Ron Hart: Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned


By RON HART / For the Register

Ron Hart: Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned

A. National Park Service ranger stands behind the barricades at the World War II Memorial during a government shutdown Oct. 1, in Washington, D.C. The memorial was temporary opened to veteran groups.

We are into the second week of the government shutdown; shouldn’t we be looting Target for a flat-screen TV by now? Why haven’t you joined a marauding street gang?


A turning point in this game of shutdown brinksmanship happened last week when “our” petulant government went to great lengths to shut down open-air memorials in order to intimidate us from ever cutting its funding.

During the sequester, the government shut down White House tours. Now it closes open-air monuments and parks. Tourism is the second-largest reason people go to D.C.; No. 1 is to beg for a government handout.


The privately funded World War II Memorial was blocked with barricades; it took more effort to barricade it than to staff it. When a busload of “Greatest Generation” veterans from Mississippi and Iowa showed up, the barricades didn't stop them. They did the right thing – again. The World War II vets, self-reliant and with little tolerance for petty politics, came in, anyway. They made the administration in D.C. look like exactly what it is: a bunch of heavy-handed, union-like goons.

This government tactic is known by many as Washington Monument Syndrome, and is a well-worn ploy. It got its name in 1969, when the then-director of the National Park Service contrived a plot to pressure Congress into not cutting his funding by being defiant.

We have a $17 trillion debt, up from $10 trillion when Obama took office; much of it is owed to China. All the while, Congress ping-pongs various spending bills back and forth between the House and the Senate. If we know anything about Ping-Pong, we know it happens every four years, and the Chinese always win.

Do we need a Commerce Department? Commerce just sort of happens, anyway. Do we need to pay farmers not to plant crops? Has the Education Department improved education (which is the role of municipalities and states)?


“60 Minutes” did a great piece last Sunday on how getting Social Security disability payments has become a TV-lawyer-driven scam. Payments have increased 20 percent in six years. They now cost us $120 billion a year, more than the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Labor – combined.

Nancy Pelosi said in a recent interview that the government cannot cut anymore. Pelosi also said she will not rest until Obamacare is fully implemented or until she captures all 101 Dalmatians.


Now, these “nonessential” government employees know they will be paid for sitting at home, which must not be dissimilar to what they do at their government jobs, if no one notices.

The shutdown is a cold-blooded, political calculation by President Obama. He knows the GOP will be blamed for it by the mainstream media, which is the echo chamber of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. If you believe them and Carney, everything is the Republicans’ fault. And if you can respect the veracity of anyone, it’s a carney.

This Washington standoff has no easy off-ramps for either side. Neither wants to be the first to blink. The advantage is decidedly with the Democrats; Nancy Pelosi has not blinked since the sequester.

The tactic of government throwing a temper tantrum when denied massive funding has run its course. Is the $3.7 trillion a year it spends not enough? We are left with a swollen bureaucratic morass that intimidates its funders – the taxpayers. It is structurally incapable of spending just a little less than it did the year before, and it seeks revenge when we ask it to live within its means.

Ron Hart, a syndicated libertarian op-ed humorist, award-winning author and TV/radio commentator can be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com or visit www.RonaldHart.com



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