2020 has been quite a dysfunctional year for the Whitewater City Council. On the agenda for 15 December 2020 is start of the process to extend the mask requirement.
I feel the best way to start this writing by explaining my opinion on masks:
- I feel that mask mandates are similar in effect (albeit lesser) and very much akin to forcing businesses to shutdown. This has had such a dramatic and negative effect on peoples’ lives. I feel very strongly that this is a violation of Constitutional Rights, whether it be on the national, state, or local level.
- On a personal level, I feel that masks take away from one’s identity.
- Masks have been worn since March and nowhere has masks eliminated or slowed the spread. There is simply no data supporting masks. If there were data to support, whether it be on the individual level or city/state level, this data would be all over the news. This would be very, very easy to prove masks actually did anything. (As a point of information, I could be construed as an expert in this area as I set up, run, and evaluate tests that directly impact FDA requirements).
- My feeling is that masks probably work for short periods of time, like maybe twenty minutes ie. after about twenty minutes the mask has enough germs around it that you may as well not be wearing it.
- I fully respect an individual’s right to choose to wear a mask. I may actually wear a mask if I were in my seventies…. but that is my choice.
So I checked with Whitewater Police. Since March, there have been six complaints for masks:
- Anonymous reported Rick’s on 8/7.
- A woman named Mary Stearns reported the gas station on corner or Walworth and Janesville on 8/21.
- Anonymous reported Pumpers and Mitchells on 8/26.
- UWW student Alissa Santana reported at 1am Pumpers and Mitchells again 8/30.
- Woman named Sandra Rasmussen reported same gas station as above on 9/17.
- Anonymous reported Acorn Beverage on 11/27.
No tickets were written. This mask mandate has been a total waste of tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
I filed an open records request demanding to know the anonymous people reporting businesses. Under the counsel of Whitewater City Attorney Wally McDonnell, my request was refused. My buddy Wally is an unelected bureaucrat that is imho driving this progressive agenda. He needs to go, sooner rather than later. Whitewater can do better.
Acorn Beverage is not Pablo Escobar. Protecting people who report mask violations is so utterly ridiculous and cowardly.
In my opinion, the Whitewater Police Department should be demanding that Lynn Binnie or Jim Allen or Brienne Brown go to these businesses and address these mask concerns. Being that no tickets have been written, and there are Whitewater businesses openly violating this… I cannot help but ask what the mask mandate is accomplishing? The answer (combined with the ineffectiveness of masks) is the same as the EO #DefundThePolice committee the city council has set up…. the truly false sense of accomplishment by these progressive acolytes.
For many citizens in Wisconsin, where common sense has a more profound effect on leadership, police going into a business in this manner would be considered harassment. Many sheriffs have refused to enforce.
[I will add here that I think Whitewater has a great police department. Part of the reason I am so vocal about the City Council and Lynn Binnie’s progressive moves to align themselves with people who want to Defund the Police is that I believe so strongly that WPD is not broken so let’s not fix it]
I also cannot help but ask why this move is necessary, being that Tony Evers is going to extend the mandate in January anyways.
What to do about it?
- Can certainly call in to zoom meetings and holler at the city council members hiding in their basements like Joe Biden. That actually did work when Lynn Binnie wanted to stop college kids from playing bags on their front lawns.
- I also really hope someone runs against Ms. Brown in Aldermanic District 3. I would gladly commit to a hundred hours of volunteer time.
I could go on… I keep hearing the whining from Binnie and the ilk over Whitewater’s dependence on borrowed college money from students. Maybe if the City Council were more focused on building businesses in Whitewater instead of destroying them, this would not be the case. Binnie actually haplessly tried to make the case to me that masks helped the businesses. How lost can someone be?
One last note …. I again encourage … if you like my blog, you like my voice…. please follow directly on my blog. The day is coming when Big Tech and social media just comes out and blocks common sense.
-mike
Discerning Whitewater 