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Things for which I am thankful

I am thankful for the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects my rights to say what I want and publish what I want. I am thankful for our First Amendment protection of our right to freely practice our faith. And I am thankful for Federal Judge Gregory van Tatenhove, appointed by the younger President George Bush, who understands that the First Amendment actually means what it says.

On May 8, 2020, Judge van Tatenhove ruled that Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing churches due to concerns about spreading COVID-19 was unconstitutional, a ruling which came too late in the process, as the Governor had successfully closed the churches for eight weeks.

Well, this time he wasn’t late. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Judge rules Beshear cannot halt in-person classes at religious schools due to COVID-19

By Jack Brammer and Valarie Honeycutt Spears | November 25, 2020 | 8:01 PM EST

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear cannot close religious schools to help curb the coronavirus pandemic, a federal judge ruled Wednesday night.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove said in a 22-page order that he was granting a preliminary injunction to 17 private Christian schools that had filed a lawsuit against Beshear’s emergency restriction. He said his order would apply statewide.

He said the schools were “likely to succeed on the merits of the case.”

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron joined the plaintiffs in the suit against Beshear and Kentucky Treasurer Allison Ball filed an amicus brief supporting the suit.

Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley said in an email the governor has appealed the decision to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Well, of course he has!

There’s a lot more at the link, including not only the Governor’s protest of the decision, but the comments of the schools, and First Liberty Institute‘s Chris Freund, the firm which represented the Christian schools.

“We are disappointed but not surprised that Judge Van Tatenhove, for the second time, has refused to acknowledge the U.S. Supreme Court decision that found an action like this is both legal and constitutional,” said Staley.

“We have already appealed to the Sixth Circuit and will request an emergency stay of the judge’s order, and, if necessary, will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s be clear: lives are on the line and everyone must do their part to defeat the virus.”

Judge van Tatenhove noted that the Governor’s order closed all K-12 schools, even though it allowed colleges in the Commonwealth to remain open. The suing schools noted that they had spent considerable sums in reconfiguring classes and providing safety equipment to meet the PPE and social distancing requirements the Commonwealth has specified for other places to continue to meet and do business.

“The Governor has every right to impose some restrictions on all schools, religious and secular alike,” said Van Tatenhove. “Social distancing, face masks, limits on class size, reporting requirements and other protocols may cost money and may be inconvenient for parents and students, but we give executives increased discretion in time of crisis.

“But in an effort to do the right thing to fight the virus, the Governor cannot do the wrong thing by infringing protected values.”

That is the part that so many public officials have forgotten. Nothing in American law supersedes the Constitution, and our constitutionally protected rights.

I am thankful that I was born an American citizen, that we have a strict Constitution which recognizes our rights, not just as Americans, but as human beings. Citizens of other countries mostly do not have such protections.

And I am thankful for our Freedom of Peaceable Assembly, which allows my family to gather for this Thanksgiving Day, in a setting which will violate the Governor’s orders.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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The Special Snowflakes™ are just so upset! "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." -- William F Buckley, Jr

I’m old enough to remember when the left supported an absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment, and I agreed with them. From Wikipedia:

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others.

With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement was influenced by the New Left, and was also related to the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. To this day, the Movement’s legacy continues to shape American political dialogue both on college campuses and in broader society, impacting on the political views and values of college students and the general public.

In 1971, The New York Times and The Washington Post received parts of what eventually were called the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg, who was partially an author of them. President Nixon’s decision to seek an injunction against the newspapers to prevent their further publication of them was overturned by the Supreme Court in New York Times Company v United States, by a 6-3 margin. Associate Justice Hugo Black wrote:

I adhere to the view that the Government’s case against the Washington Post should have been dismissed and that the injunction against the New York Times should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented to this Court. I believe that every moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. Furthermore, after oral argument, I agree completely that we must affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the reasons stated by my Brothers Douglas and Brennan. In my view it is unfortunate that some of my Brethren are apparently willing to hold that the publication of news may sometimes be enjoined. Such a holding would make a shambles of the First Amendment.

Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, followed in 1791. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country.

Freedom of Speech and of the Press continued to expand, and what appears to have been the last vestige of government censorship, that of censoring pornography, has finally faded away due to the ubiquity of pornography on the internet; technology has rendered porn uncontrollable.

But now, the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: “Woke is a political term originating in the United States referring to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It derives from the … Continue reading and the Special Snowflakes™, creatures of today’s left, have become utterly appalled that people who have different opinions than their are allowed to speak, allowed to publish:

Penguin Random House staffers broke down in tears over release of Jordan Peterson book: report

Employees cried to management at a town hall addressing the book’s release in March

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News | November 24, 2020

A new report shows inner turmoil that is apparently taking place at Penguin Random House Canada over the publisher’s release of a book written by Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Peterson, a psychology professor from the University of Toronto and a popular podcast host who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, announced on Monday that he is releasing a new book titled “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life,” which is set to be released in March of next year.

However, Vice reported on Tuesday that Peterson’s book has sparked an emotional outcry within the Canadian publishing giant with an effort by employees to pressure the company into canceling the book’s release.

According to the report, “several” employees confronted management of Penguin Random House Canada (PRHC), a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, at an internal town hall on Monday and “dozens more have filed anonymous complaints” about PRHC’s plans to release the latest work from the politically and culturally outspoken professor.

