California Gov. Gavin Newsom [D] at his Tuesday [May 5th] briefing said to the good and gullible people of his state, “We’re not going back to normal. It’s a new normal – with adaptations and modifications – until we get to immunity and a vaccine.”
Whenever that will be, if ever.
But Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is evidently not prepared to accept the safety-trumps freedom governor’s decrees.
The sheriff is not even enforcing Newsom’s stay-at-home orders put in place eight weeks ago.
Sheriff Bianco told the Riverside County Board of Supervisors this week that officials, including Gov. Newsom, “participated in something never done before in our nation’s history…. [Government] ordered residents into their homes, closed their businesses, made them wear masks, forbid them from going to church, and eliminated constitutional freedoms put in place over 200 years ago.
“In the name of a public health crisis, our civil liberties and constitutional protections were placed on hold.”
Bianco said he did not enforce the stay-at-home order because he “trusted our residents’ ability to do the right thing without fear of being arrested.”
He added, “I knew they could be trusted to act as responsible adults, and I was correct. As we continue, I will reinforce my position. Not only do we not have the resources to enforce unreasonable orders, I refuse to make criminals out of business owners, single moms, and otherwise healthy individuals for exercising their constitutional rights. I believe Riverside County residents are responsible enough to proceed cautiously.
“There cannot be a new normal,” he warned, citing the country’s “fundamental freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…. Any new normal is a direct attack on the basic rights, which set us apart and make us the greatest country in the world.”
In Riverside County, there have been 4,817 known cases of coronavirus, 2480 have recovered and there have been 204 deaths, as of May 10, 2020.
After hours of public comments and discussion on Friday, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to rescind county public health orders imposed amid coronavirus.
The rescinded orders previously executed by Riverside County Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser include: social distancing, face coverings, restrictions on golfers, and barring short-term rentals except as emergency shelter for vulnerable people.
The supervisors decided against rescinding an order mandating all schools stay closed through June 19. Instead, they amended it to include only K-12 schools. Vocational schools and higher education systems are no longer ordered closed by the county.
No other county health orders are in place.
Now, this is not to suggest that people should not employ social distancing or gathering in crowds. It is to suggest that an informed populace, assumed to be a free people, with constitutional rights which cannot be abridged by fiat, can be trusted to act responsibly without a dystopian government.
Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
