of the daily special. Looking ahead, don't go to your bar or bistro and expect innovation and variety, only limited selections of pre-approved packages, just like health care. You get the government you vote for.  

Oh Say, You Can't See

Can you imagine George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt putting up traffic cones and crime scene tape to gratuitously impede distant views of a National Monument? Ah, but Barack Obama is progressive, different. Since he had already closed the Washington Monument your vindictive president resorts to shutting off views out in real America in order to punish the people and press his politics.

It's time to turn over Mount Rushmore to South Dakota. The states can handle the parks, monuments and memorials respectfully and responsibly. 

Mount Rushmore Sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote,

"We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than village impulses, greater than state dreams or ambitions. Therefore we believe a nation's memorial should, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, have a serenity, a nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggests the gods they have become.

"As for sculptured mountains - Civilization, even its fine arts, is, most of it, quantity-produced stuff: education, law, government, wealth - each is enduring only as the day. Too little of it lasts into tomorrow and tomorrow is strangely the enemy of today, as today has already begun to forget buried yesterday. Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor, and out of its body builds its homes, its temples. Civilizations are ghouls. Egypt was pulled apart by its successor; Greece was divided among the Romans; Rome was pulled to pieces by bigotry and bitterness much of which was engendered its own empire building.

"I want, somewhere in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the Continent, so far removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting civilizations, a few feet of stone that bears witness, carries the likeness, the dates, a word or two of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high it won't pay to pull them down for lesser purposes.

"Hence, let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away."

Yes, their visage endures for posterity until the wind and rain shall wear them away, or until Barack Obama becomes Dear President of the United States.

The Myth of Financial and Economic Armageddon

Don't believe the fairy tale stories reported in the media of financial and economic free fall resulting from the tussle between the House of Representatives and the President, and the resulting so-called gridlock and dysfunctional government.  There are always short term fluctuations to be sure, but the dollar has actually strengthened since the Republican House was elected in November 2010 and has been fighting to reduce deficits and slow the growth of the federal government debt bomb. Here are the data.

Obama's NPS Holds Tourists Hostage

It's ironic that Barack Obama prattles on about how Republicans are holding a gun to the head of the American people when Dear President is using his armed US Park Police and Rangers posses to actually hold tourists hostage.

US 212 closed due to
winter weather conditions.

A small geography lesson is in order. Cooke City, Montana (elevation 7,835 feet) is a tourist town located four miles outside the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park. There is one road into and out of Cooke City. To the west the road out travels down through Yellowstone National Park, then outside the park to Gardiner Montana on US 89, continuing down Paradise Valley towards Livingston and points beyond. Leaving Cooke City to the east is US 212, the Beartooth Highway, which crosses the Abasaroka Mountains, Beartooth Pass, (Elevation 10,947 feet) and the Beartooth plateau, before dropping down to Red Lodge Montana, then on to Billings. Due to continuous extreme weather conditions, the eastern route is closed in winter, i.e., most of the year in these parts. Typically, the Beartooth Highway closes in mid-October and opens in late May to early June.

Green Line is Yellowstone NP Border, Red is Beartooth Highway, Yellow are alternate roads.

Early season snow storms this year have closed the Beartooth Highway since September 24, and shut down the Chief Joseph Highway bypass as well, giving tourists in Cooke City no way out because they are blocked by Obama's NPS thuggery.

The most recent storm dropped between 10 and 14 inches of snow, preventing road travel to the Chief Joseph Highway, which can be used as an alternate route out of Cooke City. And Yellowstone closed Tuesday because of a congressional budget impasse that caused the federal government to shut down. Locals can travel through along the still-plowed roads of the park to Gardiner with special stickers they apply for from the park. Tourists, however, are unable to traverse the stretch, barring a medical emergency. “We're trapped,” said Bill Anderson, of Wichita, Kan., one of about 15 tourists in Cooke City. “It's nuts.”

How can it be nuts?  This is the policy of Dear President of the United States. Don't dare call him nuts, lest the plethora of useful idiots on the left label you extremist, racist and bigot.  Just say it's time to turn national parks over to the states. We've had enough of this.

