OT: WI supreme court strikes down governor's stay-at-home order
Posting this since MI (and most other states) have a similar dynamic playing out with respect to the conflict over state executive mandated lockdown/closures (to varying extents).
While there is a marked partisan political overtone to this (especially in WI and MI where Republican legislatures are fighting Democrat governors), nationally this is not an exclusive partisan issue (for example, OH Republican state legislature is fighting similar orders by the Republican governor). It is a more fundamental issue of defining the powers of a state's executive vs legislative branches during times or crisis (as well as what constitutes a time of crisis and how long it can last). This is getting into some uncharted waters since the nation is not at war, nor are the states under martial law - in a murky gray area that hasn't been much of an issue until late, especially at the state level.
I will not comment on whether the WI court's ruling was right or wrong (not sure there even is a "right" answer), but it is interesting to note that neither side in the case wanted to ruling to go into effect - a stay was requested by the plaintiffs in order to negotiate a compromise but the court refused. I'm not a professional legal scholar or practitioner, but I think that this recent health crisis will further define (or redefine) aspects of governing at all levels for years to come - with this ruling being the first of many to come (and many likely to be conflicting).
Interesting times.
Yes we should always value the economy over public safety. ?
Serious question – don’t the two go hand-in-hand? Economic crisis can lead to severe public health crisis, including mental health crisis, suicide, increased anxiety and depression, poverty, lack of resources available to assist the underprivileged, decrease in charitable donations on which many providers rely, increased consumption of alcohol and drugs, etc.? It’s not so clearly a choice between health and economics. Choosing lockdowns likely lead to lower COVID death counts. I think that is fairly clear. But, do those same lockdowns lead to increased death from the other causes that I listed, along with a host of severe societal costs (decreased interaction for kids, loss of joy in society, etc). Again, we need to balance these competing interests, especially when the figures show that while the disease impacts all age ranges, the OVERWHELMING number of deaths are in a clearly-identifiable subgroup of society. Note that I am not advocating for simply “letting it rip” and reopening everything immediately. I’m simply saying that the choice is far more complicated and nuanced than you make it seem.
The problem is we can't quantify the unknown... If we open back up right now and there is another spike, society will blame opening up (and the person that made that decision) for those deaths.
We can't quantify how many of those people would've caught it in 3 months and died anyways, how many lives we saved from people committing suicide, lives lost from liver disease in 10 years, lives lost from heart disease from people eating unhealthy and not exercising, lives lost from starvation because of lessened donations from the economy, lives lost from lack of blood donations, the list goes on. If there was a way to quantify this #, then someone could say "yes, X number of people died from COVID-19 because we opened up, but Y number of more people did not die from all these other things"
To eradicate a virus like polio,the majority of the population needs to be immune along with a vaccine. Flattening the curve of infections by sheltering in place the healthy we also flattened the herd immunity. Polio hasn't been diagnosed in the US since 1984.
" Serious question – don’t the two go hand-in-hand? "
To a significant extent... no.
While deaths of despair generally increase in an economic downturn - most other forms of death decrease, leading to an overall reduction in mortality rate. This has been the norm across many economic downturns.
Average lifespan went from 57 in 1929 to 63 in 1933 for example.
https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_98173---,00.html
I am over 60, but holy crap those ages nearly match the average death rate without COVID
We should always be able to act rationally. Safety is important. Cars aren't 100% safe, but we drive them because the value to our society is higher than the cost - and we learn and make cars safer every year.
Making your argument is overly simplistic and deluded. There are safety costs in putting safety too high over economics. There are economic costs in putting the economy too high over safety. Adults know that we have to find a reasonable balance.
Thank you!
I mean its a nice theory as far as checks and balances, but when you have a democrat governor and a republican-controlled legislature (or vice versa), how would you expect anything to get done? In that situation with a divided state government, I could easily see the legislature holding the governor hostage. Why would they bother approving anything that didn't align with their own political goals, whether it was for a common good or not? What checks would the governor have to make sure that the legislature couldn't just unilaterally shut down anything they wanted to try and do that didn't fit the legislature's agenda?
Assuming there aren't conditions for this that you're not mentioning, I think you'd see a lot of political gridlock in this situation. Much more than you see now.
I live in Waukesha county, in Wisconsin, and this comment is spot on.
The R legislature is constantly chipping away at the D governor and obstructing him. Obviously, depending on what side your politics are, this is a good thing/bad thing.
It is ultra partisan here in the state. It has been that way for about 6-8 years now.