“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” one town hall attendee, who is also a member of the LGBTQ community, told Vice.

So, quit! If this unnamed “member of the LGBTQ community” is not proud to work for PRHC, there is no law — other than the laws of economics, I suppose — forcing him to stay there.

Another employee alleged that “people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives” with one explaining that Peterson had “radicalized their father” and another insisting the publishing of Peterson’s book will “negatively affect their non-binary friend.”

Well, wahhh! Dr Peterson’s arguments have persuaded some people, and the #woke don’t like it, so they want to clamp down on his speech so that others won’t hear it.[2]Full disclosure: if I have ever read anything by Dr Peterson, I do not recall doing so, or that he was the author of something I did read.

PRHC is, of course, a private company, and therefore their decision to, or refusal to, publish anything, by anyone, is not an act of government censorship. But Penguin Random House is in the business of publishing, so yeah, they are going to publish things that the company believe will make money.

PRHC told Vice in a statement, “We announced yesterday that we will publish Jordan Peterson’s new book ‘Beyond Order’ this coming March. Immediately following the announcement, we held a forum and provided a space for our employees to express their views and offer feedback. Our employees have started an anonymous feedback channel, which we fully support. We are open to hearing our employees’ feedback and answering all of their questions. We remain committed to publishing a range of voices and viewpoints.”

We have previously noted how the #woke are really, really, really opposed to Freedom of the Press, at least as far as printing things with which they disagree. But, at bottom, much of it is fear that healthy debate undermines their own positions, because their positions are, well, kind of stupid. How would you like to have to defend the position that girls can be boys and boys can be girls?

Children have their own ‘logic,’ and I suppose that it sounds good to them. But, being children, there’s always the great fear that the grown ups will show up, and to the #woke at Penguin Random House, Jordan Peterson is one of those awful grown ups.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia: “Woke is a political term originating in the United States referring to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It derives from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke”, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.

First used in the 1940s, the term has resurfaced in recent years as a concept that symbolises awareness of social issues and movement. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics, socially liberal and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has also been the subject of memes, ironic usage and criticism. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.” I confess to being one of those who uses the term disparagingly.

↑2 Full disclosure: if I have ever read anything by Dr Peterson, I do not recall doing so, or that he was the author of something I did read.
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An act of desperation and defiance It may not work out well for him

When the state has the authority to require you to have a license to do business, and to inspect your premises, you become subservient to the state. I suppose that the only truly libertarian businesses are bootleggers and drug dealers.

When Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) ordered all commercial inside dining suspended for three weeks, Andrew Cooperrider of Lexington was at the end of his rope, and refused to comply, so naturally the government had to stomp down on him. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Lexington coffee shop ordered closed by health department, refuses to stop serving

By Janet Patton | November 24, 2020 | 3:36 PM EST | Updated 4:23 PM EST

The notice from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. Photo from Brewed’s Facebook page.

The Lexington health department on Tuesday ordered a Lexington coffee shop to close after the owner refused to halt dining inside, defying statewide COVID restrictions.Last week, Gov. Andy Beshear announced new restrictions on restaurants and bars as well as other steps designed to stem the surge in coronavirus cases in Kentucky, saying that the state’s health care system is in danger of being overrun.

Restaurants were ordered to close dining rooms for three weeks, but outside seating in an approved tent was allowed to continue. However the tent must have no more than 50 percent of the perimeter enclosed to qualify.

Brewed at 124 Malabu Dr. was ordered closed and the establishment’s food service permit was suspended but owner Andrew Cooperrider said he plans on operating normally.

Cooperrider said that they were operating with a garage door opened 6 to 12 inches but the inspector said that would not meet the state emergency order requirements for a heated patio.

If you visit Brewed’s Facebook page, you can see plenty of comments. A commenter calling himself Phil Hunt wrote:

You think you are big Patriot….nope you’re just a selfish moron.

With ‘patriots’ like Mr Hunt, our national anthem would still be God Save the Queen.

People who believe that Governor Beshear’s ‘order’ is warranted and ought to be obeyed certainly have the option of not patronizing Mr Cooperrider’s restaurant.

The inspector cited the restaurant for having customers with no masks on and said they had to close. A supervisor called to the scene agreed.

“While on site for a routine health inspection at the establishment, we observed that the establishment was continuing to allow in-person dining,” according to a statement by Kevin Hall, Lexington-Fayette County Health Department spokesman. “The establishment manager was served an enforcement notice requiring that in-person seating be discontinued, which was refused. We then served an enforcement notice to suspend their food permit for not following the executive order guidance.”

“While on site for a routine health inspection”? What, I have to ask, are the probabilities that the Health Department inspectors just happened to be there, out of thousands of restaurants in Lexington? Not as probable, I would guess, than some Gladys Kravitz snitched on the place.

This is Mr Cooperrider’s problem: restaurants are required, by law, to have food service permits. These are issued to insure that the facility keeps its service and preparation areas clean and free of insects, is using safe preparation methods and safe ingredients. In this particular instance, the food service permit requirement has nothing to do with any of that, but is being used as a cudgel to enforce the Governor’s political policies.

