Over the weekend, the FBI took its Amber Alert missing child website offline, blaming the shutdown. At the same time, First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” web site stayed up and running.
Amber Alert is back online today, after the closure of the site generated negative publicity.
So it seems that Lord Obama can pick and choose what is and isn’t getting shut down. And it seems that he is in fact picking and choosing what gets shut down, in real time. He chose to close memorials and parks, including Mount Rushmore, and Obama chose to kick a pair of senior citizens out of their home. Obama’s decisions appear to be arbitrary and capricious, based not on actual fiscal conditions, but on what he can close to visibly demonstrate his political points on the shutdown. In some cases, the government is spending more to enforce the shutdown than it would spend simply to leave sites open. In closing hundreds of privately-run parks, Obama’s decisions are actively costing the Treasury millions of dollars per week.
When the lawsuits over closing a home and privately-run businesses get underway, and they will, the fact of these arbitrary and capricious displays of power should be included.
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