Governor Abbott of Texas bans jail for business openers…
…and frees Shelley Luther.
Throwing Texans in jail whose biz's shut down through no fault of their own is wrong.
I am eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders.
Criminals shouldn’t be released to prevent COVID-19 just to put business owners in their place.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 7, 2020
NOTE: This is almost completely irrelevant, but I keep being struck by their names. With a slight change in spelling: “Abbot frees Luther.” It has a certain ring, doesn’t it?
And Luther has a slice of Abelard.
Makes me proud to be a Texan, it’s a good day during bad times.
Meanwhile, somewhere, Sam Nunn smiles…
The salon owner has over half a million waiting for her when she gets out given a funding page…
[go back a few weeks and you will see me mentioning that this is going to get expensive for the state given their actions and settlements… ]
NEXT location of issue:
The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday voted to identify hotels refusing to take in the homeless during the coronavirus pandemic and said they could possibly be “commandeered.”
[this may not go as well for the democrats as they think it will… MANY MANY wealthy and business owners, and others may start to say.. WTF am i doing helping this kind of peoples?]
I feel a certain personal sense of joy seeing all the “Luther” connections being made. It’s like the world has suddenly wandered up to my place for a beer & I’m happy to oblige.
And I’m happy the PTB in Texas are trying to make this nice woman’s life a little less difficult. And the half-a-mil in GoFundMe won’t hurt either.
I hope that “Shelley Luther” will be a name ascribed to patriots. Maybe all it takes is one to stand up and then others will follow. I was surprised to find that even CNN and MSN covered the release but without much fanfare. So perhaps the libs are even getting a bit of the message.
@Art: yeah, California will be the next test. Maybe there will be Shelley there.
Seems to me Abbott has himself to blame for Luther’s predicament. He ordered the lockdown.
To paraphrase a famous movie, Ms. Luther is going to need a bigger beauty salon.
parker – the news reports I read are confusing, because they often don’t distinguish between state and county orders; or between orders, directives, and guidelines – some are legally enforceable and some or not.
The following exercise is just for information, since the case is now moot.
However, it’s interesting to see the documents in the case rather than just pundits’ interpretations.
The judge was almost within the strictures of the EO (the $7000 fine was actually more than the upper limit of $1000), although by my reading any attorney worth his fee could get Luther acquitted anyway.
The protests were more about his pontificating, which was gratuitous and condescending, and the imposition of a fine at the maximum level rather than at the minimum (none) where it should have been, and any jail time at all — when hardened felons are being released; robbery suspects, turned loose without bail; and high-status criminals, celebrated by conspirators in the halls of the government with impunity.
Bottom line is that almost everyone but Judge Moye agrees a jail sentence and massive fine (for a hairdresser’s income) “does not serve the cause of justice,” to quote another legal opinion issued today.
Here’s the official State orders if anyone wants clarification.
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-executive-order-implements-statewide-essential-services-and-activities-protocols
Information on re-opening. Hair salons are not included in the first tranch.
https://www.themonitor.com/2020/04/22/dshs-issues-guidelines-non-essential-businesses/
Timeline of the tranches.
https://tdem.texas.gov/essentialservices/
Here are the relevant provisions from the EO itself.
https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/EO-GA-14_Statewide_Essential_Service_and_Activity_COVID-19_IMAGE_03-31-2020.pdf
Looks like to me that the onus was on the people who were not avoiding visiting the salon as much as on the owner.
Here’s what went down –
(a) Governor realized that his EO allowed jail time, and that was too harsh for the crime of violating the EO (especially since they were releasing real criminals); he should have thought of that before he signed it, but governments always over-threaten to encourage compliance, and just because they can.
My parenting books advised: never threaten a punishment you aren’t willing to go through with.
(b) some legislators got illegal haircuts also, pointing out that there was no rationale for pushing salons to the second wave of openings in the first place; it was a knee-jerk obeisance to the CDC, without thinking it through.
(seems to be a lot of that going around these days).
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abbott-issues-executive-order-eliminating-jail-as-punishment-for-violating-coronavirus-restrictions
Note that neither of them were arrested, fined, or jailed.
Interview on “Hannity” followed her release pretty quickly – did they social distance or do it over the phone? Not watching to find out!
https://www.foxnews.com/media/shelley-luther-speaks-out-released-from-jail
Babylon Bee has the final word.
https://babylonbee.com/news/american-christian-glad-he-doesnt-live-in-one-of-those-commie-countries
“American Christian Thanks God He Doesn’t Live In One Of Those Communist Countries Where The Government Can Shut
ChurchesHair Salons Down On A Whim”https://babylonbee.com/news/bill-of-rights-was-hidden-away-for-safekeeping-during-lockdown-and-now-no-one-can-find-it
Gov. Abbott did bring this on himself by ordering shutdowns, but he and the entire state leadership bent over backwards not to be heavy-handed about it. He never tried to make an example of any business that was in violation, opting instead for a kind of charm offensive of phone calls and exhortations. He issued a re-opening order with some flexibility, so that counties with very low COVID-19 case counts could open up faster to higher occupancy rates. The Dallas judge was out of step with most of the state. That kind of thing seems to be playing better in Dallas, and perhaps the other big cities, than it is in small-town Texas.
“Abbot frees Luther.” It has a certain ring, doesn’t it?
Friendly reminder: Father Johann von Staupitz, Martin Luther’s Father Superior, is rightly celebrated in some Lutheran synods, and was played in Luther by the late, great Bruno Ganz.