“Rome has spoken; the case is closed.”– St Augustine
An Emailed Letter Sent out to Oregonians
by Dennis LinthicumOregon State Senate – District 28
July 2, 2020
Governor Kate Brown has stepped onto thin ice, again. She recently issued a mandate for masks at all indoor locations across Oregon’s 36 counties. Her statement can be seen as a clear threat, “I do not want to have to close down businesses again, like other states are now doing. If you want your local shops and restaurants to stay open, then wear a face covering when out in public.”Meaning if your business doesn’t enforce to her liking she’ll shut you down again.
Yet our role as participants in the great American experiment about Life, Liberty and our own just pursuits, or happiness, demands that we analyze, discuss and push back against unfair and abusive power plays by those engaged in policy making.
The Governor also claims that science, data and modeling guide her decision making, but we’ve seen bad modeling before. Her claim that “our hospitals could be overwhelmed by new COVID-19 cases” is 1) not a certainty and 2) doesn’t justify why there is a ridiculous demand for masks in counties with no deaths and few cases.
The governor has spoken, the case is closed.
The mask demand is galling because common masks are only 3% effective. Dr. Fauci told the public, “…in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. Right now, there is no reason for people to be walking around with a mask. … When you are in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better … and it might even block a droplet but it is not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is and often there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and people keep touching their face.” Here, Fauci lets loose that masks do little more than make people “feel” better. The Democrat majority specializes in this tradecraft with a magician’s keen sense of misdirection like gun control, cap and trade, mandatory vaccines, banning straws, plastic bags and more. In the TSA screening line at the airport, everyone submits because they’ve been told it will make the skies safer. Yet, patting-down granny, your wife or 13-year-old won’t make America safer because these individuals never posed a threat. Millions of travelers have been treated as if they were a threat when they weren’t. The same concept holds true with masks.In the airport example, when the TSA throws away your soda or water bottle the agents all know, without a doubt, your bottle poses no threat to the passengers, airport personnel or the airliner. They also know there are no explosive liquids present. We know too, because they simply pitch it into a garbage bin filled with other travelers confiscated stuff. If there was any serious consideration of danger, they would clear the area, bring in the robotic bomb-mobile, shut-down air service and explode the device on some out-of-the-way section of the tarmac.It is not about safety; it is about compliance and conformity. Bureaucracies have their rules, regulations and checklists. They follow instructions and gaining compliance from you and your business is at the top of that list. The point is, we are universally treated as potential terrorists by the TSA and the same is true with the mask mandate where everyone is deemed diseased.
Oregonians have had their businesses crushed and their lives upended not by a virus but by policy mandates spilling from our Governor. The public has been forced into compliance by the innumerable possibilities of regulatory threats to their businesses, education, travel, worship, employment and access to markets if they fail to walk the line. This threat is very real and quite serious because our state is nakedly authoritarian.
The state can selectively enforce control over a business through licensure requirements, hiring, wage limits, advance scheduling and absurdly ridiculous safety demands. In essence, business owners, across all socio-economic strata have lost their business enterprises to the iron-handed demands of the state.
This stranglehold is on more than just businesses. It has enveloped every aspect of life, family and community over the last three decades of Oregon’s march toward socialism. The COVID-19 fearmongering has made this evident.
The authors of the COVID-19 rules have placed their chief confidence in censorship, vain repetition, and the suppression of truth. In doing so, they are destroying the real interests of the people of Oregon by the grossest statistical fabrications and absurdities. These so-called policy advisors have imposed these mindless dictates upon diverse and disparate groups of people, both healthy and unhealthy alike, and in turn have wreaked havoc in every community across Oregon.
People’s lives are harmed when they are not allowed the necessary freedom, and peace of mind, to develop as individuals to make decisions for their families, their education, their businesses, their places of worship, and for those most vulnerable within their neighborhoods. The current authoritarian system stifles the development of any sort of individuality, while keeping people constantly off balance and in a state of demeaning dependence. There is no better way to protect individuals, families, children and the elderly, than to fight for the rights of people to make their own distinct medical choices, raise their children, protect their grandparents and run their own lives. Only then, will we see progress in the real world which happens to be filled with complexities, risks and rewards.
TAB Editor comment: Most likely the same situation in every ‘Blue State,’ and maybe few ‘Red States’! Here in Jackson County Oregon, the population is at roughly 221,000, the deaths from perceived Corona-virus (no deaths at Providence Hospital / none at Ashland Hospital ), Rouge Valley Hospital (?) …but as stated by Channel 10 News, there have been four deaths. Of course no details as to age, were prior complications, etc. IF the 4 deaths are factual, this calculates out to … .000019% of the population. It would appear that one’s chance of ‘getting it’ …. Is extremely nil! So, in our county ‘fear-based’ society, they are maintaining the ‘PANDEMIC!’ and now the ‘Mask Mandate’! …while more people die in traffic accidents, by suicide, prescription drugs and overdose, etc. I would hope that most Americans are aware the planned pandemic program to oust Trump, put a demon-crat/Marxist in the White House, take the guns away and then it’s ‘HELLO RUSSIA 1917’ …all over again, here in the good ‘ole USA …then it will ‘ANTIFIMERICA!’ By the Demon-crats want to convert the ‘District of Columbia’ (Corporate Headquarters). But the questions; What to name it? Just for them, let’s call it ‘The State of Marxism.’ Would the last man out turn the lights out!
Instead of simply isolating and protecting the most vulnerable, i.e., the elderly with underlying health conditions, residents of nursing homes, etc., our state government is using this “crisis” to further their socialist agenda. This mask mandate forces businesses and schools to be the enforcement arm of state government without any liability protections.
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