Today I did my grocery shopping and let Penny have a couple of runs. I completed today’s blog. Tomorrow I have busy day of phototography.
County health officials reported five new confirmed cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the county’s total to 237 cases. Three people are now hospitalized, one less than a day ago. Two of the hospitalized patients are in the ICU. Another 45 people are recovering at home and 188 people have recovered. San Luis Obispo County has had one death attributed to COVID-19. Three of the new cases are in Paso Robles, which now has a total of 90 cases, and two are in Nipomo, which now has 19 cases. Health officials report that 2,277 coronavirus tests have been conducted at the public health lab, and another 3,561 tests have been conducted at private labs. This brings the total tests done to 5838. The County is reminding residents that free COVID-19 testing is available to anyone in the county, even those who are not showing symptoms. Since the two testing sites opened May 4 in Paso Robles and Grover Beach, health officials say 1,750 tests have been done. To date, five tests have reportedly come back positive with some results still pending. The testing is free. The County says insurance information will be taken from those with health insurance, but no co-pay is required. The state will pay for the tests of those who are uninsured. “We’ve expanded our testing capacity and I encourage everyone who would like to be tested to take advantage of this opportunity, even if you do not have symptoms,” said SLO County Public Health Officer Dr. Penny Borenstein.
Once again Gov. Gavin Newsom is damaging the local and state economy with unconstitutional power grabs. While he is allowing offices, childcare centers, and gardening businesses statewide to open with modifications, restaurants can reopen only in 18 counties that have met all of the governor’s guidelines. San Luis Obispo County missed one metric, so at this time local restaurants are not permitted to have inside dining. The county did not divulge the specific benchmark, though it appears to be the number of new cases per population. The governor’s coronavirus response has played havoc on the local and state economies. He proposed today cutting $6.1 billion from the state’s budget to alleviate the financial hit from his coronavirus response, yet he plans to give illegal aliens stimulus checks. The governor’s budget through next year forecasts unemployment to climb to nearly 25 percent and for overall tax revenues to drop by about a quarter. It also calls for a 10 percent pay cut for all state workers. California will seek the savings through collective bargaining with the unions that represent different workers, but the administration will “impose reductions if the state cannot reach an agreement.” Locally the damage due to his plans includes major city budget short falls, loss of income from college student housing rentals, and the closure of local long-term businesses like Los Osos Fitness, which had been in business 25 years. The response from local officials is to bow and grovel and say, “yes your majesty, anything you say your majesty.” It is time for local citizens to step up and let state and local officials know we are not going to allow their unconstitutional power grabs anymore. Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Bible says in James 4:17, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” People need to step and let elected officials know that their actions have consequences In Wisconsin their Supreme Court struck down the state’s “safer at home” order Wednesday, saying Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration overstepped its authority when it extended the order through the end of May.
Judge Andrew Napolitano
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
To Thomas Jefferson, the fulcrum between the people and the government they have elected was fear. He argued succinctly that the government would only respect liberty if it feared losing power. Today, the relationship between people and government is power. Does the government have the power to tell us how to make personal choices, or do we have the power to tell the government to take a hike? Stated differently, does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Jefferson’s answer to that question in 1801, the year he became president, was that the government worked for us. Today, unfortunately, this same question has two answers — a functional one and a formal one. One would stumble answering this question if one looked only at how some state governors are treating the people for whom they claim to be working. One needs to look as well at the nature of government in a free society. Six months ago, no one could have imagined where we are in America today. Then, if anyone had suggested that the governors of all 50 states, in varying degrees of severity, would be using police to interfere with personal choices — choices that we and our forbearers have all made without giving a second thought to the preferences of the government — no one would have believed it. Think for a moment of how you would have reacted to any pre-COVID-19 idea that the police in America — using not the force of opinion but the force of arms — would prevent you from going out of your home, operating your business, jogging in a park, patronizing a restaurant or clothing store, buying a garden hose, going to Mass or church or temple or mosque or even joining a small public gathering of folks who want to protest these prohibitions. Where did these prohibitions come from? They have come from the ever-changing edicts of governors and mayors, who rely on the ever-changing evaluations of medical data from an ever-changing cast of scientific experts. They are the pronouncements of politicians who have forgotten that they are elected to enforce laws, not to write them, and to be the servants of the people, not their masters. Why do Americans accept this? We are a nation born in a bloody revolution against a king. The founders of America made the profound and indisputable choice of establishing a government dedicated to the cacophony of liberty over the illusion of safety. They embedded that choice in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The former states, unequivocally, that no government is legitimate without the consent of the governed and that government’s principal duty is to secure our rights. The latter — which expressly protects the right to make personal choices — is the supreme law of the land, and thus all governmental acts are subordinate to it. We have fought wars against tyrants who wanted to tell us how to live. Today, we have elected our masters who are doing just that. Americans seem to accept the restrictions on our rights to speech, religion, travel, and commercial activities simply because the origin of those restrictions is a popularly elected person. But even an elected government can be tyrannical. Should you bow to these restrictions merely because their authors were elected, and they have persuaded your neighbors that the prohibitions are for their own good — the Declaration and the Constitution be damned? Stated differently, the governments that have interfered with our well-established rights to go about our daily lives as we see fit — taking chances whenever we cross the street, drink a glass of water, bite into food, sit next to a stranger on a train or at a baseball game, or go through a green light in our vehicles — have failed their first obligation, which is to safeguard our freedoms to take those chances. Instead of safeguarding our freedoms — our natural rights to make personal choices — the governors and their police enforcers have treated us as if we work for them.
California Conservation Corps members help Cal Fire prepare areas for the fire season and train to work on the fire lines when there is a fire.
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