Someone (or some persons) in the National Park Service Alaska Region formed an insurgent group in January of 2017, and opened up a Twitter account to openly defy the Trump Administration. They seem to be doing so during business hours.
They call themselves the @AltNPSAlaskaRegion on Twitter and occasionally refer to themselves as park rangers.
Last week they ramped up their resistance. They posted on Twitter this message, which warns the private sector to stay out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or face economic recrimination:
“BREAKING: We need EVERYONE to watch to see who will be bidding on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next few years. We must ALL work to spread the word to economically break them. That is one major step in defending this last great wilderness #Resistance“
The Alaska Twitter group describes itself as the “The Unofficial #Resistance team of the U.S. NPS Alaska Region. As civil servants we don’t serve this Admin, we serve the American People.”
These public servants also post notes like the following one on Twitter during normal Alaska Time business hours — on a regular basis:
The group, which has a logo that mimics that used by the National Park Service, appears related to the national resistance team called @AltUSNatParkService on Twitter, which purports to be run by Park Service employees on their non-government hours.
That group was also founded last January around the same time as when the Park Service was discovered to be engaged in politically motivated communication. The Park Service had its Twitter account suspended after it showed side-by-side photos of President Trump’s smaller inaugural crowd and former President Obama’s larger inaugural crowd, without explaining to readers that the District of Columbia voted 90 percent for Hillary Clinton in November of 2016, which would account for the crowd difference.
The Alaska group has been busy resisting Trump since its January inception, posting 1,336 Twitter messages.
The official Park Service Twitter account, founded in 2009, has posted 8,900 messages in its entire 8-year history.
Sounds like we can save some money on personnel cost but it would be offset somewhat by related unemployment costs.
Park service should be closed until these frauds are brought into the light!!
I would bet a new Fox shotgun that the Alt Left NPS members in Alaska will vote for Walker’s re-election. These are the people who went after John Sturgeon and other Alaskans who attempted to have quiet use of this public land.
It seems to me that use of the official site logo, by anyone expressing political views, should be illegal and met with a severe penalty.
They slightly changed them so they are not exactly the official logo, but most people would not notice the differences. – Suzanne
Park rangers, who mostly work in parks. also mostly don’t work conventional office hours. Parks are open and staffed a bit longer than 9-5, Mon-Fri. Therefore, if these are real rangers, your observation regarding when they post is absolutely meaningless. And if they have personal opinions off duty, they’re likely normal Americans
If you’re a public employee, you don’t have personal opinions off duty if those opinions are made under color of office or if your identity is inextricably linked to your employment. Just their cutesy emblem is enough to establish the link to their employment and make their speech unprotected.
As they usually do, the Left overplayed their hand in the dramatic growth of federal employment during the New Deal. They turned the Works Progress Administration (WPA) into a leftist/communist front. Abuses by federal employees and particularly WPA employees in the 1938 election led to the passage in 1939 of The Hatch Act, named for the Arizona senator of that name. The Hatch Act strictly limited the permissible political activities of federal employees and others receiving federal funds. Since FDR’s Democrats controlled the Congress in ’39 the activities must have been well over the top to get a Democrat Congress to pass such a law. Of course, they might have been as cynical then as they are now and have figured that the law wouldn’t really apply to them.
About the only legal right a federal employee had politically was the individual right to vote; no buttons, no signs, no campaign contributions, no public statements. Kennedy made the first breach in the wall by allowing unionization of some federal employees, so while the employees remained restricted in their political activities, their unions weren’t. Clinton and Gore mounted an all out assault on The Hatch Act and essentially gutted it. Comrade Obama pretty much finished it off, and federal employees essentially became a political party. Federal employee unions aren’t as powerful as most state employee unions in the union states because few federal employees are subject to compulsory dues as a condition of employment, but there are millions of federal employees and other recipients of federal funds and they are a formidable political force. Activist federal employees protected by merit system rules and union contracts are the essence of “the deep state.” Here in The West they are an occupying army. The right answer is to restore The Hatch Act and shut them up, and if they don’t want to shut up, you fire them.
Even without The Hatch Act, their speech is inextricably linked to their employment and they don’t have 1st Am. protections. Their cutesy emblem is enough like the NPS emblem for their speech to be taken as NPS speech. Some suits from the Secretary’s office showing up and escorting them out of the building with their personal crap in a Xerox paper box would likely have a beneficial effect on the morale of the remaining employees.
“shut them up”, you are a true constitutional conservative.
^^^ Spoken by someone who clearly has a very limited understanding of the Constitution.
Damned right; shut them up. They’re federal employees acting under a symbol that links their speech to their employment, and they don’t get to do that. I used to love to deal with smartass State employees who liked to rant about the 1st Amendment as they trudged out of the building with their crap in a Xerox box.
National Parks are unconstitutional to begin with. Give us our land back!
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