LET THE DICTATORIAL GOVERNORS TREMBLE.

There are plenty, and their continued arbitrariness begets ever more insolence from the peasants.

We'll start in Illinois, where rookie governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) must have been so impressed by the sound guy's console at some concert that he's micromanaging the state as if too much feedback means a few slides get moved.  Thus, if the test positivity rate exceeds some percentage for so many days, bars and restaurants in that part of the state must go back to outdoor dining only.  That's not doing the hospitality industry much good in Rockford or DeKalb, and there's a lawsuit coming

Illinois attorney Thomas DeVore led Thursday night’s session to inform owners about their legal rights and possible consequences should they defy the mandate.

“I had significant amount of business owners reach out to me and say if we have to shut down indoor dining especially this time of year it’s going to bankrupt us and what can we do about that," said DeVore.

Speeders and rioters rejoice: the governor has reassigned state troopers to enforce the shutdowns in Rockford.

Restaurateurs and publicans in DeKalb county have filed a similar lawsuit, with the endorsement of the mayors of DeKalb and Sycamore. "I guess I'm very supportive of our local businesses," [Sycamore mayor Kurt] Lang said. "They're really stressed a lot with not having the inside dining. Whatever we can do to help them be successful, I'm for. The governor has hopefully our health in mind, but I think selectively choosing restaurants and bars and not other things is kind of a targeted action, I guess."

The participants in the lawsuit also sought an emergency stay of the closure order: that failed in court.

The petition for a temporary restraining order – asking that restrictions on indoor dining planned to start this weekend be delayed so a judge could hear testimony on how those mitigations are "unfair" to local businesses being impacted by larger case surges in surrounding counties such as Winnebago – was denied by Circuit Clerk Judge Bradley Waller Thursday at the DeKalb County Courthouse.

"The balance here is such that the decision by the governor to impose these types of restrictions is governed by rational basis,” Waller said.

In his ruling Friday, Waller said he made his determination because the law states that operating a business is not a fundamental right under the constitution, though said he feels for local businesses impacted by further shutdowns.

There's an elected judiciary in Illinois. Remember that name. Bradley Waller.

The time will come when somebody discovers regulatory takings.  Prolonged business closures under arbitrarily extended gubernatorial powers might qualify as denial of a fundamental right, namely, the deprivation of property without due process of law.

Note further that travel still is a fundamental right, and the restaurants and bars of Wisconsin are still open.  It might be a small sacrifice for Illinoisans to hang out in Packer country if they can at least hang out.  "With Wisconsin just miles away and cooler temperatures in the forecast [Beloit grill manager Jon] Pingel says its possible Stateliners might make the drive to dine inside."

In Wisconsin, a coalition of business interests and opposition politicians got the shutdown orders of rookie governor Tony Evers (D-Public Instruction, first E is long) tossed out.  The governor has not issued any new general ukases, although he keeps issuing and extending mask mandates.

There are two other problems at work in Wisconsin.  First, the first round of shutdowns occurred while nothing was happening, bat gobbler flu-wise, in much of the state.  But all the patience, and all the cash reserves, were depleted in that first month of shutdowns.  Second, the best way to avoid getting hit with a lawsuit for regulatory takings is to enact emergency legislation by regular order, which has been the Cold Spring Shops position from early on.  The problem is, consistency is to politicians as prayer is to vampires.

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature could convene at any time and vote to cancel the health emergency, and the mask mandate, but have chosen not to ahead of an election during which some members may become more vulnerable by taking such a vote.

Instead, the legislative leaders are paying private attorneys at taxpayer expense to accomplish the same goal.

A political party ought not be an incumbent-protection racket. Sometimes you have to put your ship alongside that of the enemy.

It has taken a while, but a court has finally had enough of the arbitrariness of Michigan rookie governor Gretchen "Karen" Whitmer (D-Hell, or someplace close enough) and noted that she has been exceeding her authority since, oh, April 30.

The state's high court ruled 4-3 that a state law allowing the governor to declare emergencies and keep them in place without legislative input — the 1945 Emergency Powers of the Governor Act — is unconstitutional.

The court was unanimous in ruling that a separate law — the 1976 Emergency Management Act — did not give Whitmer the power, after April 30, to issue or renew any executive orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic after 28 days without Legislative approval.

The governor doesn't like the ruling.  She's looking for "alternative ways" to continue her rule.  Sic semper tyrannis.

