The COVID-19 Pandemic Permanently Damaged Property Rights

I don't pay particular attention to health scares, so when talk of a spreading pandemic started dominating the news cycle I largely shrugged and went about my business. I was staying at a cheap motel in Calexico, taking photos of the New River and the Salton Sea for my

That was the weekend when the shutdowns began. I recall stopping at a grocery store near Modesto, when I noticed meandering lines and a run on toilet paper. The rest, as they say, is history. Like most people, I never could have predicted the coming shutdown of the economy, government orders to stay at home, an end to restaurant dining and public gatherings, and profligate "relief" payments.

As that (probably fake) George Washington quotation put it, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force." Government officials aren't wiser than the rest of us, so when they tried to deal with a serious public health problem, they did so in a forceful, ineloquent, and unreasonable manner. Unfortunately, many of its worst approaches leave permanent scars.

In my column last year summarizing lessons from COVID-19, I concluded that it left us as a "nation of rulers, not laws." American governors—and California Gov. Gavin Newsom in particular—quickly and eagerly used their broad emergency powers to begin issuing edicts. Given the extent of the public-health threat, some of the more modest and temporary ones were understandable, but they bypassed the normal legislative process in cynical and expansive ways.

One Republican lawmaker published a 138-page document detailing the 400 laws that Newsom unilaterally imposed or changed—many of them that only tangentially had anything to do with protecting public health. In particular, officials used the crisis to impose policies they already supported but couldn't get through the normal legislative process.

Governor Lockdown was almost in range of being recalled because of his arrogance in 2020, but the Republicants just didnt go after him for this very point.

The governor is not God, and has no right to confine us to our houses absent personal guilt. Yet he and every two bit County Health Officer did just that in their hysterical overreaction. And people let them.

The “Americans” are no longer an assertive free people; they’re cattle in service of a gangster state.

Some of us knew this was a scam the instant that Mike Pence (pizz be upon him!) hoisted the bait and switch “30 days to stop the spread” sign.

I think my first clue was watching the closure of little businesses but the big guys who sold the same things could stay open .... along with the liquor store and pot dispensaries. Essential my ass.

Plus watching the elites flout masks and distancing rules, ban funerals for everyone but have THREE for St. Floyd it occurred to me, you know, they're not truly fearful of this virus they're frightening us with ... why is that?

DO NOT FORGET what they’ve done to you.
Do not let their sudden realization they are in bad shape politically excuse the last two-plus years of abuses.
They shut down your job.
Called many of you “non-essential.”
Closed your kids’ schools.
Expected you to live off $1200 for months while they got richer and richer.
Denied you the ability to be with your dying loved ones.
Then denied you the ability to give those loved ones a proper funeral.
While they let George Floyd have three.
While they went on vacation.
Visited family.
The hair salon.
They arrested you for paddle boarding by yourself.
They shut down the parks and the playgrounds.
They called you a grandma killer if you questioned them.
Suspended you from social media if you didn’t obey the narrative.

They called you domestic terrorists when you demanded your kids get the education your tax dollars paid for.
They mocked you when you demanded a return to normalcy for children.
They sneer at your concern over empty shelves and exploding grocery and utility bills.
They messed with supply chains and emptied store shelves, while the elites partied on yachts and Martha’s Vineyard.
They queered women’s sports and the military, and made the citizenry pay for it.
They sexualized schoolchildren, and persecuted parents at school board meetings.
They denied you the chance to try alternative treatments for COVID.
Then they fired you for not getting the vaccine.
When you stand up for your freedom, they call you Nazis and bigots.

Do not forget what they have done.
Do not forgive them.
They are hoping that, by November, you have forgotten the nightmareof the last 2+ years.
YOU struggle to make ends meet and the best the Biden administration can do is free crack pipes for “racial equity.”
This is on top of the woke, cancel culture bull they shove down our throats, the 2020 riots, being accused of racism and bigotry because we oppose their agenda.
As the election draws closer, they’ll pretend they didn’t do any of this.
They’ll gaslight us.
Project.
Blame the GOP (like they tried to when defunding the police went south).

DO NOT give them power.
They haven’t learned a damn thing from this.
You re-elect them, and you can expect masks and lockdowns and nonsense in perpetuity.
Not just for COVID, but for whatever else they deem a “public health emergency” (guns, climate change).
(Remember, they are the very same people who ignore a pubic health emergency aka AIDS.)
They will trample your rights.
VOTE THEM OUT.

NEVER FORGET.

REMEMBER…..each NOVEMBER!

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