Remember, modern laws/law enforcement is about revenue generation not maintaining a high quality of life place to live. Busting business and middle class people for masks is much more lucrative than dealing with homeless crack addicts.
This is the essence of Third World tyranny. Low level criminal scum are free to pray upon the productive. The productive working people must cower in fear from capricious but heavy-handed enforcement of arbitrary rules.
When some vagrant can shoot heroin in a public park then shoplift from a small businesses without fear but you are worried that you will go to jail and be fined for having a birthday party for your kid, our transition into a Banana Republic is assured.
“Busting business and middle class people for masks is much more lucrative than dealing with homeless crack addicts.”
It’s also less likely to get you killed.
For now.
To hell with defunding the police.’
Defund the politicians.
Tarring and feathering is more appropriate at this point.
So if I spend an hour with 6 other people, they’ll throw me into a confined space with hundreds of other people for a month — in the interest of slowing the spread of a virus?
And I bet Oregon released a bunch of career criminals from prison to “protect them from COVID”.
Yes, they will. And yes, they did.
But don’t worry; the gangsters, rapists, and meth dealers have already been released, so you’ll be alone in your cell. Problem solved!
And there’s still no clarification on how or whether the 6-person limit applies to large families and renters. We have seven — two adults and five kids — plus a renter in our home. That’s 8 total, without guests.
My wife and I have no idea if our everyday family life is now a criminal liability that could send us to jail. Nobody else can answer that, either.
The family down the street does foster care for the state. They have 2 fosters, plus their 3 kids. That’s seven people in the household, two of whom are unrelated but — as wards of the state — would not be there had the state not put them there. Are they now liable? Nobody knows, and that’s a serious problem.
There must be some 8th Amendment cruel-and-unusual-punishment implications here, too. It’s a 14-day “pause”, but violations carry a 30-day prison sentence? That’s a pretty dramatic crime-punishment mismatch.
If your family group is all one “pod” and you all live together, that doesn’t count as being in part of a gathering. Not in any state that I’ve heard of. Because it wouldn’t make any sense, like you said.
But I have been assured that the police are on the side of the citizens and that no cop would ever enforce tyranny
Last I heard, State Senator Brian Boquist, a Republican, asked the head of the State Police if they’ll enforce the Governor’s edicts and arrest people in their homes. Paraphrasing, “No COVID obfuscations, no vague platitudes, just a simple Yes or No.”
He has not gotten a straight answer, and there’s little reason to believe it if he had.
Both of those things — the non-answer from the State Police, and the lack of trust in any answer from them — are deeply concerning.
Devil’s advocate here: he might not be able to give a straight ‘no’ as that instantly gives the Oregon dictators all the reason they’d need to remove him.
The head of the police isn’t the average cop in the field.
No, but the average cop in the field can be fired for refusing the orders of the head of the police*.
“But what if they all refuse the orders?”
Well, as long as we’re living in fantasy-land, how about we just pretend the head of the police didn’t issue the illegal orders in the first place? The practical effect is the same.
*Unless, of course “the police” means anything federal and “the head of the police” is Trump. Then no one hardly ever gets fired, and even when they do they get a book deal and a CNN commentator slot.
This explains the popularity of recall petitions outside of the Portland-Eugene corridor. Redmond Oregon was full of recall Kate Brown petitions
Executive Order 20-65 (linked below) limits “at home and social gatherings” to no more than six people, but allows “faith institutions” to gather up to 25 indoors and 50 outdoors… So I guess if you want to have seven people over to your house for Thanksgiving, one of you better hit the Universal Life Church to become an ordained minister.
Executive Order 20-65:
https://www.oregon.gov/gov/Documents/executive_orders/eo_20-65.pdf
I suddenly foresee a spike in members of the Church of Eris Discordia.
Giving up hot dog buns is difficult for a lot of people.
Hey, at least she’s covering those bucky, yellow-green, beaver-eatin’, rat lookin’ choppers she has poking out her from lip most of the time…