Just Watch This Interview!

The Indiana legislature has begun its session, and the usual “culture warriors” who dominate that body thanks to Republican gerrymandering are already posturing about covid mandates and suggesting legislation that will incentivize and reward vaccine denial.

Despite GOP rhetoric about “freedom,” and the party’s steadfast, “pro-business” opposition to most regulation (Republicans pander to business through low tax rates and by turning a blind eye to pollution and other anti-social business behaviors), several lawmakers are proposing to overrule individual business owners who require their workers to be vaccinated.

This video sent to me by a reader shows the utter stupidity–and danger–of such intrusions into what should be decisions made by private businesses.

You really need to watch at least the first five minutes of this interview with the head of OneAmerica, an insurance company headquartered in Indianapolis. He makes two extremely important points:

  1.  Some businesses–his among them– need to have their employees return to the office, but large numbers of vaccinated employees are unwilling to do so if any of their co-workers will be unvaccinated;
  2.  Insurers are finding that death rates among working-age Americans have skyrocketed--they are 40% higher than actuarial tables and prior experience would predict, and the pandemic is responsible, both directly and indirectly. (Not all these deaths are from contracting Covid; many are the result of hospital overcrowding that has prevented or delayed needed care. Etc.)

You need to WATCH THE VIDEO.

The GOP politicians who are feeding anti-vaccine mythologies and rewarding dangerously anti-social behaviors are making a mockery of freedom (we are “free” only if we agree with them, evidently).

Their proposed tax give-backs/bribes cannot hide the fact that they are waging war on business– and in the process, killing Americans.

25 Comments

  1. Despite the alarming uptick of omicron, the television coverage of the legislature shows that the majority of legislators are not wearing masks. That is not leadership….

  2. Conservative commentators are leaving it up to businesses to decide if they want to require a vaccination for their employees. Thats part of freedom guidelines. The government shouldn’t mandate or tell a business they can’t require a vaccine protocol.
    Case in point, my wife snd I both got vaccinated due to health immune suppression. We tested for Covid prior to our Christmas parties. We had cold symptoms requiring it. We were certain we did the right thing for the guests that came in. Iur symptoms had cleared and wexwere ready, we required people to get tested. But in between showing positive and showing symptoms their is a 24 hour window of being transmissible. We are are coming down with Covid and not necessarily from our gathering. Politically we are a mix and we had nearly all the same conclusions about the virus. We were all in between symptoms and had vaccinated. My wife and I apparently got the Delta variant afterwards while others had totally different rang of mild symptoms. We even had a virus killing machine developed by NASA in our home. (Social distancing and wearing a mask at our employment is required for a good reason urging employees to vaccinate). All tracing guidelines are being followed and in our places of employment, we are given opportunities to distance.
    More importantly in looking at employees who don’t vaccinate vs those who do, only employees who do not vaccinate are ending up on ventilators or are having a much harder time.
    Businesses are looking iut for their employees not just to slow diwn the spread which isnt happening with Omicron, but it is looking to protect those that are coming down with it. Those who aren’t vaxers, still want freedom but are coming to the conclusion they could have had a better run with it had they vaccinated.
    The only variation that employees aren’t being offered by the government is if employees can prove they have gained immunity thru catching it that they shouldn’t require employees to get the vaccination. But employees who are afraid to get it should provide a past positive PCR test or blood test with antibodies present.
    Either way businesses one by one need the freedom to chose how to deal with this pandemic. Those visiting businesses should make individual decisions but not participate in the cancel culture that is predominate in this country. We learned what happened in Germany, citizens were marched around concentration camps because radical politicians abused the system.
    We still need secure elections that follow the constitution. HR1 is allows the federal government to override the constitution.
    January 6th was caused by corrupt politicians counting mail in and harvested ballots, Trump on January 4th requested 10000 troops to guard the Capitol building and The congress and the mayor of Washington denied that request.
    Ask yourself if your angry at these facts being told. If you are, then you are more interested in part politics than the country you should be serving.
    Remember Trump was a democrat up until he found an opening in the Republican Party to run and obamas over reach allowed him to win.
    Remember to recycle

  3. The legislators pushing this garbage have a very selective and perverse view of the rights of individuals, including corporations, especially considering the Supreme Court has ruled in cases that support the idea that “corporations ARE people, my friend”, as Sen Romney famously quipped.

    So a corporation is fully within its rights to require Covid-vaccination as a condition of employment. It would only be considered an infringement of the employees rights IF they did not have the choice to quit their job and work elsewhere, or submit to testing.

    That our GQP majority General Assembly sees no problem with trampling these rights is a good indication they’ll be fine with trampling on others as it suits their needs from time to time. A hallmark of nascent authoritarianism if there was ever one.

