Author Topic: 'All about power and leverage' -- feds shut down major roadway, block access to graveyard  (Read 651 times)

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Offline Cincinnatus

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Just keep pushing, Obama. You might find out people are going to start pushing back.

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Folks who live in the Great Smoky Mountains have just about reached their breaking point with the federal government.

“It’s almost like they are pushing to see how far they can push before the American people say enough is enough,” said Ed Mitchell, the mayor of Blount County, Tenn. “We were founded on a declaration of independence. And they are about to push the people to the line again.”

Nearly a third of Blount County is inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So when the federal government shut down the park, it also shut down one of the area’s chief sources of revenue.

The National Park Service also closed the Foothills Parkway, a major thoroughfare in the county. The closure came without warning and left the local school district scrambling to get children back to their homes.

The children live in the eastern Tennessee community of Top of the World – serviced by School Bus 49. Normally, the bus travels along the Foothills Parkway. Other roads leading to the isolated mountain community are impassible by bus.

“It’s dangerous,” said Nancy Kemp, the spokesperson for Blount County Schools.”It’s very curvy and straight up the mountain. It’s just not a safe route.”

One local resident told Knoxville television station WBIR that the alternative roads are “white knuckle routes.”

The closure caught locals by surprise and left the school district scrambling to alert parents that they would need to find a way to get their kids back home. And until the partial government shutdown ends, school buses will not run. That means parents will have to transport their children to and from school using treacherous “white knuckle routes.”

“I’ve already talked with some of our neighbors (and) we’re going to be carpooling,” resident Danielle McClurg told the television station. “It’s going to be very inconvenient for our community.”

Resident Buzz King said the shutdown of the Parkway has already created hardships for the mountain town.

“It’s going to be tough on people up here – definitely tough,” he said.

Local businesses are also facing tough times.

“Twenty-eight percent of the park is Blount County,” the mayor told me. “And this is the busiest season for us – when the colors are changing.”

And so long as the shutdown is in effect – that means no fishing, hiking, horse-back riding, or camping inside the park.

“That’s a slap in the face to the American people,” Mitchell said. “They should have never, ever let this happen.”

One of the areas shut down is the popular Cades Cove – an old community that was donated by local residents to the federal government some 75 years ago, the mayor said.

“Hundreds of families gave up that land, packed up their stuff and moved out to give the country that park,” he said. ‘Now, they’re watching the government shut the gate on it.”

Even more insulting is the National Park Service won’t allow family members to visit old grave sites.

“Some of them have family members buried there,” the mayor said. “And they go and visit every week at the churches still in the cove. They are not able to do that.”

The Great Smokys are one of the most beautiful places in this country. If you have ever driven through them you know how unsafe it is when driving off the main highway. This usurper who infests our WH is putting the lives of these children at great risk and we have some idiot on here who is concerned that a trucker demonstration against his policies might offend DC commuters. What an incredibly skewed sense of values.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/07/all-about-power-and-leverage-feds-shut-down-major-roadway-block-access-to/?intcmp=latestnews
We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid ~~ Samuel Adams

Offline mountaineer

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This usurper who infests our WH is putting the lives of these children at great risk
Harry Reid made it abundantly clear that dead children are irrelevant to the Democrats in Congress and Occupy White House (collateral damage, at the most).
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