Mr Cooperrider stated on his Facebook page that the Health Department inspectors would not answer his question as to what would happen to him if he refused to close, and stated that, until he was hauled out in handcuffs, he would continue to open for business.

Someone called the cops; the Herald-Leader article does not say who did that. But the Lexington Police Department was having nothing to do with the situation, Brenna Angel, the LPD spokeswoman, said:

The police department was contacted regarding the situation between Brewed and the Health Department, however, this involved a civil/regulatory matter and not something police could take action on.

Good for them! But I wonder: will Governor Beshear, who had the State Police record license numbers of cars in church parking lots on Easter Sunday, Easter Sunday!, to order churchgoers who violated his church closure orders, something the federal courts later enjoined, into two weeks of self-quarantine, send the apparently-more-compliant state troopers to haul Mr Cooperrider off in handcuffs?

Mr Cooperrider said:

I would like the end result to be that we stop having arbitrariness to it. … Put us in a position where we can succeed. Back in January I was a millionaire. Now I’m on food stamps.

I understand about us dying but I care about us living.

Mr Cooperrider’s restaurant is not the only one in the Bluegrass State which has defied the Governor’s orders, but being in the Commonwealth’s second largest city, one governed by Democrats, has put more of a bullseye on his back. I fear that his act of civil disobedience, one which I fully support, will not end well for him. I do not live in Lexington, and get there only infrequently, but the next time I do go there — other than for Thanksgiving, at my daughter’s house, when his restaurant will be closed — I will stop by and buy some coffee.

If it’s still open, that is. At least right now, it is; at 10:23 AM I called the phone number listed on Brewed’s Facebook page, and the call was answered, and the gentleman on the other end said that yes, they were still open.
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Updated: 3:15 PM EST

Good news! Lexingtonians who believe in liberty have stood up for Mr Cooperrider!

Customers line up at Lexington coffee shop defying COVID orders

By Janet Patton and Jeremy Chisenhall | November 25, 2020 | 12:30 PM | Updated 2:44 PM EST

Despite being ordered to close on Tuesday for violating COVID restrictions, a Lexington coffee shop opened its doors to dozens of customers on Wednesday morning.

At times, the line at Brewed at 124 Malabu Drive stretched out the door, with at least one customer waiting an hour for coffee.

Brewed was ordered to close by the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department after owner Andrew Cooperrider said he would not stop serving indoors.

Cooperrider, who is an official in the Libertarian Party of Kentucky according to his Facebook page, refused to comply with an emergency order issued last week by Gov. Andy Beshear to close restaurant dining rooms and bars.

Customers, including some not wearing masks, crowded into the coffee shop on Wednesday morning.

Further down:

Beshear said Tuesday that the vast majority of restaurants and bars across Kentucky are complying with the emergency order. But at least a handful of other restaurants around the state have announced intentions to defy the order.

He said that those that do not comply could lose alcohol licenses. They also could face fines up to $100 from the health department.

That’s a problem for Mr Cooperrider, since he does have beer at his place, but for restaurants without liquor licenses, a $100 fine is probably meaningless if they can stay in business.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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There are times that I wonder if today’s Democrats see George Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning but a model of good government.

As we have previously noted, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) imposed a three week, possibly renewable, ban on indoor dining at restaurants. Los Angeles, Chicago and foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia have all banned indoor dining, and Philly imposed new restrictions on outside dining as well.

Well, LA has gone a step further. From the Los Angeles Times:

L.A. County suspends outdoor dining at restaurants as coronavirus surges

By Alex Wigglesworth, Matt Hamilton and Jenn Harris | November 22, 2020 | 3:29 PM PST | Updated: 9:19 PM PST

In a devastating blow to Los Angeles’ struggling restaurant and hospitality industry, L.A. County public health officials on Sunday announced they will suspend outdoor dining at restaurants amid a surge of new coronavirus cases.

Few segments of Southern California’s economy have been hit harder by the pandemic than the once-booming dining world, with many landmark establishments closing in recent months and many more on the brink. After they were forced to shut indoor dining rooms in the spring, many eateries got a lifeline when officials allowed them to serve outdoors, often in patio areas and makeshift dining halls set up in parking lots, sidewalks and streets.

The new rule takes effect at 10 p.m. Wednesday and restricts restaurants — along with breweries, wineries and bars — to takeout and delivery only for the first time since May. It will remain in place for at least three weeks, officials said. Wineries and breweries can continue retail operations.

Warm weather Los Angeles is a great place for outside dining, if you don’t mind the automobile fumes too much, anyway, much better than in the impending winter weather in most of the country. But, not to worry, now LA is going to suffer just as much as Philadelphia. Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) won’t have to completely shut down outdoor dining in the City of Brotherly Love; evening temperatures in the thirties and forties will do that for him.

Diner: Waiter, could I have another glass of water.

Waiter: Is your glass empty, sir?

Diner: No, it’s frozen.

But, if the ban on outdoor dining doesn’t run the Los Angeles restaurants out of business, the county is preparing to do more to them:

Officials have urged residents to stay home as much as possible for the next two to three weeks to curb the rising tide of infections and avoid overwhelming the healthcare system.

L.A. County could face even stricter rules to stem the spread of the virus if the average number of new daily coronavirus cases over a five-day period continues to rise and tops 4,500, or if hospitalizations grow to more than 2,000, officials said.

