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Cuomo Wants Our Ventilators and Buffalo is Having None of It
New York State is a microcosm for how elites view America. A tiny little speck of a megacity controls politics, and the overwhelming majority of the area is dismissed as “upstate,” mirroring the “coasts vs. flyover country” view of the nation.
The hospitals in the Buffalo area especially, and throughout the state in general, have been preparing. We have ventilators and are using them. New York City is running out. Despite the state still having a stockpile of ventilators, Cuomo is now ordering the National Guard to take equipment from our hospitals for New York City. Buffalo’s politicians and hospitals are having none of it.
The largest local hospital system issued a statement that they had been following state guidelines, and need this equipment to handle what we have coming. The local county hospital and trauma center said: “Before announcing an executive order, a solution to work collaboratively and request exactly what is needed would have been a more responsible approach.”
We have made the appropriate preparations. We are not going to allow our people to die because of the incompetent preparation of others. Erie County Executive Poloncarz has flat out said that our ventilators are all in use, and aren’t going anywhere. The ants are telling the grasshoppers where to stick it.
Cuomo claims that the equipment is simply being moved to hotspots, and will be returned when we need them. Among the many problems with this statement is the fact that patients have been lingering on ventilators for weeks at a time. When we need them back, are patients going to be removed from them?
This could get very ugly very quickly. Can Cuomo legally order the guard to steal equipment from our local hospitals? Will the Guard obey these orders? When people resist, will force be met with force?
Published in Healthcare
This is precisely why we needed real strategic pandemic leadership years ago and at the outset of this outbreak. We finally heard from a professional, on loan to FEMA from the J-4 (that is logistics at the highest level in the military), this Thursday. In just 13 days, he got medical asset and supply visibility down to the county level and is driving the level of detail to the hospital level.
Anyone still babbling about “I need, I need, I need” is just asking to get exposed as grossly incompetent. We already have the ventilators in this country to overmatch the UW and Dr. Birx approved projections of need, even at the high end. The potential shortfall has always been ICU beds and general beds plus staff.
Dramatic demands are now being answered with hard facts that show “I need, I need, I need” is the sound of basic logistical incompetence, not real shortage. Sorting out the ground truth will include making medical facilities not showing REAL need give up equipment to other facilities in the same state, before the federal government coming in with the strategic backup to cover needs where the states are actually, by the real numbers, about to be overwhelmed.
How does a hospital show it will need the ventilators in 7 days, sooner than patients in NYC will be finished with them?
Here’s where they keep some of them:
This is tricky business. My REAL need is at least what is required to meet the projected wave that is going to hit me. Now, back to those models…
When I was at Notre Dame from 81-85, his daddy Mario Cuomo was touted as the Catholic savior of the nation, and they really really wanted him to run for president.
I didn’t know anything about politics back then, but I was not so stupid to think that a politician was going to be the savior of Catholicism. It appears I was right.
so much for eminent domain.
legal plunder
People are learning what Federalism means, many of them for the first time.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/sean-hannity-gov-cuomo-stop-denying-new-yorkers-hydroxychloroquine
They’re just a confiscation away.
This is the fundamental question, namely, “at what point will armed civilians take violent action against the standing army of the central government?” But for the massacre at Lexington, would there have been Concord?
If Cuomo attempts to send the NY Army National Guard (NY ARNG) to forcibly seize private property, I predict that the NT ARNG Staff Judge Advocate General (SJA) will immediately release a determination that the order is lawful. The NY Adjutant General, Commanding Officer of the NY ARNG will have already staffed this issue, and advised Cuomo that the Guard can be used in such a way. (If the SJA determines otherwise – that the order is NOT legal and therefore unenforcible by the Guard – then Cuomo would never issue such an order.)
If the National Guardsmen show up and begin seizing ventilators in one location, expect resistance at the second, third and subsequent facilities. Also, expect roadblocks, barricades and other non-lethal obstacles to prevent Guard convoys from leaving upstate areas.
