Tag Archives: State of Emergency

When Lawlessness Begins At The Top

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President Biden has a unique style as President. Laws that should be voted on by Congress are simply passed by edict. On January 24th, CNN reported that President Biden had signed 30 executive orders in his first three days in office. There was no attempt made to get any of his policy changes through Congress. Unfortunately, other Democrats have followed his example of ruling by edict rather than ruling by law.

On November 1, The Carolina Journal posted an opinion piece titled, “How long will we allow a dictator to rule?” That is a really good question both on the federal and state level. Some of the actions of President Biden are impeachable offenses, but impeachment will never happen as long as the Democrats control the House of Representatives. Some of the actions of Governor Cooper are impeachable, but until the Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives develop a spine, impeachment will not happen in the state.

The opinion piece reminds us:

On March 10, 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper declared what became an unlawful state of emergency that has now lasted over 19 months with no end in sight. For those who think the term dictator is hyperbole, consider the following. To date, he has issued 83 executive orders that have limited the free exercise of religion by forbidding gatherings, the right to free speech by curtailing the operation of government, the right to peaceably assemble unless you were doing so for one of his favored causes (e.g. BLM protests), the right to personal property by forcing business closures or restrictions, and the right to bodily autonomy with mask and vaccine mandates, all without legislative input, due process, or equal protection. In addition, Cooper has issued a record 64 vetoes, more than all other N.C. governors combined (35), while politically intimidating Democratic members of the legislature to prevent a veto override. Finally, under state law, “A state of emergency declared pursuant to this section shall expire when it is rescinded by the authority that issued it.” Therefore, Cooper has absolute rule as the head of the executive branch, can block any bill he does not like from the legislative branch, and has the protection of a Democrat majority on the State Supreme Court in the judicial branch.

We the people are responsible

Having learned the lessons of tyranny under British rule, our state forefathers and their successors intentionally made our governor one of the weakest in the nation. In the first N.C. state constitution of 1776, the governor was elected by the legislature for one-year terms with very little authority. But like the nation of Israel in the Old Testament who wanted a king, over time, we too wanted to be like other states. Since then, we began popular elections in 1836 with single two-year terms, expanded to single four-year terms in 1868, allowed governors to serve two successive terms starting in 1971, first passed the Emergency Management Act in 1977, and was the last state in the union to give our governor veto power in 1997.

We the people are sovereign

According to Article I, Section 2 of our state constitution, “All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.” Therefore, as a government instituted by the consent of the governed, we do not have to accept this state of tyranny, nor should we.

Recently the North Carolina legislature passed a bill that would limit the duration of a declared emergency and therefore the governor’s power to continue to abuse the declared emergency. As expected, the governor vetoed the bill.

The opinion piece concludes with a possible solution:

Now before you dismiss the idea due to the lack of a two-thirds majority of senate Republicans needed to convict, you need to know that state law on impeachment has one critically important wrinkle from the presidential impeachment process. As Dallas Woodhouse pointed out in his recent article on the State Supreme Court recusal issue, once a state official is impeached by a simple majority vote in the House, state law stipulates that “every officer impeached shall be suspended from the exercise of his office until his acquittal.” In other words, once the Republican-controlled House votes to impeach Gov. Cooper, Lt. Governor Mark Robinson would become acting governor until the Senate trial is over. And that is how we end this. We impeach Cooper, have Robinson end the state of emergency, and sign the Emergency Powers Accountability Act Rep. Bell mentioned, and the dictatorship is over.

I realize some will consider this the nuclear option and one that should be avoided at all costs. But how much more of our freedom must we lose? Must more lives be ruined? How many more children must be abused before we draw the line? Failure to resist tyranny is an open invitation for more. We the people are sovereign, and we will live under this dictator for only as long as we are willing.

I think it’s time that we the people put some pressure on our elected Republicans to end the current dictatorship.

 

Following The Science?

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On Tuesday, the John Locke website posted an article about North Carolina’s response to the coronavirus.

The article includes the following information:

Here is the NC Threat-Free Index for the week ending May 17:

    • As of May 17, there were 963,539 North Carolinians presumed to be recovered from COVID-19
    • Active cases comprised just 1.6% of NC’s total case count (note: a case of COVID isn’t a permanent infection, and only someone with an active case of the virus can conceivably transmit it to you)
    • Active cases represented over 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent) of NC’s population (note: active cases are lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 minus recoveries and deaths)
    • Now 34 out of every 35 (97.1%) of NC’s total cases were recovered, meaning they are no longer infectious
    • Only just over 0.1% of people in NC had died with COVID-19 (regardless of the actual cause of death)
    • About 90.6% people in NC had never had a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19, despite the PCR test cycle threshold set so high as to produce a large amount of false positives (note: this proportion will always decline, but we have been living with this virus since February 2020, as far as testing is concerned)
    • All things considered, nearly 99.9% of people in NC posed no threat of passing along COVID-19 to anyone — a virus most had never had and the rest had recovered from (note: this proportion will fluctuate based on relative growth in lab-confirmed cases vs. recoveries, and it is likely understand because it does not account for vaccinations)

The title of the article asks the question, “The NC Threat-Free Index for the Week Ending May 17 — and Why Are We Still Under a “State of Emergency”?”  That is a very good question.