In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Per the Desert Sun, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has issued a video statement decrying Gov. Gavin Newsom's plans to impose shutdowns across the state due to surging COVID-19 cases, and repeating his objection to penalizing those who don't follow the new protocols. Bianco said his department won't be "blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle against Riverside County residents in the enforcement of the governor's orders." The video, which was published on the department's YouTube channel and shared through its social media, shows Bianco in uniform. He accuses Newsom of having a "dictatorial attitude" and being "extremely hypocritical." Bianco called the stay-at-home orders "flat-out ridiculous." Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva "will not instruct his deputies to enforce a new statewide stay-at-home order announced Thursday that could force businesses to temporarily shut down as coronavirus c...

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant is asking questions few others have posed -- just what is the "science" behind the lockdown order s being promulgated in many US states? LA County banned outdoor dining at restaurants this week in response to a surge in COVID cases. While there is sketchy evidence for COVID transmission at indoor restaurants, there is apparently none at all in the literature for outdoor dining. Banning any restaurant business just before Christmas is, of course, economically disastrous. The judge thinks there ought to be good reasons to do it. The Daily News reports Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant “appeared sympathetic” to separate lawsuits seeking to lift the restriction filed by the California Restaurant Association and famed attorney Mark Geragos, who owns the Engine Co. No. 28 restaurant in downtown L.A. However, according to the outlet, “Chalfant said he was reluctant to issue an order that could have a major i...

As far as I'm aware, none of the usual suspects among the California civil authorities has made any direct statement about either the November 25 US Supreme Court ruling in Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo , or the December 3 ruling in Harvest Rock Church, et al. v Newsom The impression I have is that the LA County Health Department was fully aware of the November 25 ruling and what it telegraphed when it issued a new lockdown order on Nov 27 that prohibited all public and private gatherings "except for faith based services and protests, which are constitutionally protected rights." The worship service exception under the constitution was completely new. On the other hand, both LA Mayor Garcetti and Gov Newsom have been in a new lockdown frenzy. Garcetti issued new stay-at-home orders on November 17 , which he said at the time were to be in effect "for the next two to three weeks." But two to three weekw later, viz, just yesterday, he announced even stricter...

Thanks to a visitor, via Lifesite News: the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a California order banning all in-person worship and granted Harvest Rock Church an opportunity to present evidence prior to the country’s top court making a judgement on the matter. [Note: the California order bans indoor worship, not in-person worship.] “The application for injunctive relief, presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court, is treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, and the petition is granted,” stated the Supreme Court’s Dec. 3 order. The Supreme Court “vacated” the lower court order against the California Christian churches were California Governor Gavin Newsom’s worship ban was upheld, stripping it of its effects. . . . The Supreme Court in its order today sent the case back down to the lower court, telling it to consider its ruling in light of the Court’s Nov. 26 ruling against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions on places of w...

US flu outbreaks in recent decades include Asian Flu (1957-58), Bird Flu (1997-98), and Swine Flu (2009-2010). Although the discussions I've found indicate that they were comparable to COVID, they resulted in no calls for draconian social controls. In fact, the 1918-19 Spanish Flu, while it was far more severe than any of the more recent epidemics, didn't cause equivalent moral panic. Restrictions on social gatherings and public meetings were of much shorter duration and far more limited. (No Spaniards were vilified, either.) There was apparently something missing, particularly from the flu epidemics of the 1990s and 2000s, that might otherwise have caused the widespread calls for drastic social controls we've seen with COVID. This suggests, if the premise that COVID is a moral panic is correct, that social tensions exist now that didn't in recent decades. What might they be? One way to try to answer this question is to ask what groups are identified with the crisis...

Last week, my wife and I warched an episode of the Crimes That Changed Us series on Investigation Discovery on the McMartin preschool case . This was a bizarre, years-long rehearsal of allegations against a Manhattan Beach, CA day care that involved sex abuse of toddlers, a bad clown in a secret underground room, and Satanic sacrifices on the altar of an Episcopal church. None of this could be proven in court, and after two hung juries, the prosecution eventually got tired and dropped all charges The narrator of the episode said the McMartin case was an example of "moral panic". My wife suggested that the current COVID crisis seems like a moral panic as well. I wasn't sure, but the idea was tantalizing enough that I decided to do some research on the web the next day. Moral panics are normally the province of sociology. What I've found is that much of the academic discussion is limited by the current Overton window, and academics will be likely to accept COVID r...

From the Catholic News Agency [San Francisco Abp Salvatore Cordileone] criticized a new health order from the state of California placing San Francisco and San Mateo Counties into a more restrictive tier of coronavirus restrictions, resulting in a ban on indoor worship services. The health order treats religious worship as a “non-essential” activity, while allowing hair and nail salons, massage parlors, and tattoo parlors to remain open, Cordileone noted. “This is precisely the kind of blatant discrimination to which the Supreme Court gave injunctive relief in New York,” he said, referencing a decision Wednesday which blocked New York from similarly closing houses of worship while allowing secular retail venues to remain open. . . . The archbishop recognized concerns over rising COVID hospitalizations, and said he is discerning the proper course of action, with advice from his fellow bishops, archdiocesan lawyers, and infectious disease specialists. Also from the ...