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Vermont has decided to go even further with deciding what is or isn’t non-essential. And quite frankly, I believe the state has gone overboard.
“Large Vermont retailers such as Target, Walmart and Costco are now required to limit the sales of non-essential items in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
The directive was announced by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development on Tuesday. The agency hopes it will reduce the overall number of people going into stores to purchase items such as clothing, electronics and toys during the state’s “Stay Home, Stay Safe” executive order.
“Large ‘big box’ retailers generate significant shopping traffic by virtue of their size and the variety of goods offered in a single location,” said Lindsay Kurrle, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development in a news release.”
Want to know what the list is?
“Arts and crafts items.
Beauty supplies.
Carpet and flooring.
Clothes.
Consumer electronics.
Entertainment (books, music, movies).
Furniture.
Home and garden.
Jewelry.
Paint.
Photo services.
Sports equipment.
Toys.”
Wow!! Let’s unpack this shall we? People have been ordered to work from home. What if they don’t have an office desk or chair? If online ordering is going to take weeks, why not go to Costco, Walmart, or Target and get yourself set up more quickly?
Kids at home because the schools are shut down. GUESS WHAT? They need paper, pens, pencils and other school supplies. What if there is a need for an additional laptop to run their schoolwork on? And they need it right away. A run to Costco is in order!
Shampoo, soap, facial cleanser, and deodorant all fall under the “beauty” category. NOT Pharmacy!
Keep kids from going stir-crazy, get a few more games, toys, and sports equipment for them to use in the back yard. Same with purchasing books, movies, and arts & crafts to keep the horde from tearing the house down out of boredom.
Clothes? Guess what? Folks do need clothes. And kids grow like weeds, and we are moving into summer. How many kids could still fit into their last year’s summer clothes? NOT MANY. Yet Vermont has deemed CLOTHES as non-essential!
And don’t get me started on restricting me from getting what I need to put a garden in this spring!
Quite a number of new restrictions have been put in place by Vermont’s Governor Phil Scott.
Here’s the order in full.
“Large “big box” retailers must:
Restrict access to non-essential goods. Stores must close aisles, close portions of the store, or remove items from the floor.
Only offer non-essential items via online portals, telephone, delivery, or curbside pickup, to the extent possible.
Except in the event of emergencies threatening the health and welfare of a customer, showrooms and garden sections of large home improvement centers should be closed.”
There is so much wrong with this order. First of all, those in the government don’t realize that online ordering of literally ANYTHING is so slow right now that in some cases the backlog isn’t days, it is weeks. Secondly, there are better ways to accomplish keeping people at a distance than closing major sections of stores and essentially shutting down significant parts of those company’s business. Third, telling people what is an isn’t essential to purchase for their own homes is overstepping boundaries big time!
Yes, let’s crack down on me buying a coloring book for my 3 year old.
— K-mo (@CallMeIshmayl) April 1, 2020
So parents trying to homeschool & entertain kids with cabin fever can just screw off in these states. I guess you can just throw your kids a box of Twinkies & tell them to deal. https://t.co/5KP1POEapT
— Stacey – Queen of #CorporateMediaDistancing (@ScotsFyre) April 1, 2020
Who the hell are these politicians to tell me what’s nonessential? 2 yr old outgrew his clothes needs new ones. We’re trying to make up for missed school & keep toddlers entertained w parks closed & on rainy days. And don’t get between me & box of hair color rn!
— Mean Wee Old Woman Deb (@mddebm) April 1, 2020
Instead of ordering national retailers to shut down entire sections of their stores, why not do what many stores are doing out here in my neck of the woods. Restricting the number of people in the store at any given time is working very well in a large number of cases.
Did anyone in the Vermont government consider that as a solution? Sure doesn’t seem like it. I along with others, including Narcissi, are getting more and more concerned that the restrictions are upending our Constitutional Rights.
Look, I get it. This damned Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus has turned the world upside down, and is decimating businesses of all sizes. However, rational thinking seems to have gone flying out the window on numerous levels. It is past time, WAY past time for everyone, the state of Vermont included, to take a big step back and grab hold of some major common sense.
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Feature Photo Credit: FASTILY / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons, cropped and modified
Scott says: “It is past time, WAY past time for everyone, the state of Vermont included, to take a big step back and grab hold of some major common sense. “.
Nina, you do remember that this is the same state that has repeatedly elected Bernie Sanders, right???
And yeah, the idiots have not a clue what’s essential..
GWB says: the idiots have not a clue what’s essential
They’ve got no business even deciding that issue, unless it’s a positive matter of deciding what to support after some major disaster. “Hey, all the buildings fell down in the earthquake. Let’s build some medical trauma centers, then food distribution centers.” Otherwise, they shouldn’t pretend to be able to manage “what’s essential”.