In that event, officials plan to impose a three-week stay-at-home order that would permit only essential workers and those procuring essential services to leave their homes.

“Essential workers,” huh? That means who work at jobs that other people find essential. The apparently quaint notion that working to put food on the table and a roof over their heads is essential to everybody who works doesn’t appear to penetrate the consciousness of the rulemakers.

Doug Rankin, chef at Bar Restaurant in Silver Lake, said that outdoor dining had helped the restaurant break even over the last few months, generating enough to carry it through the year and ensure staffers kept their jobs.

Rankin planned to pivot entirely to takeout. He said that the entire service staff had already been laid off and that kitchen staff would be scaled down immediately.

Mayor Eric Garcetti (D-Los Angeles), with a salary of $248,000 per year and a net worth of $3,000,000, doesn’t have to worry about the ever-increasing restrictions will put him out on the street, doesn’t have to be concerned with being able to put food on the table, so it’s just so easy for him to have put the “entire service staff” of the Bar Restaurant out of work. It’s for their own good, don’t you know, as though eventual homelessness won’t be any big thing.

Many in the hospitality industry shared the sense that their businesses were being scapegoated, and they worried that the closure of outdoor dining would push L.A. County residents to gather at homes, where adherence to safety measures would be inconsistent or absent.

Governors Kate Brown (D-OR) and Tim Walz (D-MN) have already asked neighbors to spy on neighbors are report any violations of COVID-19 regulations. If Mayor Garcetti or Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA), net worth $10 million, most recently famous for his attendance at a maskless dinner at the hoitiest and toitiest of restaurants, get too concerned about the people misbehaving at home, count on them wanting to send the Geheime Staatspolizei to people’s homes to stamp out that, too.

There are times that I wonder if today’s Democrats don’t see George Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning but a model of good government.

Perhaps if I point out that many of the restaurant staff who will lose their jobs are illegal immigrants, Mr Garcetti will yield and let them go back to work, rather than force them to return south of the border . . . .
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Another Democrat Governor wants to turn you into Gladys Kravitz Peek through the curtains and tattle on COVID-19 regulations violators!

I suppose that, in the Bluegrass State, we are fortunate that Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) gave the enforcement of his COVID-19 executive orders to the state and local health departments; some states gave it to the police.

Gladys Kravitz

While I do not pretend to know the Governor’s thought processes on this, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if at least part of his decision there was based on the knowledge that very few, if any, of Kentucky’s 120 elected county sheriffs would actually enforce his regulations.

Not so on the left coast, where Governor Kate Brown (D-OR) wants to turn citizens into snitches. Gladys Kravitz could not be reached for comment.

Oregon governor tells residents to call cops on people violating COVID restrictions

New confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 have reached a record high for the third straight day in Oregon

By Frank Miles | November 22, 2020

As the nation cracks down on group activities so close to the Thanksgiving holiday, Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, has told Oregon’s residents to call the cops if they see coronavirus violations.

“This is no different than what happens if there’s a party down the street and it’s keeping everyone awake,” Brown said in an interview Friday. “What do neighbors do [in that case]? They call law enforcement because it’s too noisy. This is just like that. It’s like a violation of a noise ordinance.”

The governor ordered a two-week freeze that includes limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings to no more than six people from no more than two households in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Violators could face up to 30 days in jail, up to $1,250 in fines, or both, the Oregonian reported. Brown said she would work with state police and local law enforcement to encourage Oregonians to comply with her mandate.

“Encourage Oregonians to comply”? As encourage with the threat of fines and jail?

We have previously mentioned how some governors are relying on officious little pricks and Karens to enforce their mandates. We noted Cuba’s Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. It was simple: every neighborhood would be organized, and every neighborhood would have people who would spy on, and tattle to the government, if someone was suspected of having counter-revolutionary thoughts.

Governor Brown, like others, wants to turn neighbors into backstabbing little snitches.

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Once again, Kentuckians have to go to the federal courts to protect their constitutional rights

As we have previously noted, the Kentucky state Supreme Court sided with Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) and agreed that he did have the authority to declare a state of emergency and issue his COVID-19 executive orders. The General Assembly, in which Republicans will have veto-proof margins in the coming session, appears to be ready to limit the Governor’s authority under Kentucky Revised Statutes section 39A, but such action cannot occur before January.

But if the state courts are now foreclosed to challenging the Governor’s actions, the federal courts are not, and two federal judges, in separate cases, granted injunctions prohibiting the Governor from “enforcing the prohibition on mass gatherings with respect to any in-person religious service which adheres to applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines.” A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a similar ruling.

The rulings came just two weeks before the Governor was going to graciously allow churches to reopen anyway.

But the Governor has now issued new executive orders:

  • All public and private K-12 schools will close to in-person instruction starting November 23, through the end of the semester. The only exception is for elementary schools in counties outside the red zone, which may reopen on December 7 if the school follows all guidelines.

Beginning on November 20 and lasting until December 13:

  • All restaurants and bars will close to indoor dining services. Outdoor dining is still allowed, with some limitations.
  • Gyms are limited to 33% capacity, and no group classes or indoor games are allowed. Masks are required.
  • Indoor gatherings should be limited to two families, not exceeding a total of eight people.
  • Attendance at wedding and funerals is limited to 25 people.

