You might have seen M. Fulton Robicheaux’s piece here at The Hayride yesterday talking about the Louisiana House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Homeland Security, and how it’s now running hearings examining the state’s response to the COVID pandemic.
Robicheaux is exactly right that this is a good thing. He’s especially right when he says this…
The suspension of our constitutional liberties and the corresponding absolute waste of trillions of tax dollars is the worst governmental overreach that I have witnessed in my lifetime. And so far, all the perpetrators are allowed to ride off into the sunset and cash in on their fame (or infamy) with no or little repercussions whatsoever.
KPLC-TV in Lake Charles did a pretty good little writeup on what the committee is doing, and they included an interview with Rep. Chuck Owen, who’s a frequent contributor here at The Hayride and, frankly, one of the best legislators Louisiana has had in the last several decades. Owen is precisely right when he says this…
Representative Chuck Owens, R-Rosepine, said some doctors were afraid to appear before the committee in September. “These people didn’t break any laws, they just did things the Department of Health wasn’t recommending,” he said. “Some of these private hospitals and the state were really going after these physicians. And one of them from Monroe, Bob Calhoun’s testimony, he treated over 400 COVID patients and did not lose one.” Though he said no licenses were revoked, Owen said some doctors were fired from private hospitals for refusing to take the vaccine and refusing to wear masks. He said another big concern is whether citizens gave informed consent for vaccines and some treatments. “The dirty secret is that these vaccines were rushed out,” he said. “They were not appropriately tried or analyzed. They were still under emergency use authorization which has a monitor of its own as far as what’s supposed to be done. When you’re given an emergency use authorization you’re supposed to be given informed consent, and we didn’t do that on anyone in Louisiana.” Owen said the committee also wants to look into how the pandemic affected schools and education. He said there are many more questions they want answered even if they need to call back former health department employees from John Bel Edwards’ administration. Owen said they also want to find out more information about those who died after getting a COVID shot. He said they have a litany of questions. No date has been set yet for the hearings.
The public is entitled to those answers and without them, Louisiana’s state legislature ought to set to work dismantling the Louisiana Department of Health and firing everybody they can.
The early 20th century anti-socialist philosopher John Basil Barnhill, in a quote often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, once said, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” Barnhill had that exactly right, and these hearings are really the best opportunity for Louisiana’s people to instill some righteous fear among the bureaucrats and politicians living off our tax dollars.
As Robicheaux noted yesterday, there has been no reckoning for the shameful abuses of civil rights our state government and its local subsidiaries engaged in during the COVID panic. And there isn’t much reason to expect one is on the way.
In a sane country there would be federal civil rights charges filed against officials of the Louisiana Department of Health and local health departments who closed down bars, restaurants and retail establishments – and churches – while leaving casinos open. And forcing people to take vaccines which were ultimately ineffective and caused harm.
And shutting down treatment options which were successful and cheap.
You probably know where I’m going with this as well, which is that the source of all the tyranny the COVID panic unleashed in Louisiana resided at the top, in the person of John Bel Edwards.
Robicheaux noted the outright theft of more than $100 million in taxpayer funds that was Edwards’ pop-up hospital at the New Orleans Convention Center, an absolutely needless, scandalously wasteful project which was nothing more than a payoff from the governor to a selection of crony contractors. That should have been prosecuted by now.
But more egregious was Edwards’ open defiance of state law in maintaining an emergency declaration for COVID which restricted the movements and freedoms of our citizens despite a majority of the Louisiana House of Representatives having signed a petition invalidating it. We spent a lot of digital ink trashing him for that at the time, but it’s worth reiterating just how disgusting it was.
Louisiana law recognizes that liberty is the constitutional default in our society, and it can be curtailed only by statute or in special circumstances such as a declared emergency. And in an emergency situation, you have to have a formal declaration by the governor together with the assent of both houses of the legislature. If one house no longer assents, that emergency is dissolved.
Which is what that petition signified.
And John Bel Edwards openly defied the law so that he could maintain a medical tyranny regime on the people of Louisiana.
Nothing has happened to John Bel Edwards as a result of his actions, which negatively affected thousands of small business people, parents and school-kids, and countless others. This was not some academic exercise, it was a real thing which hurt real people, and nothing Edwards did could be said to have positively affected public safety. Louisiana’s COVID death rate was one of the worst in America, and Edwards’ LDH was utterly and completely incompetent in getting effective treatment to people who got sick.
They were actively pushing remdesivir on the public, for crying out loud. And they killed thousands of people insisting they be put on ventilators.
Edwards has never really been held to account for any of this. It would be a very good thing if the Select Committee would subpoena him and make him answer for what he did.
And not for the purposes of any political retribution. Reversing as many of Edwards’ policies as possible and proving, through success in economic development and population growth, what a terrible governor he was is the proper political retribution against him.
No, this is about what Barnhill said. This is about serving notice to those who would hold power over their fellow man that if that power is abused a toll must be paid. That the government must be made to fear the people, because that’s the only way to ensure it won’t abuse us.
We have had far, far too little accountability imposed on our ruling elite of late. That has to change. Owen and the rest of those committee members have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to see that it does.