Use Of A Mask

A law firm in Maine is offering to represent anyone arrested or fined for not wearing a mask, for free. But not for being denied entry to a business because business owners have a right to impose a dress code. What a lot of people are doing, including myself, is letting business owners or managers know that we will never again shop in their stores if they choose to enforce the governor's dress code against the wishes of their customers.

I have mentioned the Tractor Supply Company store here before. I even have a thread about it because they offer some good products at reasonable prices, and I have spent a lot of money there since they opened their Millinocket store. However, I will never again set foot in one because they mandate the use of a mask. I understand that this is a company mandate, and not the fault of the local manager, which is why I will never shop at any Tractor Supply Company store again. That is the only local store that has decided to enforce the governor's edict, and there is nothing they sell that I can't get at a local nursery or hardware store, or online. When the election is over and all of this mask nonsense goes away, I will still never again shop at the Tractor Store.

When our Democrat governor first decided to crash our economy, our local supermarket began requiring a mask but it wasn't long before they realized that wasn't going to work out well for them. People walked away and began shopping online or in smaller markets that didn't require it. The store managers wisely determined that enforcing a state governor's mandate wasn't their job. In fact, they said that policy of posting signs but not enforcing a mandate came from the corporate office.

Roughly half the people I see in stores are wearing masks, about the same percentage of the population who vote Democrat, yet only one person in Millinocket has tested positive for the virus. He brought it back from China and, although he was all over town without a mask, no one else has caught it.

It's not strictly along party lines, though. I know Republicans who are just as nutty about it as anyone else, and I know Democrats who don't wear them.

 

I thought that exact same thing about never shopping there again, if the store requires masks; but I have been giving it more thought, and changed my mind.
Yesterday, I was reading about some restaurant (in Louisiana ? ) that was allowing people in without wearing a mask, and the ATF came in and said they would pull the liquor license if the restaurant continued to do that.
So, my take on that , is that they can tell us we have to wear a mask, but they can’t enforce it that well. Businesses, however, have no choice but to do as they are told, or be closed down, fined, or both.
So, they are FORCED to tell shoppers that they have to have a mask, not for the shopper’s safety, but to keep from being closed down by state or city authorities.

That being said, even though I do not like having to wear the mask, I think that the store owners are as much a captive in this takeover of muzzling people , as we the people are.
I wore my garden hat/mask to walmart shopping, and it works fine, and I can actually breathe when wearing it. The sign says “please wear a face covering”, it does not say we have to wear a medical mask, so my hat works as good as anything else.

 

No, they are not forced. They chose to obey. One large restaurant in Bethel, Maine continued to serve customers throughout the lockdowns. Others, too, remained open, but this was the highest-profile one. Yes, they pulled his licenses but he continued to serve customers. His licenses were returned after his attorneys got involved, and he remained open. Just as many people don't have the incentive or the willingness to look beyond the lies and have come to view blind obedience as a virtue, most businesses have done the same. Although most of them have posted the signs, the only store that I have come across that chose to enforce the governor's edicts is the Tractor Supply Company store, and I will never again shop at one of those stores. Anything I might buy there, I can get from any of the nurseries here, or from either of our two hardware stores, where no one - including employees - are wearing masks. Or I can shop online, which I am doing more of. Our supermarket initially enforced the mask edicts. They soon learned that many of their customers were walking away, shopping at another market in a neighboring town, which wasn't enforcing it. They soon changed their policies at the corporate level. So, while there is no reason to get angry or be rude to an employee who is simply doing as s/he is told, the owners or managers should have an interest in pleasing their customers. When they choose, instead, to please the governor, they will no longer get my business, and this will continue after the election when no one is worried about the virus anymore.

 

Most states, and some counties and cities, have set up online sites where people can report violations of the state's mask orders, as well as disallowed gatherings, and so on.

In most, if not all, cases, these reports are subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Maine has such a site, and the site itself notifies citizen reporters that their reports are subject to FOIA requests, and may not be held confidential.

A month or so ago, I forget where but somewhere in the US, someone obtained these snitch reports through an FOIA request and published them online. Some citizen reporters claimed they were receiving death threats, which probably wasn't true because people lie about that kind of thing all the time, but they were likely receiving some negative feedback, including threats such as SNITCHES GET STITCHES.

This is an issue that people feel pretty strongly about, on both sides. Those who bought into the mask campaign propaganda are certain they are all going to die unless everyone does as they are told, while others don't appreciate being told what to do, particularly when it seems to be an unreasonable demand.

Some of these people, on both sides, are unstable.

Thus far, it seems unlikely that anyone here in Maine is going to be arrested or fined for not obeying the governor's commands, but people are being encouraged to report businesses where violations are occurring, and people are going to be angry if stores or restaurants are shut down, and they will want to know who reported them. I'm not talking specifically about the business owners, but employees and customers, as well.

We appreciate those businesses that are defying the governor's orders, and I have little doubt that there will be some retribution directed at anyone who changes that. At the very least, they will have made some permanent enemies around town. I would certainly never do anything to anyone who decided to report a business or even to report me to the state, but I would never forget it, or them. However, I am pretty sure there are others who would feel as if they needed to do something, and since most people here are related or otherwise connected to one another, it could get uncomfortable.

Throughout this nonsense, even when all of the restaurants and bars were ordered to be closed, I know of a bar that remained open to people who didn't park in the bar's parking lot, and who knew to enter by the back door. As he was on the other side of a nasty political fight I was in a decade or so ago, I despise the man who owns the place and I am not one to patronize bars anyhow, yet I would never have reported him for violating the lockdown, and kind of admired his willingness to do so. I'm sure I wasn't the only person in town who noticed, yet no one reported him.

Given the vehemence in which some of the maskers show toward people who enter a store without a mask, it's likely that a lot of businesses will be reported, although probably not here. I could be wrong about that, though. It is equally likely that there will be payback once someone has gone through the FOIA request procedure, as someone surely will.

 

I used Maine's snitch site the first day it was in operation, to report our governor for violating her own orders in posing for selfies while neither wearing a mask or social distancing. She has frequently violated these orders, and she has done so blatantly, in the realization that her orders are for peons, not for herself or anyone in her family or on her staff. There is no one else who I would report.

 

True. That, and many other things that are being promoted here now, were among the examples that were used to illustrate the evils of the Soviet Union.

 

This is a dry run for when Global Warming Global Cooling Climate Change legislation gets passed.

You think it's bad that The Unmasked are portrayed as wannabe assassins, just wait until these idiots get a shot at those of us who are "making the planet unlivable for the rest of us." And like everything else The Left does, this shall be a tool of Selective Punishment.

I feel as though I'm living in the U.S.S.R.

 

Uh-huh, and if the media reports it, more than half the population will believe it, including many of those who insist they don't trust the media. Like with everything else they have planned, the wealthy, the elite, and the connected won't be inconvenienced one bit. The inconveniences are for the masses.

 

The idiots will cheer the fleet of single-passenger Lear jets flying overhead, carting each celebrity to the Climate Summit.

It's weird to be present when a culture hits its Expiry Date.
Too much prosperity has brought us Idiocracy.

And Darwin wept...