Back in 2010, when the Tea Party was at high tide, there was a wave of sightings of some disturbingly racist and violent signs at Tea Party rallies. These signs got all kinds of media attention.

Thing is, when people were able to crowd-source the people carrying the signs, a huge portion of them turned out to be ringers – people from leftist groups who just happened to wind up in front of the news media with their objectionable signs. Not just a few, eitheri – there was a very high correlation.

Of course, some of the less curious members of the media just ran with it – killing the Tea Party and other obstreporous bitter clinging deplorables was just fine by them.

But before I MCed the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party rally, I made sure the organizers got the word out as publicly as possible – anyone with an off-color sign would be photographed, and publicized, and “outed” either way – but especially if they were lefty ringers bent on slandering the Tea Party.

Sounds like certain conservative groups need to re-learn this lesson.

How likely is the woman’s sign a hoax?

Is there a number over 100%?

“We” – the Governor’s junta, at this point – can re-open Minnesota when we “have enough testing”, and we will be testing 20,000 people a day – or we will. We are assured is going to happen any day now.

Which we’ve been assured is happening any day now for over a month. And after a month of bureaucratic proclamations and excuses and deflection, we are testing about 10% of the rate that the governor says would make him talk about opening things up again.

And they wonder why people are protesting?

A frienc of the blog emails:

I think the Ayd Mill Road bikeway passed tonight. I’m not opposed to the bikeway concept. But I cry at the level of insensitivity of some council members. There are many people who “budgeted and planned” to feed their families, pay their rent, run their business and suddenly a pandemic occurs. So, they take that money that the budgeted and planned for and stretch it out to do the basics. 

And while reliable, safe transportation is a basic, a bikeway that basically leads no where is really not paying for basics.

But, as it stands, there continues to be less and less reason for people to come to St Paul and more and more reasons to head elsewhere, so I guess might as well make a bike path that serves the leisure class. And to CM Jalali’s point, they’ll certainly “deserve it” when there is absolutely nothing left in St Paul.

The other day, a media story noted that the Covid crisis was forcing the Twin Cities’ mayors to stop playing Sim City and start focusing on the basics.

That didn’t last long.

“Governor Walz hates Black people and wants them to die.”

You know that would be the headline, if Walz were Republican.

Shutting down the schools is resulting in kids missing class, mostly Black children.  Walz is widening the achievement gap and condemning a generation of Black children to poverty and despair. 

Shutting down business resulted in layoffs, twice as many Blacks (25%) as Whites (12%).   Walz is shifting the economic burden of the pandemic to those least able to carry it.

Governor Walz’ Stay Home order – while appearing to be race-neutral on its face – is causing disproportionately larger harm to Blacks than Whites.  That’s prima facie evidence of disparate impact racial discrimination. In a Republican administration, the media would be screaming it from the rooftops. But since Walz is a Democrat . . . .

Joe Doakes

If Joe’s scenario were happening, Black Lives Matter would be blocking the freeway…

…although I doubt most people would notice these days.

As I write this, Glenn Beck is interviewing Ben Dorr.   

I sent this email via the Beck show’s email link:

Mr. Beck,

I’m a talk show host, gun rights activist and conservative in Minnesota.

As I write this, Glenn is interviewing Ben Dorr.

The Dorr Brothers are hucksters. Gun Rights and pro-life groups and liberty-minded politicians in several states (most notably MN and IA) have condemned them as carpetbaggers who do nothing but raise money – which they pay to themselves.

You do your listeners a disservice by giving exposure to the Dorr brothers. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, a bunch of real-life Elmer Gantries.

They’ve been exposed repeatedly – not just by mainstream media, but by gun rights and pro-life groups.

Please, please, please – ask some questions of people who’ve dealt with the damage they do.

I can’t stress this enough – I implore you to distance yourself from the Dorrs, immediately. Money donated to them may as well be given to Michael Bloomberg and Planned Parenthood.

