Straight Talk From Steve

On August 9th President Joe Biden went before the camera and blamed 80 million unvaccinated Americans for the persistent spreading of the coronavirus and mandated that all federal employees, save the U.S. Postal Service, and all employers with more than 100 employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or get weekly virus tests. Biden insisted that “This is not about freedom or personal choice; it’s about protecting yourself and those around you…”

I disagree.

Biden’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional. President Biden swore an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he took office. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it extend power to the executive branch of the federal government to mandate what a person must put into his or her own body, and the 10th Amendment grants over to the states those powers not specifically delegated to the federal government. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1990 in the case of Washington v. Harper that “the forcible injection of medication into a nonconsenting person’s body represents a substantial interference with that person’s liberty.” So, this really is about personal liberty after all.

Biden’s mandate also violates federal law. In sinister fashion, the Biden administration tried to get around the high court’s 1990 ruling by forcing the Department of Labor to impose his new rule through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). If businesses require vaccination of their employees or testing once per week, then nobody is forcing an injection upon a non-consenting person, right? Well, not so fast. The mere fact that the new rule only applies to businesses with more than 100 employees makes Biden’s new rule arbitrary. Such an arbitrary or capricious standard means that Biden’s new rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act. Under this Act a rule is invalid if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” Because there is no necessary line of distinction between a business with 99 employees and one with 100 employees, Biden’s new rule constitutes an arbitrary violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.

Biden’s vaccine mandate is bad for business. Why would any business owner want to let go of good employees when help is so hard to find these days, especially when they know that there is no one waiting on the sidelines to replace them? Biden’s mandate comes one month before the start of the Christmas holiday shopping season. While employers are looking to hire more holiday help, the federal government is now mandating that these same employers downsize their companies, and that makes the Biden mandate very bad for business.

Biden’s vaccine mandate is also bad for government. Consider what would happen if all 80 million unvaccinated people decided to wait until they got fired or let go by their employers instead of quitting their jobs. This would result in 80 million people suddenly filing for unemployment benefits! In order to help you see this, consider what happened in Chicago last month when 73 school bus drivers suddenly resigned due to the city’s new vaccine mandate. The mayor and school administrators found themselves frantically talking to Uber and Lyft about transporting 2,100 students to school, including 990 special education students. Because of their contracts, the Chicago Public Schools must now pay families $1,000 upfront and $500 per month to drive their own students to school.

Biden’s vaccine mandate also ignores science. Some 14 studies have now been completed showing how natural immunity is better at preventing COVID-19 than the vaccines. Moreover, Biden continues to ignore the weakness of the vaccines. For example, 40 percent of coronavirus cases in the United Kingdom last month came from people who had already received at least one shot of the vaccine, and Yale University epidemiologist Harvey Risch has stated publicly and for the record that “the majority of those infected become so after being vaccinated.” According Risch, 60 percent of cases in America come from people who have already been vaccinated.

President Joe Biden is now threatening to run over any governor who stands in his way. Gov. Ricketts has opposed Biden’s vaccine mandate and he needs some help. For this reason, I called Gov. Ricketts last Friday and urged him to call the State Legislature back into a special session just to deal with this problem. We especially need to protect those small businesses with fewer than 100 employees in Nebraska. No one in Nebraska should ever have to lose his or her job or be compelled to get a vaccination they do not want in order to feed their family and pay their bills. Biden’s vaccine mandate constitutes a declaration of war against personal liberty, and so the State Legislature is now compelled to act.