Stephen Gutowski (@collegepolitico) reported on Twitter the Park Police blockaded the entrances to the parking lots to Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon is not a government site. According the the Mount Vernon web site:
No Shutdown Here
The Federal government may be shut down, but Washington’s home remains open. Mount Vernon has remained a private non-profit for more than 150 years.
Numerous other sites around DC have been unnecessarily closed by the NPS and other federal agencies in what critics are labeling a cynical political stunt which only serves to punish the American people.
In some cases, efforts to shut down these sites actually require more manpower and resources than if they had been left open, highlighting the fact that this is an act of partisan theater by the Obama administration to pin the blame for the government shutdown on Republicans and opponents of Obamacare.
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It is costing more resources to close these places than to just leave them alone and let the public use them. So much there being no money to waste. Obama is using this whole thing to get a visual of people being denied access and trying to blame it on the GOP. However, the park service has said at the WWII memorial that the orders came from Obama's OMB. Why devote these precious resources to something as trivial as keeping nonagenarians from visiting their monument before they die? The reason is to inflict pain, which is what this administration is good at. Sad that there are more resources devoted to guarding bike trails and monuments that guarded and protected Americans in Benghazi.