I urge you to do the same. Here’s Beck’s email link.

I spent a little time watching some of the local TV news and weather drones chattering about Earth Day yesterday.

I know – I forgot to celebrate it, too, right?

And the line among the various weather drones, in noting that pollution is at record lows around the planet, was simultaneously predictable and a crushing face palm;

“it just shows what people can do to Fight climate change when they set their mind to it”

Yes. When the economy slows to a record halt, vaporizing trillions of dollars in personal and institutional wealth, throwing millions/tens of millions, really, into at least short term poverty and possibly much worse, with industries shut down and hundreds of thousands of small businesses vanquished over a little more than six weeks, the air will get a little clean.

“That which is not prohibited is permitted.”

It’s the underlying principle of American law. We inherited it from English constitutional law, which goes back at least 500 years. I suspect it was also Norman law and Roman law, going back more than 2,000 years.

Certainly, there were variations. And subpopulations had restrictions, there have always been slaves or persons treated differently. Religions imposed restrictions.  The guilds had rules. But the general societal rule throughout the history of Western Civilization has been to leave individuals free to do as they please, with limited exceptions.

Until last month, when Governor Walz flipped it on its head.

Everything is banned except those few items which are permitted. Every job is banned except those deemed essential. Every activity is banned except those deemed essential. Everything is banned, except.

Hitler didn’t do it.  Lincoln didn’t do it during the civil war. None of the Caesars did it. 

I’m not sufficiently familiar with non-western Traditions to know about other nations: Mao’s China, Pharaoh’s Egypt, Stalin’s Russia, Castro’s Cuba. Maybe they were all totalitarian states with everything run by whim of the Chief, and everyone bowing and scraping subserviently.

And now Walz’ Minnesota. We still have people commenting on Internet sites, demanding that the boot remain on their faces, insisting that people should be punished for violating the edicts. “No, no; don’t give us any of that freedom, we don’t want it.”

Stunning.

Joe Doakes

If we are smart…

…well, I was about to say “if we, The People, are smart we’ll make damn certain our legislature puts some guardrails around the executive’s emergency power in the future”.

Of course, betting on the wisdom of the crowd usually breaks one’s heart.

But not always. Five years ago, the Second Amendment groups in Minnesota got Governor Dayton to sign a bill forbidding the government from confiscating guns under a “state of emergency”, and foreclosing it from shutting down gun shops unless literally every other store in the state was also closed.

So it can be done.

Will we do it?

Bars and restaurants are struggling with Minnesota’s fairly draconian pandemic restrictions.

People are pretty ingenious though – especially when their livelihoods are at stake.The “Black Hart“, a bar down by Saint Paul‘s new soccer stadium, hobbled both by the quarantine restrictions and the canceling of major league soccer, is…well, adapting:

The bar’s inaugural drag delivery staffer will be Dina Delicious (pictured above). From now on, orders placed online between 4 and 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays will result in a drag delivery.

As the weather warms up, I would expect various Gentlemens clubs and Hooters to come around to similar ideas.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It used to drive my wife crazy that I bought Land 0 Lakes butter instead of Cub’s house brand. Cost an extra buck a pound. Why buy it?

I claimed it was because Land 0 Lakes is a farmers’ cooperative so I was helping farmers, but she could smell the cow manure in that answer. The truth is the packaging reminded me of home, of the olden days, of traditional brands I grew up with. The old white guy on the can of oatmeal. The Black woman with the kerchief around her head on the bottle of maple syrup. The mermaid on the can of tuna. And the Indian girl on the box of butter. They all changed over the years, of course, each time getting more modern looking. But now – the butter girl is gone. Just a big, empty zero where she used to be.

Look, guys, I can get butter anywhere. I don’t need to spend the extra buck for yours. That girl wasn’t hurting anything. Yeah, okay, so a couple of professional complainers bitched about it. But millions of the rest of us bought it because we knew and loved the label, the connection to tradition. You just cut me off from that.

