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EDWIN GREINER| Amarillo Globe-News

This is an open letter to the membership of the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce (ACoC) and by extension to the Citizens of Amarillo and Potter and Randall counties. The Mission Statement of the ACoC is: The Mission of the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce is to enhance business and industry growth while preserving a high quality of life. I know that many businesses in the Amarillo area are barely staying alive as we moved from 2020 into 2021. Perhaps the Mission Statement of the ACoC should read: To ensure the prosperity of its members against all impediments public and private. Maybe the Chamber should be more oriented towards individual business and not so much the esoteric and general enhance business etc.

The Chamber member businesses and businesses generally have been harmed and damaged by governmental edicts that are possibly arbitrary and violate the U.S. Constitution, specifically at least the derivative right of association of the First Amendment, the due process and takings clauses of the Fifth Amendment and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Has there ever been a presentment of evidence to support probable cause and therefore due process for the lockdown edicts by the Amarillo City Council? Has any advice that the Amarillo City Council received by any health care professionals been substantiated by empirical evidence? People say follow the science! Has there ever been peer reviewed studies showing that these generalized lockdowns have any actual and positive effect on area health outcomes? If you filed a case with the evidence that has been utilized by the Amarillo City Council, if any, would a judge toss it out? Hillsdale College publishes the IMPRIMIS and the October 2020 edition was authored by a leading epidemiologist from Stanford who, with a plethora of evidence, debunks the generalized and authoritarian lockdowns that have occurred. He along with two other leading epidemiologists from Harvard and Oxford also authored the Great Barrington Declaration which recommends an approach called Focused Protection.

In this time, with edicts from public entities that are arguably damaging business, is the ACoC conflicted by having representatives from such public entities on their board? If these entities are not directly a public entity how are they funded? Entities such as the Potter County Commission, Amarillo Economic Development Corporation, Texas Panhandle Regional Development Corporation, Amarillo ISD, Northwest Texas Healthcare System, Elevate Amarillo, WTAMU Amarillo Center and the Workforce Solutions-Panhandle. Are there any anti-trust concerns by anti-competitive behavior against existing businesses?

Why is this important? Because what government does government does by force. Our founders enacted a Limited Government to ensure our liberty and prosperity. We are on the cusp of seeing our God given natural rights significantly eroded without the benefit of due process or equal protection. Government intertwining its tendrils into the private sector is to be mistrusted. How do Citizens protect their liberties? Those most aggrieved must come together in congress and actively remonstrate against such depredations. If the members of the ACoC cant bring themselves to do such then we need another general business association that will.

Edwin Thomson Greiner is a constitutional law attorney with a doctorate from Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

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Greiner: Virus restrictions and the role of local chamber of commerce - Amarillo.com