It started with Scott Walker striking down the teachers unions. After that there were 2 recall attempts sandwiched between a brutal re-election.
WI's other problem is that due to intense gerrymandering the GOP have a majority of the seats in the state assembly despite receiving 44% of the vote vs. 52% of the Dems.
Yes - Wisconsin Republicans usually act in bad faith. This court ruled in favor of the state's Republicans who wanted to force the Apr 7 primary election when the governor wanted to delay it until a time when coronavirus was less dangerous. It turns out dozens of people who voted or worked at the polls either had covid-19 at the time or contracted it at the election.
they are way worse than that. the wisconsin repubs actually engineered the virus such that it would only infect their political opponents who wanted to vote. meanwhile, all the repubs were immune from such peril as they went to vote. diabolical.
Ok I chuckled at that. I think people have turned off their sarcasm meter.
1 upvote for you!
Well, the ballot included candidates in the Democratic presidential primary so the turnout would likely be overwhelmingly Democratic. And due to corona, turnout was way down of course. I don't really know what their agenda was but it seemed pretty stupid and dangerous. And by your logic - why endanger your own voters? Most of whom are older and could be vulnerable? Check out this clown: https://www.businessinsider.com/wisconsin-gop-leader-says-voting-safe-dressed-ppe-gear-2020-4?op=1. That's WIsconsin's Speaker telling everyone its safe to go out to the polls - while he's decked out head-to-toe in PPE gear.
Wisconsin has an ugly recent history of trying to suppress the vote, largely due to rural Republicans' inability to grasp that Milwaukee is the state's largest population center and mostly Democratic. They don't seem to understand that people - not counties, land, etc., are the ones who vote.
It is necessary that the chief executive have the ability to take quick action to respond to emergencies without going through the negotiation and compromise required by sharing power with those who have conflicting opinions.
However, this emergency plenary power has to have a time limit. Especially where the exercise of this power involves the suspension of the basic rights of the citizens. Even if you are convinced that the executive is enforcing a course of action that is the best option you must still allow a sharing of power with those elected legislators who disagree.
We would all agree that a dictatorship would be the best form of government if the dictator always made the right decisions. But since a dictator will certainly sometimes make decisions we think are wrong we need to realize that shared power is a better way to go. Even when we think the opposition is wrong.
That is why a governor or president has veto power. If the legislature, who also represents the citizens of a state or nation feel strongly enough, they can override the decision of the governor. That is the way democracy functions.
Our current situation with CV19 is no different. You have two competing forces one health-based, the other economic, which while not completely separate, have very different solutions. You need to balance both, imo. If you keep people at home and have businesses closed for too long, eventually your economy will be so destroyed that your healthcare system will founder and this will lead to more sickness and death as well as crime. Then there is deficit and national debt that you incur and the problems that presents. There is no perfect solution.
Well maybe if both parties can't agree that it is a good idea, it probably shouldn't be done. This is why the executive power and legislative power wind up being held by opposite parties very frequently both nationally and in states. People don't trust either party with absolute power so they flip their votes to the other side to keep government from being able to operate too effectively.
You can't deny that mid-term elections are almost always won by the party that doesn't control the executive branch. People just don't trust government and politicians to do the right thing when they have total power.
People don't want their Governors or Presidents to be able to declare an indefinitely long state of emergency and then become dictators.
What if, let's say, the legislative branch passes laws that state the governor can declare something without further approval from the legislative branch. Maybe the legislature wanted to grant some of this power to the executive branch so the government could be nimble in times of crisis. Would that count as 'approval' from the legislative branch when the governor uses that granted power to limit mobility and buisness during a pandemic?
This is true however neither branch of government has the authority to suspend the Constitution. It is the Supreme Law of the Land and cannot be overruled. That's all the exercise one needs to make.
what if it's bankruptcy?
"You can't just say bankruptcy and expect it to mean anything...it doesn't work that way" - Oscar Martinez
"I didn't say it I declared it".
He didn’t say it. He declared it.
Then you've got a lot of state constitutions to re-write if that's your goal.
Does this also apply to the federal executive, and things like the War Powers Act and National Emergency Act?
LMAO... so when aliens attack, (either illegals or ETs) we'll be sure to let them know that the Governor cannot declare any state of emergency... so please stand by while our political system makes sure we're all safe before slaughtering millions.
Oh so it should be the same for the President then right?