Now there’s no reason for me to spend the extra buck. So I won’t. Ever again.

Joe Doakes

I often wonder whether companies are ever going to rebound, to snap back on the whole politically correct virtue signaling thing?

It would be interesting to try and trace the psychology of advertising and marketing as related to clinging to social trends.

I’ve been writing about the Dorr Brothers – the Iowa-based scammers behind “Minnesota Gun Rights”, among many other potemkin 2nd Amendment, pro-life and pro-Trump “groups” – for a long time.

No – a very, very long time.

And I’ve written a lot about them.

No – I mean a lot. Including just about as much actual reporting as just about anyone in the field ever has (here’s an excellent summary of alternative-media coverage of the Dorrs, going back more than seven years).

But MPR’s Catherine Richert is taking the story mainstream again

THREAD: Back in February, I started reporting on a trio of brothers who used social media to spread disinformation and sow discord within the GOP, including in MN. The story was shelved when COVID19 hit… until now. https://t.co/wQiQhJLcMQ

— Catharine Richert (@CatRichert) April 21, 2020

Discord like this:

Rep. Josh Heintzeman, who has what anti-abortion groups would call a "perfect" voting record on the issue, is among Dorr's targets. At the start of this year's #mnleg session, Dorr was filmed asking Heintzeman's son if he knew his dad "votes to kill babies." (That's false.)

— Catharine Richert (@CatRichert) April 21, 2020

I reported for the first time in 2013 the Dorr Brothers’ pattern:

• Move into a state.
• Establish a social media presence.
• Loudly and abrasively claim that Republican, pro-life and pro-gun legslators are “selling out” their supporters – apparently, by being in the same capitol building as their opponents?
• That if their followers keep the money coming, and coming, and coming, then they’ll be part of an “uncompromising” approach that won’t “sell out” – but won’t actually do anything but make more Facebook videos.

Richert’s thread is excellent. It touches on some of the same shady business practices Fox9 found a couple years ago.

The story is even better – although one hopes that the mainstream media closes the circle and reports on the depth and depravity of the Dorr Brothers’ scam nationwide.

Now – in a state with an Attorney Generals’ office that focuses on “consumer fraud” like a dog focuses on a squirrel, why hasn’t Keith Ellison gone after these frauds?

CNN journalist info-tainer Brian Stelter – who is employed, and has at least six-to-seven figure income – is feeling a little down about the pandemic:

Never go full-bore Plath.

It is well-established law that a policy which appears to be
race-neutral, but which has a disproportionately large adverse impact on
racial minorities, is a form of racial discrimination.

Governor Walz’ Stay Home order, which ordered the closure of
non-essential businesses, has resulted in nearly half-a-million
Minnesotans losing their jobs, 25% of them racial minorities as opposed
to only 12% Whites.

The Stay Home order is a form of disparate impact racial discrimination.

Governor Walz is a racist.

Republicans in the state House tried to end the Stay Home order.
Democrats blocked their efforts.  Twice.

Minnesota Democrats are racist.

Why isn’t anybody talking about this?

Joe Doakes

Rhetorical question, right?

To those who portray the response to Covid as a binary choice between “staying inside for a few more weeks” and “killing grandma” the justification often comes down to “if we can save just one life…”.

It’s the same form of emotion-driven logrolling that drives many peoples’ responses to a depressing list of issues, from gun control to welfare policy.

And those approaches, being logrolling emotional manipulation as they are, almost never ask the same question from the other perspective. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that the most prescriptive of the “Lock It Down”-ers are people with public union jobs, or who can live on residuals.

They need to. Increased unemployment kills.

Opioids, alcholism, violent and property crime and suicide all spike, hard, when unemployment rises. Let’s look at the increase in deaths from opioids alone:

A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research paper finds a 3.6% increase in the opioid death rate per 100,000 people for a 1% rise in unemployment. There were 14.6 opioid death rates per 100,000 in the United States in 2018. If we use the more conservative estimate of a 20% unemployment rate without a quick return to lower levels, then there would be an estimated 59.4% rise in deaths per 100,000, leading to an increase of 8.7 deaths for a total of 23.3 for opioids.

