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Whitmore in Michigan
In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer allowed Home Depot to stay open but forced it to close off parts of its stores. “I just don’t understand,” said one Michigander doing odd jobs. “You can put up drywall, but you just can’t paint it right now because that’s not essential.”
Gov. Whitmore
Whitmer received a steady stream of criticism after announcing the measure on April 9, with people inside and outside the state insisting her orders were overly restrictive and nonsensical. Among the more pilloried provisions was a ban on traveling between any two Michigan residences and a shuttering of lawn care services. It prevented big box stores from selling certain items like paint and plants, meaning establishments like Home Depot had to tape those aisles off from customers. It prohibited the use of motorboats, but it allowed the use of boats without motors.
Four Michigan sheriffs announced in a letter last week that they would not enforce parts of the order, which they said represented a violation of individual rights. "We write today to inform the public for our respective counties of our opposition to some of Governor Whitmer's executive orders," they said. "While we understand her desire to protect the public, we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority."
So, if you have a brain, can you tell me if any of this makes sense?
• If a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.
• Somehow it’s un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.
• Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.
• It was cool for Joe Biden to "blackmail" the President of Ukraine, but it’s an impeachable offense if Donald Trump inquires about it.
• Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.
• People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.
• Inflammatory rhetoric is outrageous, but harassing people in restaurants is virtuous.
• People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.
• Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.
• Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang-bangers who jump the southern fence are welcome.
• $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.
• If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.
• People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.
• We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us (the democrats and liberals).
• Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.
• Criminals are catch-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it's a violation of THEIR rights.
• And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us "racists"?!
* Several Democratic run cities, have allowed lawlessness to take over ares of the city. They called riots peaceful, they called other areas "summer of love" areas, soon to have people getting beat up, robbed, shot and killed. But now they want the president to bail them out with federal funds when they didn't enforce the law to keep the city from being destroyed and burned!
Plandemic rules: You can riot, destroybuildings, cars, and cemetaries, tear down staues and monuments and liquor stores, abortion clinics and businesses owned by the ruling class can stay open. But Churches can't gather, Hair and Barber shops have to close, along with resturaunts and Bars. But, the globalists big chain stores can stay open.
Maybe it will be the hand sanitizer that finally exposes the sham. The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that due to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s waiving the familiar 3.4-ounce limit for liquids and gels—for hand sanitizer only.* You may now bring a bottle of Purell as large as 12 ounces onto the plane to assist in your constant sanitizing of yourself, your family, your seat, your bag of peanuts, and everything else. All other liquids and gels, however, are still restricted to 3.4 ounces. The liquid restriction has been a key component of air travel ever since 2006. If people are now allowed to bring 12-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer onto planes, won’t the planes blow up?
People are getting arrested and put in jail for breaking the distancing rules or not wearing a face mask, while the Demoratic governors are letting criminals out of prison and jail so they aren't succeptible to the corona virus!
Nothing makes sense anymore, no values, no morals, no civility and people are dying of a Chinese virus in the media, but 99.8% will survive if infected.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Provides a Lesson in What States Shouldn't Do To Stop a Pandemic
Some protestors were nasty and went overboard, but her harsh tactics will sap her legitimacy at a critical juncture.
SHIKHA DALMIA | 4.16.2020 9:48 AM
(Jacob Cessna/Fema/ZUMA Press/Newscom)
If any politician is looking for a lesson on how not to deal with the coronavirus crisis, they would do well to look at Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Even if you have zero sympathy with the people who violated basic social distancing rules yesterday to protest Whitmer's new stay-at-home-order, you should at least understand that her policy was bound to spark an ugly blowback.
The spread of coronavirus represents a massive failure of public health authorities, but Americans everywhere—including in Michigan, where I live—have thus far willingly complied with their edicts. It has been amazing to see just how completely American society has transformed itself in three short weeks: Businesses that have been deemed non-essential have shut down, laying off millions of workers. The ones that are still operating are letting their employees telecommute from home.