I don't know the right decision here. I don't even know if there is a right decision. One way or the other its probably lose-lose. Stay closed, more companies go out of business, more individuals and families financially ruined, deteriorating mental health, higher unemployment costs (at least in the short-term), and some families with kids wondering where their next meal comes from. I don't feel bad for people who are pissed that they can't go to the bar or who can't go get a haircut, but I completely empathize with the small business owner who is hanging on by a thread right now and may be weeks away from financial ruin if they can't open their doors. I can't imagine the stress they must be feeling.
Re-open, you're letting people go back to work and restart their lives, but you risk becoming an infection hotspot and sending your community right back to square one with this virus. All it takes is one person to get it started, and then people who otherwise wouldn't have gotten sick or died, now could.
I'm not advocating for either option here. Trying to be an impartial observer. But it definitely appears that no matter what right now, whatever decision you make, lives will be ruined. I do not envy anyone who has to make these decisions.
I think the state governors made the right decision to lock down in March, at that time the virus was very unknown and, as Dan Crenshaw put it, we needed to go into a "tactical retreat". We know much more now, that elderly are at particular risk, as well as people with other underlying health issues (immunocompromised, obese, smokers, etc.). You're absolutely correct that lives are and will continue to be ruined, it's just frustrating that otherwise healthy people's lives are being ruined as well. Hospitals are literally closing, furloughing medical staff because they had no profit generating elective procedures to support their budget. With few exceptions (looking at you New York City, Detroit), hospitals and ICU beds have not been overrun. It's time to go back on the offensive, open up a bit and let the people less at risk get back to work, open up businesses, restaurants, etc.
The goalposts have somehow moved from flattening the curve to saving all the lives. If we're being intellectually honest, saving "all the lives" comes with heavy casualties, whether they be financial, emotional, societal, etc.
at that time the virus was very unknown
We know much more now, that elderly are at particular risk.
Except that's untrue. It has been known since early on that the elderly were at risk. That fact was ignored and/or suppressed by the media and governments from the beginning.
I did some digging in the data once it got to Italy, as I knew it would be here soon after. Called my 76 yo Mom shortly after doing so and told her to stock up and lock herself in. Which is what we should have done with everyone over the age of 70 about that time.
You can speculate as to why these two groups of people ignored this information all you want. Political persuasion will probably dictate your conclusions. I tend to attribute it to Hanlon's Razor.
What cannot be denied is that both of these groups share blame for many thousands of deaths due to their failure to widely distribute that information from the very beginning.
Ok... maybe we knew the elderly were more susceptible... but we didn't know the CFR, the R0, or have any idea just how dangerous Covid-19 was to the general population. We have a much better idea now.. it's not nearly as deadly as first predicted. So let's regroup, establish safety parameters (masks, social distancing, sanitizing, etc), and move forward.
I hope this has been a wake up call to our leadership, we're not currently ready to handle a virus with a true 2-3% mortality rate, as Covid-19 was initially thought to have.
It's time to go back on the offensive, open up a bit and let the people less at risk get back to work, open up businesses, restaurants, etc.
So your analogy to war/combat has some useful parallels, but there isn't really an "offensive" approach to this. Opening back up is akin to London during the Blitzkrieg. People can go about parts of their days but when the bombs come, everyone goes inside and life stops until the threat is gone. We can't send our own bombs back in this situation. We can aid ourselves by taking the steps recommended to have some semblance of normal life without significantly increasing our risks (limited capacity in public places, no large gatherings, etc) but really everything is a defensive maneuver or mitigation tactic.
The goalposts have somehow moved from flattening the curve to saving all the lives.
Yeah, this has been my trip up lately. The initial curve has been flattened. Hooray!! I think it's disingenuous when people claim the goalposts were moved because that implies nefarious intent. Governors aren't doing this to make people take unemployment and usher in communism or some BS. Anyone who thinks that needs to get their head examined.
Being the closest authority over their constituents (outside of Mayors), if there are spikes across a state and death tolls skyrocket, who gets the brunt of the blame? Who has to go out there every day and report "another 900 people died today" when they may be able to impact the numbers in some positive way? It's not the local McDonalds franchisee or your local grocer. As the post that you are replying to said, I don't envy Governors who thought their biggest issue was going to be how to implement new legislation regarding pot and are instead inundated with a global pandemic leading the deaths of rather significant numbers in their states. Lost lives is a hard number that is right in front of your face. The economic impact of shutting down is also a pretty hard number, but it's not binary like dead or alive nor is it absolute.