Obama Closes Ocean, Changes National Park Service Culture

Virtually overnight, Barack Obama has changed the National Park Service culture from one of serving the people to that of sticking it to the people -- a remarkable transformation.

After Barrycadding the open air plaza that is the WW II Memorial, blocking bicyclists from riding into the District of Columbia, unlawfully shutting down private parking at the foundation owned and operated Mount Vernon Estate, refusing the state of Arizona's offer to pay to keep the Grand Canyon open and blanketing the National Capital Region with unpaid police officers who are issuing $85 tickets to motorists parking in vacant unmetered parking spaces, the latest is that Obama's National Park Service is issuing orders to shut down the ocean.

Charter guides received a message from the National Park Service this week informing them that they are not permitted to take clients fishing in Florida Bay until the feds get back to work. That means that more than 1,100 square miles of prime fishing is off limits between the southern tip of the mainland to the Keys until further notice.

The ocean is for them, not you.

The closing affects not only fishing guides, but anyone with a license to conduct business in the park, including tour operators and paddling guides — anyone with a Commercial Use Authorization permit, said Dan Kimball, superintendent of Everglades and Dry Tortugas national parks.

You got a hick bully in the Oval Office. It's catching, working its way down and through the bureacracy through Obama's OMB enforcement arm. Good choice American People!  From here on out I will be an advocate of turning all National Park Service properties over to states and local government. They get the job done. They, unlike Obama's NPS, will be good and faithful stewards.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/03/3668028_p2/shutdown-day-3-food-distributor.html#storylink=cpy

Government Shutdown Activities: Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial Williamsburg visitors interacting 
with period actors/interpreters.

If you have driven to the DC area, it's only a couple more hours to Colonial Williamsburg, a privately operated historical attraction that Barack Obama's National Park Service doesn't own or control, and hasn't tried to close down -- yet. It, like Mount Vernon, the attraction we first recommended for stranded tourists, is an amazing historical exhibition --  fascinating, entertaining and instructive. Colonial Williamsburg is made up of about 20 blocks of preserved and restored Colonial Americana, with the Governor's Palace and the Virginia colonial Capitol (George Mason, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry served there in the 18th century) thrown in for good measure. Guides and period actors/interpreters abound. Visit only if you want to be astounded by our roots, the founding of our country, and the people behind it.

The Colonial Williamsburg web site sums it up,

Colonial Williamsburg is open during the government shutdown.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization and is not affected by the federal government shutdown. All activities and events will go on as planned.

As with Mount Vernon, when we lived back east we purchased annual passes at Colonial Williamsburg and visited repeatedly.

Here is the Foundation's overview,

Obama Administration Spends to Avoid No Spending

Barrycades are popping up throughout the DC region. NPS is putting fences at road crossings and comically blocking trail access points in open park areas. Locals are laughing at the impositions all the while walking, running, biking or rolling around the barriers and pushing the barriers asunder, even though busting a barrier is now a capital crime in the District of Columbia.

The Obama administration attempts to shut down DC to bike riders.

The Weekly Standard pictured the NPS reinforcement of barriers surrounding the open air plaza at the WW II memorial earlier this week.  While adverse publicity has forced Obama's OMB (orders issue from OMB which is the president's operational arm) and DOI thugs to cut off the plastic ties, the picture exposes the absurdity of putting up the barriers in the first place.  

Weekly Standard picture of RentACades

Lack of funding is the excuse for blocking off the WW II Memorial. But as I've noted, the Memorial is open air plaza, not normally staffed, a place with steps and pillars designed for walking around. Volunteers are there virtually around the clock to answer questions and help visitors -- not salaried park rangers.  So when the Obama administration runs out of money, what does it do?  It leases protection.  The Barrycade is a RentACade -- dial 888-276-2618 or go to http://www.rentaguard.com/rentacade/.  NPS is paying a vendor to supply materials to block off a site where access is costless.  That's presidential spite for you. “It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Meanwhile, open space abutting the WW I DC Memorial, around the corner and down Independence Avenue from the WW II Memorial, remains unbarricaded.

File picture of DC Veterans WW I Memorial on Independence Avenue

The last living WW I veteran died a couple years back at age 110 -- no living infirm visiting veterans for the Obama administration to block.