  4. I think it may be time for the US to follow the French. Mr. Macron wants to make it hard for the unvaccinated to remain unvaccinated. Let’s limit access to areas controlled by the Federal Government to inconvenient times of the day for those who are unvaccinated. That seems the best way to go in an environment where so many governors and possibly many Supreme Court Justices seem to want to block vaccine mandates.

    I wonder how Justices Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh will look at vaccines for measles, mumps, chicken pox, and small pox, when those vaccine challenges come to their children’s schools.

  5. Businesses/corporations must have the ability to require health/safety practices as those practices impact the business productivity. Only caveat is the action does not discriminate-all inclusive is NOT DISCRIMINATION. Now to John S. comments: THE NAZIS KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS-THEY DID NOT “MARCH THEM AROUND”. Secondly, not a single state official responsible for vote counting in the several US states FOUND ANY FRAUD. Stop spreading nonsense John S.

  6. But if you are an excellent tennis player, you do not need to be vaccinated to go to Australia.

  7. John S, you ramble on for a while before you get to an important point. Unvaccinated are the ones ending up on ventilators. Then you say businesses should have the freedom to choose. That is like saying miners should have a choice to not use PPE and end up with black lung disease. The subtle difference between a coal miner and office worker in the pandemic is that an office worker can also end up on a ventilator from activities outside the office. To me, this speaks to the fact that we need an across the board vaccine mandate, and not just an OSHA mandate, but having employees protect their employees is a good first step.

    But the gaping blind spot in your whole story goes to show how effectively politicized the whole pandemic has become. The politicization seems to have started when Trump made the calculation that; the pandemic was an act of god and there was nothing he could do to change it, and rather than acknowledge it (which might imply he had some responsibility as President for upholding the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) he choose to ignore it and down play it. And like the lies over the election, once you start on a big lie, you just have to keep doubling down despite any evidence and reality. After the worst happened and he lost the election, then the cold political calculation shifted. Republican politicians across the board seemed to embraced this cold political calculation that anything bad that happens on a presidents watch will reflect badly on the current administration. (See the first part of this paragraph to understand how this might effect re-election). To that end Republican politicians seemed to have embraced out-right sabotage (also see January 6th Insurrection, as one example) of the US and the current US government. To that end, part of that sabotage is to sell the electorate on the fact that they have the “freedom” to get sick, die, and sabotage the economic health, and maybe even the stability of the US. The blind spot is that there should be strict vaccine mandates across the board, because every American should have the opportunity for life first, since liberty and the pursuit of happiness don’t automatically follow if you are dead. In addition masses of sick and the dying will continually whipsaw the economy.

    I despise the politicians that have made this cold political calculation and have sold the idea to millions of American’s under the guise of “Freedom”. There is a reason that the authors of the Declaration of Independence mentioned Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in that order. “Freedom” only happens when you are free to peruse life first.

    Please don’t be part of the Republican politicians effort to sabotage the American ideal, and the the US economy.

  8. Before watching videos or listening to arguments pro or con regarding vaccines, let’s remove blanket immunity from corporations.

    Until that is done, I don’t want to hear from the government or businesses. As a member of the free press, I take issue with granting blanket immunity from prosecution for wrongdoing and then giving them any sort of voice.

  9. No business leader in this community or throughout our state is more authoritative than Scott Davison’s on these issues. He is not only CEO of AUL, a business directly effected by the impact of COVID on his and other workplaces and enterprises and individual workers, but for several years has served as chair of the IU Health board of directors, allowing him to perceive and requiring him to help manage this pandemic along with healthcare providers and medical systems. The political leadership of our state would be well advised to heed his advice and credit his insights and experience.

  10. the supreme court has heard the arguments on emploeyees,fed,otherwise, will they take the phrase,freespeech fine,but you cant yell fire in a croweded movie show. if one has a moral sense of any value,they would help to control and get the facts to,further spread of the disease. if you can not understand the importance to the every be around you,your failing to rid or,control. many have gone home to family without regard to the imune compromised, now think, does the other persons DNA have the imnune comp,in thier genes,and you would now it. the younger people have carried,passed,and survived this,but, there is a strong case,not known in early pandemic, that it caused trombosis in some, again DNA. that story was related by the koch inst,in germany,backed by oxfords tests,but,the post mortum wasnt found,until the tests,were developed. my reading,watchdog,the u.s. didnt relate this story for 2-3 weeks later in domestic news. DW.com has a better watchdog,the kock inst, (not related to the koch bros, this is German health care,to all.) I grew up in my grandfolks house,my respect for elders is given freely, without
    thought. i have my shots, ive never had a adverse reaction to any shot ive ever recieved,of prescription.. if the influence of misinformation has a start, ask where they get thier information? of if you decide its a free speech,freedom etc, then by all means,express it , in the privacy of a body bag..