With a current U.S. population of 331 million, there are 3,310 groups of 100,000, meaning there is potential for an additional 28,797 deaths from opioids annually. Consider that for 2018, the Centers for Disease Control reports that there were 67,367 deaths from all-drug deaths, with 46,802 of those coming from opioid use. The 46,802 deaths were considered an opioid crisis. A possible 75,599 should not be dismissed quickly.

And those increases carry over to other areas – crime, suicide, domestic abuse, pretty much every one of life’s travails and miseries.

I’m not one of Jason Lewis’s “Rip off the Bandaid” crowd. I have people in my family with all sorts of reasons to be concerned about lung problems. But then I’ve got a job where i can work from home (God willing). I have options.

Know any people in your life who don’t?

So the assumption that’s driven a lot of the models regarding the spread of Covid so far has involved the idea that transmission might be “Aerosol” – that the virus might hang suspended in the air for a period of time, until it latches onto a passing human, who might inadvertently ingest it into vulnerable tissue via the nose or mouth.

But what if it’s transmitted most readily by something less persistent, and more predicatable?

Amazing study, supporting droplet (rather than aerosol) as key means of transmission. One asymptomatic person infected 10 (out of 91) at restaurant—but *only* if they were in direct line of air pushed by the A/C. (Aerosol would have infected others, too). https://t.co/j8VXjnWtlN pic.twitter.com/w8yNENCT6M

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) April 18, 2020

Note to “Progressive” readers Those are actual scientists.

My hunch – since this theory impugns population density and the “Blue” urban lifestyle to which so much of our chattering class subscribes, it’ll be downplayed.

Hard.

C-list “celebrity” Patton Oswalt’s profound wisdom was on display over the weekend:

Anne Frank spent 2 years hiding in an attic and we’ve been home for just over a month with Netflix, food delivery & video games and there are people risking viral death by storming state capital buildings & screaming, “Open Fuddruckers!”

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 18, 2020

I’m going to screenshoot that for the day when an economic collapse (heaven forefend) leaves C-list “celebrities” like Oswalt tossed out of their Los Angeles condominiums, and looking for dishwashing jobs at Fuddruckers.

If they can find one.

If Trump wins this fall, this tweet will be a good chunk of the reason why.

Governor Walz extended the Stay Home order again. But this time, he
specifically invites the Legislature to step up. That’s the right thing
to do, they should be involved. They should be weighing costs versus
benefits.

Now, who will be the first legislator to introduce a resolution to
terminate/modify the order?

Joe Doakes

New House GOP Caucus? It’s your time to shine.

(Although in a practical sense it’s gonna have to be the Senate).

World War 2 was an industrial war – the second, and final, war to completely harness the entire industrial might of the largest of the world’s developed nations. All of them – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the USSR and, biggest of all, the United States – turned the entirety of their peacetime industrial output, one way or another, toward waging wars for national and cultural survival.

Other nations lent other assets to the various war efforts. Sweden had massive iron ore deposits, Romania, Arabia, Iran and Indonesia, oil in quantities scarcely imagined at the time; China and India had immense supplies of manpower.

And little Norway, with a population scarcely larger than Minnesota even then? With one of the largest coastlines on earth, it had a massive merchant fleet by any standard, even more so measured per capita. Nearly 1,000 merchant ships sailed under the Norwegian flag as the war began – about one for every 3,000 Norwegians.

And without ship, and lots of them, all that industrial capacity – especially in Britain, isolated as it was from all raw materials, and the US, far removed from all the battlefronts – would be utterly useless.

In a war that was lopsidedly decided by logistics, the Norwegian fleet was a weapon of exceptionally disproportionate importance.

