New York Democrats call for outside investigation of Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 nursing home Executive Order
The man whom some Democrats thought might be a suitable replacement for Joe Biden at a brokered convention because of his handling of COVID-19 in his State is now embroiled in a burgeoning scandal because of his handling of COVID-19 in his State.
Of course I am talking about Andrew Cuomo, the man the media has held up as the example of how Donald Trump should have responded to the COVID-19 outbreak. In case you do not know, and if you watch the mainstream media you probably do not know, Andrew Cuomo signed an Executive Order in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak which prevented nursing homes from testing people returning or being admitted to nursing homes from hospitals to be tested for COVID-19 before they were admitted to the homes.
Seniors are among the most vulnerable and they are a high risk group for COVID-19 so this decision made no sense, naturally COVID-19 spread throughout the nursing homes and to date 5,300 nursing home residents have died of the virus in New York.
Now there is growing outcry from New York Republicans and Democrats for an outside investigation into what went wrong. Here is more:
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo finds himself engulfed in scandal as a growing number of Democrats join state Republicans in demanding an independent investigation into his controversial policies and how questionable actions may might have contributed to the catastrophic outbreak of coronavirus in New York nursing homes.
More details have emerged in recent days raising major questions about potentially fatal decisions made under Cuomo’s watch as the death toll in New York’s nursing homes swells to over 5300 and continues to climb.
Last week, New York suddenly disclosed more than 1,700 previously unreported deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities. An Associate Press tally put the number of nursing home virus deaths at over 5300. Elderly care fatalities in New York have reportedly been on the rise by an average of 20 to 25 deaths per day for several weeks.
“It’s fine to have the Health Department and the attorney general looking at what individual nursing homes are doing. But there needs to be a professional review of not only the industry as a whole but what the Department of Health has been doing, both leading up to this situation and in the midst of this situation,” said New York Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, a Democrat. “Certainly, it would be wrong for the Department of Health to be charged with examining itself.”
“The attorney general should bring in outside counsel,” said Gottfried.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat from the Bronx, said the State Legislature should investigate.
“I strongly believe that the Legislature is one of the key entities that should look into this issue, which has devastated so many families across our state,” said Rivera, chairman of the Senate Health Committee. “It is imperative to hold public hearings as soon as possible to get to the bottom of what truly happened at our state’s nursing homes as the COVID-19 pandemic developed.”
You would think that in the middle of a pandemic where senior citizens are the highest risk group that you would test people before they are allowed to be admitted into a nursing home, but not only did Andrew Cuomo stop nursing homes from providing this potentially life-saving test he also shielded the nursing home from lawsuits which might arise in the wake of his deadly Executive Order. He had to have known how dangerous this order would turn out to be and he issued it anyway because he had no idea what to do.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
The battle between authoritarian governors and people who long for simple freedoms which were once guaranteed by the Constitution is starting to heat up. There are currently hundreds of COVID-19 lawsuits making their way through the various court systems and we are starting to get some decisions and they are coming down on the side of freedom.
First a court ruled Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had to allow gun shops to open, and then a court ruled Kentucky’s ban on in-person church services was unconstitutional, and now the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Governor Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order. Here is more:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Gov. Tony Evers’ coronavirus stay-at-home order Wednesday, ruling that his administration overstepped its authority when it extended it for another month without consulting legislators.
The 4-3 ruling essentially reopens the state, lifting caps on the size of gatherings, allowing people to travel as they please and allowing shuttered businesses to reopen, including bars and restaurants.
The decision let stand language that had closed schools, however, and local governments can still impose their own health restrictions.
Chief Justice Patience Roggensack wrote for the majority that health secretary Andrea Palm’s order amounted to an emergency rule that she doesn’t have the power to create on her own.
“Rule-making exists precisely to ensure that kind of controlling, subjective judgement asserted by one unelected official, Palm, is not imposed in Wisconsin,” Roggensack, part of the court’s 5-2 conservative majority, wrote.
It will be interesting to see how the cities and towns will react to this decision because according to the article the decision will allow them to implement the same restrictions at the local level, but this is still a pretty big victory and I hope this will lead to more totalitarian State restrictions being ruled unconstitutional all across this once free nation.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Despite the exoneration of Michael Flynn with the news the Department of Justice will no longer pursue charges against him because the FBI tried to set him up, it looks like the saga is not quite over for him just yet.
According to this story the Judge presiding over the case wants to give more time for somebody, anybody, to come forward with information they can use against Michael Flynn. Here is more:
D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued an order Tuesday indicating he’ll soon accept “amicus curiae,” or “friend of the court” submissions, in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn — drawing immediate scrutiny and a planned ethics complaint against Sullivan, who had previously refused to hear amicus briefs in the case.