  11. There is the Democrat vaccine, safe and effective, the results of a combination of private and public enterprise employing the latest science, delivered to waiting arms everywhere.

    And there is the Republican vaccine, neither safe nor effective, deployed by political religion instead of science, that keeps hospital staffs running ragged and kills about 1 out of every 150 men, women and children who utilize it. And here is the best part. It is virtually guaranteed to maintain the pandemic in perpetuity disrupting everything normal.

    Some say that the Republican vaccine is but a trial for the upcoming destruction of normalcy due to how we dispose of fossil fuel waste which makes it disappear from fossil fuel company’s bottom lines everywhere.

  12. Todd:
    good point,i watched the c span arguments at that point about legal immunity in congress. both isles tipped to protecting the corps. wall street has a interests,the profits margin will dip, the 10% of the richests people,who have possesion of 84% of the domestic stocks,will have to cut back to welches juice and ramon noodles.. they had, a idiot for a leader,and greed has a complete political party to pad thier ass. if someone was in shock over the misinformation,formulated to divide the citizens,it worked again. (,, fox,murderdoch) the wall street mob runs this country,it wont outright say it, instead its a steady diet of hired think tank orwells,and,no one reads a damn thing anymore on my side of the fence..

  13. Pete:
    made my day,thanks.. ill pass on the diet,in my next face to face conversation with the thrumpers here in nodak… im still laughing… sad, but laughing…

  14. Let’s be honest. We relish the idea of killing the unvaccinated. Making things “inconvenient” for them is a euphemism for the ultimate solution. Let’s just kill them and get it over with. To Imprison them and their families would just be an expensive exercise/exorcise. Such an expense would cause our Vanguard and BlackRock portfolios to slightly plummet. After such an endeavor, we can move on to killing the remainder of the populace we feel are beneath all of us. I guess those with only a compulsory education can be next in line to die.

    Uncensored

  15. Let’s say that you have a vaccine, approved by the CDC, that has 95% effectiveness when it comes to preventing someone getting a fatal disease that has killed nearly 900,00 Americans. But there is a .01% chance you might be suffer some negative health consequences from the vaccine and a .00001% chance you’ll die from getting the vaccine. Do we want the drug manufacturer to be tied up in litigation over those extremely rare occurrences? What happens would be you would derail the vaccine entirely and many more Americans would needlessly die. Let’s be clear…the anti-vax people aren’t about getting justice for these few individuals harmed by vaccines. They are about shutting down the vaccines entirely.

  16. Since the British are no longer crawling through our second floor window, I wonder how Patrick Henry would characterize the current meaning of his famous speech before the Virginia Assembly of the colony: “Give me liberty or give me death”.

  17. The federal government Has the Constitutional right Put forth edicts on public health. The federal government also Has the right to declare martial law if something is out of control and is causing a threat to health and well-being of the nation.

    individuals who are immuno-compromised or have an autoimmune issue, tend to be petri dishes allowing These different variants to crop up. The The Omicron variant has 50 mutations. The post Omicron variant IHU (B.1.640.2.) has 45 mutations. They just discovered this around 3 days ago or so. It’s in France and more than likely came from Cameroon.

    Did Covid19 Start in a lab somewhere? Well, investigators had found a bacterial element in covid19 indicating that it not only would be adept at mutation, it would be adept at merging with other diseases and illnesses. and, you can see how this sort of thing can get way out of hand real quick. When something mutates so quickly, and then ends up resistant to treatments, You have an issue That is more than just a pandemic, it could actually be an extinction event.

    Polio, Typhus, Smallpox, cholera, the (Bubonic) black plague, These diseases killed and maimed hundreds of millions of people throughout history. Unfortunately, these sort of things can Crop up again. We are already seeing a resurgence of polio. We are also seeing a resurgence of tuberculosis. We are seeing a resurgence of chickenpox outbreaks and shingles. It’s going to take an effort by government to exert control over the population to stamp out a lot of this ignorance. But, Will the government have The gumption to do it is the question. The whole of public health and education is in play.

    Remember, the Bubonic plague was actually the start of the dark ages, and it resurged at least four times. It decimated the workforce, businesses closed down, educational institutions closed down, people regressed, and it took centuries for civilization and society to recover. Right now, you can’t force anyone to become vaccinated. But, Those individuals do not have the right to infect their fellow citizens. So, Something is going to have to give somewhere. And I would suggest it’s going to be some sort of vaccination passport. And people who do not have that official passport will not be able to mingle in society. Am I right? Or am I wrong? I can see The wheels creeping in that direction. Anyway, society, It’s probably not going to be the same.