Both sides knew this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortraship

As Minnesotans – among whom Covid has taken a fairly minimal toll, in population-wide terms – start to protest the economic toll of government’s response, New Yorkers, who’ve suffered relatively terribly, may be showing the real end-game of the government’s shutdowns – ignoring the whole thing and seeing to their own survival, medically and econmically:

On my “essential walks” which I take daily to the grocery or the bodega, I traverse an overpass above the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. For the past month traffic has been spare, an emergency vehicle here and there, not much more. That too has changed. While it has not returned to the soul crushing bumper-to-bumper standstill that makes the BQE infamous, the number of cars coursing to and from Staten Island has built up everyday.

What is important and telling about the differences in people’s behavior this week is that no city or state government policies have actually changed. The people of New York themselves, and from accounts across the country in other places as well, have simply decided to loosen the guidelines for themselves. We tend to think of the idea of the government existing through the consent of the governed as being about elections, but it is about more than that, the successful lockdown of New York City was not enforced as much as it was consented to.

This phenomenon is something that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo seems to understand. Cuomo was asked during one of his daily press conferences this week if he is worried that his steady stream of good news about the number of deaths stabilizing instead of increasing and the decrease in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations could give New Yorkers a false sense of security. His answer was basically that he has to tell citizens the truth or he loses his credibility.

Ninety years ago, Prohibition was basically a dead issue by the time Congress got around to repealing the 18th Amendment.

I can easily see that happening with some of the more draconian government responses.

Indeed – being ignored may be the best that some executive pols can hope for.

I went online to watch Governor Walz March 25 video explaining why the
Stay Home order was required. I think it’s useful to remember why we
started down this road.

In the video, Governor Walz explained that if we did nothing, upwards of
74,000 Minnesotans of all ages would die, from 6 months to 90 years
old. It was already too late to “flatten the curve;” testing didn’t get
started early enough. All we could do was push the peak out, delay it
until we could get ready for the surge of Covid-19 cases that the
computer model predicted was coming. If we did nothing, the surge would
hit in 6 weeks (May 8th). If we did nothing, 2.4 million Minnesotans
would be infected, 85% of them mildly, 15% requiring hospitalization,
and 5% requiring ICU care.

I’m not clear if Governor Walz meant 5% of the whole 2.4 million =
120,000 people in ICU; or 5% of the 15% who are hospitalized = 18,000 in
ICU. Either way, we only had 235 ICU beds at the time of the first
order. We didn’t have enough ICU beds, ventilators, masks to care for
that many ICU patients. Thousands would die, untreated.

If Minnesotans heeded his order to Stay Home, we would slow the spread
of the infection. 2.4 million were still going to get it, but not right
away. That gave us time to prepare for the ICU surge. With Stay Home
in place, the ICU surge would be delayed until late May or June. By
then, we’d be ready for the 120,000 (or 18,000) ICU patients. We’d
convert arenas, stadiums, motels, into temporary hospitals providing as
many as 1,000 ICU beds. Still had to work on getting ventilators and
masks, etc., but if we had enough time to prepare, we’d save lives.
Governor Walz asked for two weeks to delay the surge so we would have
time to prepare. That’s why the original order lasted two weeks.

I went online to watch Governor Walz video explaining the extension of
the Stay Home order. He said we were making progress. The infection
curve was pretty much flat. That’s good because it buys us time to
prepare for the surge, and there is a surge of hospitalizations coming.
We’re going to need a MINIMUM of 3,000 ICU beds starting in mid-May,
could last into July, could need more beds.

Current ICU bed capacity at the time of the extension was 1,000 but we
can double it in 24 hours, triple it in 72 hours. Another 3,000 beds
coming online in alternate facilities but not for Covid patients, those
are for displaced patients from other hospitalizations. According to
the model, we now have plenty of ICU beds but we’re still facing a
shortage of ventilators. We have 2,500, we need 3,000, we have none in
reserve, they’re all in use. They’re on back-order. Minnesotans need
to stay home to delay the hospitalization surge until the back-ordered
ventilators arrive. And there’s still a shortage of masks. Supply
chain disrupted world-wide. Minnesotans need to stay home to delay the
hospitalization surge until mask supply arrives.

