Governor Murphy Strikes Back At Atlantic County Surrogate FB Post
Governor Phil Murphy this afternoon pushed back strongly against a statement posted earlier today by a South Jersey official challenging his shutdown order in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
Atlantic County Surrogate James Curcio posted this on his Facebook page: “Atlantic County Officials need to sound the alarm. Reopen New Jersey immediately without restrictions. Trust American freedom ingenuity and the US Constitution. Untie the hands of the Private Sector so it can rescue NJ from this nightmare.”
In response, the governor said, “We untie the system right now and there will be blood on our hands.”
“We need responsible leadership,” he added.
Speaking at his daily press briefing at the War Memorial in Trenton, the governor took the opportunity to challenge those who have advocated publicly for the repopening of state parks and forests and described “polite constructive” conversations he has had with, among others, golfers.
“Golfers want to golf,” he acknowledged.
They and others want to know why his administration is keeping parks closed to reinforce social distancing orders to combat the pandemic.
“We believe strongly what we’re doing is what we need to do to keep them [people] safe,” he said. “We wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.
“Think about it,” he added.
Why would he want to close parks?
“We didnt run on an-anti park platform,” Murphy said.
But if he were to relent and reopen New Jersey now, he would be doing something “completely and utterly irresponsible,” he said.
“We are doing this to try to keep infections, hospitalizations, and Lord knows, fatalities, as low as we can,” the governor said.
Murphy doesn’t wear a mask but want all kinds of people including kids to wear one. And then he expects jerseans to Trust him ?
Everyone does understand that all of this is because Murphy won’t piss off the residents of Lakewood by making them adhere to his own law…..
They are still spreading the virus because they never stopped partying day in a day out for the past month…..
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. To quote an often cited clause from that Amendment:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
I don’t know the Surrogate in AC and I don’t even live there. But the data coming in shows that AC has consistently has been near the bottom of new virus infections/hospitalizations/critical cases/deaths list in NJ for almost a month now. There should be certain sectors of the AC economy that could be safely reopened without risking an implosion to their healthcare system. There should be a hospital capacity analysis done, now that the numbers have been stable for more than 3 weeks and then an analysis to pick a sector or two to reopen safely. By safely I mean with masks, gloves and social distancing.