Tyranny is Alive and Well in Democrat Run Third-World Cities and States (and Thanksgiving Wishes)
BY LISA MICHELLE
This is what tyranny looks like . . .
Apart from packing Michigan nursing homes with elderly Covid-19 patients, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has imposed harsh and nonsensical Covid-19 restrictions. While she prohibited the Michigan peasants from outdoor outings like fishing and boating, her husband used her position as leverage to dock his own boat.
Although Whitmer has had to rescind some executive orders after the State Supreme Court ruled them to be unconstitutional, she’s at it again, and just in the nick of time for Thanksgiving. Gatherings of more than two households at a time are discouraged, and she has suspended in-person classes at high schools and colleges statewide and eat-in dining at restaurants and bars until December 8.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has banned travel to and from Chicago and from a large number of other designated states without first producing negative COVID-19 test results, which must be performed within 72 hours before arrival or a 14-day quarantine is imposed.
Doesn’t this violate HIPAA?
Governor Pritzker has also commended Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot for boasting some of the most restrictive covid-19 guidelines, including enacting a stay-at-home advisory for all non-essential workers and discouraging constituents from having guests and telling them to “cancel traditional Thanksgiving plans.”
Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown also has issued strict Covid-19 regulations. As of November 18, she has forbidden social gatherings of over six individuals from two separate households. Worse yet, she has promoted a police-state mentality, asking residents to rat on their friends, family, and neighbors and to contact police if they fail to comply with restrictions . . .
As The Washington Times explains,
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown wants residents to call the police on their neighbors over violations of the state’s latest coronavirus shutdown, which includes a six-person limit on in-home gatherings.
The temporary “freeze,” which went into effect Wednesday, restricts indoor at-home and social gatherings to six people from no more than two households, with no exceptions for Thanksgiving dinner get-togethers.
In a Friday virtual interview with KGW-TV, Ms. Brown agreed that Oregonians should contact authorities if they see their neighbors hosting more than six people.
Vermont’s Governor Phil Scott, who is the only Republican (in name only) here, might rate Number 1 on a 1-to-10 scale, with the most restrictive at 10 for tyrannical conduct. He’s issued orders to ban all social gatherings, both indoors and outdoors, and has threatened to penalize children if their parents don’t follow the rules.
As Breck Dumas writes in The Blaze,
On Tuesday, state officials delivered an added threat to those who dare to visit Grandma for Thanksgiving: Children will be banned from the classroom and must return to remote learning at home for two weeks — or for one week if they can present a negative COVID-19 test result after that time.
Continue reading . . .
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf has mandated masks — now a lucrative and growing industry that will be hard to shutdown — for indoors and has banned the purchase and sale of alcohol but for Thanksgiving only. Following in the footsteps of Governor Pritzker, he has also placed extreme restrictions on interstate travel. Those who enter the state must be tested for Covid-19 and quarantined . . .
Today I’m announcing efforts to slow the spread of #COVID19 as cases reach critical levels.
— Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) November 23, 2020
They include a recommitment to school safety, protections for businesses and employees, reduced gatherings, enforcement for mask wearing, and an advisory encouraging PA'ians to stay home. pic.twitter.com/NbV8w9Xqq2
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has followed suit and announced several new coronavirus restrictions that limit indoor and outdoor gatherings, restrict group exercise classes, and prevent the sale of alcohol at restaurants past 10 p.m.
California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has also imposed draconian Covid-19 restrictions in the wake of Thanksgiving. On November 19, he issued “limited” stay-at-home orders with curfews and condemned Californians to wear masks outside at all times, but it’s not without some resistance . . .
Resist the curfews!
— Millie Weaver 🇺🇸 (@Millie__Weaver) November 24, 2020
Resist the take over of America by authoritarians! https://t.co/fYxysnCcqD
Producer and actor Kevin Sorbo might have come up with a way around Newsom’s Thanksgiving restrictions: “To those wondering,” he tweets, “I will be having a funeral on thanksgiving for my pet turkey. 30 guests may attend.”
To those wondering. I will be having a funeral on thanksgiving for my pet turkey. 30 guests may attend
— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) November 26, 2020
New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy isn’t too far behind. Like Whitmer and Cuomo, he inexplicably forced elderly Covid-19 patients into ill-equipped nursing homes and is possibly responsible for thousands of deaths. Now, after months of irrational, unscientific lockdowns and restrictions, he has once again extended his initial March 9, 2020 Executive Order, but his constituents are beginning to grow impatient with his hypocrisy . . .
Of course, the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo led the way, sending thousands of vulnerable elderly patients with Covid-19 to predictable deaths by cramming them into nursing homes, but now he denies it. He continues to impose draconian rules that violate privacy and are killing New York businesses. Some small business owners have had just about enough of it and are beginning to stand up to him . . .