The Governor assured us the experts were constantly updating the model.
Ro increased from 2.4 to 4.0 (formerly, we thought each infected person
transmitted it to 2.4 people, now it’s assumed to be 4 people, spreads
much faster than thought). Hospitalization severity and length of stay
also adjusted (didn’t say up or down). If we drop restrictions, the
surge of hospitalizations comes rushing toward us and we’re not ready.
Thousands will die. Stay Home to save lives.

My thoughts:

The plan originally was sold on the basis that this virus attacked
everybody, babies to elderly, we’re all equally at risk of dying from
it. Data from around the world (and around Minnesota) suggest that’s
not true. This virus attacks the same people as every other influenza
virus – seniors and those with a compromised immune system. The
scariest basis for the order, is gone.

The plan originally was sold on the basis that a two week delay would
suffice, we’d have time to prepare for the surge of cases. Because the
whole thing depends on a surge of cases slamming our hospitals in a few
weeks. The Governor’s models confidently proved it would happen, we
were going to get slammed, it was only a matter of time. Except . . .
Dr. Fauci of the CDC now says he expects this to be similar to a bad flu
season, maybe 60,000 dead nationwide. And nobody else is seeing a
surge. If there’s no surge coming, then the entire basis for the order
is gone.

Assuming the surge hits as planned in May, Governor Walz says we’ll need
3,000 ICU beds and we’re ready for that, but still not enough
ventilators or masks. No word on why that’s such a problem. If the My
Pillow guy can make masks, why can’t Minnesota figure out a way to
acquire them? Can’t we ask idled machine shops and metal workers and
backyard mechanics to cobble up machines? We only need a couple of
thousand more ventilators – how hard can it be? I’m guessing the
Governor means “FDA certified and approved” which, obviously, takes time
and raises the cost. How many patients would say, “Oh, no, don’t treat
me wearing that un-certified mask, leave me to die.” Can’t we by-pass
the certification process for this world-ending emergency?

The plan was sold on the basis that we’d be saving lives. The math
doesn’t work for me. Assuming the best numbers, if 18,000 will need ICU
beds but we only have 3,000, then when the surge hits we’re still short
thousands of ICU beds so all of those people are going to die. By my
math, the Stay Home saves 2,765 lives (the difference between 235 ICU
beds before and 3,000 ICU beds after). And who are those people? Based
on experience to date, they’re nursing home patients with preexisting
conditions who are going to die soon, anyway.

The cost of providing this end-of-life care is incredible. 375,000
Minnesotans have applied for unemployment. Our unemployment rate is
over 11%. And those are only the people who qualify. Small business
owners, restaurant owners, landlords, independent contractors,
commissioned sales – they don’t get unemployment. The Governor says
that with Minnesota’s generous unemployment benefits coupled with the
federal $600, many people actually will make as much or more then they
did before. I’ll believe that when I see it.

Point is, we’re shutting down the entire state for months, costing
millions, destroying wealth and lives and careers, turning citizens
against each other, betting a surge is coming and that we’ll be able to
buy a short end-of-life extension for a few thousand old folks. That
might be a wise public policy trade-off, or it might not. But it’s
something that ought to be debated in public, with the costs and
benefits weighed, not decided unilaterally and continued indefinitely.

I call on the Legislature to hold public hearings on whether to continue
the state of emergency, or to end it.

Joe Doakes

When Norway – as top-down communitarian a state as there is, which had a hard, sharp attack of Covid and a sharper reaction to seeing Italy and Spain’s agony, and closed down hard (and suffered more deaths than Minnesota, so far, with a similar population) – is moving to lift its lockdown now, even given their immense savings and the ability it gives them to ride out crises, that should tell us something.

