While South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is trying to chart a course to keep South Dakota businesses from going bankrupt during the coronavirus outbreak, the Brookings City Commission has proposed an ordinance which seems to be trying to do the opposite:
As you might gather from the tenor of the above poster which is making the rounds locally on facebook, if the local chatter is any indication, people are not happy with their elected officials, with most citing it as an overreach of municipal government.
The proposal has also sparked a change.org petition against the passage of the measure.
What’s driving this overreaching proposal? According to the local newspaper, it may actually be city staff:
“Brookings COVID numbers have increased dramatically over the past week. The guiding metrics have all been triggered with the exception of hospitalization. The current ordinance (Phase 3) regulates bars, restaurants, salons and retail. Additional regulations are needed to mitigate the increase in cases. Staff recommends extending the existing ordinance and necessary amendments including regulating residential gatherings to 10 or less and ceasing the sale of alcohol past 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday,” says a memo from City Manager Paul Briseno, which is attached to the agenda on the city website.
If infringing upon what people do in their private residences is a recommendation that comes from city staff, city councilors should less consider changing ordinances as much as they should consider changing staff.
Because that’s nothing short of ridiculous.
UPDATE.
It didn’t even dawn on me until this am.. but over the course of the next 60 days, South Dakotans will elect public officials from the president down through the county level, and often, the lead up to it this involves gatherings in both public places and private residences. Limiting the nature of gatherings would be a direct and recognizably improper infringement on our rights of assembly.
The governor has a LOT of work to do, not the least of which is to root-out impacted ideologies in the university systems. There are two primary control vectors under scrutiny, a matter of concern; universities and municipalities. It doesn’t matter of it’s China, globalists, or Illinois gangsters. Start sniffing university administration closely .. we have the precursors to point the NSA at the university system. My advice, dig-into the emails and communications of university professors. But also seek testimony of students. In my experience, the professor class is on the hard-sell. They don’t say “why” to vote left. The just push the youth to vote left, or the world will end. Take Barron Orr. I worked with Barron at The University of Arizona (I was mentoring the geospatial software design and development team at The Arizona Remote Sensing Center in enterprise Java). He had a big heart and a passion for his work, but I always sensed he was being pushed to something he endorsed begrudgingly. A very ugly monster came-out during the Kerry/Bush election. https://www.unssc.org/about-unssc/speakers-and-collaborators/barron-joseph-orr
University professors are a diverse crowd. Do you tend to generalize as much as you have here?
Hubris is a terrible curse. Who these punks are that think they can impinge on a social gathering in ones house are those who created the environment for Trumps election and will insure his re-election.