Executive Orders, Police Violate Rights

After just 30 days of voluntarily and government orders to stay home from their jobs in obedience to President Trump and State Governors executive orders to quarantine due to the CoVid-19 virus, 16,780,000 Americans have lost their jobs.

South Carolinians filed for unemployment in record setting numbers a month ago with 2,000 filing first week, 30,000 the second week, over 64,000 first week of April and last week over 80,000 filing for unemployment. Never before seen numbers for unemployment.

And while the dominant media squawks about hospitals being flooded and overflowing with patients, South Carolina’s hospitals are asking the State to bail them out to the tune of $30 million dollars due to those hospitals having to furlough employees because of empty beds including Prisma Health Care System who has furloughed or rescheduled 3900 employees according to a report in The State newspaper.

Now, since Governor Henry McMaster cracked down and mandated quarantine rules even more stringent than before for quarantine limitations to stay at home or work with limited travel areas allowed, rights guaranteed and secured by the U.S. Constitution are being bludgeoned and abused by State and local officials.

Just last week in Charleston a hair dresser was shut down and arrested in her own business for having customers in the shop even though the front door was locked. In Columbia and Forest Acres gold and silver dealers were visited by law enforcement and told to shut down or face fine and jail time. This has also happened in other venues around the state.

Essential businesses are listed categorically by the Governor and if a business falls outside those categories as “essential” they are being visited by Sheriff Deputies, police chiefs and mayors mandating they close or face fine and go to jail.

In another story City of Columbia police asked Steve Lefemine of Columbia Christians for Life to stop a public assembly on April 7th. Lefemine, Mark Baumgartner and others were meeting outside the Columbia Planned Parenthood abortion center at Middleburg Plaza in Columbia.

Not only is this happening in S.C. but throughout the country these and similar violations and abuses are taking place.

The mayor in Greenville, Mississippi forbid church members from attending “drive through” church services this past Wednesday where members met inside their own car to hear a local service broadcast over their radio. The congregants were in the church parking lot to hear a message of comfort and hope from the pastor on a local broadcast radio frequency. Nobody exited their own car yet police showed up and went o each car issuing citations.

An executive order by Mayor Errick Simmons prohibited in-person and drive-in gatherings where attendees simply stayed in their cars. Over 20 members who were sitting in their cars were issued $500 tickets by local police for violating the order. Pastor Arthur Scott was threatened by police with jail.

“I just can’t believe it,” Scott said. “I tried to talk to the mayor. I’ve been here 45 years and I’ve never been to the city council. I’ve never complained. I’ve never stirred up a stink. But I told him I’m going to fight them on this.”

A Louisville, Kentucky judge also issued a temporary restraining order against the mayor there concerning church meetings being banned. Meanwhile Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, said in a statement that a 14-day forced quarantine will be mandatory for those who attend Easter weekend services.

Meanwhile, almost every fast food restaurant, grocery store and big box hardware stores are listed as essential and open with hundreds of people in store shopping.

Granted, those food and hardware supplies are needed services, but individuals sitting in their own car receiving a local Christian message of hope for their soul in a life altering pandemic is part of necessary spiritual food. Ironically, when citizens need a place where hope and encouragement are dispensed, governors across the nation have declared the church as “non-essential”.

 

Michael Reed is Editor of The Standard.

 

 

 

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