So it’s back to the federal courts. From the Lexington Herald-leader:

4 Lexington Christian schools, 5 others in Ky. back lawsuit against Beshear closings

By Valerie Honeycutt Spears | November 23, 2020 | 07:11 AM EST | Updated: 10:27 AM EST

Nine Kentucky Christian schools, including Lexington Christian Academy and three others in Fayette County, filed a brief Sunday night in support of a federal lawsuit against Gov. Andy Beshear‘s order stopping in-person instruction at public and private K-12 schools.

“No evidence whatsoever has linked any current increase in COVID cases to numbers in schools,” said the brief filed in U.S. District Court in Frankfort. Amicus briefs, as they are called, are often filed by those affected by court cases to which they are not parties.

“Because the religious schools believe both in the importance of their mission and the need for in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible, each of the religious schools has taken extraordinary steps and incurred significant financial expense to provide safe in-person learning during this academic year, “ the brief said.

Nevertheless, Beshear added new COVID-19 restrictions last week after the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that he can to protect the health and safety of Kentucky citizens.

Despite that ruling, Danville Christian Academy and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Friday filed a federal lawsuit against Beshear, arguing that his order closing Kentucky’s schools, including private religious schools, violates the First Amendment of the Constitution and the state’s Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.

There’s more at the original.

Given Mr Beshear’s penchant for filing lawsuits to try to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY) when Mr Beshear was state Attorney General, there’s some delicious schadenfreude that a Republican Attorney General is paying the Governor back in kind.

The obvious question is: how long will it take for these lawsuits to be resolved? Unless the court issues a temporary injunction, something the lawsuit included in its filing, a lawsuit of this nature could easily extend beyond the January 4, 2021 date at which the school closure expires. However, it is also possible that the Governor will extend the order if he believes that COVID-19 is still to rampant.

The sad thing is that Governor Beshear, who was just so eager to protect what he saw as Kentuckians’ rights when he was Attorney General has lost all sight of our rights with his COVID-19 orders. An even sadder thing is that people now have to go to court in the hope of protecting their rights, because our elected representatives sure won’t do it.

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The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer asked for “radical new thinking” and “radical realism” I'm guessing that they won't like my "radical new thinking" and "radical realism"

About fifteen years ago, I worked for a ready-mixed concrete company in suburbs of Philadelphia, and one of my responsibilities was driver recruitment. The biggest problem? More than half of potential recruits couldn’t pass the drug test!

The greatest anti-poverty program is a job, and a huge percentage of those in poverty in Philadelphia have made themselves ineligible for decent jobs through their own choices to use drugs. Reducing poverty cannot come from the top down, from boards and commissions and charities. It must come from the bottom up, from a community which refuses to use drugs and will not tolerate those who sell drugs.

I know, I know, it’s just horribly politically incorrect to say this, but poor people are poor primarily due to their own choices.

Solving Philly’s poverty problem requires radical thinking — and realism | Editorial

The Inquirer Editorial Board | November 22, 2020 | 6:00 AM EST

One of the great challenges of living in a city with the high poverty rate that has long dogged Philadelphia is how to remain optimistic that the proposals designed to alleviate it can work.

The past few decades have seen many attempts to “solve” the poverty problem, both nationally and locally. Mayor John Street launched a $300 million anti-blight program called the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. In 2013, Mayor Michael Nutter launched the Shared Prosperity program, designed to streamline and maximize available aid to people. Both had their successes, but change in the poverty rate was incremental.

The latest effort, a “Poverty Action Plan” was released in early March from City Council and a committee including Darrell Clarke, Maria Quiñones Sanchez and Allan Domb. Last week, Council announced the creation of a new nonprofit to implement the plan, funded with a $10 million grant from the city.

The plan, originally described as a “moonshot” designed to lift 100,000 people out of poverty by 2024, offers a set of sweeping actions: seven strategies that range from providing a basic income to individuals and wage tax refunds to adult education and job training stipends. It creates a Poverty Commission, described as a public-private partnership including city and state government, philanthropies, universities and civic institutions like the United Way. In addition to a fund, it creates a dashboard to measure progress.

The commission also assembled a staggering number of people: five co-chairs, 19 full committee members, and 57 additional people spread over three separate committees.

So, 81 people, probably none of them truly poor themselves, involving government employees, philanthropies, universities and civic institutions. Philadelphia is going to have yet another anti-poverty program put together and run by the elites, most, and possibly all of whom have never been poor, have never, to use the expression of Robert E Howard, had their lives nailed to their spines, trying to put together a program for people who are not like them.

Many are familiar names who have been at the front lines of fighting poverty for years, if not decades. While it will take a large, all-hands-on-deck effort to make inroads, it is of concern that, especially in this town, many people means many politics, and many often-conflicting agendas. And the last eight months have complicated things further, since many organizations will be fighting for their own survival.

Translation: the same people who have “been at the front lines of fighting poverty for years, if not decades,” and failed, will be at it again. Is there any reason to expect different results?

Part of leadership is setting goals that are slightly out of reach. But leadership must also recognize that there needs to be a possibility of success, especially confronting complicated problems like poverty. Lifting 100,000 people out of poverty will take vision and optimism. But it will also take a lot more than $10 million – and a lot longer than four years. Solving this crisis requires a capacity for radical new thinking as well as radical realism.