Grocery stores have become thinly populated because shoppers are limiting their trips. Every store near me has erected spit barriers between cashiers and shoppers and some are disinfecting every single cart before use. The vast majority of shoppers wear masks (regardless of whether local laws mandate this or not), sanitize their hands a gazillion times before touching items, and refrain from unloading their carts when someone else is checking out. Drivers wipe down pumps and steering wheels. Park visitors maintain a scrupulous six-foot distance.
Most local lockdowns have their share of nuttiness (for example, in Florida and D.C., you can walk through parks but not sit down) and excesses (a Colorado* man was handcuffed for playing with his daughter in an empty softball field). But so long as the ratio of good sense to nonsense is relatively high, for the most part Americans have gone along. Irate residents and partisans seeking to exploit these measures for political gain have been marginalized.
But that changed in Michigan with Whitmer's new executive order that not only extended the state's shelter-in-place mandate till the end of the month—something most everyone had expected and accepted—but added arguably the country's most draconian and nonsensical provisions.
Even as neighboring Indiana and Ohio are relaxing their orders and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency guidelines are classifying more industries as "essential" so that they can reopen and minimize the economic hit from the shutdown, Whitmore has gone the other way on the pretext that Michigan has the third-highest share of coronavirus cases in the country.
She ordered big box stores to stop selling paint, carpets, and other home-improvement material not considered essential, though as Reason's Billy Binion reported, she does allow lottery ticket sales, probably because the proceeds go to the state's K-12 funds.
She shut down lawn-care services. Contender's Tree and Lawn Specialist Inc., a company that purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of fertilizer and other supplies had to stop spraying its plants in the middle of spring season, risking its entire crop. (Michigan's gardening industry, with an estimated retail value of $580 million to $700 million and 9,000 employees, faces a complete loss this year if it isn't able to operate soon.)
In addition to large gatherings, she also barred families that don't share a home from getting together, preventing one man from seeing his girlfriend of 14 years because she doesn't live with him.
She forbade families from traveling to their vacation cottages in northern Michigan, a popular springtime activity in Michigan. She shut down golf courses and prohibited motorized boats, although non-motorized ones are allowed, for some reason.
This is arbitrary and irrational micromanagement that has understandably irritated many residents.
What's more, Whitmer has decreed that violations will count as misdemeanors punishable by up to a $1,000 civil fine. Criminal penalties are also on the table, should prosecutors choose to pursue that. Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has gone full China and is encouraging employees to rat out their bosses and call the police if they try to open up shop in violation of the lockdown.
What's so outrageous about all this is that the new businesses and activities that Whitmer is targeting can all be safely conducted while adhering to strict social distancing rules. But Whitmer's theory apparently is that anything beyond absolutely essential conduct jeopardizes frontline workers. This is the precautionary principle on steroids. It considers even an infinitesimal increase in secondary risk as unacceptable, a mindset that could justify stopping virtually any activity anytime.
That's why this order has disrupted the political equilibrium in support of her efforts. To date, hardly any legal challenges have been filed against any stay-at-home orders. But Whitmer's new order has already prompted four Michigan residents, including the guy who can't see his girlfriend, and Contender's, the landscaping company, to sue her for violating their right to free association and perpetrating an uncompensated regulatory taking. More lawsuits might well be underway.
A Facebook group called Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantining—whose very name suggests that it isn't opposed to reasonable quarantining—gained steam with over 282,000 members. Four Michigan sheriffs have declared that they won't enforce parts of Whitmer's executive order that they view as unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, Operation Gridlock, which was mounted by the Michigan Conservative Coalition inviting motorists to drive to Lansing, the state's capital, and shut down its roads, elicited a massive response Wednesday. Thousands of Michigan residents heeded the call and created an hours-long traffic snarl.
Although the motorists adhered to the social distancing rules as they were advised, the protest also brought out a lot of nasty gun-toting thugs onto the streets. Michigan Proud Boys, a supremacist outfit, blocked the intersection around a hospital. Not only did they ignore safety guidelines, exposing themselves and others to the virus just when Michigan was beginning to flatten the curve, they also waved Confederate flags and chanted "lock her up."
