New York Legislative Assembly Bill 416: Sweeping Public Health Measures

Although not yet law and without even a co-sponsor of Bill 416, the bill grants sweeping powers such as:

  • Removal and detention of cases contacts and carriers who may be a danger to public health in the event that the governor declares a state of health emergency due to an epidemic of any communicable disease
  • Persons or groups of persons can be detained in a medical facility or other “appropriate” facility for as long as the department of health may direct as long as the person is contagious
  • If the person or group is ordered to be detained for less than 3 business days that person or group I entitled to a hearing
  • Should a detention order be greater than 3 business days the group or person subject to the detention order requests a release the governor must obtain an order the governor must obtain a court order authorizing the detention. The governor can keep extending the detention order upon further court orders provided hearings are granted to the person or group
  • The governor may make orders requiring enforcement of any order which is “necessary or appropriate” to prevent spread of a communicable disease including forced quarantine, testing, examination, treatment, vaccination, medical treatment
  • Forced medication shall require a court order

So the question is whether this amounts to good public health control or a violation of civil rights an argument I will not delve into but I recall in Canada there is no power, at this point, to compel vaccination or a specific medical treatment or to compel confinement to a medical facility.

You may recall that recently the New York State Bar recommended compulsory COVID vaccinations.

Poetry Corner: “The Orange Toad and the little man with a funny moustache”

The Orange Toad and the little man with the funny moustache

Both started with election wins
One succeeded with a coup while the Orange Toad lost an election and called foul
but desperately summoned his militia to overpower democracy
Both had their goon militia to beat, intimidate and threaten
Both created phantasmagorical enemies to rally their masses
Through social chaos power maintained amidst different socio-economic classes
and both loved social clashes
The little man with the funny moustache launched a war of iron and steel
The Orange Toad a war of vindictive words

Hatred is their moral currency
Divide and conquer
Bully and beat
Cultivate the right
Demean and destroy the left

The little man with the funny moustache demonized and murdered a category of many
The Orange Toad simply hated and mocked

The little man with a funny moustache built nasty camps fortified by towers and barbed wire and millions fell but the Orange Toad let a nasty bug take its toll
The Orange Toad promised a great wall
The little man with a moustache on The Continent and the Orange Toad afar
On history they left a scar
While not the same
They both played a dangerous game
Let history decide what they had in common
other than inspiring rock bottom.

Robert K. Stephen

Poetry Corner: “Too many apples and grapes later”

Too many apples and grapes later

A gasp
thunderous deafening roar
burning acrid gas
hot molten lava
slides down the precipice

A sigh like the spring wind
and the disaster is sucked down into the bowels of the earth
only
the warm human smell remains

Robert K. Stephen

Poetry Corner: Mama Bravo strikes again or how not to love Boeing Super Max!


Mama Bravo strikes again or how not to love Boeing Super Max

Laughing gaily they take their seats
out of the hostile freeze into the cheap tequila and sun of Mexico
the plane hurtles down the runway
passengers waiting for those free holiday cocktails
BUT
LURCH
snap, crackle and pop
like steel rice Krispies

No time for screams
What’s left of the bodies
lies steaming on the runway and looks like Mama Bravo’s dropped from the Empire State Building
on a cold winter’s day

Robert K. Stephen