OSHA pretending to withdraw Joe Biden’s private sector COVID vaccine mandates
Following the recent Supreme Court ruling against the agency, the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) said yesterday it will withdraw Biden’s private sector COVID vaccine mandates, but the agency is only pretending to do so.
Introduced only a few months ago, OSHA’s COVID vaccine mandate — the Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard — applied to private sector businesses with more than 100 employees, and it included penalties up to and including termination for employees who refused to comply.
Like many of his dictatorial orders — his eviction moratorium, for example — Joe Biden chose to ignore lower court rulings against his COVID vaccine mandate, making a Supreme Court challenge of the OSHA directive inevitable, just as the SCOTUS decision against his vaccine mandate was equally inevitable.
In the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling against COVID vaccine mandates for private sector businesses, the justices pointed out that OSHA couldn’t enforce such an edict without Congress. However, it’s important to remember that Joe Biden was apprenticed for the job as president by Barack Obama, the guy whose entire presidency was run by his “pen and phone.”
In other words, Joe Biden was taught to ignore the courts and do as he pleases whenever necessary (via OSHA’s official statement):
“[OSHA] is withdrawing the vaccination and testing emergency temporary standard issued on Nov. 5, 2021, to protect unvaccinated employees of large employers with 100 or more employees from workplace exposure to coronavirus.
“Although OSHA is withdrawing the vaccination and testing ETS as an enforceable emergency temporary standard, the agency is not withdrawing the ETS as a proposed rule. The agency is prioritizing its resources to focus on finalizing a permanent COVID-19 Healthcare Standard. OSHA strongly encourages vaccination of workers against the continuing dangers posed by COVID-19 in the workplace.” (emphasis mine)
First Liberty Institute represented three national religious ministries – Daystar Television Network, the American Family Association, and Answers in Genesis – in consolidated cases challenging the mandate, and according to Kelly Shackelford (president, CEO, and chief counsel for First Liberty Institute), OSHA’s fake withdrawal of Biden’s vaccine mandates means the fight isn’t over:
“The Supreme Court made it clear that the President Biden administration’s attempt to federalize the nation’s workforce is blatantly unconstitutional.
“OSHA had no choice but to withdraw its unlawful ETS, but it needs to completely put an end to this dangerous government overreach. We will continue to fight on behalf of our clients and the American people to protect them from being forced to violate their faith.”
The fact that religious ministries were involved in the lawsuit is significant for many reasons.
Yesterday, I wrote about how Biden is collecting the personal information of Christians who object to vaccine mandates and refuse to take the shot for religious reasons to build a database capable of keeping tabs on them in the name of “safety.”
In that piece, I also shared with you two 2021 Supreme Court rulings (one in November and the other in December) where Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh joined with the far-left wing of the court to oppose granting exemptions to vaccine mandates for healthcare workers who objected to the shots for religious reasons.
In a second challenge to vaccine mandates outside OSHA, the court that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell claims to have saved failed to protect the religious liberty rights when Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the liberal wing of the court ruled 5-4 to uphold Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers at providers that receive Medicaid and Medicare dollars — no religious exemptions allowed.
Of course, liberty isn’t what drives Joe Biden and the far-left, COVID tyranny is, something Dr. Anthony Fauci himself admitted to in an October 2021 interview on Face the Nation. Calling every American a “member of society,” Fauci said that “reaping the benefits of that society” requires making sacrifices for the greater good of society as a whole.
And in a tweet since-deleted by the Twitter gods, Fauci was caught on video saying:
DR. FAUCI ON VACCINE MANDATES:
“There comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the greater good of society.” pic.twitter.com/LCkPLOFlqy
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 3, 2021
If that sounds a little Karl Marx-ish, there’s good reason:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” ~ Karl Marx from his Critique of the Gotha program, 1875
The motivation behind Joe Biden’s COVID vaccine mandates for private sector businesses is government’s tyrannical rule over every aspect of our lives:
- If you work for the government, you must comply with vaccine mandates.
- If you don’t work for the government but receive government benefits — benefits you paid for by the way — you must comply with vaccine mandates.
- If you run a private sector business, it’s only through the benevolence of the government, which means that if you want to stay in business, you will comply with and enforce vaccine mandates.
Don’t think for one second that OSHA is serious about withdrawing COVID vaccine mandates for private sector businesses . . . they’re only pretending to do so.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily two-minute radio feature: iTunes | Stitcher | Tune In | RSS
sp;
