Actions of Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf tells us a lot, and most of it is bad.
The Novel Coronavirus has opened opportunities for politicians to suspend people’s rights, spend trillions of dollars, and grandstand for the public. Governors have been especially active in this area. They seem thrilled at the idea that power can be seized and their political careers advanced by appearing on local news almost by fiat.
Among the worst offenders of rights is our own Governor Wolf. Seizing on an obscure law that appears to allow him to do almost anything in the event of a health emergency has allowed him to claim powers almost unheard of at state level. Section 5 of the Disease Prevention and Control Law, among other areas, may be interpreted as awarding powers to close businesses and restrict public activity by the governor. Many legal experts disagree with this. Pennsylvania’s own state lawmakers voted to end Wolf’s orders to allow business to reopen. The governor simply ignored them, much the way any king might have done if annoyed by the riff-raff.
Like other Governors, Wolf and his health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine have pretended to hold news conferences on the actions. They are faked by only allowing press questions to be submitted in advance, so that Wolf and Levine may determine which questions to ignore.
Wolf’s actions have been so notorious that a national newspaper, The Wall Street Journal recently ran an editorial titled, “A Wolf in Emergency Clothing”. Written by a senior research scholar at Princeton University, Allen Guelzo noted that until the virus problem, US governors had relatively little power and low profiles, The 55 governors (including US Territories) never seemed to have much effect on daily lives compared to the lawmaking state bodies.
By invoking dubious laws, governors like Wolf are suddenly important and threatening. Business all over the state are told that they will be shut down, lose licenses, and be fined out of existence. Counties who disagreed with Wolf and tried to reopen businesses were threatened with loss of federal funding. The thousands of protestors who demanded a return to normal activity were ignored.
The result has been tremendous hardship for Pennsylvania businesses. According to the WSJ, we have experienced twice the economic decline of the last recession, and double the job losses. Yet Wolf has chosen favorites among our businesses like the White Horse Diner in York County and a well drilling company in Adams County. He even allowed his former cabinet business to be declared an Essential Business until the Philadelphia Inquirer exposed him. In all, Wolf granted 6,124 exemptions, picking and choosing those who might avoid hardship.
As the article points out, the U.S. Supreme Court long ago ruled that governments had no business ignoring constitutional guarantees in the name of public safety. Scholars will argue for years about how governors like Wolf may have exceeded their mandate. The pitiful home printed signs on doors of establishments claiming they are following ‘state law’ may eventually be ruled illegal. Unfortunately, these rulings will come too late for the thousands of businesses that go bankrupt and employees who permanently lose their income.
The mission of government is to guard our freedoms, not our health. A lesson needs to be learned from the excessive power claimed by Pennsylvania Governor Wolf and others like him. The citizens of this state and the lawmakers who work for them must see to it that dictators like Wolf are never allowed to ignore their rights. The inability of both major parties to show leadership and protect freedoms has been appalling in Pennsylvania. There has never been a better time for Libertarian candidates to demonstrate a clear difference between choosing freedom over dictatorship.