“Radical new thinking as well as radical realism”? I can provide the Inquirer Editorial Board with that, but I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t like it. But perhaps, just perhaps, some actual plainspokenness is needed here.

There are three things which have to be done to reduce poverty in Philadelphia, and they need to come from within the poorer, primarily black, communities.

  1. People have to stop using drugs! The Philadelphia Police can only do so much to find, stop and arrest drug dealers. Drug dealers exist because people want to use drugs, and they will continue to exist as long as people are willing to buy and use drugs. But drugs lead to lost employment opportunities as employees in a lot of fields are subject to pre-employment, random and post-accident drug tests, as well as lowered productivity when on the job even if applicants get past the drug screens. Drug use leads to other poor lifestyle decisions, and syphons money from people’s earnings into useless spending which does not improve their situations or enable them to save.The neighborhood has to take action that the police cannot, to drive out the drug dealers and give them no shelter or security. The dealers need to be shunned as the neighborhood cancers they are.
  2. Neighborhood women and girls need to step up and take leadership roles. Most of the bad behavior, from petty crimes all the way up to Philadelphia’s exploding murder rate, comes from young males, and, if we are brutally honest about it, young black males. But there is one thing that young males value more than anything else: sex. Young women in poor neighborhoods need to stop rewarding the bad behavior of young males with sex. The guys who stay in school, the ones who try to make something of themselves, they are the ones that young women in the neighborhoods should date.This is something that their mothers, and the other older women in the neighborhoods, need to stress to younger women as they grow up.

    This point will be denounced as horribly sexist, but I am far beyond caring about that. You may think it sexist, but it is true nevertheless.

  3. Fathers in the neighborhood must step up and take responsibility. Almost every negative social statistic, for suicides, for criminal behavior, for dropping out of school, and for out-of-wedlock childbearing, is much higher for people who grow up without their fathers present in the home. Young women should not date young men who are unlikely to stick around if the woman gets pregnant, and young women should not let themselves get pregnant by men to whom they are not married. Single parenthood is very often a one-way ticket to poverty, at far greater rates than are the case for two-parent homes.Again, that point will be condemned as sexist, but there is one incontrovertible fact: pregnancy and child rearing put a much greater burden on women than men, and if the man is absent, 100% of the burden falls on the woman. Men who impregnate women and then refuse to step up and do their duty as fathers need to be shunned in the neighborhoods.

There are many other behaviors that only people in the neighborhoods can fix, only the individuals involved can change, but they are all part of the three points made above. The various ‘civic leaders’ the Editorial Board mentioned can stress these things, but only the people on the ground in their neighborhoods can actually change behavior.

Readers can denounce me as sexist or racist or whateverist, but it doesn’t matter to me; I am retired, living out in the country, and I can’t be fired for writing something some people will find uncomfortable. Because uncomfortable or not, the points I have made are true, and any rational examination of the facts will bring the reader to the same conclusions.

This is the “radical new thinking” and “radical realism” the Inquirer’s Editorial Board wanted. That it is not #woke, nor sufficiently sparing of the feelings of some, that it is horribly politically incorrect does not mean it should not be examined for whether it is true or not. That it puts much of the blame for poverty on the behavior of the poor will be seen as unjustifiably harsh, but harsh or not, it is still true.

Poor behavior leads to unfortunate consequences, consequences which are often far beyond what people would like to believe. No well-intentioned committee of 81 committed fighters against poverty, no brilliant Mayor of perfectly good motivations, and no priest nobly absolving parishioners of their confessed sins can change the consequences of poor and economically inefficient behavior.

The solution to poverty can be encouraged by all of those people, but the implementation of the solution has to come from the people in poor communities themselves.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Church leaders in Kentucky decline to agree with Governor Beshear’s request to close down But one idiotic pastor has practically dared the Governor to change his request to an order

We have previously noted Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) request that churches in the Bluegrass State suspend in-person worship services through Sunday, December 13th. I pointed out that, as long as it was a request, rather than an order, the Governor was acting within his free speech rights. Churches, on the other hand, are acting in their First Amendment rights of Freedom of peaceable Assembly and Free Exercise of Religion regardless of which way they chose to go on Mr Beshear’s request.

Well, it seems as though many churches are honoring the Governor’s request by stating that they will continue to exercise great caution, but will remain open. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

After Beshear’s request, some churches cancel services. Others ‘draw a line in the sand.’

By Karla Ward | November 21, 2020 | 08:42 PM EST | Updated 8:57 PM EST

While a number of congregations are complying with Gov. Andy Beshear’s request to halt in-person worship services through Dec. 13, others are reluctant to return to having only virtual services.

“I feel very strongly that churches have to draw a line in the sand,” Pastor Denny Whitworth, of the Bread of Life Assembly of God, wrote in a post on the church’s Facebook page. “I am concerned that this recommendation will possibly extend beyond the time frame laid out, this is always the trend. We are essential to our community and it is an opportunity to reach people for the kingdom of God, who may not be reached unless our doors are open.”

