Making Covid Tyranny Permanent in Michigan

Under Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan has imposed notably repressive Covid rules. At one point, even selling garden seeds was restricted in the name of the ChiCom virus. This authoritarian approach has been a conspicuous failure. Michigan’s Covid numbers have been the worst in the country. Insanely yet unsurprisingly, Whitmer is doubling down on her failed policy of repression. She wants to make her emergency rules permanent:

State bureaucrats are moving to impose permanent regulations that would mandate the following and more on all Michigan businesses: mask wearing whenever employees are within six feet of someone else, daily health screenings, extensive record keeping, and keeping a “COVID-19 safety coordinator” on-site. Retail stores, personal care services, and other businesses open to the public would have to become the mask police: They would be required to make all customers wear masks, vaccinated or not.

Many of these rules are based on mandates put in place last spring by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. As such, many are based on outdated scientific knowledge about how COVID-19 spreads.

For example, they mandate excessive cleaning of surfaces. Contaminated surfaces are not a significant threat for spreading Covid.

The rules make no accommodations for vaccinations. The word vaccine doesn’t even appear in the rules.

Michiganders who took the vaccine to get Big Government’s boot off their neck have been duped.

Other mandates in the proposed rules may be impossible for businesses to comply with.

You can’t expect leftists to regret businesses being destroyed by their dictates. The fewer businesses, the higher the unemployment rate, the more government dependency, the more votes for Democrats. This explains a great deal of Democrat economic policy. Minimum wage is the most obvious example.

With the help of the bureaucracy, Whitmer effectively rules the state as a dictator. Legislative approval for her emergency powers has expired. She doesn’t care.

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of three medical providers who had been shut down, and a patient who had been denied care, and the Michigan Supreme Court eventually ruled that the governor had acted illegally and could not extend these emergency orders indefinitely.

Whitmer, nevertheless, maintained unilateral control.

She circumvented the ruling by having the state Department of Health and Human Services reinstate most of the mandates that had been invalidated.

Other state departments, such as the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA), followed suit with their own emergency rules that mirrored the governor’s original orders.

No wonder tyrannical technocrats like Anthony Fauci bark that the right to bear arms is a “public health issue,” as moonbats hug their Dr Fauci pillows in delight. Laws, constitutions, et cetera go out the window when public health is at stake.

The permanent rules being discussed are being put out by MIOSHA.

If Michigan joins New York in establishing Covid concentration camps, MIOSHA may soon oversee its own gulag archipelago. It is to Whitmer what the NKVD was to Vladimir Lenin.

In 2020, MIOSHA went after gas stations for employees wearing face coverings inadequately, roofers who were not social distancing, and forklift drivers working outside and not wearing masks. It has issued dubious fines for transgressions, including to the city of Port Huron, even though the inspector admitted he didn’t see any unmasked workers, but simply had a “general feeling” that masks “were not being taken seriously.” The agency can fine or put companies out of business or even put people in jail.

Across the Detroit River, Covid tyrants in Ontario have gotten pushback from local police. Let’s hope Michigan police are too American to participate in enforcing Whitmer’s decrees.

On a tip from Lyle and ABC of the ANC.

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