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OP-ED: Situation reaching critical mass

5 min read
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This will not be news to anyone outside of the city of Harrisburg, but the natives are restless. Very restless.

The modern version of Paul Revere rode through the media a month or so ago yelling, “The virus is coming, the virus is coming,” and everyone said, “Wow, must be bad because a computer model said so.”

The middle of March rolled around and no one had really seen any evidence of the scourge but the governor said there’s an emergency and slapped a lid on the state. Within a week, we were all under house arrest and virtually all the businesses were shut down. Somehow, the vast majority of us were “non-life-sustaining.” No one ever explained the difference between “life usstaining” and “non-life-sustaining,” except if you worked for the latter, you were either unemployed or working at home. Within a couple weeks, two million of us found ourselves at home, under house arrest and in the unemployed category.

For a couple weeks it was kind of funny joking about where all the toilet paper was going. Then it wasn’t funny anymore. It’s nice seeing the family but not 24/7. Home schooling kids gives everyone an appreciation for what their regular teachers endure.

Then the amusement has worn off, the money is gone, worry about jobs and house payments and businesses starts to loom large and people begin to ask, “Why exactly are we doing this?” In the whole western two-thirds of the state there are barely over a thousand cases of this supposedly ominous virus. Maybe the eastern end of the state and Allegheny County have a problem, but why are we in jail, losing our jobs and our homes and our businesses because of something that seems no worse than a lot of other maladies?

We are being told that we have to maintain whatever social distance is so we don’t spread the virus, but if it is not here, what are we not spreading? We are told that this virus is super deadly, but more than half the fatalities have been in nursing homes among people with pre-existing morbidities, and in many cases, officials really don’t know what these people died from. So why are we under house arrest, deprived of our livelihoods, bankrupting the economy of the state for something with a realistic impact less than common flu or opioids?

But our governor just can’t leave the festering pile alone and this week added to it by requiring everyone, even in more or less unaffected areas, to wear masks when going into their favorite stores. Now we look like a state full of wannabe bank robbers.

OK, I poke a little fun at what is going on, but the situation is deadly serious and not because of the virus. There are millions of Pennsylvanians out of work and confined to their homes. Many are worried about making house and car payments, making rent payments on their businesses and so on. We have an entire generation of kids who have been deprived of three months of learning which they cannot afford. The worst part is that the governor has no desire or plan to end this. He says he does, but his actions say otherwise.

The Republican Legislature presented him with a perfectly workable plan based on the Federal CISA Guidance, which is a well-reasoned and safe startup plan. The governor rejected it out of hand for no reason and then vetoed the bill. He talks about more testing, more requirements, never an endpoint, never a point at which we can actually start. He recently mentioned a nebulous idea that “maybe” some construction could start May 8. Why not today? What will change in three weeks for construction? That is not a plan. Neither is online car sales.

What Pennsylvania needs is a solid plan with dates, places and assigned people to start the thousands of existing businesses and to bring back businesses that are now in places like China. We need to bring back our pharmaceutical industry, our electronics industry and much of our aerospace industry. We have places along Route 43, along Interstate 70 and elsewhere in the county that would be perfect for industry. Who is out recruiting the plastic companies that should be attached to the Shell cracker plant? The rest of Pennsylvania is the same way. Who is looking to bring jobs here?

Recent phone calls and social media postings have made it very clear that people are thoroughly disgusted with Governor Wolf and are very unhappy with elected officials in general, regardless of party. They are tired of seeing the governor and his medical person day after day telling tales of doom and extending house arrest. Unless that changes fast, the horn-honking demonstrations will degrade quickly. Republicans better get out in front of the situation with solid plans and action. Democrats better figure out how to stop obstructing relief to working Pennsylvanians. If not, Election Day will not be happy for either party.

Dave Ball is vice chairman of the Republican Party of Washington County and a Peters Township councilman.

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