It was a little over a year ago that Brazil – against the caterwauling of the caterwauling class – radically liberalized its gun laws, which had essentically been Chicago-like since the 1940s.  

The caterwaulers said liberalizing gun laws would result in Brazil – whose violent crime rate is about five times that of the US – getting, y’know, violent. 

It’s been almost a year.  What do you suppose happened?

Do I even need to explain it?   Violent crime is down in the vicinity of 22%:

Comparing changes between available months of 2019 and 2018 shows an average decrease of Total Violent Crime and Monthly Index at 22.25% and 23.04% respectively.

Since 2018 was already a low-crime year compared to 2015-2017, Jan – April 2019 violent crime number indicates that people are better off with the means to defend themselves. Brazil new gun policy is a step in the right direction.

Other than the loosening of gun restrictions, law enforcement taking harsher measures could also contributed to the lowering of violent crime.

It’s not entirely the gun.  Nobody said it would be; preserving order is one of government’s few legitimate jobs (if you’re a conservative), and Brazil’s corrupt post-socialist system has been notoriously bad at that for a long time.  An armed society without some means of preserving order might turn into the American frontier – or it might turn into South Central Los Angeles, depening on whose will to power gets satisfied. 

But, as predicted, it seems to be helping in Brazil. 

Epidemics and other disasters come and go

But the worst side-effects of the Covid epidemic are going to be with us for years.

This was the Raleigh NC Police’s response to a protest against the government’s shutdown restrictions:

And if the people allow this attitude to continue, then they – we – will deserve what follows.

The First Amendment isn’t more important than the broad concept of “order” – but it is certainly more important than the Raleigh PD treats it in this case.

Someone needs to get hauled into court, but good.

The ACLU has been showing some signs of paying attention to actual civil liberties again during this crisis. Here’s hoping.

This is weird – I keep finding these modifications but they’re not
mentioned in the media.

Attention Subjects!

His Royal Highness, Timothy Walz the First, proclaims a modification of
Executive Order 20-20 requiring Minnesotans to Stay Home.

It has come to Our attention that some of Our subjects are in flagrant
disregard of Our proclamations.  In one such instance, the violator
behaved in a loud, obnoxious, and boisterous manner which aroused anger,
alarm and resentment in the Royal Officers who were bravely attempting
to enforce Our order.  This behavior undermines the legitimate authority
of the Crown and threatens public safety.  Effective immediately, no
subject shall express disagreement with any of Our orders, on pain of
immediate and indefinite confinement.  As to such persons, the right of
habeas corpus is suspended for the duration of the emergency.

Our Attorney General has confirmed that Abraham Lincoln himself set the
precedent for this modification, and that it does not infringe the free
speech rights of Minnesotans.  Subjects remain free to express agreement
with Our orders in any form they like: in word, in writing, in artwork
or interpretive dance, even poetry.  The only restriction is on Hate
Speech, which is defined as any speech We hate, and which all decent
subjects should hate, too.

Thank you for your attention.

HRH Timothy Walz the First

Just thought you ought to know.

Joe Doakes

I’m sure I’m not the only one that can imagine Keith Ellison re-purposing the Sedition Act…

This just came out from the State of Wisconsin:

Because glass, apparently, isn’t virus-proof.

No. It’s because while science is vital, government bureaucracy is all the things we do together, stupidly.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is out at Menards picking up some shop towels for making face masks out of. While looking around a corner, he runs smack-dab into Avery LIBRELLE

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG:   Ah, sssssss….sssshure is nice to see you.  How are you doing, Avery? 

LIBRELLE:   You conservatives sure did yuk it up over the Trump Virus spreading through blue cities. 

BERG:  No, nobody “yukked it up”.  But there certainly seems to be a correlation between pandemics and blue cities, which tend to be very mass-transit dependent, and have populations even denser than some of their mayors, like DiBlasio. 

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  Well, red states shall get their comeuppance!

BERG: Perhaps.   Epidemics follow biological rules, not political ones.  

LIBRELLE:  Pffft.   Look at South Dakota.   Governor Noem refuses to order South Dakotans to stay at home!  And now the virus is out of control!

BERG:  South Dakota’s case rate is very heavily skewed because of a big outbreak at a pork processor in Sioux Falls, which has skewed the state’s cases per million waaay up; as of April 14, South Dakota had 1,142 cases per million; Minnesota has 307.   But that’s very skewed – South Dakota doesn’t have a million people, so an outbreak causes a disproportionate jump in per capita numbers. 

LIBRELLE:   Not issuing draconian stay at home orders kills!

BERG:   Enh.  South Dakota’s death rate per million is 7, which is half Minnesota’s rate.  Both of those will change, especially if the cases in Sioux Falls manage to overwhelm the region’s healthcare system…

LIBRELLE: …which is will !

BERG:  …which it’s not.  And God willing it won’t. 

LIBRELLE:  Oh, you and your God and thoughts and prayers.  Science!   It shows governors need to put their foot down!  

BERG:  North Dakota, which has about the same population and population density as South Dakota and has taken a similar set of approaches to the epidemic,  but which has no outbreak like the Smithfield plant, has statistically similar cases and deaths per million as Minnesota with Governor Walz’s much more draconian approach.  And yes, the outbreaks have been going on about the same length of time in all three states.  

LIBRELLE:  MERG!   If Governor Noem hadn’t been a stupid red-state governor and issued a stay at home order, the Smithfield outbreak wouldn’t have happened!

BERG:  So what kinds of businesses are exempt and “essential” under the MInnesota shelter in place order?

LIBRELLE:  Essential stuff like grocery stores, liquor stores, Democratic political action groups, medical stuff…

BERG:   What do they do at that Smithfield plant?

LIBRELLE:   I don’t know.  It’s South Dakota.  I have no idea.  Aren’t they Amish?  I’m gonna guess Amish furniture.  

BERG: It’s a pork processing plant.  Where exactly do you think the food that the grocery stores sell, comes from?

LIBRELLE:  Amazon!

BERG:  Yeah, food processing plants are pretty much open everywhere…

( But LIBRELLE has skipped away, pushing  a cart full of plastic bags to use as make-shift head coverings). 

And SCENE. 

So among all the bad news about the pandemic, it seems there is a silver lining: the administrations in Minneapolis and Saint Paul are being forced to stop playing Sim City with real money and people, and actually do he things city governments are supposeed to do.

Or, well, try. Emphasis added by me:

In Minneapolis, meetings to discuss the hotly debated Upper Harbor Terminal redevelopment have been postponed. Discussions about millions in funding for neighborhood organizations and reimagining the city’s transportation networks have been pushed to the summer.

In St. Paul, the pandemic prompted the city to postpone public hearings on a tenant protection ordinance and a ban on conversion therapy. A community meeting on the future of Ayd Mill Road was canceled and replaced with an online video.

The coronavirus is causing a major slowdown for the two cities, which have in recent years raised the minimum wage, overhauled zoning and made other changes consistent with a progressive policy agenda for workers and the environment. Now, they’re scrambling to find ways to meet the immediate needs of struggling residents while protecting their own workers.

In bold, you almost literally see a shopping list of “progressive” virtue-signals – gone (until the spigot turns back on).  

I’ve said it for years – especially since the Walking Dead was the most popular show on TV:  catastrophe makes everyone a conservative, one way or the other.   

“It’s nice to want to change the way things happen, but we don’t have the luxury of promoting change at this point,” said Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Goodman. “We have the responsibility to make sure we provide the basic services of the city.”

And, when conversations on those more ambitious goals resume, they won’t look the same.

And one can hope that the people of MInneapolis and Saint Paul, when they see how badly the Cities take care of the basics after a decade of no practice, react to that change in the “conversation” by changing the way they’re governed.

Likely? Absolutely not. But if we don’t have hope, why bother?