Texas Governor Greg Abbot, in an April 27 executive order concerning coronavirus, declared: “Individuals are encouraged to wear appropriate face coverings, but no jurisdiction can impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.” This executive order provision stopped in their tracks local governments that sought to enforce mask mandates as part of their coronavirus crackdowns.
Because of his stand against mask mandates, Abbott gained praise for defending liberty. But, on Wednesday, Abbot turned his back on liberty when, in a KWTX-TV of Waco, Texas interview, he endorsed local governments ordering stores and other businesses to require people at the businesses to wear masks.
Daniel McAdams has written about police on two occasions backing down in their efforts to stop children of a group of families from using playgrounds in Texas that had been designated off limits in the coronavirus crackdown. In those instances, parents discussed the restriction with police, and once with a vice mayor as well, with the police ultimately assenting to the use of the playgrounds. In the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the effort to ensure kids can use the Middleton Playground has played out differently. Catarina Moura and John Annese report at the New York Daily News that people have at least 26 times — the latest on Monday — cut off locks and chains that, in the name of countering coronavirus, have been used to prevent people from accessing a playground.
Continue readingSometimes a video can communicate important political ideas very well and quickly. That is the case with the two-minute video “No New Normal” at the Essential People YouTube page.
Starting off, it seems as if the video, like many others, is promoting that people make all sorts of sacrifices, changing their lives drastically and painfully, to counter coronavirus. Then, the video takes a quick turn, harshly criticizing the coronavirus crackdown and the “new normal” of dystopian restrictions on human actions that people in government and media often assert must persist. At the same time, the video denounces Bill Gates who has been a prominent backer of the crackdown and promoter of the “new normal.”
The video also provides a haunting visual demonstration of the dehumanizing nature of the masks and other face coverings that some governments and businesses are mandating people wear.
When students at two prominent Texas state government universities — the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M — return to the universities’ campuses in the fall semester, after being booted in the spring semester due to purported worries about coronavirus, they will find the experience much different than it has been in years past. To put it simply, new rules imposed in the name of countering coronavirus will make being a student at these universities suckier.
Take, for example, new mask mandates announced by the presidents of both universities this week.
Have you heard about these prominent American libertarians? A former United States Marine Corps general who was a secretary of defense in the Donald Trump administration while taking a break from serving on the Board of Directors of General Dynamics, one of the largest military contractors in the world. A Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from Massachusetts. A Republican member of the US Senate from Alaska.
Of course, you have not heard of these libertarians. That makes sense. No such people are libertarians.
Last week, United States Libertarian Party Chairman Nicholas Sarwark suggested to these nonlibertarians that they join the Libertarian Party. For the House and Senate members, his suggestion went so far as that they change their party affiliations in Congress to Libertarian.
On Friday, Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that a portion of 16th Street near the White House had been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. That day a street sign bearing the new name was installed. “Black lives matter” was painted in huge yellow letters on the road surface on Friday as well.
Continue readingAcross America over the last week large groups of people have been protesting. Many people have also crowded together rioting and looting, often with no police taking any action to stop the out-in-the-open assaults and theft. Meanwhile, in many of the same cities and towns across America businesses remain totally shut down or are legally allowed to operate only under new restrictions that make profitable functioning difficult to impossible, all in the name of countering coronavirus.
Continue readingA lot can change in three months. In March, the message from the United States government, communicated through individuals including Surgeon General Jerome Adams and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, was that people should not wear masks when they go about their daily activities outside their homes.
Then, in April, the US government and its high profile medical “experts” including Fauci and Adams turned on a dime, urging people to wear masks. And, in May, citing the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) new pro-mask guidance, stores such Costco as well as state and local governments including, as of Friday, Virginia imposed mask mandates on their customers and people in their geographic jurisdictions, respectively.
The message transitioned from “do not wear masks” to “you must wear masks” all in three months, and all the while the prominent propagators have insisted that the morphing message is based on science.
With protests, riots, looting, and revolutionary acts rising over the last few days across the country, here is a bit of information for participants in these activities to keep in mind: There are likely government agents among you. These government agents are undercover and taking part in the activities with you. Their role may be to take down names and inform on activities; their role may to act as provocateurs, seeking to lead you and others to do or say particular things; their role may be to make arrests.
Continue readingStarting Friday, people ten years old and older who are indoors just about anywhere in Virginia other than in private homes will be required by a new executive order of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to “cover their mouth and nose with a face covering, as described and recommended by” the United Sates government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Further, the mandate even requires wearing such a mask when outside at a long list of places “if a distance of six feet from every other person cannot be maintained.”
Oh brother. Indeed, oh Big Brother.
Continue reading