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Bad Faith Governance and More Symptoms of the Great Unraveling
A few days ago I replied to a comment here about those who “blindly following the narrative because it’s ‘what the CDC recommends’…” with:
Not sure which is worse, those “blindly following” or the others who “cynically hide behind” while knowing full well it is all crap. Truth is, I won’t have much respect for either on the other side.
All of the above is truly something to witness from a front row seat. For those of you who do not have much appreciation for how this is really playing out, today I will direct you to this insightful piece from RedState:
EXCLUSIVE: Another Siemens Employee Stands Up: ‘It Feels Like the Ultimate Betrayal’
Not a unique situation in the slightest, the whole thing is worth the time to read. But, among other things, it hits on a key point about how the fate of the OSHA “guidance” really is likely going to be irrelevant. That is more of a side show…something to suck up the oxygen in the room and distract the masses while eating up critical time on the clock. It is the change to the language in USG contracts that will prove permanent and very destructive:
[Siemens Employee:] “We are not sure if the stay through the federal Court of Appeals is not going to have any impact on how Siemens is handling this “mandate.” Rather than go with the OSHA guidelines, they are deferring to an executive order that changed the wording of federal contracts requiring federal contractors to have a vaccinated workforce. The State of Tennessee passed a handful of laws a week ago that might have some impact on drawing unemployment, which will be a godsend. They also passed a law restricting vaccine mandates, but Siemens responded with, “Federal law trumps state law.”
And, to repeat what I’ve mentioned before:
[1] I suspect that most of the companies that have been deputized by the President to ram this mandate down the throats of We the People are not agile enough to play this game. In USG contracting situations, the mandate is already being expedited and codified and employees are already beginning the irreversible process on their end. Will companies pause the disruptive implementation causing more disruption or just proceed as planned? Some are already contractually obligated to do it. …
Regardless, just like the last eviction moratorium, this was bad faith governance at it’s core. Bad faith is not part of the compact.
[2] …And compliance means not only the contractor to the USG but all of the subcontractors to the contractor to the USG must be in compliance also. And, barring any real pushback by We the People, all will be complete — the voluntary compliance by entire industries — in less than three months from the release of the EO. No checks, no balances.
I’m not aware that any of this is being addressed by current court filings…or if any of it is addressable by such means. The president mandated changes to contractual terms and conditions with the Executive Branch. (Who or what is going to bow up like a cheap two-by-four and even try to do anything about that?) I guess the next president can reverse that…but by then the damage will be done. People cannot un-take the vaccine. But there will be other damage too:
…there is still the wholesale destruction of trust between Siemens and its employees, and the subsequent fallout from it. Many quality, long-term employees have already opted to retire or resign, and who replaces them is unclear, particularly since the skill level and expertise required for their jobs is not prevalent in the marketplace. Then there is the sheer uncertainty and confusion among employees, and even some management, that has resulted because of the ever shifting goal posts on the mandate.
This “destruction of trust” – driven by bad faith governance enlisting corporate entities as agents of it’s unconstitutional bidding – is now a broad and pervasive phenomenon in corporate America. Based on my experience in a tiny little corner of this world, it appears between 20%-40% of certain workforces are either refusing the vax or accepting it under some broad level of coercion. But I also see somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of the remaining workforce that has had the vax on it’s own but now displays a range of disgust with either the “blindly following” or “cynically hiding behind” the narrative by the employer…and, not to mention, the condescending flow down in typical corporate-esse.
(I’ll save discussion on the mass vax-mandate-waiver-rubber-stamping minefield being prepared by some companies and how destructive that will be on the workforce for another time. Talk about cynical and bad faith! Good times, I tell you.)
None of this is good for the long term health of any specific workforce or the now tattered fabric of American society. And it is all being done willfully and purposely in the name of We the People.
Thanks comrades. Now, ever more quickly, into the abyss…
Published in General
Insufficiently cynical 😬
Interesting how the feds require those with federal contracts to have a vaxxed workforce, but I have yet to see a requirement for those receiving federal benefits thru SNAP (food stamps), Section 8 (housing), Medicaid, etc to prove vax status to continue to receive their benefits. Could it be that those on the dole are reliable foot-soldiers/voters for the current regime while employees at Raytheon, Brown & Root, General Dynamics, etc who are in the middle class due to their employment status and compensation are not so reliable? Therefore, is the purpose to purge the problematic sorts from employment thru the vax mandates, leaving the loyalists employed? On the upside, I just hired a new admin employee at my office who left her previous job because they were requiring the vax. Their loss is my gain.
In which case we may see some level of social-political realignment…but I suspect there will be way more unraveling involved.
An Executive Order is not law. Thus, federal supremacy should not apply to it.
Exactly. The RedState piece touches on that:
Like the modern Ricochet troll, the feds really don’t even try to hide the “bad faith.” And that is where we get to the employers, thru the reliably compliant “judgement” of their lawyers, hiding behind the supposed force of law of the EO.
