It didn’t take long for the state Department of Health to pounce with both feet on the resistant Dr. Stephen Skoly. The following is from a copy of the compliance order issued to him today, according to a source:
5. On October 1, 2021, the Providence Journal reported that Respondent stated that (a) he was not vaccinated, (b) did not meet the medical exemption incorporated in the regulation, and that he intended to directly engage in patient care or activity in which he or others would potentially be exposed to infectious agents that can be transmitted from person to person.
6. On October 1, 2021, Respondent made various public statements, including statements published in video recordings, indicating that he had engaged in the activity set forth in the previous paragraph.
7. The facts set forth above constitute reasonable grounds to believe that Respondent is in violation of 216-RICR-20-15-8 and subject to disciplinary action pursuant to 216-RICR-40-05-2.15.1 (A) (24).
The regulation cited for disciplinary action refers to Rhode Island General Law 23-1-25, which states that violation of a compliance order can, upon conviction, result in a fine of $300 or imprisonment of 90 days for each day of failure to comply.
Presumably a judge will have the final say, but the Department of Health appears to be looking to make an example of Dr. Skoly, leaving him a choice of how many days’ exposure he wants to risk.
Featured image from Bing Maps.
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If you’re too young or too non-Northeastern to immediately recognize the classic reference in the title of this post, see here.
That’s what came to mind when I saw Rob Nesbitt’s tweet of video showing the vaccine mandate protesters blocking traffic in Providence.
Protestors against the vaccine mandate for health care workers are now blocking traffic coming off of the interstate at the intersection of Memorial Blvd and Francis St in Providence @wpri12 pic.twitter.com/umMLLbvcAe
— Rob Nesbitt (@RobNesbittNews) October 1, 2021
Hey, protesters for freedom don’t tend to like this approach, but if this is the way social justice activism is done, then it’s the way it’s done.
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The road to serfdom couldn’t be much clearer than as illustrated by this Newsmax article headlined, “US School Board Group Asks Biden for Help Against Growing ‘Threat’“:
As schools around the country face growing backlash related to pandemic safety measures and studies of race in America, school board members are asking for federal help from the president to protect teachers and community members from the “immediate threat.”
The National School Boards Association (NSBA) said in a Thursday letter to President Joe Biden that school board members, officials and students across the nation are facing an increased amount of malice, violence, and threats that amount to “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
“America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat,” Viola Garcia and Chip Slaven, the group’s president and interim executive director, said in a statement about the letter.
One hopes this national organization doesn’t represent the views of school boards/committees at the local level, but one suspects it does. Everybody wants more community involvement until that community involvement comes in the form of disagreement.
The tendency to label parents and taxpayers who assert their points of view as “domestic terrorism and hate crimes” is a harmful trend. It is, unfortunately, in keeping with other shifts in attitude that are becoming far too common, wherein the other side doesn’t deserve a right to speak and, indeed, is inherently dangerous when it does.
Perhaps we’re nearing the high-water mark of a lurch toward authoritarianism, and people will start to listen to how they sound, although I fear that’s not likely. It would help if any school boards that are part of this national organization withdrew their membership.
Featured image from The Illustrated Road to Serfdom.
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Frankly, I’m surprised powerful interests have even let get this far:
[Open full post]The special counsel tasked with chasing down the origins of the Russia collusion conspiracy perpetrated against candidate and President Donald Trump reportedly has issued more criminal indictments in federal court.
A federal grand jury convened by John Durham, the former Connecticut U.S. attorney, issued the indictments as a follow-up to the indictment of the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, according to reports from National Review and CNN.
Pay attention to the budget of a Rhode Island school district for a few cycles, and you’ll learn that there are two companies providing busing, both with unionized workforces. Districts are obligated by law to provide transportation (including mandatory bus monitors), so the lack of competition leaves them with little choice and leaves the public vulnerable to labor action, as Warwick is learning right now:
First Student will be unable to provide transportation services to Warwick students on Friday due to a union labor issue, according to an email from the Warwick School District.
High school busses have already left, but there will be no elementary or middle school bussing, including small buses for special needs students, for the rest of the morning.
Additionally, there will be no afternoon pickup for all students — high school, middle school, elementary, and special needs.
A community can adjust to life with no school buses, but when they’re part of community life, the disruption ripples throughout the entire city or town and its local economy. These are the basic contingencies that we organize governments to manage. Unfortunately, government in Rhode Island has been captured by special interests, and the market tilted in their favor.
When you’ve got a situation in which there are tens of millions of dollars available for a mandatory service and requests for bids to provide that service receive one or responses, a huge competitive need is not being met. In other words, this is an area screaming for reform, but it’s one that Rhode Island’s elected officials do not want to address, and probably couldn’t (politically) if they wanted to.
Featured image by Vahid Moeini Jazani on Unsplash.
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My goodness. How did the United States wind up with Gina Raimondo front and center as potentially the most significant trade war the century bubbles?
Raimondo said Beijing is reneging on its phase one trade deal with the former U.S. administration in 2020. The deal, signed by the Chinese regime, aimed to vastly increase Chinese purchases of U.S. manufactured products. …
“The Chinese need to play by the rules. We need to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable,” Raimondo said in a separate interview with National Public Radio broadcast on Sept. 28.
