Connecticut’s crazy excessive coronavirus fines

OPINION:

Connecticut’s ruling political elites have just issued fines in the total of $3,000 to a couple of citizens who didn’t comply with all the state’s coronavirus-related travel guidelines.

Guidelines? Let’s be serious. These are dictates — and constitutional or not, by gosh, they’re being enforced.

At least the good governor feels sorry about it.

“Look,” said Gov. Ned Lamont, during a press conference to announce the $1,000 fines each for two individuals who failed to fill out public health forms on their return flight from Louisiana and Florida, as well as the $1,000 fine that one had already accrued by refusing to self-quarantine — “Look,” he said.

Pause for dramatic effect.

“I hate to do it,” Lamont said, Fox News reported, “but we are going to be serious and show people we are serious about this.”

And the way the government shows it’s serious is by stripping hard-working Americans from their hard-earned pay — at a time when many of those hard-working Americans are told to stay home, stay out of work and stay busy waiting for the stimulus check from the taxpayers. It’s called Government Logic. And it’s killing the economy, as well as the nation’s taxpayers — but that’s a story for a different day.

Today’s tale is about the Connecticut citizen who was fined $1,000 after a rat-faced coworker tattled about his (or her) refusal to self-quarantine for 14 days — and how that same citizen was then fined another $1,000 for refusing to fill out travel forms.

This is what America has become? A nation of tattle-tailing pinheads and tyrannical governors with pens and phones to dictate COVID-19 crackdowns and then sign tickets that fine violators?

The state’s “travel advisory,” as it’s oh-so-benignly called, says that “anyone traveling into Connecticut from a state that has a new daily positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents or a state with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average are directed to self-quarantine for a 14-day period from the time of last contact with the identified state,” Fox reported.

There’s a mathematical mouthful for ya.

What it means in layman’s is this: Don’t travel. ’Cause the government is watching. And apparently, so are your coworkers.

Here’s the kicker to the whole coronavirus-in-Connecticut madness: it’s not even clear if the fined residents tested positive for the coronavirus.

So much for the argument that this countrywide chaos is all about health. It’s not. It’s about government control, government power and the government’s ability to control the people using the coronavirus as justification.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.