A Government “Medical Camp”

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Via Dr David Samadi, a bill proposed in all seriousness in the New York Assembly. It authorizes the Governor, on his declaration of a health emergency, to “remove” and/or “detain” anyone or any group he decides is a threat to the public’s health. The money paragraph comes early on:

UPON DETERMINING BY CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE THAT THE HEALTH OF OTHERS IS OR MAY BE ENDANGERED BY A CASE, CONTACT OR CARRIER, OR SUSPECTED CASE, CONTACT OR CARRIER OF A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE THAT, IN THE OPINION OF THE GOVERNOR, AFTER CONSULTATION WITH THE COMMISSIONER, MAY POSE AN IMMINENT AND SIGNIFICANT THREAT TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH RESULTING IN SEVERE MORBIDITY OR HIGH MORTALITY, THE GOVERNOR OR HIS OR HER DELEGEE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE COMMISSIONER OR THE HEADS OF LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENTS, MAY ORDER THE REMOVAL AND/OR DETENTION OF SUCH A PERSON OR OF A GROUP OF SUCH PERSONS BY ISSUING A SINGLE ORDER, IDENTIFYING SUCH PERSONS EITHER BY NAME OR BY A REASONABLY SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUP BEING DETAINED. SUCH PERSON OR GROUP OF PERSONS SHALL BE DETAINED IN A MEDICAL FACILITY OR OTHER APPROPRIATE FACILITY OR PREMISES DESIGNATED BY THE GOVERNOR OR HIS OR HER DELEGEE AND COMPLYING WITH SUBDIVISION FIVE OF THIS SECTION.

Notice that. Folks of whom the Governor—or his delegees—disapproves can be rounded up and locked away. The present governor has already attacked many of the Jewish communities in his State for their insistence on acting within their religious requirements—which conflict with the Governor’s personal views.

Notice, too, that once the Governor has declared a health emergency pursuant to a particular disease that’s epidemic, he gets to lock up anyone or any group who have any “communicable” disease, not just the one driving the alleged emergency.

But wait—there’s more.

There’s not a syllable of measures to be taken to protect the new inmates’ medical privacy. Nor can there be: these unfortunates are to be seized, unavoidably publicly, pursuant to a publicly declared “health emergency.”

The newly detained will be “permitted” to identify those friends and family the new inmate wants to be notified of the fact of his seizure. Of course. That way, those friends and family can be more easily rounded up and locked away, too.

The accumulated timing of all the delays to notifications, responses to requests for release from gaol, actual release (if any) lines up well with CDC’s view of the duration of contagiousness. And the Governor gets the first three days of lock-up free: he doesn’t have to do anything in that initial interval. Nor does the clock count weekends and holidays: if the seizure is done on a Friday morning of a three-day weekend, the Governor gets six days.

RTWT—it’s short, and the link is just below.

This is what happens with Progressive-Democrats have both houses of a legislature and the executive’s office. Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has stolen a march on Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

The proposed bill can be read here.

Diversity

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A brief thought. Joseph Epstein wrote about true diversity, as opposed to the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party’s ideology of race, sex, et al., diversity before merit in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

In the main, he’s right. I want to add a little, though, to his concluding sentence.

The best way to celebrate diversity, perhaps, is to begin by celebrating diversity of thought.

Number one.

Number two is overtly recognizing the inequality of individual talent, interest, work ethic, plain luck, and a host of other inequalities intrinsic in every man that culminate in unequal outcomes flowing from the utterly necessary equality of opportunity.

That equality of opportunity is at the center of individual liberty, which includes the freedom to speak diversely—out loud and publicly—from that diversity of thought.

That ability to speak freely is a critical part of every man’s right to show the best that there is in him, a right that is truncated by demanding equality of position or of outcome.

Additionally, that demand for equality of position or of outcome insults every one of us by insisting that our best isn’t worthy of consideration or that we cannot achieve that best without Know Betters in government doing for us.

Surveillance State

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And it’s not the People’s Republic of China this time. It’s a European ally.

Spain is planning to keep a record of individuals who refuse to receive the coronavirus vaccine, said the country’s minister of health on Monday.

Worse, Salvador Illa, Spain’s Minister of Health says,

The log of people who refuse vaccination will be shared with the country’s “European partners,” but will not be shared with employers or otherwise made public….

Not even simple, ordinary doctor-patient confidentiality matters here. This medical information will be shared around so all of Europe’s governments can participate in a pan-European surveillance state, even though the putative purpose of such surveillance—so that local employers, et al., can take “appropriate” measures—will be blocked.

The contradiction is so obvious it can only be taken as a distraction from the move’s true purpose: to take an initial step in tracking the details of the daily lives of citizens.

This is the Europe Joe Biden and his ilk want us to emulate. Of course, that dovetails nicely with the administrative state he and his want to expand in our nation.

Happy New Year

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Originally published in 2012, I repeat it here.

This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun.  Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than I.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace Thackeray

New Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James Agate

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution.  Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
–Cavett Robert

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
–Thomas Hood

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.
–Ellen Goodman

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
–Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve.  Middle age is when you’re forced to.
–Bill Vaughn

This bit of ’70s-style wisdom:

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
–Phil McGraw

And finally,

Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
–Goran Persson

Investing in the PRC

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For good or ill, the People’s Republic of China has decided change the regulatory rules regarding Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s banking activities. The company has lost

almost all its stock-market gains this year, just days after [PRC] regulators signaled a major change in their posture toward the e-commerce behemoth and its finance affiliate, Ant Group Co.

Notice that: the regulatory change does not cover the PRC’s banking or finance industries—it’s explicitly targeted at Alibaba’s subordinate, Ant. The PRC’s

central bank released a harshly worded statement Sunday criticizing Ant’s business practices and instructing the financial-technology giant to shift its focus back to its mainstay—and less lucrative—digital-payments business.

Notice that, too: the ruling is not the outcome of any sort of investigation, followed by trial in court to assess whether anything wrong actually was being done, followed by a court ruling based on the presented evidence. No, the order is government diktat.

Investors, unwarned by the existence of an investigation or subsequent existence of a court trial, have lost heavily. The only warning investors had was a Christmas Eve announcement of an investigation—and then came the diktat.

Alibaba’s swift comedown has led investors to reassess the regulatory risks faced by [PRC] internet companies…
The hard part is figuring out “how much of the recent regulatory moves against Ant and Alibaba is politically based, how far it will go, and when it will be over,” said Alex Au, managing director at Alphalex Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund.

Yewbetcha.

This is what rule by law does, as compared to rule of law. This is why it’s foolish, potentially to the point of violating fiduciary responsibility, to invest in PRC businesses.

Remember this for the coming year.