That’s an absolutely valid concern. The Governor’s initial church closure wasn’t a request, but an unconstitutional order, one he nevertheless got away with, and it lasted for nine weeks. On March 13th, he asked churches to cancel services, but many did not. So, on March 19th, he made it an order, with which almost all churches complied. In May, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order allowing churches to reopen, and on May 24th, we were ever-so-graciously allowed to attend Mass again.

The Governor even sent the State Police to record license plate numbers on cars in church parking lots on Easter Sunday, Easter Sunday! to order the owners of the vehicles into quarantine.

Whitworth said the congregation will cancel fellowship meals until January, and he urged attendees at services to wear masks “coming in building and leaving” and to continue social distancing and other measures.

Several churches that said they plan to continue holding in-person services mentioned that they have taken careful steps to try to keep from spreading COVID-19.

This is what the Diocese of Lexington has done. My pastor holds Mass outside if the weather allows, though now that it’s the latter half of November, that’s a vanishing option. The Diocese insists on masks and social distancing, which has not been a problem even inside the church; my parish is a very small one.

Pastor Jeff Fugate, from his parish website.

Pastor Jeff Fugate of Clays Mill Baptist Church said many people, especially the elderly, may need to stay home, but the church does not plan to halt in-person services.

“There are many of us that are able and anxious to be in church for services,” Fugate wrote on his Facebook page. “I refuse to allow Governor Beshear who promotes the liquor business, abortion business and gambling . . . and keeps them open, to take away or threaten a Constitutional right of a church to assemble. If we as Patriotic Americans continue to sit back and allow this type of control to take place without resistance we are going to lose/give away our freedoms.”

Now that’s a man I can admire! But then he kept running his mouth:

Fugate said in an interview Saturday that the church had 500 to 600 people in attendance at its worship service Nov. 15. Most attendees, he said, do not wear masks. In addition, he said the church buses are running again, picking up a few hundred children for Bible classes each Sunday.

A church service at Clays Mill Baptist Church, picture from the parish website. The photo is not dated, so it could be from well before last March.

Way to go, Mr Fugate! Way to announce to the world, and Governor Beshear, and the Jessamine County Health Department, that what other congregations are doing to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 your church and you are not doing and, apparently, have no intention to do. Way to taunt the county and state into taking some sort of action.

If the Governor reads about this, and the Herald-Leader is delivered in Frankfort, the state capitol, Pastor Fugate has pretty much dared him to change his request to an executive order. Local people probably knew about how large the congregation is, and that masks weren’t being worn, and that occupancy restrictions weren’t being observed, but they could ignore it as long as nobody rocked the boat.

Pastor Fugate rocked the boat.

Was the Governor deterred from making his request an order by the federal judge’s ruling in May? I can’t read his mind, so I do not know, but Pastor Fugate, bless his heart, is trying to tempt the Governor into trying an order again. Yeah, he’d lose in court, again, but that would take several weeks and cost churches thousands of dollars. [1]Every Southerner knows just what “Bless your heart” means in a sentence like this

Governor Beshear hasn’t made it an order, at least not yet. In that, he has not violated Kentuckians’ freedom of religion or right to peaceable assembly, at least not in church. Though there are many, many things about which to criticize the Governor, this is not one of them. But now Pastor Fugate has virtually challenged the Governor to make it an order, and that’s just stupid.

The hornet’s nest on the corner of your porch really isn’t much of a problem . . . unless you poke it with a stick. Brother Fugate — I think that’s the appropriate form of address for a Baptist minister — has poked the hornet’s nest with a stick.

References

References
↑1 Every Southerner knows just what “Bless your heart” means in a sentence like this
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The shutdowns are about more than just missing some Christmas presents

While I have noted the complaints of Lexington restaurateurs in response to Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) three-week indoor dining ban, Kentucky isn’t the only place in which government’s over-zealous response to COVID-19 is destroying businesses and throwing people out of work. Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) has done even worse. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Six-week shutdown could mean a ‘year without Christmas’ for Philly businesses

by Sam Wood and Katie Park | November 18, 2020

Beleaguered business owners and city residents, who had reconfigured their work lives to survive the pandemic’s first wave, latched onto a now-ubiquitous sentiment on Tuesday: Hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The City of Philadelphia imposed new business restrictions on Monday that will go into effect at the end of the week. Sectors of the local economy will be required to shut down or severely curtail operations until at least Jan. 1.

Until New years Day? Even Governor Beshear only ordered closure for three weeks, at which point he could, conceivably, reissue the restrictions, while Mr Kenney decided he’d just destroy the rest of the year.

“For millions of people, this could be the year without a Christmas,” said Stephen Mullin, principal at Econsult Solutions and a former city director of commerce during the Rendell administration. “We’ll see unemployment bouncing up significantly again.”

The poor will be hit disproportionately as minimum wage jobs in retail, hospitality, and restaurants disappear, he predicted. The next six weeks will be tougher than in the spring and will probably endure into the new year. And businesses are pushing back and taking their complaints directly to City Hall.

With a salary of $218,000, Mr Kenney isn’t worried that COVID-19 shutdowns will put him in the poorhouse; that’s reserved for the working class people. He’s been in city government for most of his adult life, spending 23 years as a city councilman before being elected mayor; government is really the only thing he knows. Being on the wrong side of government edicts and regulations? That’s something he does not know.

