Hundreds of St. Louis citizens who snitched to the government about businesses that defied closure orders are discovering that their messages are not confidential and their identities are subject to sunshine laws.
As part of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, some city and state leaders have forced businesses they deem “nonessential” to shut down. St. Louis County encouraged people to report any such businesses that are still open via an online form.
The county received more than 900 complaints. And the complaints, apparently, were not anonymous. Indeed, they’re public records subject to the state’s sunshine laws. Now people who are angry at the extent and duration of government shutdown orders are using those laws to expose the people who filed the complaints.
KSDK, a local NBC affiliate, reported in late April that a man named Jared Totsch received a copy of these tipsters’ records and shared them on Facebook. When a KDSK reporter reached out to him to point to him that these tipsters are now worried about retaliation, Totsch responded that was partly the point.
“I’d call it poetic justice, instant Karma, a dose of their own medicine,” he responded. “What goes around, comes around. They are now experiencing the same pain that they themselves helped to inflict on those they filed complaints against.”
KDSK interviewed a tipster named Patricia (the station withheld her last name) who was worried about retaliation. “I saw a lot of businesses that were non-essential that were open and had lines outside, parking lots filled as if the order didn’t matter to them,” she explained to the station. “And that was kinda frustrating.” She has personal reasons for being worried about the spread of the coronavirus—she has lupus, and two other people in her home have autoimmune issues, so they’re in a higher health risk category than many others.
The whole fight feels like waves of resentment coming from opposite directions. There are huge economic costs to these businesses if they’re forced to shut their doors. These shutdowns are going to lead to bankruptcies and destroyed livelihoods.
But yes, there are huge health risks to people like Patricia. Plans to try to restart the economy tend to involve keeping those who are in high-risk categories in quarantine while others carefully start returning to work.
The Reason Foundation (which publishes this site) recently released a working paper that tries to avoid these anger-inducing one-size-fits-all responses and focus instead on containing infection clusters. Patricia needs to keep herself safe, but that doesn’t mean those businesses she saw needed to be closed in order to achieve that goal.
If more people realized that government’s responses have trended more toward authoritarian blanket demands rather than actual risk assessments and properly targeted protection measures, we’d all be better off moving forward.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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Very simple solution. Patricia and anyone else like her can just stay home. She obviously was out and about otherwise how did she see these “lines of people”? Mind your own damn business Patricia.
1.5 Million people in the US have some FORM lupus
70% is very serious, so 1,050,000 should absolutely stay home
10% is cutaneous lupus affecting only the skin
Then the rest is a mixed bag of neonatal lupus that goes away or drug-induced from medication gone awry (10%)
https://www.lupus.org/resources/lupus-facts-and-statistics#
But if you have Lupus, you would assume, and rightly so, that even just seasonal flu would be more problematic for you and you would have governed yourself accordingly all these years. But no, all of a sudden it’s extremely urgent that other, healthy Americans curtail their life because you have Lupus.
Gimme a break. The whining is insufferable.
This woman Patricia has the same mindset as The Peanut People. You know, the ones who DEMAND that no one in the same building where they’re cursing everybody else’s existence is allowed to eat or smell like peanuts.
Take names folks and don’t forget. Should all this get to the point where you have to choose sides, you will have a good and naughty list in hand.
And go old school with pencil and paper, FUCK GOOGLE and five eyes!!!!!!!!!!
You have that right. That is good advice.
Reminds me of something I once heard:
A man stands outside smoking a cigarette. He is approached by an anti-smoking zealot who regales him with the health consequences of smoking and even second-hand smoke (even though he’s outside). When she’s nearly done she finishes with “Don’t you know you’re shortening your life? What do you have to say for yourself?!?”
The smoker replies, “Well, my grandfather lived to be 101.”
The anti-smoker demands, “Did he smoke?”
The smoker tells her, “No, he minded his own fucking business!”
it’s always a tough one when you have to contend with the facts. Follow The Money. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgnBldI7KPY&w=560&h=315%5D
There’s an old saying in the western counties of West Virginia, as well as the eastern counties of Kentucky:
” Snitches are often found in ditches.”
