Big City Politicians Call for An End to the Shutdown?

For the past year, mayors of big cities have been calling for extreme shutdowns and mask mandates. So it came as a surprise to all of us when those same mayors began to call for an end to the shutdown over the weekend.

Mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, called for bars and restaurants to be opened “as quickly as possible” while the Mayor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, called the shutdowns unsustainable and called for New York City to be opened as soon as possible.

These same mayors were calling for the shutdowns to continue less than a month ago. And recent numbers have shown a spike in COVID-19 cases—so what has changed?

With this week’s inauguration, one can only assume the worst in the sudden change of hearts in these big-government politicians, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that politicians believe that they have the power to demand our lives and livelihoods be shut down and reopened based on their whims or what works to fit their political agenda.

We are in the worst economy since the Great Depression, and it has been entirely caused by the government’s restrictive shutdowns. No one will be happier than me when the economy opens and these oppressive restrictions are lifted. It will be a huge relief for millions of people, and any reason to end a lockdown is a good reason.

However, when bureaucrats think they can shut down an economy, ruin the lives of so many of the hard-working taxpayers in their cities, and then not have any explanation when they suddenly change their opinion a week before their party comes into power… they should be held accountable for their actions.

In The Tuttle Twins and Fate of the Future, Ethan and Emily learn that the fate of the future depends on thinking of ways we can work together peacefully, to build a better society without relying on coercion. Few things are more coercive than the government fully shutting businesses down based on emotion and bad data.

As I often say—we should be handing out Tuttle Twins books on Capitol Hill. Well, we should also hand them out at City Halls because the mayors of New York and Chicago, and likely many more, need a Tuttle Twins lesson to learn that they don’t get to make decisions for others—no matter how many elections they win.

—Connor