Tag: masks

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crime and punishment local leaders

Charges Dropped

Shannon Joy, arrest, School Board, Covid, protest

The best part of the story — not counting Shannon Joy’s pluck and defiance — is how promptly the prosecutor dropped the bogus charges of “criminal trespass” against her.

The Rochester mom and radio talk show host had been handcuffed while attending a Fairport school board meeting this August. Her dastardly deed consisted of wearing a mask wrong.

Joy figures that board members were sick and tired of her vocal criticism of their policies — she has a platform outside of board meetings — so, in collaboration with others, the board had staged her arrest with malice aforethought.

To supporters at the courthouse, Joy spoke of “bully tactics sometimes employed by school boards and superintendents who don’t want to hear from parents about their children’s education.”

The county’s policies about masks are less than uniform. PJMedia’s Megan Fox points out that in Monroe County and other nearby counties, people are not required to wear a mask “except in public schools, government buildings, and some doctors’ offices.”

Irony and hypocrisy were not eschewed by arresting officers. One cop teaming up to handcuff Shannon Joy was not wearing a mask. Another wore her own mask in the same under-​the-​chin fashion for which Joy was being hauled away. These officers did not, however, arrest themselves.

“How is this America?” Joy tweets above an arresting image of the arrest.

Well, it’s not the Mayberry America. It’s not the best America. But at least there was a refreshing return to common sense in her courtroom victory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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local leaders

Political Intimidation Unmasked

mask, child, children, student

Last week, Illinois state regulators threatened Dr. Jeremy Henrichs with “personal and professional consequences,” specifically loss of his medical license, if he continued to oppose mandatory mask-​wearing in schools.

Henrichs is a board of education member and a medical doctor.

He questioned the necessity of masks. Why? On the basis of his best medical judgment — and he is hardly alone in seeing good reasons to oppose mask mandates, especially for children. In response, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation “has threatened my medical licensure unless I expressly support and enforce a mask mandate for all students.”

In his public protest, Henrichs added that it’s bad for democracy when people tolerate this kind of intimidation.

Fortunately, in this particular case the intimidation is not being tolerated, for state lawmakers called for hearings on the matter.

The agency that threatened Dr. Henrichs soon apologized, apparently ending the threat to him. (According to the letter of apology, though, the complaint won’t be formally closed until the Medical Disciplinary Board meets on September 1.)

In addition, the entire Mahomet-​Seymour school board of which Henrichs is a member has signed an op-​ed defending him.

Their op-​ed argues that board members should be “free to express their opinions, debate with their colleagues . . . and vote their conscience without the threat of coercion. . . .”

So it’s looking good for Dr. Henrichs. But power-​holders with censorious mentalities are still out there, eager to crack down on speech with which they disagree.

Whenever they can get away with it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

The Lollapalooza Loophole

Lori Lightfoot, Lallapallooza, Chicago

When the Lollapalooza music festival took place in Chicago, on the hinge of July and August, with oodles of attendees (some masked), a few people cried bloody foul, on account of super-​spreader event potential. But Fox News’s Ben Domenech noted that the number of murders in Chicago over July was three times the number of COVID deaths, and the nation’s capital sports a similar ratio.

When Domenech asked guest Tim Pool about the lack of interest in gun violence in gun-​controlled Chicago, Mr. Pool expressed bafflement.

But — really? Politicians seem bent on focusing on regulating us with masks and jabs rather than regulating criminals. And for a reason.…

More striking was Anthony Fauci’s public worrying about the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, while ignoring the Lollapalooza event — as well as Barack Obama’s 60th Birthday Party, which revealed/​reveled in plenty of celebs unmasked.

A familiar double standard: how the elites get to behave vs. how they say we “must” behave!

The concept of “Anarcho-​tyranny” may explain much of this. Politicians of a certain sort prefer to regulate peaceful people (tyranny) while letting real criminals go free (anarchy). It is easier to police the peaceful and law-​abiding, while criminals on the loose reinforce the need for a more powerful state.

The Lollapaloozans are on the “right side” (the left side?) of the cultural divide, while the Sturgis rally is on the “wrong side.”

And make a good target. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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paternalism too much government

Doom, Still Pending

Walenski, CDC, Covid

Has our ‘wife, mother, and daughter’ betrayed us?

In late March, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, went off-​script (her words), reflecting on what she called her “recurring feeling” of “impending doom.”

COVID case numbers were up. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope,” she said. “But right now I’m scared.”

You might think this is no way to lead a country in a crisis — after all, she had just been given the top job at the Centers for Disease Control. 

“I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director,” she pressed on National Public Radio, “not only as your CDC director but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.”

Last Monday, Dr. Walensky “first signed off on changing her agency’s mask guidance,” The Washington Post reported, only to continue “to defend the CDC’s sweeping guidance that Americans wear masks in public, including in a Senate hearing Tuesday,” before Thursday’s announcement that the vaccinated don’t need to go about wearing masks, indoors or outdoors, for their own sake or others’.

The policy lurch leaves us in some weird territory. If the vaccinated may go about un-​masked, then the unvaccinated should remain masked — yet it remains illegal (courtesy of HIPAA regulations) for businesses to ask about our medical records. Which implies, for want of enforcement, the controversial (and unwanted) “vaccine passport” idea. 

Further, many who have endured the disease claim immunity. Others who have had COVID, like Dr. Jordan Peterson, took the jab because they were told their immune levels were too low.

But “the science” on that is far from settled.

Thankfully, the CDC is not really in the regulation business. And increasingly Americans on all sides are ignoring Walensky, Fauci and Co.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies

Masking Upside Down

upside down, inside out, masks, surveillance

After initially being downgraded as worthless, perhaps even harmful, masks are now heavily promoted. There are even demands that the federal government step in to make mask-​wearing mandatory.

Nationwide. 

Bad idea. And I could marshal a number of arguments to make the case. Indeed, one really sticks out: when the CCP virus is no longer the fear, but a bad flu season strikes at an unsuspecting populace, will the masks be required then, too? What’s the threshold? How do we decide when to go into all-​panic mode?

How much better it would be to argue for mask-​wearing as a matter of manners — consideration for others during pandemics or simply if ill — than as policeable government policy. 

And maybe we should look at it upside down. You know, like we can reflect on school closures in perpetuity as a possible blessing — because they encourage private and communal responses.

Maybe it is a downside up, but the current pro-​mask state mandates mean that governments cannot stop you from wearing masks when they don’t want you to wear masks.

All around the world, but especially in Britain, and increasingly in the United States, mass surveillance with face-​recognition AI is turning free peoples into the subjects of Big Brother’s watchful gaze.

Frightening.

And the easiest way to throw a monkey wrench into face-​recognition systems is to wear masks when we are out.

They can hardly stop us when they are requiring masks because of contagion fears. So even if the forces of totalitarian control fail to mandate masks nationally, take the “new normal” as an excuse to mess up their larger agenda.

Big Brother?

You may lose this one after all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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