Lawless Move: NPS Barrycades Private Mount Vernon

Barrycades at Mount Vernon

I've been advising tourists to go down to Mount Vernon during the Federal Government shutdown. Mount Vernon is open and welcoming. It's privately owned and privately funded. The Mount Vernon Ladies Association is clear, stating that " Mount Vernon does not accept grants from federal, state or local governments, and no tax dollars are expended to support its purposes."

Well that's not enough for the petulant, grubby, power mongering presidency of Barack Obama. The National Park Service sent its jack booted rangers and maintenance workers down to Mount Vernon to shut down all the foundation owned parking -- Barrycades is what the barricades have come to be known. Barrycades appeared as if from nowhere to block off publicly accessible areas that are unstaffed and have never been shut down for any reason (including many previous government shutdowns). Obama's move is not only ridiculous.  It's lawless.

Now let me talk about the law for a second here.  Mount Vernon parking spaces are accessed through National Park Service land, but Mount Vernon has secured access and use through legally enforceable easements. Easements are all about. Here in Montana, for example, many public roads are built on private land, but landowners have through one means or another granted public access through and along those roads. The private owners have no right whatsoever to deny the public access through their property on those roads.  

Current Parking Situation at Mount Vernon,
Courtesy of www.thecollegepolitico.com

An easement is every bit as much of a property right as what is commonly thought of as ownership.  The owner of property who has granted an easement has no more right to eject or interfere with users of an easement than a landlord has to willy, nilly evict or interfere with the quiet enjoyment of leased property by a tenant. The NPS Barrycading was a lawless move, but what else would you expect from the most lawless administration since Richard Nixon occupied the White House?

The Mount Vernon Ladies are a cooperative crowd. Their parking is open and available to all, including those looking for a place to anchor a hike or begin a bike ride along at the southern terminus of NPS's Mount Vernon trail. Cooperativeness just makes them an easy target in the world of Obama. 

Confronted by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the National Park Service has backed down, removing the saw horses and police tape from the entrances to all but a distant satellite lot that fills only during the heavy summer tourist season.  

The barricading of the parking lots at Mount Vernon comes at the same time the National Park Service has blocked off many other public monuments, memorials, and parks. They’ve even blocked off small parking lots that are otherwise unmanned. In fact, every parking lot along the George Washington Memorial Parkway has been barricaded.

That includes a parking lot with a mere 3 spots located on the parkway between Mount Vernon and Old Town Alexandria.

At the moment there is no word on when the government shutdown will end, when the National Park Service will remove their barricades, or why the barricades were really necessary in the first place. Hopefully those answers will all become apparent soon.

Petulant twits carrying out Obama's will -- NPS, you are totally losing my respect dudes.

The creepy presidency continues.

Overcoming Barriers

A little bit of anarchy is a very good thing.

WASHINGTON — Wheelchair-bound elderly veterans pushed aside barricades to tour the World War II Memorial Tuesday morning, in defiance of the government shutdown which closed all of the memorials in the nation’s capital. 

The four bus loads of veterans — visiting from Mississippi as part of a once-in-a-lifetime Honor Flight tour — ignored National Park Police instructions not to enter the site as lawmakers and tourists cheered them on. 

“We didn’t come this far not to get in,” one veteran proclaimed.

They weren't alone.

As Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, distracted a Park Police representative, other lawmakers and their staff helped topple the metal fences. A bagpiper on hand for the event led the men past the crowd and into the heart of the memorial, attracting a large, applauding crowd. 

“This just means so much to me,” said Alex “Lou” Pitalo, an Army vet who also served in the Pacific during WWII. “I waited 70 years to get a welcome like this. And to get to see this and to have all those people clapping … I’m just so happy. This was amazing.”

Veterans and their escorts broke through the Barrycades and crime scene tape at the WW II Memorial.

The WWII Memorial is an open plaza with steps and pillars. It's granite. It is never closed for any reason and seldom is there any official presence. More personnel resources are needed to close plaza off than to leave it alone. There is no reason to have closed it off this week to begin with other than advancing Barack Obama's power, ego and cause. The spite presidency continues its work.