Sullivan’s order indicated that an upcoming scheduling order would clarify the parameters of who specifically could submit the amicus briefs, which are submissions by non-parties that claim an interest in the case. Sullivan specifically said he anticipated that “individuals and organizations” will file briefs “for the benefit of the court,” as he prepares to rule on the government’s motion to dismiss the case.
“Judge Sullivan, who denied leave to file amicus briefs when he knew third parties would have spoken favorably of Flynn, now solicits briefs critical of Flynn,” independent journalist Michael Cernovich wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening. “This is a violation of the judicial oath and applicable ethical rules. We will be filing a complaint against Sullivan. … [He] is acting as a politician, not a judge.”
The people who have an “interest in the case” would be Barack Obama, Joe Biden, the FBI, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and anybody else who participated in the spying on and framing of an American citizen in the attempts to take down a President, they all have a vested interest in keeping Michael Flynn from ever talking, by any means necessary…
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
We have seen some downright scary stories out there about tracking American citizens in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as authoritarian governors begin to flex their muscles while the people just lie supinely on their backs and take it.
Most of the stories revolve around cellphone tracking but New York is talking about creating a “tracing army” of thousands of people and New Jersey is already using drones to enforce social conditioning distancing.
Now Kentucky, which just lost a court decision on banning in-person church services, is getting in on the act. According to this story some COVID-19 patients are being forced to wear ankle bracelets as if they are common criminals. Here is more:
Kentucky is taking severe measures to ensure residents exposed to the coronavirus stay at home. Louisville residents who have been in contact with coronavirus patients but refuse to isolate themselves are being made to wear ankle bracelets.
Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Angela Bisig ordered the Department of Corrections to fit D.L. with a global positioning device for the next 14 days. If D.L. leaves the house again, he or she could be criminally charged, WDRB reports.
D.L. is not the only Louisville resident ordered to wear ankle monitors to contain the spread of the coronavirus. According to WDRB, there are three other known cases so far. Two other people who live in the same home — one who has tested positive, and the other who has not — were ordered to remain in their home last week after both refused to stay isolated.
And another man was put under house arrest after he went out shopping despite having tested positive for the coronavirus, according to WDRB.
This is getting out of control, the states are pushing us to see how much we are willing to take and by and large the American people are failing this test. It is time to say enough is enough because this is only the beginning, the more the American people take the more they are going to push the limits.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
We are beginning to see literally hundreds of lawsuits against the various usurpation of our rights by the State governments starting to make their way through the court system. Just how far are these authoritarian governors allowed to go during a time of a self-proclaimed state of emergency? That is what we are going to find out.
People are growing weary and are beginning to ask questions, they are beginning to awaken from their states induced comas, and the tide might finally be turning. Recently a Federal Judge ruled that Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker overstepped his bounds when he declared gun stores to be non-essential businesses and shuttered them with the swipe of a pen, and now a Federal Court ruled that Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s ban on in-person Church services during the COVID-19 outbreak is unconstitutional. Here is more:
A federal court halted the Kentucky governor’s temporary ban on mass gatherings from applying to in-person religious services, clearing the way for Sunday church services.
U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove on Friday issued a temporary restraining order enjoining Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration from enforcing the ban on mass gatherings at “any in-person religious service which adheres to applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines.”
Did you ever think we would see a day in America when a court would have to remind the government that it cannot ban Church services? You will note that Churches still have to adhere to social distancing guidelines, you know the same guidelines Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and others follow because they were allowed to stay open.
The ruling from the Eastern District of Kentucky sided with the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Nicholasville, but applies to all places of worship around the commonwealth.
The federal judge’s order in the Tabernacle Baptist Church case said Beshear had “an honest motive” in wanting to safeguard Kentuckians’ health and lives, but didn’t provide “a compelling reason for using his authority to limit a citizen’s right to freely exercise something we value greatly — the right of every American to follow their conscience on matters related to religion.”
“The Constitution will endure. It would be easy to put it on the shelf in times like this, to be pulled down and dusted off when more convenient,” Van Tatenhove’s opinion read. “But that is not our tradition. Its enduring quality requires that it be respected even when it is hard.”
I believe this is a just and responsible decision, the Church can reopen following the guidelines big businesses have been following all along and people who feel safe can attend while people who do not can stay home and watch the streaming services.
This is another step in the right direction, slowly but surely we seem to be turning a corner, but we still hear this talk about a “new normal” and that has me worried.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Sunday, May 10th open thread: ‘Assassin’
“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24 KJV)
Here is this week’s open thread. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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Here is Muse performing “Assassin” live in 2015:
While shutting down businesses and depriving people of their ability to earn a living during the COVID-19 pandemic many States have declared that gun shops are non-essential businesses and have ordered them to close.
Massachusetts was one of the States which ordered gun shops to close but today a Federal Judge ruled that gun shops can reopen in the Bay State, here is more:
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that gun shops across Massachusetts can reopen this weekend, ruling that Governor Charlie Baker’s decision to shutter them along with thousands of other “nonessential” businesses infringed on people’s Second Amendment rights.