This is horrifying and indefensible.
However, Whitmer ought to take the pushback from responsible protesters seriously. She needs to use the minimal force necessary—not the maximum possible—to maintain public buy-in. If she is seen as too power-hungry, she will lose legitimacy. Instead of defeating coronavirus, she'll spark civil unrest.
Michigan Faces More Protests Over Stay-At-Home Order
NEXT: It Figures That Michigan Is Among the First States To See Protests Against Social Distancing
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America Is a Sham
Policy changes in reaction to the coronavirus reveal how absurd so many of our rules are to begin with.
By DAN KOISMARCH 14, 20207:16 PM
Security and security theater at an airport.
Robert Alexander/Getty Images
Maybe it will be the hand sanitizer that finally exposes the sham.
The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that due to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s waiving the familiar 3.4-ounce limit for liquids and gels—for hand sanitizer only.* You may now bring a bottle of Purell as large as 12 ounces onto the plane to assist in your constant sanitizing of yourself, your family, your seat, your bag of peanuts, and everything else. All other liquids and gels, however, are still restricted to 3.4 ounces.
Among many shocks of the past week—school closures, Tom Hanks, the shuttering of one sports league after another—this rule change registers as major. The liquid restriction has been a key component of air travel ever since 2006. If people are now allowed to bring 12-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer onto planes, won’t the planes blow up?
The TSA can declare this rule change because the limit was always arbitrary, just one of the countless rituals of security theater to which air passengers are subjected every day. Flights are no more dangerous today, with the hand sanitizer, than yesterday, and if the TSA allowed you to bring 12 ounces of shampoo on a flight tomorrow, flights would be no more dangerous then. The limit was bullshit. The ease with which the TSA can toss it aside makes that clear.
All over America, the coronavirus is revealing, or at least reminding us, just how much of contemporary American life is bullshit, with power structures built on punishment and fear as opposed to our best interest. Whenever the government or a corporation benevolently withdraws some punitive threat because of the coronavirus, it’s a signal that there was never any good reason for that threat to exist in the first place.
Each day of this public health crisis brings a new example. People thrown in jail for minor offenses? San Antonio is one of many jurisdictions to announce that, to keep jails from being crowded with sick citizens, they’ll stop doing that. Why were they doing it in the first place?The federal government charging interest on loans to attend college? Well, Donald Trump has instructed government agencies who administer loans to waive interest accrual for the duration of the crisis. But why on earth is our government charging its own citizens interest anyway?Broadband data caps and throttled internet? Those have been eliminated by AT&T and other internet service providers, because of the coronavirus. But data caps and throttling were really just veiled price hikes that served no real technical purpose. Why did we put up with them?Police helping landlords evict tenants in times of financial trouble? Due to the coronavirus, not anymore in New York, Miami, and New Orleans. But—and you see where this is going—why do the police aid evictions when tenants are stricken with other, noncoronavirus illnesses?The city shutting off your water, or your power, as punishment for hardship? During this public health emergency, plenty of cities and companies have suddenly found a way to keep service turned on. “As long as COVID-19 remains a health concern,” said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, “no Detroit resident should have concerns about whether their water service will be interrupted.” Why in the hell should any Detroit resident have concerns about their water service being interrupted, ever? Shouldn’t clean water be the absolute base level of service delivered by a city to its residents?
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/coronavirus-tsa-liquid-purell-paid-leave-rules.html
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Go on and live your lives
By DAN PHELPS | dphelps@lowellsun.com | Lowell Sun/Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise
PUBLISHED: June 17, 2020 at 7:22 a.m.
I am not Dr. Fauci. And I do not play him on TV, which he does. (And he does have a part to play in this ongoing soap opera, you better believe it.) I do, however, have a doctoral degree in life. Call me Dr. Grouchy. Please allow me to give my advice for living with the coronavirus as we move forward with life.
