Talk about cultivating a hostile environment!
John DePetro reports that the state Department of Health is encouraging healthcare workers to tattle on coworkers who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 (whether or not they have acquired immunity through prior exposure). Center for Professional Boards and Licensing Chief Ellen Balasco ends a recent notice about vaccination requirements thus:
Additionally, if you are aware of any RIDOH-licensed healthcare provider who is providing direct patient care to patients and is unvaccinated, you can file an online complaint at https://health.ri.gov/complaints/ or you can call 401-222-5200.
Presumably providing direct patient care to people who aren’t patients is still fine…
What people who are keeping their heads throughout this civic crisis have to remember is that a large number of their fellow citizens really do believe that the coronavirus is an unusually deadly pathogen, that the vaccine is a near-flawless medical miracle with few unknown properties, and that claims about gaining immunity after having already been infected are highly suspicious. That truly is the world they think they’re living in, and they are behaving accordingly.
To be clear, if you are an adult who hasn’t had COVID-19, I believe you’re better off being vaccinated than taking your chances with the virus. As I’ve written multiple times in this space, outcomes appear to be better and risks lower with vaccination in every category. However, the very same research and analysis that led me to that conclusion also makes clear that most people have no problem recovering from infection and that doing so provides stronger immunity than the vaccine.
The fact that government and public health leaders refuse to acknowledge this reality remains one of the most mind-boggling indications of the politicization of our society that I’ve seen. Forcing people out of their jobs — while there’s a shortage of workers! — and then calling for them to rat each other out is disturbing and incredibly telling of the way these people see the rest of us.
We’re not equals trying to work out an historically unprecedented situation. No. It’s responsible administrators and hallway monitors (them) versus no-good malefactors (us).
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Jeff Bezos has recruited Star Trek legend William Shatner to give PR for his personal space program a boost. Well, I’ll take any excuse to revisit this classic performance:
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Calls of hypocrisy can go too far, but it’s simply too easy to imagine (meaning “to know”) how differently this sort of news would be handled if Biden were a Republican:
[Rep. Jim] Banks, the Republican Study Committee chairman, was responding to the New York Post’s report on the findings of the nonpartisan CRS showing how Biden — without being mentioned by name — avoided paying Medicare tax on speaking fees and book sales in 2017 and 2018, improperly using S corporations to show low salaries but count most revenue as “distributions” exempt from Medicare tax.
Sometimes it seems like progressives believe supporting higher taxes is a suitable substitute for paying them.
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On one hand, I sympathize with Alexis Santoro, of Cumberland:
Santoro first raised the issue in an email on September 1 to Cumberland school officials.
“Each year there has been a bus monitor/crossing guard for the bus when the bus has stopped at this location since pound road has a lot of blind spots and cars fly around the corner,” wrote Santoro. “In 2019, the bus stop was moved to the corner of Windsong and Goldstar for the safety of the little children. This year, it was set back to the corner of Windsong and Pound for some reason, however, there is no bus monitor/crossing guard, so the children are required to cross this busy and poorly visible street with oncoming traffic coming towards them.”
“I am requesting the bus stop be moved into the neighborhood, [and] the bus drive around so the kids do not have to cross the road or a bus monitor/crossing guard be assigned to the bus,” said Santoro.
We pay plenty of money for our government schools and the related transportation, in Rhode Island, and it is the job of the people whom we pay to provide services at the level for which they’re collecting money. From that perspective, Santoro even went a step toward indulgence, suggesting an alternative for safety that would satisfy her concerns as a parent.
On the other hand, one can’t help but wonder if that very same transactional perspective isn’t creating an unhealthy middle ground of expectation to be served:
According to Santoro, who provided emails to GoLocal — she was told she could “train to become a monitor” in light of the shortage of workers.
“Excuse me, I have a job. This is their responsibility,” said Santoro, of the response from the Cumberland School Department.
What’s wrong with the schools’ response, there? Granted, officials appear to have done a poor job explaining why one stop is necessary over the other, but assuming there is some unspoken explanation, along with a shortage of monitors, taking every opportunity to pitch for employees seems reasonable.
The problem is that Santoro has encountered one of the bottlenecks where the various unaccountable decisions of elected and appointed officials create a situation with which a particular constituent is not happy. Central among those decisions is that government services have to be offered free of charge to all comers.
Let’s imagine, then, if this were a transaction with a private company. In that case, Santoro would have a consumer’s leverage. The school would have reason to do whatever it could to accommodate her concerns, either adding a crossing guard or moving the stop. If that were not possible, she could demand a refund of her busing fee and find another way to get the child to school.
Indeed, once upon a time, children were expected to get to school one way or another, and communities would organize volunteers for things like ensuring children weren’t run over crossing the street. As we’ve been taxed to pay people to do those jobs, we’ve lost that sense that our money is going to particular services and we have to fill in the gap.
Featured image by Cleyton Ewerton on Unsplash.
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Professors from multiple states have signed on to the argument that “success and merit” should not be goals of a university, but rather that they’re “barriers,” according to Kate Anderson on Campus Reform (via Instapundit):
“Admitting that the normative definitions of success and merit are in and of themselves barriers to achieving the goals of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion is necessary but not sufficient to create change,” professors Beth Mitchneck and Jessi L. Smith recently wrote for Inside Higher Education. …
Speaking with Campus Reform, University of Illinois professor Eunmi] Mun said, “[M]erit-based pay systems may increase the gender gap in bonus pay, which is more sensitive to individual performance than base pay.”
