In swift fashion, more than 20 Governors and/or state attorneys general – all of them Republicans – have announced their plans to not only oppose President Joe Biden’s sweeping jab and COVID-testing requirement on businesses with 100 and more employees, but also to bring near-immediate legal action to block the Biden move.
As Raymond Wolfe reports for LifeSiteNews, the list of governors and state AGs who explicitly expressed their opposition to the jab mandate… does not include a single Democrat.
That rule, which has yet to be formalized, will come through the Department of Labor’s Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Biden said, and may lead to $14,000 in fines per violation. Biden also announced that he will mandate vaccination, with no testing option, for all federal employees, federal contractors, healthcare workers at facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding, and 300,000 educators with the federal Head Start program.
Of course, Biden’s rule does NOT apply to Congress, the Judicial Branch (including any federal lower court judges) or those lucky, tax-paid Legislative and Judicial Branch staffers, because, while Biden and his cronies long have disregarded the US Constitution when it comes to regulations and mandates on private citizens, OUR livelihoods, our travel, our communications, our private work agreements, and what we buy or sell, are open for hunting – always. It’s just that, in this case, the Bidenistas won’t jump the long-rotted fences called “separation of powers” that they pretend still exist in the federal leviathan.
Leading the pack of governors who have emerged to oppose Biden, and, perhaps, phrasing his opposition in the most cogent, pro-federalist fashion, is Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who, as Wolfe notes, said Friday:
When you have a president like Biden issuing unconstitutional edicts against the American people, we have a responsibility to stand up for the Constitution and to fight back, and we are doing that in the state of Florida. This is a President who has acknowledged in the past he does not have the authority to force this on anybody, and this order would result potentially in millions of Americans losing their jobs.
Curiously, Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Godhead of Science Anthony Fauci, and even California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) all, “long, long, long, ago” (within the past two years, and, in the case of Psaki, it was July), said they opposed mandatory jab edicts.
But they aren’t protesting now.
It’s taking the “fascist” Republicans, those eeeevil guys whom AntiFA often target as hating personal choice, to stand up for personal choice.
How odd.
As Wolfe notes, the list includes:
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, Ohio Gov. Ron DeWine, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon.
Of course, one must keep in mind that characters such as Ron DeWine and Brad Little have rather checkered records when it comes to COVID19 mandates and civil liberties, but at least they are standing up to Biden against the jab mandates.
And then there are:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, Missouri Governor Mike Parson and AG Eric Schmitt, Arizona Governor Doug Doucey and AG Mark Brnovich, Kansas AG Derek Schmidt, Louisiana AG Jeff Landry, Arkansas AG Leslie Rutledge, Oklahoma AG John O’Connor, Utah AG Sean Reyes, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
Biden is employing a little-known clause in OSHA regulations called an “emergency temporary standard” (ETS) to weasel his mandates upon the companies that ALREADY should not be handling mandates by OSHA because OSHA (started in 1970 under Nixon) and the Labor Department (started under President Taft in 1913) aren’t sanctioned by any enumerated power in the Constitution and exist contrary to basic ethics.
As Reason’s Jacob Sullum explains, the “normal” rule-making (read: Constitution-breaking) process can take from four years and four months, to eleven years and six months, to complete. So, the edict-issuing agency began using a nebulous, make-it-up-as-you-go “ETS” standard, which isn’t really a standard in any way:
By contrast, OSHA can issue an ETS ‘without supplying any notice or opportunity for public comment or public hearings.’ The standard takes effect immediately and lasts until it is superseded by a permanent rule, which OSHA is notionally required to issue within six months. That requirement seems unrealistic, the CRS notes, given ‘historical and currently expected time frames for developing and promulgating a standard.’
So, for an agency that isn’t sanctioned in any way by the Constitution, which violates every standard of market practice that, when the British violated them through mandates like the Intolerable Acts and the Stamp Act, inspired the American Revolution, there are a subset of further arbitrary and malleable rules that people can’t even challenge.
Sounds solid.
The (again, stressing, anti-constitutional) OSHA rules require that something in a workplace represent a grave danger for OSHA to be able to intercede with “emergency” mandates.
So, stressing, once more, that ZERO OSHA mandates are valid in the first place, even if one operates on their unfounded level, the survivability rate for COVID19 is so high, and the “protection” level of the jabs so low, one can make a strong case that, first, there is no justification for a claim of “safety emergency” and, second, no proscriptive reason to create a mandate for jabs, even if there were a “safety emergency.”
Again, those arguments really aren’t pertinent in a US that operates according to the rules written in the Constitution, but it’s been over 200 years since that was the case, and even the Biden Administration is making it up as it goes.
As Sullum notes:
The Biden administration's new rule for health care facilities that participate in Medicare or Medicaid, by contrast, does require vaccination, and the ETS for other private employers will require vaccination or regular testing for workers in every sector of the economy, including people who are already resistant to COVID-19 because they developed antibodies in response to prior infections. The only exception is for companies with fewer than 100 employees.
When asked September 10 who would pay for the forced tests if employees wouldn’t comply with forced jabation, Jen Psaki lazily told the reporter:
I—I would… believe it’s probably per business to make that decision, but I—I would… bet that most of the businesses would pay for that.
Which, as I mentioned in a separate piece for MRCTV, means that employers, employees, and consumers will pay for it.
Those would be the people she doesn’t know. The businesses she doesn’t own. The market exchanges to which she is not an invited party.
The lines are drawn. The suck-ups and the excusers are silent or applauding fascistic threats directed at all of the peaceful market participants mentioned above. And, right now, these governors and AGs are the major state politicians fighting back.
As Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said, Thursday:
My team and I, along with other like-minded attorneys general, are reviewing all legal action on how to stand against these authoritarian actions by the Biden administration.
Let’s hope the spirit of opposition spreads, so that even people who are hog-tied to the Democrats can show some principles.
Related: Biden Press Sec Psaki Claims Jab Mandates On Businesses, Employees, Are “Empowering” | MRCTV