BY ASHE SCHOW, The Washington Examiner
A partial government shutdown just wasn't going to hit people the way the Obama administration needed it to, so officials resorted to some unprecedented acts to make Americans feel the pain, as Conservative Intel's David Freddoso notes:
Most people — even the poor in state-run safety net programs — don’t have that many interactions with the federal government agencies affected right now by the shutdown.
So it’s a challenge to make people notice that your agency is vital to the survival of the Republic. The feds have to apply a lot of force and behave in unsubtle ways to make you angry with Congress.
1. Veterans

No group has been more visible during the shutdown than veterans. Memorials were closed, and House Democrats voted against bills that would restore funding to veterans programs.
A short list of some of the monuments closed (note that veterans moved barricades to see their monuments anyway):
» World War II Memorial
» Normandy cemetery
» Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
» Iwo Jima Memorial
Just 4 percent of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs have been furloughed, according to Government Executive magazine, making it even more odd that the department’s funding wasn’t restored.
2. Lake Mead, Nev., property owners

Suddenly, owning a home on federal land causes homeowners to be kicked out of their domiciles.
Ralph and Joyce Spencer, an elderly couple who own a Lake Mead cabin, were forced out of their homes by park rangers saying they had to leave until the federal government reopens.
The Spencers have owned their home since the 1970s, and fellow Lake Mead resident Bob Hitchcock, who's owned a cabin on the lake for 26 years, said he wasn't told to vacate during the previous government shutdown that occurred under the Clinton Administration.
3. Cancer patients

House Democrats also voted against a bill to restore funding to the National Institutes of Health, a federally funded medical research center.
Yes, there is privately funded cancer research still occurring, but saying no to cancer research of any kind is probably not a winning strategy.
NIH is an agency within the Health and Human Services Department, which furloughed 49 percent of its employees, according to Government Executive.