So long as the Guard does not “shoot first”, violent civilian action will probably not occur. (Most of those likely and capable of resisting are veterans…the prospect of pulling the trigger on a uniform we once wore is a hard, hard prospect.)
If the ARNG (or other Regular standing forces) shoots first, all bets are off.
(Apologies for coming into this discussion late. Please excuse if this point is made better earlier in the thread.)
Be interesting if hospital officials in the Buffalo area have used Cuomo’s forewarning to hide their ventilators off-site if NYS Guard troops are ordered to seize them. Then you could end up with the governor ordering hospital officials arrested and jailed for trying to maintain potential services to their Upstate area, along with members of the Guard conducting searches across the area for medical equipment to seize and send downstate.
I doubt that is true, but seeing as how the SJA is his own staffer it’s not likely that the SJA would stymie his boss. However, if the SJA did determine that confiscation were illegal, does anyone really think that a New York democrat governor would restrain himself?
I don’t know New York law, but Texas law does give the governor this power in an emergency. I’m guessing New York’s governor has similar lawful power.
Even assuming this as true, there is nothing to stop a local magistrate to issue an arrest warrant for the troops seizing the ventilators, having the local police arrest them, and putting it before a judge to sort it all out. A ruling by a SJAG is just that: a ruling. It is not a magic password that removes all obstacles. If a civilian judge decides that there is probable cause that seizing the ventilators was theft, then the police are as justified in arresting the perpetrators (even if they are military) and restoring the presumed stolen property as the guardsmen were in taking them.
Might the arrest warrant be improper? Possibly. But so might the SJAG ruling. It is up to the courts to decide at that point.
Is this a form of lawfare? Again possibly, but so is seizing the ventilators. And what I am suggesting is a more effective form of resistance that roadblocks and barricades.
Things might get interesting if the guardsmen resist arrest, but that is their choice.
Umm . . . I don’t think Texas law give the power to take life-support equipment needed in one spot to take it to another spot, even if it is needed in that other spot. I know Gregg Abbott is not stupid enough to issue such an order. It gives broad powers, but it does not give the state the right to endanger one group of citizens to benefit another.
As I said earlier that position is akin to saying the state has the power to arbitrarily order one set of people out of a lifeboat in order to give it to another set
In an emergency, the governor is allowed to seize private property. (But he’s specifically not allowed to seize guns.)
That seizure power is not unlimited. That is why he is specifically not allowed to seize guns. To facilitate self-defense when seizures endanger life and limb.
I’m pretty sure it is unlimited with the sole exception of guns. I’ll have to go back and read the code again.
There is a difference between de jure and de facto. That why the firearms exemption exists. Do you think a Texas jury would actually convict anyone who did use force to defend property upon which their survival depended from confiscation?
Austin, or Lubbock?
Here is the pertinent code:
and
Further:
I am pretty sure either, assuming we are talking about occurrences within the local community. An Austin jury would acquit because those in Austin are the anointed and any action to seize stuff from them is proof the government is run by Bushhitler and an antifascist response was necessary. In Lubbock the jury would acquit because common sense would tell them the government seizing stuff people needed to survive from those people is wrong.
Different bases, but similar results.
That reads like a wide-open door, to me.
Those are negatives. They are not allowed to seize firearms.
Unless they arrest the person, or make some claim that the firearm is evidence in a criminal investigation. I don’t see anything there about having to get a warrant first, or a grand jury indictment, or anything else. We all need to recognize that a big hand doesn’t come down from the sky to force cops, judges, or anyone else, to do the right thing. So they disarm the individual because they claim they “reasonably believed” it is “immediately necessary” for the protection of blah blah blah. Everything else happens AFTER THE FACT. IF it happens at all. And how do you PROVE that they DIDN’T REALLY believe it was “immediately necessary” blah blah blah. They could even make that happen themselves, if they want to. They can keep moving closer, and closer, until they’re so close that if the person DID raise their gun or whatever, it would “an immediate threat.” And then they take the gun away. Because of what THEY did. Not really because of anything the other person did.
Epilogue: Cuomo has blinked. He now says that New York City has enough ventilators.