Today's Headline

 

Headline in today’s Newspaper:

“Special Session on Mandates Begins Today”

        This should scare the hell out of every sentient, literate, Floridian (but it won’t). It won't scare most people simply because most people don't understand, or won't try to comprehend, the significance of state attempts to roll back, or simply ignore, federal mandates. Among other things, one of the goals of this special session called by, of course, Republican presidential hopeful, and current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is an attempt to accomplish several of the following legislative boondoggles.

        The first is an attempt to take away the rights of employers and businesses to require vaccination of employees to protect the health and safety of their staff and/or clientele. The second would prevent government employers from requiring workers to be vaccinated against COVID. The third, which is being hidden under the name “Reinforcing parents Bill of Rights” would prevent schools protecting student and staff with mask mandates. The fourth would prohibit the state surgeon general from forcing people to be vaccinated. However, since the state surgeon general is a pawn of the current governor that's of little concern.

        As if those weren’t bad enough, the last and most significant, and certainly most dire in its implications, is a move towards withdrawing from federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration oversight. This last should scare everybody. Here's the further description of this piece of work: “The lengthy process to move away from OSHA oversight is a desire of both the Florida House Speaker and the Senate President" (both, of course, Republicans). What this would do would be to set the precedent of the state overriding national interests and controls and the protection of the people of the state. One example might be removing safety requirements for pesticides used by agricultural workers. Another might be easing requirements for appropriate safety equipment to be provided by an employer. In other words, it could push the state’s work force back to the “bad old days” of the robber barons when employers treated employees like chattel instead of workers that were valued. Of course, since most state representatives and Senators are business owners and none of them truly “work” for a living, they don't care.

        In 1828 South Carolina in a hastily called state legislative session attempted to pass a bill nullifying the tariff of 1828 which they called the “Tariff of Abominations”. Andrew Jackson responded by threatening the use of federal troops to enforce tariff collection while clandestinely urging supporters in Congress to pass a greatly reduced tariff bill. What this accomplished was the end of a state's attempt to nullify, or void, a federal law, but it also established the precedent that a state cannot nullify a federal law. The last time I looked, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created by federal law. If the state of Florida were to nullify the extent or level of control of OSHA within the state, why not just also nullify the Food and Drug administration's requirement that drugs be “safe and effective?” Why not nullify provisions of the department of agriculture's meat inspection act? We've already seen states attempt to bypass federal voting rights laws and those cases are currently in court. Ron DeSantis seems so desperate to look like a leader that he is treading on ground and espousing “slippery slope” principles already declared invalid almost 200 years ago. We deserve much better.

A Profound, yet Simple, Truth

 

This a repost of a recent Leonard Pitts Op-ed. I copied it so as to make it easily readable on-line. Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

"If you want to leave, take good care, hope you make a lot of nice friends out there.” — from “Wild World” by Cat Stevens

       This is for those of you who’ve chosen to quit your jobs rather than submit to a vaccine mandate.

       "No telling how many of you there actually are, but lately, you’re all over the news. Just last week, a nearly-30-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department surrendered his badge rather than comply with the city’s requirement that all employees be inoculated against COVID-19. He joins an Army lieutenant colonel, some airline employees, a Major League Baseball executive, the choral director of the San Francisco Symphony, workers at the tax collector’s office in Orange County, Florida, and, incredibly, dozens of healthcare professionals.

        Well, on behalf of the rest of us, the ones who miss concerts, restaurants and other people’s faces, the ones who are sick and tired of living in pandemic times, here’s a word of response to you quitters: Goodbye. And here’s two more: Good riddance.

        Not to minimize any of this. A few weeks ago, a hospital in upstate New York announced it would have to “pause” delivering babies because of resignations among its maternity staff. So, the threat of difficult ramifications is certainly real. But on the plus side, your quitting goes a long way toward purging us of the gullible, the conspiracy-addled, the logic-impaired and the stubbornly ignorant. And that’s not nothing.

        We’ve been down this road before. Whenever faced with some mandate imposed in the interest of the common good, some of us act like they just woke up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. “There’s no freedom no more,” whined one man in a video that recently aired on “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.” The clip was from the 1980s, and the guy had just gotten a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt.

        It’s an unfortunately common refrain. Can’t smoke in a movie theater? Can’t crank your music to headache decibels at 2 in the morning? Can’t post the Ten Commandments in a courtroom? “There’s no freedom no more.” Some of you seem to think freedom means no one can be compelled to do, or refrain from doing, anything. But that’s not freedom, it’s anarchy.

        Usually, the rest of us don’t agonize over your intransigence. Often it has no direct impact on us. The guy in “The Daily Show” clip was only demanding the right to skid across a highway on his face, after all. But now you claim the right to risk the healthcare system and our personal lives. So if you’re angry, guess what? You’re not the only ones.

         The difference is, your anger is dumb, and ours is not. Yours is about being coerced to do something you don’t want to do. Like that’s new. Like you’re not already required to get vaccinated to start school or travel to other countries. For that matter, you’re also required to mow your lawn, cover your hindparts and, yes, wear a seatbelt. So you’re mad at government and your job for doing what they’ve always done. But the rest of us, we’re mad at you. Because this thing could have been over by now, and you’re the reason it isn’t.

        That’s why we were glad President Biden stopped asking nicely, started requiring vaccinations everywhere he had power to do so. We were also glad when employers followed suit. And if that’s a problem for you, then, yes, goodbye, sayonara, auf wiedersehen, adios and adieu. We’ll miss you, to be sure. But you’re asking us to choose between your petulance and our lives.

And that’s really no choice at all."

Me: This is about as rational and succinctly stated as it gets. Bravo Mr Pitts!