Supporters of government largesse will often cite polls and studies showing the taxpayers support the expansion of this or that program. “Support” for a government program is all well and good when support only requires a nod of one’s head. It’s another matter entirely when one is asked to shell out actual money. The current partial shutdown of some government operations helps to illustrate the dubious nature of this assertion. If the taxpayers were uniformly appalled and outraged at the thought of a government shutdown, it seems unlikely that the federal government would need to go out of its way to make a big show of what government services were being shut down. This is a time honored strategy, of course, and even has a name: the Washington Monument Syndrome. For decades, the bureaucrats in the National Park Service have gleefully closed the parks whenever government shutdowns have occurred, and have even threatened to close parks if Congress did not provide sufficient appropriations to please the NPS. The Park Service knows that the closure of parks plays a helpful role in angering American tourists and taxpayers who find themselves traveling a thousand miles to only end up at a closed National Park. According to one blogger, the NPS has even gone so far as to station armed guards with assault rifles and body armor at the entrance to Death Valley National Park. Taxpayers who still think that there is something “public” about the public lands in the National Parks might want to think again.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 06:02:06 +0000
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