    And, Leave it to big business? I don’t think so, big business has had free Reign for a long time, and the kabash needs to be put on that.

    Also, the separation between church and state has to be addressed and fortified. Because people use an excuse of religious exemption to Not get vaccinated. And, spreading a plague is not a very Christian thing to do.

  18. Whose Brand Is It?

    We’re suckers for great marketing. Slogans simplify big ideas into memorable phrases. With “Where’s the Beef?”, Wendy’s repositioned McDonalds’ burgers as skimpy. FedEx debuted a logistics and delivery revolution with “When it Absolutely, Positively, Has to be There Overnight.”

    These slogans became totems for much bigger ideas, and so it is with the masterful crafting of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) as a catchall for “owning the libs.” For months I argued that no K-12 school system anywhere teaches CRT. My bad for totally missing the marketing genius behind the misapplication of the phrase. They know it isn’t taught anywhere this side of grad school, but it makes a great stalking horse.

    Columnist Thomas Edsell put me right: “Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and a self-identified brawler, takes full credit for turning critical race theory into a political wedge issue.” Here’s Rufo’s Tweet: “We have successfully frozen their brand — “critical race theory”— into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think “critical race theory.” We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

    Russ Vought, head of Citizens for Renewing America, agrees: “Friends, It’s a good day when the political class, consultants, and even the media are forced to admit we’ve been right: picking cultural fights leads to electoral wins.

    “This was our thesis when we started Renewing America. It was our thesis when we made fighting back on Cultural Marxism and Critical Race Theory a pillar of our work. It was our thesis when we launched an all-out blitz across the country in states and local schools boards with our Stop CRT Toolkit and model legislation. And it will continue to guide our path forward.”

    What you’re seeing is marketing raised to an art form, and you’ve got to hand it to them: It’s working. They’ve rebranded an innocuous academic study into a dastardly effort to turn our children into…progressives.

    Take Loudon County, Virginia, the poster child of the current wave of school board confrontations, where we find a couple of hundred very angry parents cursing the (nonexistent) teaching of CRT. There are 81,000 children in Loudon County public schools, but as we’ve learned, the angriest people control the room.

    We silly liberals think our brand is Righteous Truth and Equality, but we don’t understand branding. You see, your brand is not yours unconditionally. What you think of as “your brand” is what you hope it is to your customers, but in reality, both your actions and the actions of others, antagonists included, influence how people perceive you and define your brand.

    Propagandists have always known that words have power, and that owning their definition limits your opponent’s options. Rush Limbaugh re-branded the word “liberal” such that it connotes weak-kneed poindexters who do nothing but promote Communism. Nice touch. Because it’s nearly impossible to re-rebrand co-opted words, the left abandoned “liberal” in favor of “progressive.”

    Not a fan of smart, accomplished women (they terrified Limbaugh), he famously branded them “feminazis.” His go-to move with powerful women was to objectify them. In dismissing successful liberal talk show host, Stephanie Miller, who is both smart and powerful, he never mentioned her without reminding the audience that, “while misguided, she’s a babe.”

    You can also thank him for the childish rebranding of the Democratic Party as the “Democrat” party.

    Concerned about the environment? You’re a “tree-hugger,” a pejorative intended to make you look weak and stupid. “Socialism” is next, but there’s a generational problem with trying to brand it as a catastrophe for soul of the country. If you’re under forty, it connotes fairness and an answer to unbridled capitalism that has held young adults in economic limbo as corporations and billionaires have prospered. As the “rich get richer” (another nifty piece of rebranding), and the rest of us get squat, the rebranding will work with Whites over 40, but won’t stick to the rest of the populace. They know the right is using the “socialism” bogeyman to stave off spending on things they want like Pre-K, fighting climate change, and tax-credits that keep millions of children out of poverty, all at the expense of their richest donors.

    Culture war is a winning strategy for Republicans. Dems are MIA. Their failures are less policy failures than failures of imagination. Now manifest, and the blame spans the moderates like Senators Sinema (D-AZ) and Manchin (D-WV) to the progressives who have overplayed their hand.

    Compelling arguments all for hiring a great agency—and for term limits.

    ©2022 Jon Sinton LetMajorityRule.org ProgressiveVoices.com

  19. It would be a good thing to post the email addresses of all our IN legislators so we can ALL email them the video link…

  20. Ormond,
    Jack Smith is a pretty decent guy, and more authentic than most, there’s no reason to insult the man.

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