Video (above): Buffalo New York Business Owners Stand Up to Cuomo Lockdown Orders; Chase Out Sheriff & Health Dept who tried to shutdown meeting of owners trying to survive (Nov. 20, 2020).
As of late, however, Cuomo’s been a bit preoccupied targeting Orthodox Jews . . .
Unbelievable! NY state inspectors admit on camera that the @NYGovCuomo administration gave them a list of Jewish schools they need to give summonses to regardless of compliance with the State’s COVID-19 red zone regulations!
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) October 26, 2020
The school is empty, they wrote a summons anyway. https://t.co/Db4Zb2eG7D
Yet, it’s not without resistance either . . .
More recently, The New York Post reports,
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday blasted a Hasidic synagogue for hosting a secret maskless wedding with thousands of guests, saying the potential coronavirus superspreader event was ‘a blatant disregard of the law’ as he called on the de Blasio administration to investigate.
‘It was a blatant disregard of the law. It’s illegal. It was also disrespectful to the people of New York,’ Cuomo said during a press briefing at his Midtown office — prefacing the condemnation with a hedged ‘if that happened,’ despite photos and videos showing the gathering.
‘The law protects everybody. It protects you, but it also protects me,’ he said.
Cuomo said New York City ‘should do a robust investigation’ of the Nov. 8 nuptials, and later noted that ‘from my information,’ the de Blasio administration is, in fact, investigating the matter.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. A more comprehensive, state-to-state list of coronavirus restrictions is available here at AARP.
Fortunately, Cuomo’s days of tyranny and religious persecution might be coming to end, as well as those of other tyrannical governors. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled him in a 5-4 decision. The court addresses both the matters of Agudath Israel of America, et al, v. Cuomo and Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York due to their similar nature. Each seeks injunctive relief from his Executive Order that seems to arbitrarily and distinctly target religious services and institutions by sporadically classifying them as in “orange” and “red” zones, which limits attendance to between 10 and 25 people:
Citing a variety of remarks made by the Governor, Agudath Israel argues that the Governor specifically targeted the Orthodox Jewish community and gerrymandered the boundaries of red and orange zones to ensure that heavily Orthodox areas were included. . . . [Cuomo’s] statements made in connection with the challenged rules can be viewed as targeting the “ ‘ultra-Orthodox [Jewish] community.’ ” [Emphasis added]
In a blistering concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch asserts, “Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis.”
…the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers ‘essential.’ And as it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?
As almost everyone on the Court today recognizes, squaring the Governor’s edicts with our traditional First Amendment rules is no easy task. People may gather inside for extended periods in bus stations and airports, in laundromats and banks, in hardware stores and liquor shops. No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions, in churches or synagogues, especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of ‘essential’ businesses and perhaps more besides. The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn’t as ‘essential’ as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel and tools, are all ‘essential’ while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids. [Emphasis added]
Nor is the problem an isolated one. In recent months, certain other Governors have issued similar edicts. At the flick of a pen, they have asserted the right to privilege restaurants, marijuana dispensaries, and casinos over churches, mosques, and temples.
“Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic,” Gorsuch later continues, “it cannot become a sabbatical.”
It seems Cuomo has also been playing games. Each time the parties attempt to pursue legal relief, he eases their restrictions, so that their cases are no longer active and ripe for court, but Justice Gorsuch wasn’t buying the bridge he wasn’t trying to sell them:
It has taken weeks for the plaintiffs to work their way through the judicial system and bring their case to us,” he points out. “During all this time, they were subject to unconstitutional restrictions. Now, just as this Court was preparing to act on their applications, the Governor loosened his restrictions, all while continuing to assert the power to tighten them again anytime as conditions warrant. So if we dismissed this case, nothing would prevent the Governor from reinstating the challenged restrictions tomorrow. And by the time a new challenge might work its way to us, he could just change them again. The Governor has fought this case at every step of the way. To turn away religious leaders bringing meritorious claims just because the Governor decided to hit the ‘off ‘ switch in the shadow of our review would be, in my view, just another sacrifice of fundamental rights in the name of judicial modesty.
Even our dissenting colleagues do not suggest this case is moot or otherwise outside our power to decide. Both Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have ‘indicated it’s only a matter of time before [all] five boroughs’ of New York City are flipped from yellow to orange.
Yet, until more Americans begin to resist these unconstitutional, demoralizing restrictions in the name of Covid-19 or SCOTUS is able to rule in a far more encompassing case . . .
Welcome to tyranny, folks, but happy Thanksgiving anyway!
With the rise of anti-Americanism, antisemitism and anti-Israel/Zionist propaganda both on and offline, Lisa Michelle has also been an active advocate for America, Israel, and the Jewish community, managing various pro-Israel social networking forums and projects. Continue reading about Lisa Michelle here.
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