Enforcement Policies of Nevada County Mask Mandates Need to be Clarified

Last night, we watched the Los Angeles Rams defeat the San Francisco Forty-Niners in the NFC Championship game played at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.  Currently, California is under an executive order signed by Gavin Newsom requiring citizens to wear a mask in all public areas.  To the left is a maskless governor with an already ill and maskless Magic Johnson in a public place (yet again) violating his own mask order.

Twitter @MagicJohnson

At this point the mask mandates, and those who enact or support them, are just silly.  Nobody is following these ridiculous orders, not even the governor who signed the executive order.  Further, neither the state nor Nevada County has an articulated enforcement mechanism at all.  Finally, and based upon these haphazard policies, the Nevada County election office has resorted to enforcement by physical force.  In fact, when asked Gavin Newsom was asked by media about enforcement of his mandate, he responded that he had “faith” in residents to follow the dictate. The lack of enforcement policies is inexcusable and leading to little government dictators changing policy on a whim thus leading to physical harm of constituents.

It is time for the Nevada County supervisors to lead on this issue.  They need to make clear what their enforcement policies.  If the supervisors value liberty, they would enforce the governor's mask mandate in the same manner which he enforces it.  We trust our fellow man to do the right thing.  I frankly rarely agree with Gavin Newsom on any topic, but in this instance, I agree with him whole-heartedly.   As Newsom has made clear, he has purposefully executed an emergency mask mandate with no enforcement mechanism and has commented to the media that we should trust our fellow man to do the right thing.  Regardless of the efficacy of masks and, for argument purposes, conceding that they are 100% effective in preventing infection, it is about a mandate which dictates to the public rather than the request which the governor has plainly made. 

At this time, the Nevada County supervisors need to lead.  Sue Hoek, as chairman of the board of supervisors, should direct staff to draft a resolution indicating that the county will follow our governor's lead and simply ask our local citizens to wear a mask in the county office.  While the supervisors may think that they work for the staff at the county, that fact of the matter is that staff works for the supervisors who work for the people.  If staff refuses to draft the resolution in the manner dictated by Sue Hoek, a template can be provided to her by a number of citizen groups who are sick of these mandates, and she can put it on the agenda.  That is her job.

As discussed in yesterday's post (and I know Sue Hoek agrees with this axiom because she is a strong, patriotic, freedom-loving woman), we are constantly on a journey from ancient authoritarianism towards true freedom and liberty.  Sometimes while on this journey, we as a society take two steps forward (the Declaration of Independence) and then take one step back (Dredd Scott).  In order for freedom and liberty to succeed, all of our collective steps must always be forward and towards freedom and liberty.  Any government mandate is a step backward towards ancient authoritarianism and away from our American way.  If we are a people that value freedom and liberty, and as Gavin Newsom said, we have to trust our fellow man to do the right thing, and the Nevada County supervisors should do the same thing and tell the county citizens that the county will not be enforcing these silly mask mandates and tell the public that they trust them to do the right thing for their neighbors.