“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” — Ayn Rand
It’s not often I agree with President Joe Biden, but when he said on Dec. 27, speaking of COVID-19 just before a meeting with some of the nation’s governors: “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at a state level.”
I totally agree. Good for him, the Bill of Rights 10th Amendment states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution, Article 1 Section 8, allows the federal government to regulate commerce with foreign nations and between the states, so things like air travel between nations and states is a federal responsibility, however opening or closing schools or restaurants is not.
Our President’s remarks may have been a gaffe or scripted, it is hard to tell, but I am glad to see him say it, the federal overreach is troubling, always fed by an emergency real or not, like 911 or COVID-19. Most on the left are pleased with the federal COVID-19 restrictions, most on the right not so much. Public health laws good for Hawaii may not be good for Alaska, even in Alaska what is good for Anchorage, an international city, may not be good for Utqiagvik, formerly Point Barrow 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
One interesting fact that came from the study of government authority during the COVID-19 flareup is that local boards of education draw their juris from the state laws, thus they are a state entity, local folks elect them, but state law controls them. The federal government wishing to punish parents from speaking our needed to invoke the Patriot Act to investigate them, federal tax dollars being withheld is the cudgel used to enforce federal policies on local school boards, arguably in violation of our Constitution.
The founders, those old dead white guys, were smart when they added restriction on the federal government in the Bill of Rights, let’s hope the current makeup of the Supreme Court at least stops the charge towards an all-knowing all-powerful federal government, one that controls us from before birth to after death. The federal pregnancy discrimination act and the tax laws that tax the dead are but two examples of this.
The COVID-19 virus has taxed our health care system and our patience, the CDC that has been schizophrenic at best, disjointed and highly political and limitedly helpful at best points to the inefficiency of a federal response to a state/local issue.
An article on the Association of American Medical Colleges WEB Site states: “Early in the pandemic, some of the answers provided by public officials — who were scrambling to track the disease as it overwhelmed health systems — fed skepticism. Last April, Deborah Birx, MD, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, when asked about people who have COVID-19 but die from pre-existing conditions: “If someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.” Oddly enough this includes traffic fatalities if the deceased had COVID.” The death total is horrible enough without padding the statistics but if your goal is to overcome that pesky Constitution or defeating President Trump, the more the dead the better, the larger the emergency the better.
In the same time frame, more Americans have tragically died under President Biden’s time in office, than President Trump’s during the same number of months, even with restrictions. This fact is not politically correct, so the media rarely reports the total number.
Please remember the “crisis at our southern boarder was fake news, according to the media who used it against President Trump, and if it looks bad for President Biden it is still not a crisis. About 1.6 million people crossing or attempting to cross the southern border illegally during President Biden’s term is not a problem. If you think it is. you are a racist. 160,000 COVID positive folks entering our nation is not a problem.
President Biden has built small portions of the wall, mostly gates, and reinstated some portions of the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Both actions were formerly called racist, and today rarely so much as mentioned in the media.
Let’s follow the constitution not destroy it. My Opinion.
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