From Forbes.com:

The National Park Service’s Behavior Has Been Shocking, And It Should Be Privatized

By Paul Kengor

The behavior of the National Park Service during President Obama’s shutdown campaign has been shocking. As has been widely reported, Park Service employees have been told to make life as uncomfortable as possible for people, and have flourished in that endeavor. They have acted unprofessionally as a partisan and ideological arm of the White House and its campaign.

Quite correct, as I wrote here and here and here.

If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, then just click Google GOOG +0.55% and start searching. There are unfortunate first-person accounts everywhere. Among the worst examples was a case innocently covered by a small Massachusetts newspaper that reported on a group of tourists traveling to Yellowstone National Park. The tourists, by no means a bunch of Tea Partiers, described the Park Service as “Gestapo”-like in its tactics.

Some people disagree with that term.  I, myself, as a cop, do not.  When you behave like a police thug, you will be perceived as a police thug.  Let me be blunt: Park Rangers are not cops.  They do not handle 40 calls for service in a shift.  They do not have to be beholden to the CAD, to the surrounding units, to people who are fighting every day, every shift, every hour, and you are expected to solve it all.

To continue:

That, of course, is an exaggeration. But the mere fact that a group of apolitical citizens would invoke such hyperbole to describe how they were treated really says something.

And that is a heart-slicing point.  But accurate.  When you lock people up in a hotel, when that occurs, you’re a thug.

As the Weekly Standard wrote:

“People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”

And that is the point precisely.

The Obama Administration went clearly and overtly OUT of its way in order to frustrate and anger and inconvenience American Taxpayers who have a right to see and visit the venues their dollars BOUGHT.

And a great point of the article:

The beauty of privatizing management rather than ownership is that ownership is permanent but management is not. This means that if one management group doesn’t perform up to expectations, a new one can be hired. The hiring process should always be regularly competitively contracted. This “competitive bidding” process keeps the current management group on its toes and accountable. If it performs badly, it can be fired and replaced—unlike the current group of government employees running the National Park Service, which is a protected class with a monopoly on its service.

But the final paragraph is the most proper and poignant:

This thought will anger NPS employees. Well, for that, they can thank White House schemers for overplaying their heavy hand and unwittingly shedding ominous light on the abusive possibilities of this agency. That’s not a sentiment that the president and allies intended to foster when they began agitating and orchestrating their shutdown campaign. Rather than convincing us of the alleged evils of congressional Republicans, they’ve unveiled the roguish tendencies of some federal employees who blindly follow orders. Let’s respond by taking power away from those employees, so this cannot happen again. Easily maneuvered into providing propaganda for a president or party, these NPS workers have proven themselves unworthy of the mission entrusted to them. They are the embodiment of the dangers of unaccountable, big government.

Consequences, ladies and gentlemen.  Consequences.

BZ