Optics

Obama is pissed that he isn't getting his widdle way with Obamacare and he is using the government shutdown to punish We the People. Case in point -- there are a lot of parks that sit in Federal land but are privately owned, pay rent to fed.gov but receive no money, no tax credits, no subsidies from them. Warren Meyer writes at Coyote Blog and also runs a company that manages a number of these parks. He is getting shafted. Here is his story:

Its Official: US Forest Service Closing over 1000 Privately-Funded Parks
The US Forest Service, under pressure apparently from the White House, has reversed both its historical precedent as well as its position yesterday and will close over 1000 public parks and campgrounds that are operated by private companies without using one dime of public money. Why does the fact that our landlord the US Forest Service is going on an unpaid vacation mean that tenants of theirs have to close up shop too? We have no idea.

This is how I explained it in my letter to my senators:

My company, based in North Phoenix, operates over 100 US Forest Service campgrounds and day use areas under concession contract. Yesterday, as in all past government shutdowns, the Department of Agriculture and US Forest Service confirmed we would stay open during the government shutdown. This makes total sense, since our operations are self-sufficient (we are fully funded by user fees at the gate), we get no federal funds, we employ no government workers on these sites, and we actually pay rent into the Treasury.

However, today, we have been told by senior member of the US Forest Service and Department of Agriculture that people �above the department�, which I presume means the White House, plan to order the Forest Service to needlessly and illegally close all private operations. I can only assume their intention is to artificially increase the cost of the shutdown as some sort of political ploy.

The point of the shutdown is to close non-essential operations that require Federal money and manpower to stay open. So why is the White House closing private operations that require no government money to keep open and actually pay a percentage of their gate revenues back to the Treasury? We are a tenant of the US Forest Service, and a tenant does not have to close his business just because his landlord goes on a vacation.

This is a large misstep for the progressives. They are looking to punish the middle-class while the ruling-class will not be affected and the recipient-class would not be visiting these parks anyway. They remind me of the quote attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto:

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

There are a lot of people out here in flyover country and we are getting pissed...