In California, the peasants are not yet to the pitchfork and torch stage, as rental trucks and moving companies are still available, if at a premium.  Their governor, Gavin "No Beachcombing at High Tide" Newsom (D-House of Pelosi) is ...attaching a diversity, inclusion, and equity mandate to his ukases.

On the 197th day of “15 days to slow the spread,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Democrat, of course) has moved the reopening goalposts yet again. Originally counties had to meet metrics aimed at ensuring adequate rates of testing and the availability of hospital/ICU beds/ventilators. (Contact tracing was supposed to be a part of that, but that effort’s been a big fat joke). Once hospitalization rates, ventilator usage, and death rates plummeted over the summer Newsom changed his strategy and enacted by gubernatorial fiat a tiered system that completely ignored those metrics and instead focused on daily new cases and positivity rate.

Now that more counties are set to move out of the most restrictive tier, Newsom’s changed the game again and has added an “equity requirement” counties must also meet before they can move down a tier.

Thanks to California's election rules, the state legislature in Sacramento is probably an even better rubber stamp than the Supreme Soviet. Bet on reality checks.

Doesn’t Newsom know that the economy in California is on the verge of collapse? The only thing propping it up is unemployment benefits and [federal assistance], and that won’t last forever. As soon as those benefits are gone, if nothing else changes, there will be an economic implosion. It might actually be too late now to blunt a lot of the damage that’s lurking.

And, where does Newsom claim to have the authority to take these actions? Only a few legislators, led by Asm. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), are fighting Newsom. Kiley attempted to pressure legislators to return to Sacramento for a special session to keep Newsom’s dictatorial urges in check, noting that the Gov has signed more than 100 executive orders during the pandemic and spent billions of dollars without specific authorization.

Is it crazy to suggest that these governors are betting on the outcome of the federal election next month? Put enough Democrats in the right places and the lockdown states get bailed out. Until the productive money flees.

A San Diego county supervisor called Jim Desmond is not yet looking for his pitchfork, but he's clearly losing patience.  "[Government officials] are failing at [presenting a way forward absent a vaccine or some other miracle] and as a result, we are quickly losing the trust of the people."  Moreover, I don't know what the demographics of Shasta County are.  I suspect, though, that "disparate impact" looks a lot different there than they might in San Diego or Santa Monica or Bakersfield.

[Matt] Pontes is now the county executive officer of Shasta County in Northern California and goes to work in thin socks, but another crisis has found him. “You cannot get closer to total disobedience of any kind of law,” he said, referring to the local response to Covid-19 strictures. “What’s happening up here is full-on anarchy.” Then he listed for me a few of the things that had happened recently: The county sheriff had announced that he wouldn’t enforce the state’s pandemic restrictions on social gatherings and businesses. People who had never before attended county board meetings were accusing local officials of treason. The county’s health officer, who had the unhappy job of imposing the state’s Covid rules on the citizens of Shasta County, was now receiving so many threats that Pontes had brought in a new threat-assessment team; he’d also ordered the bushes cut back away from her house, installed a security system and floodlights, and ordered police patrols of her neighborhood. “She still doesn’t feel safe out there,” he said. “At all.”

Problem is, Shasta, like many of the Wisconsin counties, was not affected by the initial outbreak, although, as in Wisconsin, the initial shutdowns used up the reserves the businesses had, and most of the credibility of the Experts.

California, however, might have been headed the way of all socialist states, and all Wuhan coronavirus has done is speed things up.  Here's Steven Greenhut.  "California just happens to have the biggest state government—and it's run almost entirely by lawmakers and other officials who refuse to consider non-government approaches."  Bring in Joel Kotkin, with "In California, we appear to have made the transition from awesome to awful" and "Not since the Middle Ages, where everything was seen as caused by divine will, have incompetents found a more convenient excuse for their failures."

Let me close this post, which has become way too long, and taken a long time account slow Internet today, with one more dictatorial governor, Jay Inslee of Washington.  I'm not familiar enough with him to tag him.  But Twitchy dunked on him after Boeing said they would build their one good jetliner in South Carolina.  The governor does not have Donald Trump's Twitter chops.  "Let me be clear - when the market for airplanes comes back, Boeing must bring these jobs back to Washington state."

Sorry, no.  "It is rather precious when the Democrat governors who have been instrumental in keeping the economy locked down want to posture as economic experts."