Category: too much government

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national politics & policies too much government

One Against the Mandate?

Daily Wire, law suit, Covid, vaccines, mandates

“President Biden, the federal government, social media, and the establishment media have conspired to rob Americans of their freedoms in the name of public health,” declares Jeremy Boreing, co-​CEO of The Daily Wire. “They have broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree.”

Quoted by Alex Swoyer in The Washington Examiner, Boreing is explaining why his company — best known for its platforming (as we say these days) of commentators Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh, but also for its burgeoning news service and mini-​entertainment empire — will not comply with “the Biden administration’s COVID-​19 vaccine mandate for private employers.”

It is “suing in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the company announced Thursday,” Swoyer reports.

Though we’ve been hearing about these “requirements” for over a month, they were published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) just yesterday. Folks at The Daily Wire had been talking up their challenge ever since Biden first dropped his bomb, and had their legal response ready.

OSHA’s mandate, Swoyer explains, “directs large companies to require employees to get vaccinated by Jan. 4, or else pay for them to get tested weekly,” and also requires those tested-​but-​unvaccinated employees “to wear a face mask.”

Note that the tests for the coronavirus are not reliable, tests for antibodies are not even mentioned (and also not reliable), and face mask utility has not been demonstrated to anything approaching certainty, as I’ve discussed.

Grounds for challenge are legion.

Other affected companies should join The Daily Wire with parallel lawsuits, or at least amicus briefs.

The president’s mandate must not stand. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom local leaders too much government

Intrusive, Improper, Offensive

in-n-out burgers, Covid, mandates, papers

The In-​N-​Out Burger restaurant won’t kick out customers who fail to display a “vaccine passport” proving they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19.

In-​N-​Out has restaurants in California and the Southwest. And it has one in San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed has ordered restaurants to enforce the city’s vaccine mandate.

Arnie Wensinger, an attorney for the chain, has explained the company’s defiance.

“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” he said on KPIX-​TV. “It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not, whether based on the documentation they carry, or any other reason. [This is] intrusive, improper, and offensive.”

In an age of weasel words and abject apologies for non-​wrongdoing, In-​N-​Out Burger is forthright in defense of itself and its customers.

Not without cost. The health department closed the restaurant for mandate violations, and it was able to partially reopen only for takeout and drive-​through orders. 

Indoor dining is verboten.

The San Francisco health department says that the restaurant was informed “multiple times about the proof of vaccination requirement,” as if the mere repetition of such an order were enough to justify it. The “outreach team provided information so the restaurant could comply.…”

Of course, the folks at In-​N-​Out Burger know that they “could comply.” And the San Francisco government has also been provided with information on why they should leave In-​N-​Out alone. Would repetition help?

Leave In-​N-​Out alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom too much government

No Transplants for the Unvaxxed

organ transplant, socialized medicine, Covid

Because of a rare but dangerous side effect, heart inflammation, Scandinavian countries are now discouraging the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger people.

We’ve seen other reports of severe illness and even death because of, or at least soon after, COVID-​19 vaccinations. But we’re assured that serious side effects are so rare and the vaccines so effective that the wisdom of getting vaccinated is self-evident.

But what’s more evident? They’re forcing you. 

If you’re “vaccine-​hesitant” for any reason — even if you’ve already got immunity because of a COVID-​19 infection — too bad. A public-​private partnership to mandate vaccination is already costing many people their jobs.

Now it’s costing people a chance for a kidney.

So ordains University of Colorado Hospital, whose Kidney Transplant Coordinator, Katie Harmann, tells Leilani Lutali that she “will be removed from the kidney transplant list” until she is vaccinated.

Note that the opportunity is not being withdrawn because the prospective recipient is sick with COVID-​19 and therefore is about to kick the bucket anyway. The hospital is treating the patient’s assessment of her own risk as irrelevant.

Lutali says, “I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see [whether the vaccine is the right thing to do], and that I have to take the shot if I want this life-​saving transplant.”

This is the reality of rationed care in a largely socialist medical system.

And this is what Democrats lust for, even demand; and it is what they are working mightily to ensure — that our current messy, mixed healthcare system will soon become even more bureaucratic and restrictive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment too much government

Government Loves Anarchists?

antifa, violence, anarchy

Some of my best friends are anarchists. But theirs is a curious anarchism, for unlike the caricatures of anarchists of old, who — theorizing that since, in their minds, all states are illegitimate, they had free rein to shoot, bomb and monkey wrench the State and its supporters — my anarchist friends are friendly and non-violent. 

They know they cannot achieve the kind of peaceful, stateless-​but-​lawful society they want with destruction.

Today’s best-​known anarchists, however, aren’t like my friends. They are “Antifa,” and believe in initiating force. Together with Black Lives Matter, these “anarchists” upped the level of chaos to fever pitch during the months leading up to last November’s presidential election.

And they haven’t exactly stopped.

What do they hope to accomplish?

Well, don’t ask the FBI. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t keep track of them. 

Spencer Brown, writing at Townhall, explains: “In a congressional hearing last week titled ‘Confronting Violent White Supremacy (Part VI): Examining the Biden Administration’s Counterterrorism Strategy,’ FBI Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Timothy Langan said that the Bureau doesn’t consider Antifa to be an ‘organization,’ and as such does not have specific information on the group’s activities.”

This is how the FBI and the left in general can say that the biggest domestic terrorist threat is “right-​wing extremism.” 

The idea is, apparently, if you don’t look at the data — even define it out of existence — you cannot report on it!

Why would the FBI join Democrats in averting their eyes from anarchist (as well as Marxist and racist) violence?

Perhaps the de facto policy at play here is anarcho-​tyranny, where the government lets violent crime run rampant. Why? So government actors can leverage chaos and public anxiety to increase government size and scope.

Do politicians and functionaries use Antifa “anarchists” to increase their power?

Never let a crisis go to waste.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today too much government

Blasphemy? Independence?

Botswanans celebrate their independence from Great Britain with an official day on September 30.

Also, September 30 has served as Blasphemy Rights Day since 2009, when it was initiated by the Center for Inquiry.

Categories
Accountability too much government

[Not] Just Plain Bats

Covid, bat, gain of function, China, lab

It’s been several months since I’ve focused on Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), which was funded by your tax dollars to “improve” upon viruses found in nature. 

The evidence for this has been out there for some time, but many avoid drawing any conclusion, finding it circumstantial. Or something.

Remember Daszak being caught organizing the open letter in The Lancet, proclaiming all talk of gain-​of-​function research as “conspiracy” theorizing and “dangerous”?

Well, now The Lancet is reported to be preparing to publish an article going so far as to say that “there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-​CoV‑2, and a laboratory-​related accident is plausible.”

Meanwhile, my co-​podcaster, on his LocoFoco Netcast, quotes Daszak’s own public boastings (from YouTube), effectively laying out EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-​of-​function research, talking of insertions of the spiked protein, and referencing to his colleagues in China.

And now another revelation, via science writer Matt Ridley. Specifically, Drastic Research reveals an earlier Daszak grant proposal to inject “deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanised and ‘batified’ mice.”

This proposal — “named ‘DEFUSE’” — was not accepted by … oh, and this gets good … DARPA.

“In other words, a branch of the federal government had already judged aspects of EHA’s research … as falling under the definition of GOF [gain of function], only for [Health and Human Services] to approve similar work without P3CO review in 2018 and 2019,” the Drastic Research report summarizes.

So it was too iffy for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but hunky dory with our medical bureaucrats?

The story is more than just about bats, it’s about laboratory manipulation of existing viruses to create new viruses.

Which is, well, batty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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bat/​Covid

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