In a Duke News oped, author Anne Mitchell Whisnant doesn't seem to know that the reason the Blue Ridge Parkway is underfunded is that NC's own Charles Taylor (R-11), chair of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, doesn't bring home the bacon he's constantly bragging about.

In fact, she doesn't even mention that the problems with underfunding the parkway has anything to do with him:

Durham, N.C. -- America’s beloved Blue Ridge Parkway, the scenic road winding through the North Carolina and Virginia mountains, is in crisis. Though it has been the most popular attraction in the National Parks system since the 1950s, and today draws more visitors than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon combined, its annual operating budget is only about half that of those parks.

See his name anywhere? Gotta love passive voice.

And, rather than call on Taylor to do the job he has pretended to be doing for the last 15 years, she decides that the the states can offer the only solution to Taylor's chronic short-changing of one of his district's two major tourist attractions. (Don't worry, he's short-changing the other one, as well -- the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.)

Yes, the states of Virginia and North Carolina are supposed to bail out the scandal-ridden congressman who perennially gets elected on the theme "I bring home all kinds of dough you'll never get with a freshman congressman."

Ms. Whisnant concludes:

. . . could a new state-federal partnership allocate state monies to aid our parkway? It was done once before -- when the parkway was first built. Let’s do it again, before it’s too late.

Yeah, you read right. She thinks North Carolina and Virginia should step in and bail out Charles Taylor. And everyone knows the citizens of California, Arizona, and Wyoming need subsidizing by the far richer south.

Since she doesn't mention Taylor by name, of course there is no mention that he gets endorsed every two years by the two largest newspapers in his district based on his "effectiveness," based on his "powerful" position in appropriations, based on the concept that we would get shortchanged in the budgeting process if we ever got up the nerve to electe a long-overdue replacement.

Ms. Whisnant, my hat is off to ya. It takes some ovaries to pimp for one of the most corrupt men left uninvestigated in congress, while at the same time acting like you're doing the citizens of your states a favor. Such a noble suggestion. Instead of calling on our congressman to do what he keeps telling us he's been doing year after year, let's up pony up and pay the federal bill through state taxes!

I don't mind so much that she calls on the states to bail out the feds. I mind that she does so while acting like the feds were helpless to act, helpless to give our states our fare share of the federal park service budget.

If Arizona, California, and Wyoming can get more funding, more employees for national parks getting less visitors, let's blame the appropriations committee members responsible. Then, we can talk about appropriate solutions.