Even History Of OSHA Edicts Likely Won’t Support Biden’s Jab Mandate

P. Gardner Goldsmith | November 9, 2021
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The Biden Administration Thursday, November 4, announced its “deadline” for, and details of, its “large employer” mRNA jab mandate on businesses with 100 or more employees, and on Saturday, the 6th, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a stay on its implementation, reacting to a filing by the Attorneys General of Texas, Utah, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as well as private challenges from citizens. This reaction from millions of Americans is one of visceral and well-informed opposition, and reflects awareness that the Biden scheme has nothing to do with health, safety, or the Constitution.

Here are key details of the "order."

As Spencer Kimball reports for CNBC, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released the info on its "Emergency Temporary Standard" (ETS), and it is the agency that will be strong-arming business owners, employees, and, by extension, any customers who might want the freedom to actually choose for themselves. As Kimball notes, the mandate actually begins in December, with a mask and testing edict, and then implements the mis-named “vaccine” mandate (mRNA injections are not the same as traditional vaccines) and glorious federal fine schedule in January.

You remember how the Founders clamored for those things when they fought the Brits with their lasers and telekinetic powers, don’t you? It’s all part of our great American heritage…

Out of deference to Final Boss Biden, we need to memorize these CNBC-provided points about the edicts:

  • The newly released rules, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Labor Department, apply to businesses with 100 or more employees.
  • Businesses have until Jan. 4 to make sure their workers have received the shots necessary to be fully vaccinated.
  • All unvaccinated workers must begin wearing masks by Dec. 5 and provide a negative Covid test on a weekly basis after the January deadline, according to the requirements.
  • Companies are not required to pay for or provide the tests unless they are otherwise required to by state or local laws or in labor union contracts.

And all of that leaves some abyssal gaps in our knowledge base.

Even when one does a detailed study of the just-released ETS as posted in the Federal Register, one won’t know who will be paying for all the tests, but it sure seems like it will be the employee, unless a state or local edict says otherwise.

We don’t know what the feds mean by “fully vaccinated” since the mRNA jabs don’t fit the original meaning of vaccine, since the Moderna, J and J, and Pfizer efficacy at reducing symptoms keeps being lowered, and since governments around the world keep upping the number of “boosters” they require to let people maintain their wondrous status of “fully vaccinated."

We also don’t know how LONG that booster shot (whatever number it is) has to have been in your system for it to be counted. One of the big points of contention among people who are trying to collect data on negative jab consequences is that the feds, right now, only count people as “vaccinated” until fourteen days have passed since a person took the jab.

We don’t know what they will use to “test” people. 

And this OSHA mandate doesn't even include the parallel and more onerous Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandates on all facilities tied to the federal welfare schemes of Medicare and Medicaid. Workers at those would have to be jabbed, and they cannot choose the alternate "testing" method, at all. 

In total, the combination of the ETS and the CMS mandates will hit two-thirds of the US workforce. OSHA would have to send inspectors into businesses, using HIPAA's provision that the government can collect your medical data (I've tried to warn people about that for years) and the Bidenistas also plan on mandating this for businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

Simply put: instead of allowing people to choose if they want to get jabs, politicians like Biden, and his team of OSHA bureaucrats, are ready to compel people to interact the way they command.

And the fines… Ah, yes. Those wonderful fines. That’s an arbitrary and changeable money-grab, as well. Marisa Fernandez reports for Axios:

Fines for violating the vaccination rules could start at $13,653 each and go as high as $136,532 per violation if employers are found to be willfully non-compliant or repeat offenses. The amounts are in line with violations for other rules the agency enforces.

“… rules the agency enforces…”

What does THAT mean? Not a lot, since the term “rule” is a euphemism for threat, and the entire OSHA paradigm is a morass of questions, mandates, and unconstitutional usurpations of Natural Rights.

This, of course, coming from Biden, who formerly promised that he would not “mandate” jabs, even as reporters near him never mentioned that he doesn’t have the constitutional or moral prerogative to consider doing that, anyway.

This breach of promise, this defiance of constitutional limits, this obnoxious insertion into private contract, this willful disregard for peace thus sees a new quote from one of Biden’s unnamed thugs, as reported by Charlie Spiering, of Breitbart from the original White House release:

’The bottom line is: Vaccination requirements work,’ the official concluded. ‘And the actions we’re taking tomorrow will lead to millions of Americans getting vaccinated, protecting workers, saving lives, strengthening our economy, and helping it to accelerate our path out of this pandemic.’

Do they really think people are so lazy, ignorant, or dumb, as to accept these edicts and nonsense terms?

As Phil Kerpen, the president of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity noted in a Tweet providing the edict text, the OSHA "ETS" strategy will be to claim that their emergency “regulatory” power comes from their "power" to mitigate or fine a “dangerous work environment.”

But OSHA has tried this ETS tactic nine times before in other contexts, was challenged in court six times, and lost in five of the six.

This is where the surface-layer debate, that “OSHA exists, and can or cannot lawfully do X” presents itself.

The idea of “workplace safety” under which OSHA is acting has been viewed by courts as pertaining only to the danger a workplace itself presents TO workers, not the danger of viral communication a team of workers or any single worker might present to each other.

Are the feds going to tell people they can't APPLY for jobs unless they get flu jabs every year, unless they assure others who might be immuno-compromised that they won't pass to them the common cold? Such busy-bodyism is insane.

And what of those who already HAVE antibodies? As the Competitive Enterprise Institute noted, November 5:

OSHA requires people with natural immunity to get vaccinated, ignoring epidemiological literature by calling it ‘unreliable’.

And Labor Secretary (formerly lockdown-loving Boston Mayor) Marty Walsh even had the gall to claim their mandate shouldn’t be called a MANDATE.

Bottom line: all of this rests on Biden’s assumption that the feds CAN do this, which he has no constitutional power to claim, and which, even if the Constitution allowed it, would not be morally acceptable.

Such a flagrant breach of the already constitutionally unacceptable OSHA paradigm is so obvious, numerous politicians and private industry groups readied or filed suit immediately after Biden’s announcement. Eleven states' Attorneys General have filed suit, and the Daily Wire came out hard and strong on the legal front, while producing what might be the best overview one can read on the mandate.

One group, the Ohio-based Buckeye Institute, filed on November 5 to stop the mandate, stating, in part:

The Buckeye Institute’s emergency motion argues that the mandate—one of the most far-reaching and invasive rules ever promulgated by the federal government—exceeds OSHA’s authority under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, violates the major questions doctrine, was promulgated in violation of the Congressional Review Act, and impermissibly trammels on numerous constitutional principles including the non-delegation doctrine and limitations on federal power under the Commerce Clause.

And Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has stepped forward to shed some light on the unconstitutional heart of OSHA, which was started under the Nixon Administration.

As Tom Pappert writes for National File:

In a statement, Biggs said, 'OSHA’s existence is yet another example of the federal government creating agencies to address issues that are more appropriately handled by state governments and private employers.'

This is a simple matter. The Fifth Circuit Court Panel is on the right track, but we need to be clear... There is no enumerated constitutional power for OSHA to exist, and, even if there were, no gang of human beings has a right to tell other people how to conduct their peaceful business.

Americans have let the OSHA sore fester for far too long. It has been a disease needing a cure for a long time.

Perhaps Biggs’ proposal will represent that cure, before it’s too late.

 

Related: US Labor Secretary on OSHA Vaccine Mandate for Private Businesses: 'This Is Not a Mandate' | MRCTV

 

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