A lot of tongues are wagging about some comments made by freshman Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina who said that restaurant employees shouldn’t be forced by government to wash their hands after using the bathroom. To be clear, what Sen. Tillis actually said was a little more nuanced than how it is being portrayed by most people.
What Sen. Tillis said is that restaurants should be allowed to opt out of the requirement.
“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,’” the senator said.
Tillis said his interlocutor was in disbelief, and asked whether he thought businesses should be allowed to “opt out” of requiring employees to wash their hands after using the restroom.
The senator said he’d be fine with it, so long as businesses made this clear in “advertising” and “employment literature.”
“I said: ‘I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,” Tillis said.
“The market will take care of that,” he added, to laughter from the audience.
The idea here is that it would be okay to let Starbucks employees serve you lattes with fecal matter on their hands as long as the franchise owners warned you that they had no policy against their employees doing so. Left unsaid, but obviously implied by the remark that “the market will take care of that,” is that no Starbucks franchise would actually post a sign saying that they don’t require their employees to wash their hands because their customers would flee.
This is similar to the idea advanced by Rand Paul that restaurants don’t have to be told to serve black patrons because refusing to serve them would be bad for business.
This is the stupidest fucking line of argument in the history of the world.
In case you’re interested, the value in having a sign in the bathroom about employees washing their hands is to remind employees to wash their hands. It isn’t so people can be arrested for failing to comply. It’s to maximize hand-washing in order to minimize the spread of communicable diseases.
And, while this is the stupidest fucking argument ever, it still isn’t as offensive as Sen. Paul’s idea that every black person’s civil rights should be dependent on racist business owners making rational profit-maximizing business decisions.
As an argument for self-regulation w/o government regulation it’s a fail:
Tillis is fine with restaurants foregoing proper employee hygiene, but only if they post a sign informing customers. Sounds like a regulation to me. If he was cool with an honor system for posting that damn sign, wonder why he didn’t say that?
NYTimes article on supplements that operate on the honor system tells us how well that works.
Thanks for pointing this out. The press shouldn’t allow Tillis, Paul and other GOP’ers to be such weasels without holding them accountable.
That was my first thought when I read the article the other day. One regulation to replace another. What a frickin’ idiot!
Now you know why I stirred myself to get out an vote last November.
And the pulled punch about posting a sign is not an oversight, it introduced the ambiguity by which Tillis will defend himself from attack on this issue.
You just saw how Republicans move the Overton window. But they are flying this in the face of a measles outbreak that could presage an minor epidemic. And epidemics require draconian quarantining to stop them.
The individualist overemphasis of the Republican Party could very soon become a danger to public health.
What do you mean could very soon become a danger to public health?
When and why has any local or state government allowed for opting out of vaccinations? Who the hell has been defunding and underfunding public health facilities across this country? (At the behest of the med-ind-complex that continues to reap higher profits as their public health competition is shuttered?)
It’s not just Republicans who thought that vaccination for major diseases as a part of public school activity was no longer necessary.
In second grade, my entire school was vaccinated for typhoid fever. In sixth grade, my entire school was vaccinated for for polio–in South Carolina. That no longer happens even in California.
Vaccination used to be a function of county public health departments. Now county health departments provide primary care of last resort, and are underfunded at that.
Indeed, privatization is well along, as is the denial that infrastructure exists.
A mindblowing moment for liberals/Democrats from WaPo Mississippi – yes, Mississippi – has the nation’s best child vaccination rate. Here’s why.
Why? Somehow in freaking MS they’ve managed to do what IMHO should exist in all states:
I remember standing in line at our public grammar school to get our small pox vaccinations, and twice we were examined with a blue light for lice.
This was in a Republican suburb in the 1950s. Everybody line up and get your shot. “NO TALKING”. Republicans weren’t bat shit crazy then (just greedy and self-righteous).
Definitely one of the stupidest comments ever.
The Market does have a way of shutting this sort of thing down. People get sick from eating contaminated food and the place goes out of business because no one wants to eat there any more.
These people bring up the most ludicrous stuff. And it gets printed.
Not sure which is more stupid, the conversation itself or the need he felt to repeat it.
Rand’s comment is more morally offensive, but Tillis’ is stupider. If you take his free market fetishism at face value, his hypothetical Starbucks franchisee has every market incentive imaginable to not post any signs. Even if they tried to enforce the signage as a (ZOMG!!!!) regulation, any possible fines are less of a cost to the operator than the lost business that posting the signs, in his own scenario, would generate. And someone other than the owner is paying for the public health costs of the resulting illnesses, too.
Of course, there’s another scenario that Tillis doesn’t mention. What if customers are too stupid to care whether a restaurant’s employees are hygienic? Then nobody pays any costs – except the people who get sick (who are clearly not right with God) and taxpayers (which just provides more fuel for claiming taxes are too damn high). Pardon the cynicism, but any time I think people or their ideas can’t possibly get more stupider, I’m proven wrong.
Also, he could sweeten the brew with lead compounds. The market would correct as customers died or went insane. No recalls for Takata airbags. When customers die, they won’t buy those cars again. Who needs an FAA? A private service could advise you whose planes crash less often.
Extreme Libertarianism is just anarchy.
The US Supreme Court will not review this case …
○ Supreme Court lets stand ruling that firing woman for breastfeeding not sexist since men can lactate
Stupidest fucking decision of any court in the world of western values!
Is it just not reported or have I missed all those gay men with their surrogate gestated newborns breastfeeding? Or has some budding entrepreneur have yet to figure out how to make lactating men chic and a revenue/profit source?
Talk about foolishness: