David Blackmon, DB Daily Update
This has turned into a bit of a flood. A friend in Pennsylvania just sent me the following information:
We are now up to 10 confirmed counties that are defecting from Wolf’s Communist State today! Each has given a formal notice of re-opening – OR – an official announcement they will not enforce unlawful orders.
Armstrong
Beaver
Franklin
Somerset
Lebanon
Cumberland
Berks
Greene
Dauphin
York4 counties are suing Wolf:
Butler
Fayette
Greene
Washington6 more counties have legislators demanding Wolf reconsider their counties. More pressure needed!!
Adams
Mifflin
Juniata
Perry
Huntingdon
LehighContact the District Attorney of your county! If they will go on record that they will not enforce Wolf’s orders. State police can still write tickets through DOH, but the DA has final say in each county regarding anything criminal.
Contact the County Commissioners and demand they follow suit with these counties.
The 24 counties that moved from red to yellow on May 8 are:
Bradford
Cameron
Centre
Clarion
Clearfield
Clinton
Crawford
Elk
Erie
Forest
Jefferson
Lawrence
Lycoming
McKean
Mercer
Montour
Northumberland
Potter
Snyder
Sullivan
Tioga
Union
Venango
WarrenWe have 67 counties in PA. We have an idea where 44 of them stand. That leaves 23 more counties as unknown. Most of these are SE counties.
[End]
The southeastern part of the state is, of course, where the Democrat stronghold of Philadelphia resides. It appears that Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh lies, also remains under the Governor’s boot.
[End Update]
Wow. Big, big news today coming out of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. There, the County Board Chairman, Jeff Haste, issued an open letter to the people of the state that he was making the decision to re-open his county in defiance of Democrat Governor Tom Wolfe’s absurd, illogical order extending statewide lockdowns through June 5.
Several things to note here: Dauphin County is home to Harrisburg, the state’s capital city. It is not some rural backwater, but a robust county with roughly 280,000 residents. Haste himself appears to be a Republican, although his bio page does not list a party affiliation. In his letter, Haste carefully lays out a wealth of factual information that Gov. Wolfe would rather the public not know about.
Here is the text of that letter in its entirety:
May 8, 2020
To the People of Pennsylvania:
Enough is enough. It is time to reopen the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and return our state to the people (as prescribed by our Constitution) and not run it as a dictatorship.
When COVID-19 first entered our state, we needed to take quick and decisive action to minimize its impact. The state was closed so that we could flatten the curve and ensure that our health care systems and hospitals were able to function within their resources. Pennsylvanians complied.
COVID-19 was an unknown foe. We had a lot to learn and have since gained a better understanding. Make no mistake, to those with impaired immune systems, certain medical conditions and the elderly, COVID-19 is dangerous and can be deadly. Now our citizens understand what is needed to protect themselves and others. We see how to implement these procedures as we go to the grocery store or big box stores. Our smaller businesses, restaurants, realtors, dentists, doctors and more have seen and learned what needs to be done. Data shows that COVID-19 is a critical issue in confined living areas and with our elderly and immunity-impaired populations. The general population can continue to work and function within the “new normal.” Our businesses and citizens have learned this; however, the governor and his health secretary have not, thus part of the reason for the Wall Street Journal giving our governor a failing grade.
In Dauphin County, our health care systems and hospitals sprang into action and prepared for the worst. Overall, the worst did not come. Some of our facilities had more than 40% of their beds empty, not performing routine procedures. As of this writing, 48% of our 141 ventilators are in use; six (4%) are in use for COVID-19-related cases; 62 (44%) for non-COVID-19 cases; and 73 (52%) are not in use. Clearly, our ventilators are not maxed out.
Let’s put some of the numbers in perspective, since Gov. Wolf and Health Secretary Levine say decisions will be “data-driven.” As of this writing, Pennsylvania has a total of 54,238 cases, or 0.4% of the state’s population. Dauphin County has 764 cases, or 0.274% of our population. Pennsylvania has 3,616 deaths, or 0.028% of the population. Dauphin County has 29 deaths, or 0.0105% of our county’s population.
Here in Dauphin County, 192 (25%) of the 764 cases are in nursing homes, while 24 (65%) of our coronavirus deaths are in nursing homes. If you remove the nursing home cases from the equation, 0.2% of the county’s general population has tested positive. Not 20%, not 2%, but 0.2%.
Since Gov. Wolf closed the state to minimize the 54,238 positive cases, more than 1,793,200 Pennsylvanians have lost their jobs. This decision has ruined the livelihood of millions of hard-working Pennsylvanians in exchange for 0.4% of our population. I have great sympathy for those who have lost loved ones to COVID-19. I also have great concern for the families that now have to struggle with financial concerns, mental health stress, addiction and more because of the shutdown. Again, our governor has pitted groups of Pennsylvanians against one another.
And he has not included county commissioners in this process.
This need not happen — enough is enough. We should focus our efforts on making sure our nursing homes have the supplies, staff, testing and whatever else they need to protect their residents and staff. Our health care systems and hospitals have shown they can handle the pressures of COVID-19 and have capacity to spare.
Allow our businesses and communities to reopen. For centuries, our people and businesses have shown they can adapt to changes to survive and prosper. They cannot, however, do a thing when a dictator and an unelected secretary place them in lockdown.
I trust and have faith in the great people and businesses of Pennsylvania to operate in a manner that protects those of our population in harm’s way and allows our residents to go back to work, enjoy their communities and have a quality of life. I, however, have no faith in Gov. Wolf and Secretary Levine’s ability to do the right thing.
Open the state and return our Commonwealth to the people.
Enough is enough.
Sincerely,
Jeff Haste
Chairman
Dauphin County Board of Commissioners[End]
It’s important to note that officials in Lebanon County, PA issued a notice similar to Haste’s, saying they will begin to reopen their county on May 15. In addition, sheriffs in Cumberland and Perry Counties posted notices on Facebook stating that they will make no effort to enforce the Governor’s ongoing orders.
Folks, this kind of action is going to continue to grow all over the country the longer these despotic Democrat governors try to extend the pain being inflicted on their citizens for crass, partisan political reasons. These shutdown orders are patently unconstitutional and simply unprecedented in any medical crisis in our nation’s history. As Mr. Haste points out, we now know that what we really had with this virus was mainly a threat to our senior citizens, and the best approach to containing it would have been to focus quarantine and other protective measures on people above the age of 65 and the nation’s nursing and retirement communities.
What we did instead was an act of national insanity.
So long as all we had to go on was a catastrophically inaccurate statistical model and the pronouncements of Drs. Fauci and Birx, the general public was willing to go along with this abuse in the name of saving lives. But, as more and more information comes to light demonstrating how wrong and counterproductive these statewide, thoughtless stay-at-home and economic shutdown orders have been, more and more freedom-loving Americans are reaching the point that Mr. Haste has obviously reached and telling their abusive governors, mayors and county judges that enough is enough.
I wrote on Wednesday that Shelley Luther was just the canary in these governors’ coal mines. Last night’s action by Chairman Haste shows the fire in that mine has been lit and is beginning to spread. If these Democrats do not relent soon on this obviously coordinated strategy to needlessly drag this pain out in an attempt to impact the November elections, they will end up paying dearly for it at the polls.
If they do not relent and continue to become more and more abusive in their enforcement efforts, the outcome could ultimately be much, much worse than that.
Enough is indeed enough. Stop this madness.
And so it continues. A free people will not be told how to conduct their lives. This strategy of county leaders preempting their governors is what is needed – either in concert with or in direct contravention of them – is exactly how this lockdown madness should be handled: county by county, nationwide. The closer to the people, the better for the people. – The Liberator