The decision from US District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock marked a rare rebuke of Baker and the broad emergency powers he’s wielded to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, during which he’s also shut down school buildings and required millions of people to wear face coverings if they can’t distance themselves from others.
But Woodlock said Baker’s inclusion of firearm retailers among those businesses ordered to close — and his lack of a public explanation for why — created an “improper burden.”
“There’s no justification here,” Woodlock said during a two-hour virtual hearing, arguing he doesn’t see a fit “between the goals of the emergency declared by the Commonwealth and the burdening of the constitutional rights of the defendants in this narrow area.”
“I have enough information to say, in this very small corner of this emergency, we don’t surrender our constitutional rights,” the judge said. “These plaintiffs . . . have constitutional rights that deserve respect and vindication. And it becomes necessary for a court to do that.”
This is a major victory for the second amendment and our Constitutional rights, however I would say a whole slew of our rights have been violated and I would like to see more challenges in the courts, but I digress.
The NRA already has lawsuits pending in California and New York over the same issue and this should be an indication that the NRA is going to win those cases as well. If so the three States which are most hostile to the Second Amendment will all suffer humiliating defeats in their attempts to use this crisis to thwart the Second Amendment.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
After a very bad week or so for the FBI which included but was not limited to the revelations that the FBI discussed trying to trick Michael Flynn into lying and trying to get him fired, and that the agency was set to drop its investigation into Michael Flynn before Peter Strzok convinced the agency to wait and this gave him time to alter notes of the FBI’s meeting with Michael Flynn to make him appear guilty, we are now learning the Department of Justice is dropping its case against him. Here is more:
The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
The action was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said that after reviewing newly disclosed information and other materials, it agreed with Flynn’s lawyers that his interview with the FBI should never have taken place because he had not had inappropriate contacts with Russians. The interview, the department said, was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
Jensen said in a statement: “Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”
Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI only after he could not afford to fight the battle any more and after the FBI threatened to investigate his family next. At this point Michael Flynn made the decision to sacrifice himself so that his family would not have to go through any more hell than they already had.
What the FBI did in this case was sickening and it showed the agency will stop at nothing to pursue a political agenda and while it is all very well and good the FBI is dropping the case heads must roll and a major lawsuit should be coming.
To paraphrase an old question, where does Michael Flynn go to get his reputation back?
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
While the governor of California, Gavin Newson, is rounding people up, separating them from their families, and forcibly locking them up with an army of “contact tracers”we have a story of at least one California sheriff who refuses to make criminals out of Californians who simply want to exercise their Constitutionally guaranteed rights. Here is more:
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco reaffirmed his stance on not enforcing stringent stay-at-home orders, telling the Riverside County Board of Supervisors this week that he refuses to “make criminals out of business owners, single moms, and otherwise healthy individuals for exercising their constitutional rights.”
Government “ordered residents into their homes, closed their businesses, made them wear masks, forbid them from going to church, and eliminated constitutional freedoms put in place over 200 years ago,” he explained.
“In the name of a public health crisis, our civil liberties and constitutional protections were placed on hold,” he continued.
Bianco said he did not enforce the stay-at-home order from the beginning, partly because he “trusted our residents’ ability to do the right thing without fear of being arrested” and emphasized that he continues to hold that position:
I knew they could be trusted to act as responsible adults, and I was correct. As we continue, I will reinforce my position. Not only do we not have the resources to enforce unreasonable orders, I refuse to make criminals out of business owners, single moms, and otherwise healthy individuals for exercising their constitutional rights. I believe Riverside County residents are responsible enough to proceed cautiously.
He went on to say there cannot be a new normal, a term that sends shivers down my spine:
“There cannot be a new normal,” he warned, citing the country’s “fundamental freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Any new normal is a direct attack on the basic rights, which set us apart and make us the greatest country in the world,” he added.
Personally I thought the time for civil disobedience was two months ago but at least we are finally starting to see people push back against these tyrannical orders and now we have a sheriff in California who is refusing to go against an unconstitutional order. Things might finally be headed in the right direction after two months of “voluntary compliance.”
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Andrew Cuomo admits majority of new COVID-19 hospitalizations are people who stayed home
According to this story Andrew Cuomo admitted earlier today that the majority of people who have lately been hospitalized with COVID-19 are actually people who stayed home. Here is more:
“If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” the governor told reporters.
“This is a surprise. Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he added. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”
Which means that New York usurped people’s rights, stole their freedom, and cost untold thousands their livelihood for nothing. All it did was to delay what turned out to be inevitable and prolonged the crisis. But that is what happens when you have a government full of authoritarian reactionaries, this was never about controlling the virus but rather it was about controlling the people.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
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