Maybe she should send them one of her “knock it off” t-shirts.
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Look, I’m vaccinated against COVID-19, and I’m hesitant-but-persuadable on a booster at some point, but the fact is that everything Anthony Fauci says has to be considered a convenient lie, at this point:
“Ultimately I believe that the optimal regimen for the vaccine for the mRNAs is going to include that third booster shot,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a remote talk held as part of the Atlantic Festival.
Three doses will become “the proper, complete regimen.”
Yeah, whatever. This guy says whatever he thinks will get people to act in the way he wants. He’s the face of lost credibility of our public health establishment and ought to have gone long ago.
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The Cranston dentist has simply stated that he will not be vaccinated:
“I won’t be vaccinated by tomorrow,” Dr. Stephen Skoly, who has a practice in the Chapel View shopping center and provides services to several state agencies, told The Providence Journal on Thursday. …
Among changes Skoly would like to see is a medical exemption for people who have acquired natural immunity to COVID by surviving the disease. He said that he had it in December and thinks he probably contracted it through work he did at the Department of Corrections.
Skoly said he is not aware of any standard for judging whether the level of antibodies he carries confers immunity.
Skoly is posting notices to ensure that his patients are informed about his status and continues to take the same heightened precautions he has throughout the pandemic.
Take particular note of the last line of the above blockquote. There is no standard because public health authorities have refused to investigate and set one, which would be an obvious step to take were their intention truly to manage a pandemic within the context of a free society. Their vaccine-with-no-exceptions approach indicates either an attempt to absorb more power or an elitist attitude that the public is to stupid for anything other than the most blunt message, such as one might use for a roomful of preschoolers.
Of course, both options amount to the same thing. The latter will inevitably lead to the conclusion that people cannot be trusted with freedom.
The state’s response to Skoly is interesting, though:
Joseph Wendelken, a spokesman for the state Health Department, told The Journal that the state will audit various groups of licensed health-care providers to ensure compliance with the vaccine mandate. The department will also respond to complaints about unvaccinated providers.
What does that mean? It looks like the state might be looking for a way to enforce its mandate only softly but is inviting complaints to trigger specific action.
The implied role of the people is disturbing. Rhode Islanders cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about whether to see a doctor who “only” has natural immunity, but they can be trusted to act as tattletales for the government. Thus, a people deprived of their freedom are transformed into agents thwarting the freedom of others.
Featured image by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash.
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That dynamic has defined the disheartening turn of national politics over the past couple of decades, and as often happens, we can see the lines of the problem more clearly when they’re close up. When people aren’t able to win fair and square and have a reasonable go at changing things, they don’t change their minds. They radicalize.
After months of voicing the concerns of many Rhode Islanders about contentious topics like critical race theory (CRT) and what Westerly Sun reporter Jason Vallee euphemistically calls “social issues,” Chariho School Committee member David Stall has resigned:
Stall, who serves as pastor of First Hopkinton Seventh Day Baptist Church, was critical of the committee and its handling of the pandemic and social issues, chastised Chairwoman Linda Lyall’s for rejecting his requested agenda items and vowed legal action as he spoke from the podium during the public forum at the beginning of the committee’s meeting Tuesday at Chariho High School.
“Some of you are smart enough to predict this separation precedes legal action that I am starting against you,” Stall said. “For the last 18 months, you have tried to silence me, dismiss my perspective, given me the run around and literally refused to allow my requested agenda items. In a few cases, I believe your actions were illegal, and often they violated reasonable and decent practice for a school committee.”
Yesterday Republican State Senator Elaine Morgan posted on Facebook a YouTube video from a few weeks ago in which Stall explains one instance of this “run around.” Part of what makes these things so frustrating for those of us who get involved is that it takes so much detail on a very narrow, facially inconsequential incident to explain it to others who follow the issues only casually. It’s like trying to explain to a passerby why the color on a microscope slide could be a fatal indication for somebody who looks healthy.
Increasingly, the people whose co-ideologues dominate in the bureaucracy and the news media are proving that they do not believe in compromise, and they do not believe it is worth spending time listening to people whose ideas they already know they’re going to refuse to consider. Worse, they think it’s detrimental even to let people share such ideas.
The subtle difference is between treating opposing ideas as arguments that may win politically and reacting to them as if they might be infectious agents that are so obviously harmfully and so dangerously attractive that they must not be heard.
The risk to such suppression is this: David Stall was willing to sit at a table and speak with them in measured tones on a regular basis. They’ve driven him away, and now he’s going to try the court system. My experience leads me to be pessimistic about that approach, so what comes next? Perhaps not from Stall, but from the next person who won’t sit by while their community goes in the wrong direction.
People sitting at the table is how we resolve our differences peacefully. Nobody should be more concerned about the implications of Stall’s resignation, therefore, than the people who drove him out.
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Per Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner, “Mexico warned Biden his border policies would cause migrant surge“:
[Open full post]Buried 30 paragraphs into a New York Times story on President Joe Biden’s “chaotic” immigration policies, the paper reported that the Mexican government warned the Biden administration that its plan to undo President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy would lead to a surge in migrants at the border.