Exactly! Once a snitch always a snitch & you can NEVER trust them. “shout out intended”
I prefer Snitches Get Stitches
As I have said elsewhere and at least 100 times, all businesses are essential to the person who runs them and those who work there to get their daily bread, fed their families, house their families, keep their families healthy, ALL JOBS ARE ESSENTIAL, except those of the politician, they are unneeded parasites.
That is a huge Amen OWG.
Any Puscifer embed gets a +1 automatically.
Snitch gets stitches
Our ‘society’ has been desperately trying to move away from the common law right to face accuser. The implications of eliminating the need for accuser to face those whom they accuse and most importantly eliminating the requirement of an principal accuser to invoke the agency of law officers for any action in law cannot be understated. The requirement of accusers to face the accused as the liable plaintiff for any action in law (including and especially criminal actions) IS my line in the sand. I will not tolerate any fraudulent claims of agency by men claiming to be ‘law enforcement officers’ if they are not acting on an accusers behalf. I also will not tolerate any ‘court’ to conduct an action against me without an actual identifiable accuser facing me with their elements of valid cause. And if there was ever an accuser making claims against me they would be held personally liable for every second of my time they took from me to defend against their fraudulent claims. The ninny anonymous accusers who expect no liability for false accusations of ACTUAL injury are hardcore criminals – equivalent to mass murderers. If you know the history of snitches in fascist and communist regimes then you know why I say this. These ninny snitches should be identified, databased, publicly shamed in the historical context of ninnies feeding their neighbors into death camps, and be held financially and criminally liable for every victim they have injured when accused by the those whom thise ninnies originally accused.
The right to face accuser is the single most important right to uphold whether you know or not it. The power of accusation is to invoke the power of the state with well established elements of when valid or invalid. The lack of accusation is also what restrains State power and differentiate lawful actions vs tyranny. All tyrants should be continually hunted, accused, put on trial for treason, convicted and executed – this includes anonymous ninny ‘accusers’ hiding in the shadows and the criminal men fraudulently claiming to be ‘law enforcement’ whom initiate criminal actions without an actual liable accuser.
The right to face my accuser IS THE LINE IN THE SAND!
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/496067-coronavirus-protests-take-aim-at-scientists-elites
you guys will love today’s tom woods column–
neil ferguson,mr china flu disaster modeler,has had to resign from his job,but not 4 what you think it was–
Perhaps you know the name Neil Ferguson.
He has spent his life making wild predictions of doom. He said 200 million could die from bird flu; the grand total was 282 people. He said 65,000 people in the UK would die from swine flu. The actual number was 457.
And so on.
More to our current point, Ferguson is the man behind the COVID-19 models on the basis of which most of the world has shut down. According to his model the UK, where he lives, would have seen 500,000 deaths without radical interventions.
Stay at home, he demanded. “Social distancing!”
Well.
It turns out that ol’ Neil, rather than abide by the rules he would impose on others, believes he ought to be able to assess the risk level for himself.
We peons aren’t allowed to make these determinations, of course. No, we have to stay home alone (even though in some states as well as in Europe around 50% of the deaths from COVID-19 are occurring in nursing homes).
But ol’ Neil? He can have visitors.
Evidently he had a visitor quite recently.
His married lover stopped by. Twice.
Once after she had told friends that her husband may have been showing symptoms.
Oops.
Ferguson has stepped down from his government advisory position.
You really can’t make this up.
These are the people running the world right now.
These are the people who have your neighbors scared out of their wits, to the point that they cannot have a rational conversation with you.
But doggone it, you need to have rational conversations at a time like this, or you’re going to go out of your mind.
This bunch of snitches remind me USSR. I hope they get what’s coming.
My mother taught us not to be tattle tales. I listened.
I’m not surprised.
Snitches. Another tool that the lazy taxpayer funded cock smoking police farces use to ensure that they don’t have to work for a living. Hush my mouth that these lard arsed, power hungry kunts have to do proper policing.
Help the cops they say. Well, they have never approached me and offered to help me do my job so my response is, FUCK OFF and do your job like you are paid to do.
Snitches are cop’s bitches.