The shutdown order comes at a critical time. It’s only with the holiday shopping season that many retailers begin to generate their best sales of the year. The order also puts a kibosh on Christmas parties and the peak of tourism in Philadelphia.

Translation: Jeff Bezos will get even richer, as more and more people will be shopping online, while ‘brick-and-mortar’ stores will suffer, many completely failing, and their employees will be laid off from jobs which will never return.[1]Restaurants are frequent business failures, which are followed by subsequent restaurant start-ups. But in the current economic and regulatory climate, the next wave of restaurant start ups will be … Continue reading Property owners will not be paid the rent they are due, which means that some property maintenance will not get done.

There’s a lot more at the original, including noting that Center City shops have lost a tremendous amount of business, because telecommuting has dramatically reduced the number of office workers. Office occupancy, the story stated, is down 85% from prior to the outbreak.

But this personal story is the one which really needs to be quoted:

Fran Cassidy, general manager of the Sporting Club at the Bellevue, was furious at the shutdown orders, which he considers unnecessarily draconian.

Business at the luxury fitness center had already crashed to 50% of its pre-pandemic level, Cassidy said. Of his 4,200 members, just 2,000 had returned. Though he believes there “hasn’t been a single case of COVID-19 among his clients,” he will have to issue pink slips to the Sporting Club’s entire staff.

“They’re devastated. How can you not be? It’s the holiday season. We had to tell 90 employees they’d be laid off,” Cassidy said. “In eight or nine days, it’ll be Thanksgiving. And that’s the news we had to deliver.”

Perhaps ninety employees from one business makes more of an impact than twenty million people on unemployment. Twenty million is a number that starts to fall outside of people’s consciousness, but ninety, that’s 45 to 50 homes. Where I lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, I can see that as the entire street from my former house to the beginning of the street. That’s a number of houses that I could see, every day, on my way home from work. That’s a number that I can visualize, a number of houses I could see and recognize, a number of houses in which I knew or at least recognized people.

The street on which my family lived in Mt Sterling, when I was growing up? There are fewer than fifty houses on the entire street.

And that’s a number of houses that I could see dark, as they had to conserve electricity,[2]Many states have banned utility shutoffs for non-payment due to the economic crisis, but eventually that will end, and eventually people will have to repay their back bills. that’s a number of houses I could see having potatoes and beans for supper one night, and beans and potatoes the next, because the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), what used to be called Food Stamps, doesn’t really feed a family all that well.

What happens when the hot water heater fails? A no-eviction order means that the tenants can’t be put out on the street, but can a landlord who has not been receiving his rent be forced to repair or replace it if he has no money? A no-foreclosure order might mean that a family can’t be evicted if they haven’t been able to pay their mortgage, but if they have lost their jobs, can they afford a new hot water heater? A quick look at Lowe’s website showed it’s least expensive hot water heater cost $319.00.

In Pennsylvania, if your automobile insurance lapses, the insurance company is required, by law, to report it to the state, and your license plates are immediately suspended for a minimum of ninety days, unless you can present proof that you kept your insurance by contracting with another company before the old insurance lapsed. If you have an insurance payment of $300 due, and you don’t have it, too bad, so sad, must suck to be you, but your plates are suspended. Since the Commonwealth stopped issuing license plate stickers and went to automatic scanners in patrol cars, the police will see you if you are driving with expired or suspended plates.

Very few of the elites, and big city mayors and state governors are most certainly among the elites, really understand what it is like to be poor, what it is like to live paycheck-to-paycheck, and how even a single setback can throw people into a deep hole. The Federal reserve reported, in 2019:

  • If faced with an unexpected expense of $400, 61 percent of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement — a modest improvement from the prior year. Similar to the prior year, 27 percent would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense, and 12 percent would not be able to cover the expense at all.
  • Seventeen percent of adults are not able to pay all of their current month’s bills in full. Another 12 percent of adults would be unable to pay their current month’s bills if they also had an unexpected $400 expense that they had to pay

Perhaps the math are too complicated for the elites, but $400 is a full week’s gross pay for someone earning $10.00 an hour, but Mayor Kenney is throwing exactly those people out of work not for a week, but for six weeks. Doing the more complicated math, adding in the 7.65% Social Security and Medicare withholding, Pennsylvania’s 3.07% state income tax withholding, and Philly’s 3.8712% wage tax for city residents, a person needs to be paid $11.53 per hour to take home $400 for a forty hour week.

COVID-19 is serious, and in some cases — not many — can be fatal. But poverty is serious, and unemployment can be fatal in itself. For the people who needn’t fear the economic consequences of shutdown orders themselves, it’s quite easy to say that these shutdowns are necessary, and something through which we just have to fight. But for the people who do bear the consequences of the shutdowns, it’s more than just losing Thanksgiving dinner due to gathering restriction orders, more than no presents under the Christmas tree, it’s a big government boot stomping into a life already lived at the hard edge of survival.
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Thanks to Robert Stacy McCain for the link!
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Restaurants are frequent business failures, which are followed by subsequent restaurant start-ups. But in the current economic and regulatory climate, the next wave of restaurant start ups will be long delayed.
↑2 Many states have banned utility shutoffs for non-payment due to the economic crisis, but eventually that will end, and eventually people will have to repay their back bills.