Wear a mask if you want. Heck, wear a mask for the rest of your life if you want. (But know that if you wear a mask in your car while driving alone, you will be the target of much laughter and merriment.) But this mandatory mask-wearing thing is getting out of hand. If you don’t want to wear a mask, don’t wear a mask. And besides, we’ve been hearing differing opinions about the efficacy of masks — sometimes even from the same person. (Hello, Dr. Fauci.)
Walk whatever way you want down the supermarket aisle. Walk on your hands pushing your cart with your feet if you want. (But please let me know first — I need video of that.) Of all the stupid rules that have come out of this stupid pandemic, this could be the No. 1 most stupid. How is this in any way preventing the spread of disease? Even if everyone in one aisle is going the same way, there is bound to be a time when they come within 6 feet of each other (while masked, of course). This is a dumb rule.
Open the damn playgrounds and ballparks. It’s summer, for crying out loud. Driving by a park and not seeing kids playing is heartbreaking. It’s also not healthy. I mean, are we not supposed to encourage kids to get off their obese duffs and get outside and play and get some exercise? Bring your kids to the playground. What are they gonna do, arrest you?
Enough of the elbow bumps. Shake hands. How dare these so-called experts tell us that shaking hands may be a practice of the past? If you feel the need, use hand-sanitizer after you shake, but for the love of all that is good in this world, do it when the other person is out of sight.
That brings us to hugging. I’ve never been a big hugger so I’m OK if hugging falls by the wayside. (I mean, don’t get me wrong. If I bump into Dolly Parton and she wants to hug me, who am I to deny her?)
What’s up with the self-quarantining for 14 days after visiting another state? So I want to bring my business a half mile over the border to Trader Joe’s or Pizzico, and I’m supposed to put myself into quarantine for two weeks? But that means I can’t go back and spend more money up there in a few days.
What about folks from Massachusetts who own property in, for instance, Maine and pay property taxes and spend a bunch of dough up there on a regular basis? Give me a break. These states should be happy people from other states want to visit and bring their money along for the ride.
Protesting, whether peaceful or violent, somehow — and we haven’t yet figured out how but we’re working on it — prevents you from getting the coronavirus. And what’s even more puzzling, the more the merrier. It is confounding to the medical community, yet we all agree that meeting in large groups to protest something has been proven to be a preventative in the catching of a very contagious disease, but that playing in a playground is deadly.
Folks, Dr. Grouchy is here to tell you that if you are going to get the coronavirus, you are going to get the coronavirus. No amount of mask-wearing will help. Wearing a mask will, however, prevent you from correctly performing an eye exam because you’ll fog up the screen on the contraption that you’re supposed to be looking at and pressing a button when you see a squiggly line, and could lead to you receiving the wrong contact-lens prescription.
Please do not misunderstand Dr. Grouchy. Wear a mask. It is your prerogative. Wear one to protect yourself — oh, and others, of course (wink-wink). It is also your prerogative not to wear a mask.
Life is about living, and although staying inside your home except for really, really important things like going out for a walk (masked, of course) or getting a few things at the market (masked, of course) does technically constitute living, it stops constituting living when you die alone in said home. Life is about seeing friends and family, chatting with them without having to yell across the yard, taking vacations, going to ballgames and, yes, once in a while getting sick.
When did Americans become afraid of getting sick? Yes, older folks and folks who have ailments that make them more susceptible to COVID-19 should take the appropriate safety measures — if they want to. But we really can’t stop someone from doing something that is potentially unhealthy for them. If we could, there would be no doughnut shops or ice-cream stands.
Be forewarned that following Dr. Grouchy’s advice could lead to exposure to COVID-19. It could also lead to exposure to the flu, the common cold, conjunctivitis and any number of communicable conditions. You could also be diagnosed tomorrow with cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis or any other life-threatening disease.
So before that happens, live your life. Go to work. Go out to eat. Go on vacation. Go on with your life.
https://www.lowellsun.com/2020/06/17/go-on-and-live-your-lives/
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