I agree that this can't go on forever. I'm fortunate and can WFH indefinitely so the impact on me is more of a nuisance than anything else (except for my wedding getting cancelled). I know others can't and we need to take steps to get to the point where we can operate somewhat normally as we continue to progress towards a final solution (BAD term but that's merely a coincidence). If getting to that point requires a huge nationwide effort in testing and tracing, then freaking do it. Kicking dirt around and complaining about this and that does nothing for anyone. If that's the other side of this situation then stay at home because of X, Y, and Z while we try this and that is the more compelling argument.
Hospitals are literally closing, furloughing medical staff because they had no profit generating elective procedures to support their budget.
This is crazy. Michigan is allowing no elective surgeries - creating pain for both patients and hospitals, Dr's and nurses. So let's keep all of this locked down even in counties with little to no COVID cases. Some of these "elective" surgeries are cancer related - like skin cancer, prostate biopsies, joint replacements, etc.
It caused another lawsuit against the State of Michigan.
I wish we had a Single Payer Healthcare System so hospitals and their workers didn't have to rely on expensive elective procedures to support budgets. Doesn't this Virus mean we're going to be slowing down on war? How about we prop up our Healthcare system instead of the military industrial complex. I will literally vote Republican for the rest of my life if they made a decision like that. I don't care about Red or Blue, I just think a functioning society needs a healthcare system that doesn't rely on people elective procedures or more people getting sick so they can grab insurance money. How is this even BiPartisan? We'd be an incredible country if we were basically the same, but you could walk into any hospital to get checked on, treated, and walk out without worrying about dipping into your savings.
We're not talking about the "RIGHT DECISION"... we're talking about the "POLITICALLY CORRECT" one.
HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE... DIFFERENCE!
Really pleased at the lack of Darwin and dancing pallbearer memes. We can take a targeted approach to this and protect the elderly, at-risk, and scared.
Everyone is at risk, some more than others. And I'm getting a little tired of being thought of as some kind of pussy for wanting to protect myself and my family from a devastating illness.
I don’t think you’re a pussy at all. But a tyrant for not allowing others to protect their families. You protect yours by staying home. Others protect theirs by going to work and putting food on the table
Hatter...I don't think anyone views ANYONE as being a pussy for wanting to be safe, protect themselves and family...the struggle is, why lock EVERYONE down? If you are medically fragile stay home, stay safe. Wear a mask to protect you, protect others. Open businesses and demand no mask no service.
And I know you are often the life of the party with sarcasm and jokes...if anything I'd call you a hypocrite, trying to protect yourself from a virus, yet you have regular posts and conversations about drinking, smoking, snorting, whatever...are you really protecting yourself or politicizing?
The nature of how the illness spreads is what makes it so difficult to please everyone. We've seen from what happened in Wisconsin, and other places, that many people don't have a respect for how viruses spread. Not a political issue, but an epidemiological one. Lots of people refuse to wear masks, and have argued on this board that they don't help so why wear them. People are ignoring social distancing rules, as has been seen in photos from Wisconsin and beyond. So how are those who want to protect their families from the virus supposed to embrace those who won't follow medical guidelines in a re-opening?
Well maybe those that want to protect their families from the virus could shelter in place. Duh.
This virus has a mortality rate of .4% for those 45 and younger it is not devastating for 2/3rds of the country. Stop the fear mongering, look at the data. It is. 6% for those 55 and younger, so being scared, protect those that are vulnerable and the rest of us get back to life.
We buried a beloved family member yesterday. She died of Covid-related complications. I would have sent you pictures of me or other family members performing sacred pallbearer duties, but nobody got the chance to be a pallbearer since the funeral service was attended virtually by all family members via a shitty internet connection. We received pictures of the coffin next to the gravesite instead of being able to attend the gravesite ceremony. Words can't describe how devastating it has been to not grieve together as a family.
Rabble, rabble, rabble.
I thought I heard in the ruling "we are giving the state, back to you, the people".
That was rousing.
This is a weird case all around because the decision was made by a lame-duck court (the deciding vote was by a judge who was voted out about a month ago), and the decision itself is...poorly written. I agree it doesn't seem like either side really wanted to have this go to the courts AND the court's majority didn't seem really interested in making the decision. It's a classic "bad facts make bad law" situation.
I do think that divisions of the government have always been fraught with overlapping interests. This pandemic brings that more into sharp relief now.
Had there been a national response embraced by both parties, this wouldn't be happening. Remember when that was possible? It wasn't that long ago.
Duplicate