Tom Riggins: Little Caesar strikes again

Our governor, Little Caesar Sisolak, has issued a new typically inconsistent mandate. He now thinks he can control private gatherings in your own home as well as public gatherings. He also thinks he can tell us how to dress, including masks when around anyone not part of your immediate household. He continues to pick winners and losers in the business world. He continues to restrict attendance at religious facilities. However, a recent Supreme Court ruling on a New York case may alter that one, since they seemingly reversed their previous ruling on a similar Nevada case.

Sisolak said that opening schools is crucial for business. That makes no sense, unless you translate that to mean “We must kiss the rears of the teachers union.” How does opening schools aid business when at the same time retail, restaurant, bar, and gym businesses are further restricted? Casinos, the mainstay for the state’s budget, have been restricted as well. But mining has seen no curtailment or cutbacks. So, governor, are miner lives less important than casino worker lives? Or do you just view miners as rubes because they live in rural areas?

When the governor was tested positive for COVID, someone I know who I won’t name for their own protection wrote him and asked a reasonable question. Did he not follow his own mandates or don’t his mandates work? There has been no reply to date and probably won’t be. I wish the governor a recovery, but hope he can see his own hypocrisy. One further question, since we are headed for a budget crisis, when is he going to decide which state employees are essential and non-essential? It is time to cut back state spending to match the state income destroyed by his actions.

In this state and across the nation governors have taken it upon themselves to violate our civil rights with mandates and demands like wearing masks, limiting group size, and curfews when data on the CDC website says masks don’t work to prevent virus spread and other implemented practices are questionable. Finally, in Nevada there is some pushback. After the governor’s mandate, White Pine County Commission passed Resolution 2020-76. Among other things it requires that local businesses comply with local health requirements, bans fines from the governor’s Gestapo (state health and OSHA), and requires that any official or agent from outside White Pine County be required to check in at the Sheriff’s Office and quarantine for 14 days prior to visitation to any establishment. It also directs the Sheriff’s Department to not enforce any purported state CV19 violations and directs the District Attorney’s office to not prosecute same. Finally, a county willing to stand up for individual liberties.

I recently finished a book called “Not Free America.” Its author, Mike Donovan, is a gay, self-labeled progressive who runs the Nexus Group non-profit which acts on behalf of illegal immigrants and minorities. He is anti-Trump, a pastor of his own church, and his views probably run counter to many. Yet, like many of us, he has a firm conviction that our constitutional freedoms are being infringed at an increasing rate. He made the statement that he believes mask mandates are an exercise in programming people into unquestioningly following government edicts.

He has long been a champion of individual liberties as set forth in the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, maintains that “our abusive relationship with our government” needs to be changed, and suggests a course of action to do so. He outlines the inconsistent and abusive nature of the legal system with numerous examples. The book ends with “The Liberty Pledge” that I think should be provided to all of our elected officials.

Despite obvious differences in philosophy, he is proof that people with a common goal can set those differences aside. A good start is actions like that taken by White Pine County. It is time to no longer accept an ongoing “emergency” as an excuse to trample our liberties. After all, there is now talk of a flu emergency as well. I don’t know how Trump’s lawsuit over the massive counting fraud in the election will turn out or who will end up being President. I do know that we owe Trump a huge debt of gratitude for forcing the corrupt media and Washington elites out of the shadows. After this election action and not just talk from the 74 million people who voted against this corruption has become more important than ever.