The Corrupted "Process"
A tactical decision to sidestep the people
The Centers for Disease Control controversial moratorium on residential evictions ended July 31, with Congress having failed to pass new legislation authorizing it. In response, President Biden—contravening his own insistence that he was powerless to act—simply told the CDC to impose a new moratorium, even though the Supreme Court has already indicated that it was illegal.
According to news reports, Biden was frustrated that there was nothing he could do, and disappointed that his legal advisors were unable to come up with a solution. But at that point, Nancy Pelosi suggested that Biden call Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe, and see what he thought. Tribe had a novel solution: reissue the order as a new moratorium, not an extension. That way, the courts would have to reconsider the entire issue from square one. Biden conceded that the solution was in fact dilatory and based on linguistic tomfoolery, noting “at a minimum, by the time it gets litigated, it will probably give some additional time while we’re getting that $45 billion out to people.”
The fact that the administration bothered to put Lawrence Tribe’s name behind this vapid legalistic maneuver, as though his imprimatur put it beyond question, indicates that the Biden White House either has outsized and naïve faith in the incorruptible reputation of a noted partisan, or a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public. Tribe, you may recall, spent the last four years next to a pyre, sacrificing his considerable credibility by going whole hog on every fantastic supposition about Trump as a traitor, terrorist, murderer, and rapist. Only Tom Arnold was more committed to the idea that Trump a KGB agent/stooge run by Putin.
Doing what you want to, establishing facts on the ground, and then letting courts and lawyers figure out the rest, is not a characteristic of a system of government run by precedent, checks and balances, and the sovereignty of the people. It is how dictators behave, and is increasingly typical of the progressive posture, if it hasn’t always been so. In New York City we see a similar dynamic at play regarding homeless shelters. New York has a unique rule, stemming from a 1981 consent decree, that provides a “right to shelter” for anyone who demands it. Under this right, some 50,000 people live in the city’s shelter system. Most of them are “families,” typically single mothers with their children, who live in apartment-style residences. But many homeless individuals live in congregate shelter, including dorm-style accommodations.
When the pandemic hit there was great concern that congregate living would foster spread of the disease, so thousands of homeless people were moved into hotels, with the cost borne by the federal government. This experiment led to an uproar in many communities, which were suddenly beset by disorder, open drug use, and crime. Hotels, though they may isolate residents from one another, were a poor substitute for homeless shelters, which have curfews, offer some services, and do not permit drug use or alcohol on the premises.
With the pandemic abating, the city began to move the homeless hotel residents back to congregate shelter. But advocates—including many elected officials—sued the mayor to stop the process, on the grounds that it is too dangerous to do so at a time of rising infection due to the Delta variant. Additionally, we are given to understand, homeless people have extraordinarily low rates of vaccination, so to expose them to congregate living would violate best public health practices. But the reason they are resistant to vaccination, it has emerged, is that they don’t want to be moved out of the hotels.
Advocates shrug. Shelter is an inalienable right, they say, so it can’t be conditioned on vaccination. And refusal to vaccinate is effectively the same thing as a failure of city government to educate the public on vaccination. So there’s nothing to be done except extend the hotel program.
The real goal of the advocates has always been to transform the right to shelter into a right to housing—to end the temporary and emergency nature of homeless shelters and provide as a matter of right permanent homes on demand. This is clearly their goal today. Using the pandemic as an excuse to expand the umbrella of the welfare state is taking place at the local and federal levels, under the correct assumption that it’s almost impossible to remove an entitlement once it is established.
The "corruption" is far more extensive than the "process." Not only are we watching the practice of "the end justifies the means," but even the "end" is not justifiable. More deaths have been caused by the COVID vacines than by all the vacines administered in the past 30 years; there has been such a rush for the politicians (and the politically oriented Medical people) to claim they have accomplished something that improves the health chances of the public that the usual testing requirement that prevented so many faulty medicines in the past has been tossed overboard. The Government, with medical people aiding and abetting, used fear to take control of our country's population, take away personal freedom, and (in several documented cases) increase the death rates of the elderly by forcing nursing homes to take discharged but still infectuous COVID patients into their care. THAT was criminal. Meanwhile, all this separation simply delayed the development of herd immunity. No one will speak of past serious flu seasons where deaths occurred but no lock-downs were even suggested; personal responsibility for taking care of one's health and the health of one's family used to be the norm. There was no reason for handling COVID any differently except for politicians desireing to use it as a means to disrupt the elections and get rid of the first President in more than 70 years that actually KEPT a majority of his campaign promises. The Eternal Bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., had worked to keep its elected officials, with little opposition from those officials, under control by allowing them their elite "club" that puts on a show for the "folks back home" so that those elected officials never actually have to return and live "back home" but instead retire with unexplained wealth to ...oh, Martha's Vinyard or some other such "special" place. Teddy Roosevelt would have declared Marshal Law and sent in troops to the North West states and Chicago to quell anarchy and rioting...and possibly arresting elected officials for failure to honor their oath of office and protect the citizens. Instead we have a "Baizuo" Administration eliminating personal choice and individual freedoms, allowing (and arguably encouraging) Social Media, Universities, and Journalists to censor and shut down free speech and all opposition arguments to a Leftist Indoctrination effort already in control of education, Media, and Entertainment. America is being turned into less than a 3rd World Country by the Left.
All according to Communist plan. “And Not A Shot Is Fired” by Jan Kozak. The playbook. Its all there. Read it.