Shutdown: If They Won't Run It, Other People Will Be Lining Up To Do So

The usa.gov site has been turned into a Democratic propaganda site for ginning up outrage against the shutdown.

Among its bullet points:

"Every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, will be immediately closed."

Web sites like nasa.gov and nps.gov have been pettily blocked with "shutdown" intro pages rather than simply letting them run would have cost nothing.

You know, I meant to blog about this years ago, but for some reason never got around to it. My family visited the Grand Canyon a few years back, and one thing I noticed while there was that virtually everything interesting and worthwhile that had been done to enhance the site had been done by private individuals.

The first path down for the mule trains was maintained for years by the Kolb Brothers who also built their famous home and photography studio handing over the edge of the canyon. The Hopi House, Lookout Studio, the El Tovar Hotel -- all the really beautiful facilities -- were built by private railroad money and investors.

The park service was antagonistic to the Kolb brothers for years and since the government eventually forced them out, they really haven't done anything except minor improvements to the trail. The government-built hotels are ugly and dingy, nothing like the gorgeous El Tovar. We didn't realize this and ended up getting booked into a terrible piece of crap government motel that would have made a Motel 6 blush in shame.

Honestly, if the government turned the tourist areas of the Grand Canyon over to a private business to run, it would be a huge improvement.