It’s time for the people who fund education (both taxpayers and students) to start asking ourselves what we’re paying these people for. After all, some of their materials go so far as to decry merit as an agent of evil whiteness.
I kinda like merit as a measure of performance, but then… white guy.
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The headline from a Dennis Prager commentary in the Epoch Times evokes two distinct ideas. Here’s the headline: “As America Has Become More Secular, It Has Become Less Free.”
The first idea is along the lines that Prager emphasizes:
Freedom permeates the Old Testament: The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, a story about man’s assertion of his God-given freedom … freedom even to disobey God. The primary story of the Old Testament is the Exodus, a story about God liberating slaves.
Being Jewish, Prager doesn’t move on to the New Testament, but there, too, freedom permeates. Even in the abstract, one can see why this must be so. The Judeo-Christian concept of God puts front and center the individual’s relationship with a divine presence. The ruler isn’t a god. Our gods aren’t embedded in the objects and lifeforms of our households and environment. Whatever intermediaries we may acknowledge, the fundamental connection for each individual is straight up to the top, so to speak. We always have that reference for anybody in between who claims authority over us.
This blends nicely into the second idea, which is that this goes back to the circular political spectrum that I proposed in this space years ago (shown as the featured image for this post). As our country has divided and anarcho-fascist groups like Antifa have emerged, the categories I suggested have held up well.
The central axis is most relevant to Prager’s essay. On the Left, government is the source and enforcer of morality. On the Right, it’s culture institutions, which includes religious ones. Cultural institutions are distinct from government institutions mainly in that they impose their rules more softly, often through the mild expression of preference.
Religious belief in a direct relationship with God may not be necessary for those on the right (certainly not overt and conscious religious belief), but it is difficult to understand how sincere believers can knowingly wind up on the left. Perhaps a more fair depiction of the spectrum would be as a three-dimensional sphere, such that the morality axis could be a measure of degree, rather than a binary choice, allowing a moderate to move toward conservatism (for example) without passing through anarchy/totalitarianism.
But when all is said and done, one has to control or the other: government or culture. If one believes government should align with and enforce morality, then that human institution is replacing God. On the flip side, if one believes a church should enforce morality through some sort of tax or police scheme, then that religious institution is becoming a government. In either case, the person is implicitly amplifying a belief in human perfectibility and therefore is moving into progressive or far-right territory on the way to totalitarianism.
When the combination of the two spheres becomes a problem, it is because the impulse to govern has corrupted the religion, not because religiosity taints the purity of government.
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Nathan Worcester lays out extensive details for a conclusion for which many of us don’t require such comprehensive research: The benefits of masking young children against COVID-19 in school are miniscule, while the harm of doing so can be significant. If only our government operated through real debate and consideration of facts (which they seem to eschew in favor of “science”).
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It’s difficult to know whether to read this Lauren Clem story in the Valley Breeze as a comedy or outrage-driven drama.
Ronald Landry worked his way up to the rank of captain in the Woonsocket police department, retiring in 2007. At that point, presumably, he took his pension along with a promotion of chief just across the border in the Millville, Massachusetts, police, where he continues to be employed. On top of these two sources of income, he works police details at Gillette Stadium.
This last job had been his point of departure when Woonsocket Patrol Officer Logan Courtemanche, who joined the force after Landry’s time, pulled him over in the middle of the night for driving 60 in a 25. Reports Courtemanche:
“Ronald had a disgusted look on his face when he handed me his license and then proceeded to lecture me about the fact that he ‘worked for the city for 25 f—ing years.’ I had no previous knowledge as to who he was as this was my first encounter with Ronald,” Courtemanche wrote. …
… Courtemanche wrote that he apologized to Landry after realizing he was a police officer and handed back his license without citing him. Before he had finished speaking, he said, Landry pulled the license out of his hand and accelerated away from him, almost running over his foot. Courtemanche said he then watched Landry take a left on a red light at the intersection of Cass Avenue and Cumberland Street.
Some of the political leaders in Millville were not happy to hear of this incident, particularly as they had disciplined him in February 2020 for an incident at a car dealership in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Outraged that a $30,000 antique car he’d purchased in Florida had been damaged during shipping, he transferred his aggression toward an Uxbridge officer who had just arrived to assess the situation. According to the officer’s report, Landry uttered the infamous phrase, “Do you know who I am?” Despite being a police chief, he became manageable as a party to the incident only after the officer armed his taser and threatened to use it.
So, what would be the appropriate presentation of the story of Landry’s exploits? If its a “based on true events” drama about a privileged man of authority who seems unable to control his temper and expects special treatment when he violates the laws he has been so richly compensated to enforce, then dark music and implied “boos” in the soundtrack might be appropriate, or perhaps the tone could shade toward the tragic harm of personal failings. On the other hand, privileged men of authority with temper problems and expectations of being treated as though they’re special can make for funny characters.
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Sometimes I wonder how many of the most-aggressive anti-COVID crusaders have children. It would be interesting to see a study of attitudes toward our response to the pandemic and having children in the home. As somebody with children spanning from early grades into college, I can testify that things have become much, much harder.
Stories like this one about screen-time-related near-sightedness are becoming regular sights, and we should expect their like, on findings big and small, to continue for the foreseeable future.
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