A bit more insight for those not familiar, the subcontract work for any large USG procurement contract has been strategically dispersed to as many states and congressional districts as possible. Also, I suspect, to fall off the “most favored supplier” list for future efforts would be rather painful for many a small business near you. (HINT: Most will decided to play ball.)
Isn’t this textbook fascist corporatism? Big business collaborates with government to direct the masses to greatness?
Yes:
There is the idea that this is a form of Maoism. The authorities tell obvious lies as a loyalty test. Those willing to repeat the lies are judged as good and then favored by those in power. Those that refuse not to repeat the lies are to be shunned and ridiculed by “the good people” and then abused by those in power.
It seems pretty clear to me that this is our version of the Cultural Revolution. Except in our time, The Little Red Book is a team publication of Fauci, Kendi, and McKibben.
Philo: “Not sure which is worse, those “blindly following” or the others who “cynically hide behind” while knowing full well it is all crap. Truth is, I won’t have much respect for either on the other side.”
Unfortunately there are many commenters here at Ricochet that are either “blindly following” or “cynically hiding behind”.
Really great post.
American Abroad; Yep, you nailed it. It is clearly “textbook Fascist Corporatism” not that many here really understand what that is.
IIRC, the federal judiciary are exempt, the postal workers are exempt, members of Congress and their staff are all exempt from the mandates being forced on private companies who are federal contractors, or in the military, etc.
Certain favored groups retain their liberty to choose or not to get the jab while others are compelled no matter their wishes, medical conditions, or having natural immunity.
The sweeping orders are all so “arbitrary and capricious”, it is a wonder none have been definitively reined in.
Of course, it’s not a federal law. It’s only an executive order.
Would a more than ‘token “opposition” party’ be loudly proclaiming that legislation to retrospectively reverse such unconstitutional executive action will be following hard upon the midterms?
Is there another party or is there only Brandon Bidenstan’s party?
The problem as I have noticed in my minor pushbacks against mask mandates issued by governors is this: that the management of whatever company is bowing to the EO from Biden, or bowing to the mask mandates in Calif from Newsom, needs only one small head nod from some lawyer their firm deals with, who tells them, “The EO is an important Federal ruling and trumps the state” or “A mandate is fully enforceable” and then the individual’s back is up against the wall.
Sure this corporate lawyer’s statement is a totally junk legal statement – but the statement came from a lawyer. So unless the individual is a lawyer themselves, the individual is stalemated.
I ended up simply no longer shopping at the two places that required masks despite my health condition that precluded wearing a mask. Had I oodles of money lying around, I would have sued both stores. But the grocery store I no longer shopped at then lost at least $ 400 worth of my money for each month for one year, so they got hit hard by me and the others I have spoken with who did the same thing.
Sadly, employees who need a job can not be quite as sanguine about the notion of going on unpaid leave for refusing the vaccine mandate. Many people leaving the work force are just weeks, months or a year away from getting a full pension and may seriously be financially impaired if they cannot collect that pension by their leaving the job.
In 2020, it was not legal that families could not retrieve their elderly relatives on whose behalf they were paying the facilities upwards of 3K each month. But many families were not allowed in to see their relatives or to retrieve them.
It is not legal for hospitals to refuse to allow in the legal representative of a patient who is dying, but that happened as well. In some cases, such legal representatives had enough clout locally to have the case against the hospital heard on an emergency basis and then the legal representative was able to either enter the hospital and meet with the patient, or even enter the hospital to take the patient out. But often legal representatives were simply normal everyday people, relatives of the dying patient, and did not know how to proceed legally.
It is also not legal to withhold medicines – especially the way ivermectin is being withheld from doctors by pharmacists. A pharmacist is not allowed to act like a doctor, and is actually breaking the law when they do this. (Practicing medicine without a license.)
It is criminal that Fauci withheld approval of HCQ and ivermectin from the American public, which is aggravated murder on a scale which by now might be surpassing the fatality count of that of Mengele.
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(Somewhere along the line it seems we – or I – stopped getting notifications about promotions. For what it’s worth, that is/was an important feature to at least one of us.)
Would you be referring to the Republicans?
Can those be nullified by a federal judge in a shopping center in Pisgah, Alabama?
Maybe. Someone more versed in the law than I am would have to answer that. Judges in Hawaii didn’t seem to have any problem nullifying Trump EO’s nationwide. I’m not sure how that works.
Good news:
Savage it and beat that dead horse six ways to Sunday…I just want someone much smarter than me to explain how that does anything to reverse (or stop) the contractual language that will have been essentially “voluntarily” agreed to by USG contractors. Then maybe explain to me how the employees for those USG contractors and all of their subcontractors un-take the vaccine.
Also, no vaccine mandate for Congress or the millions of refugees flooding the borders?
I identify as a member of Congress. That’s one of my 57 genders. Thus, the EO doesn’t apply to me.
This process of directing the behavior of industry via fiat would be precisely described in another place (Italy) in another time (1925) as Fascism.
Is this true? I thought Fascism was about train schedules.
One thing’s forsure. This administration couldn’t make them run on time.
November 19 Update:
And the “flow down” requirement to all subcontractors makes this a rather massive, irreversible, and very destructive mandate.