GWB says: Oh, and since you mentioned Bernie….
This is a perfect advertisement for his politics.
See how things are right now? Well, this would be what you can look forward to every single day in Bernie’s world – without Winnie The Flu as a driver. It will just be like this EVERY. DAMN. DAY.
Scott says: Spot on on both points GWB.
Once authoritarians get a taste of banning things, it’s like potheads and potato chips. Bet you can’t ban just one.
jeff says: I fear all is lost. Too many of my friends usually reliably rational, conservative, and distrustful of government, are all advocating hunkering down and obeying whatever our brilliant leaders tell us to.
chemman says: Just wait until it is all done and they decide to apply the “Wickard” decision to our backyard gardens because we are interfering with interstate trade. If they could tell a farmer he couldn’t grow for himself they’ll certainly tell us that.
Bandit says: In Vermont beauty supplies are not essential
GWB says: deciding what is or isn’t non-essential
There’s the whole problem: feeling they have the knowledge and wisdom to decide for others what is needed. You don’t need 500 rounds of ammo. You don’t need 17 kinds of deodorant. You don’t need all that meat. You don’t need a gun. You don’t need a house with a half-acre lot. You don’t need more hospitals in your area. You don’t need this, or that, or those things. Even God isn’t that controlling.
Did anyone in the Vermont government consider that as a solution?
Why would they? That wouldn’t entail enough control, and someone, somewhere, just might be disobeying!
This damned Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus has turned the world upside down
No, the media and governmental panic over it is what’s turned everything upside down.
grab hold of some major common sense
Yeah, like THAT’s gonna happen! That emptied from the shelves faster than TP, and the supplier has shut down for the duration.
Hey, governor: nIm mIn
Norma Holmes says: Washington Examiner reports FBI repeatedly stopped Chinese agents from smuggling virus compounds in luggage entering the U.S. Rvidence is growing that corona19 was created and released not only to resolve over population pressures but to achieve geopolitical objectives. Can you comment on this and other reports?
njc says: To the Left, the point isn’t isolation, but whether we are suffering enough for our many sins. Sins like prosperity, and freedom, and happiness, and meaning in our lives. And most of all, the arrogance not to need the virtuous socialist bureaucrat running our lives.
Scott says: Interesting GWB and njc. I’m currently reading a book from the “Dragonlance” series called “Hederick the Theocrat”, and the behaviors you both describe related to politicians and the left (which are dead on by the way) match the behaviors of the lead character in my book.. (did i mention it was part of the “VILLAINS” series?)
Fromage du Nord says: I live in Shanghai. And while the authorities here closed places of amusement (theaters, restaurants, clubs, parks, etc.), they never closed the stores or malls. And they never told people what they could or could not buy. The authorities in Vermont are worse than the Chinese communists.
Marie in Vermont says: Yeah, it’s true that our (Republican) Governor Scott is only ever-so-slightly better than the Dems that actually run the legislature.
A couple of points for you non-Woodchucks* to keep in mind: most of us Vermonters who aren’t transplants or second home owners from the NYC/NJ/CT/MA Axis of Know-Nothing Liberalism already have our open-pollinated, saved seeds in hand and our vegetable seedlings well under way. Also, New Hampshire (no sales tax!) is a short drive away for most Vermont residents – the big box stores in NH are actually closer to our farm than the same chains in VT – and there’s no restriction on purchasing any item. We were just in NH yesterday to pick up supplies and saw the garden sections of WalMart and Home Depot filled with seed packages for sale. Lastly, please do not assume that because Vermont is a deep blue state that all Vermonters are equally air-headed; there are lots of us who do not buy into the big government socialism that has taken root here. A good deal of that was brought by people moving from elsewhere and there are, unfortunately, a whole lot of them.
*woodchucks: Vermont natives
flatlanders: people from elsewhere
GWB says: unfortunately, a whole lot of them
Well, you got forests that need fertilizing, and you have shovels, right?
Marie in Vermont says: There may be no need for that. At the rate the greedy school districts are ballooning their budgets (for increasingly fewer students, by the way) the second-home owners are getting clobbered with property taxes because they don’t get resident-only kickbacks. Add a good corona recession with its attendant drop in tourism and leisure – which our idiot legislature pushes instead of cultivating useful local businesses and light manufacturing – and a lot of them may just decide to sell. Boo-hoo. How many of these folks are there, you ask? The best info I can find indicates that 17% of Vermont residential properties are second homes; we’re number 2 after Maine and, as you can imagine, competition from out-of-state deep pockets pushes home prices way up.
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