*Editor's Note: We at the Tarheel did something a bit different here his month. We looked back and found LPMeck Chair Jeff Scott's planks for his 2020 campaign for state senator against Jeff Jackson. We were astounded at how prescient this was, as it would be a perfect set of campaign goals even now, for 2023, and so we are publishing them today, just as he did three years ago.

by Jeff Scott for NC

Fire Mandy Cohen
Pressure the new governor to fire and replace Dr. Mandy Cohen and the senior management team at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Zero Liability
Pressure the new governor and state legislature to reverse the lockdown and allow the economy to resurrect itself. Zero liability for commerce means that when businesses reopen, their requirements should be no more onerous than the rules in place in 2019. Every business, and every business man and woman is essential. We must roll back restrictions to repair the damage from the public overreaction. Regulators of health and safety must consider both the benefits and the costs to frivolous state impositions like obsessive surface cleaning and plexiglass barriers. Businesses can voluntarily take additional safety measures to transact if they perceive inordinate panic in the behavior of their customers. But businesses have no legal obligation to cater to their most paranoid customers, and fickle customers are free to spend their dollars elsewhere for any reason they want.

Jail Cooper
The Governor does not enjoy immunity for crimes. The cause of excess deaths in North Carolina and elsewhere is the illegal response to what we now know is a minor disease. The U.S. economy and North Carolina were shut down based on wildly inaccurate models that predicted 2.2 million American deaths. Since then, millions of North Carolina residents continue to suffer financially, physically, and mentally. Crises are like drugs for those in office, offering Governors the option to retain powers over the public.

Does the Governor have authority to prolong an emergency declaration motivated by virus eradication? The series of absurd reasons for containment permits him to bypass state law and federal Constitutional rights. Cooper, like other Democratic governors who are being challenged in Ohio and Michigan, conveniently expanded his privilege to keep people under virtual house arrest with no legal consequences to himself. He threw North Carolinians under the bus. When will "non-essential” business owners, their employees and their customers get a chance to speak up?

The emergency declaration is an exercise of power that should be reviewed by the courts. The ballot box is an insufficient remedy because the damage has been extreme. If courts are unwilling to review any action based on public health, it’s rendering itself useless. North Carolina should not suffer from judicial indifference over Cooper's destructive actions.

If we don’t challenge the Governor's decision, whether he is still in office or out, the tyranny manifested under the guise of a COVID-19 response can be applied to a wide array of "public health" issues. That includes obesity, drugs, racism, guns, and rights of association and protest. Not only that, but "public health” indoctrination and propaganda included gag orders, censorship, and tight media control. The federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) even stopped evictions on the grounds of "public health." This is just the tip of the iceberg when one stops to consider a Federal takeover of public health.

CDC confirmed that 94 percent of the deaths attributed to the virus were from people who had as many as two to three other serious illnesses. The majority of those deaths are individuals 75 and older. Six percent of the deaths were directly from COVID-19, according to the CDC. The Governor made a calculated tradeoff to allegedly save lives in the short run while destroying the livelihood of North Carolinians in the long run.

Businesses are struggling, and many will never re-open. Drug overdoses and suicides have increased. Many people were unable to get treatment for conditions not related to COVID-19 because hospitals were closed to accommodate the rush of patients who never arrived. Forcing doctors to make poor decisions for patients does not help public health and clearly violates medical ethics.

Children are struggling because many of them cannot attend school in person. Dentists are seeing a surge in cases of cracked teeth from the rise in tension. Masks provide no real protection against this virus and are promoted as a social-psychological device, not a medical one.

Families have been barred from seeing their loved ones in hospitals and long-term care facilities, and residents in long-term care facilities have suffered because of the lack of in-person communication from their loved one. People living alone, of all ages, have been forced into solitary confinement and are dying at increased rates due to loneliness and lack of self-care.

The courts must end the Governor's crusade and hold him accountable whether he is returned to office or not.