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Posted on 10/07/2013 5:24:27 AM PDT by markomalley
National Park Rangers shut down a family-owned and fully-booked inn along a lonely North Carolina highway on Saturday, driving customers away during the peak tourist season.
Bruce O’Connell, the owner of the Blue Ridge Inn, provoked the park rangers when he reopened his lodge after the Park Service demanded he close his business by Thursday due to the partial government shutdown. The World War II veterans who stormed their barricaded memorial inspired him to take a stand against the federal government, he said.
“It’s conscience and conviction that have taken over me, and I just can’t roll over any more,” he said. (RELATED: WWII vets storm closed memorial as GOP congressman reportedly distracts cops)
In response, the rangers blocked the inn with patrol cars and told customers and told customers who had booked reservations months in advance that the “government was closed,” according to USAToday. They also forced 35 of O’Connell’s 100 employees out of their homes and off the federally-leased lands.
“It’s about the visitors. It’s about the staff and employees who are now having to move off the mountain — they live here — with no notice. They have no jobs. That’s the concern,” said O’Connell of his newly homeless, jobless workers.
Another North Carolina outpost, the Peaks of Otter Lodge, folded without a fight after receiving a similar Park Service order.
Chief Ranger Steve Stinnett plans to enforce the directives issued from National Park Service Rangers in Washington, D.C. to keep rangers holding customers and homeowners at bay “as long as they are needed” — in other words, until the government resumes the recently shuttered 17 percent of its functions.
Keeping the rangers ringed around the inn will, according to Stinnet, ensure that “people don’t utilize a business that, according to the federal government, is closed.”
The Obama administration’s decision to deploy federal agents to wall off private businesses costs the tourism industry $76 million per day.
North Carolina’s unemployment rate currently stands at 8.7 percent.
If they can do this to businesses now, they can do it to any business at any time. "According to the Federal Government, your business is closed."
In the good old days of the Soviet Union ...
Those who can will file for unemployment and other government assistence. NC should sue the Feds for reimbursement of those costs.
“According to the Federal Government, your business is closed” ‘cause you didn’t build that!
Ahm, is it just me, or is it more expensive to keep rangers posted 24/7 around these lodges than it is to just let them stay open?
As for this ...
> Chief Ranger Steve Stinnett plans to enforce the directives
> issued from National Park Service Rangers in Washington, D.C.
Chief Ranger Steve Stinnet must be reminded that he is under no obligation to execute unlawful orders, which these clearly are. His execution thereof makes him complicit in the crimes being perpetrated by the petulant narcissist occupying the White House.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough...
I think that’s part of the goal of “Obamanomics” -
get as many people dependent on government as possible.
Was that strategy called Cloward-Obama or Obama-Priven, anyway?
Oh, of course. I’d forgotten that. Everything you have is a gift from the federal government, comrade.
These punk rangers need to realize they don’t own the land. The people do.
Our land will be just fine without these punks. They can go get real jobs.
When those federal agents set foot on state property for a split second, the governor needs to have that states national guard armed with APCs and M4s arrest them all at gun point.
Am just having a hard time wondering why good men don’t stand up and do something.
Our country is being hijacked, taken over — from within.
What are we going to do ...just sit here and let them do this?
Let’s stand up for Bruce O’Connell!! Obama is a THUG...a MENA, HEARTLESS Negro Nero.
Who is HEAD of the NPS???? Does HE live on GOVT> PROPERTY??? KICK HIM OUT if he does!!
Make a list.
We will remember.
Head of NOS is Jonathan Jarvis.....anyone know anything about him...where he lives??
What the Park Rangers are doing is absolutely shocking and disgraceful. Shutting down a private business on public property, putting productive people out of work. In fact, they are going out of their way to do this. You wouldn’t believe it could happen here.
Let’s change that paragraph a bit.
What the DHS is doing is absolutely shocking and disgraceful. Rounding up people and herding them into camps, taking people away in the middle of the night. In fact, they are deliberately targeting people. You wouldn’t believe it could happen here.
Oh yes, it can. What you are seeing with the Park Rangers is PEOPLE FOLLOW ORDERS. Now I know what the prescient Germans of 1930 saw coming. But they couldn’t do anything to stop it.
As far as I can tell, there is really only one difference between the two paragraphs I typed. I can type the first one and post it. Today. Maybe it puts me on “the list.”
I probably won’t be able to type and post the second one. They won’t have internet in the camps.
"See what happens when you don't worship Oboner, you peons?"
Where is the governor of that state? Why isn’t Fox News there covering this heart-rending story?
When a member of any minority is deprived of some government program, the Leftist media is there to tell the world that the hard-hearted Republicans are to blame. Where are the stories of hardship caused by Obama and Reid?
This is a selective shutdown by the NPS Rangers in NC.
They claim it is a “concession” so must be closed.
The NPS website for NC Parks shown a number of “concessions” as open.....
http://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/nfsnc/alerts-notices/?aid=20323
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