Will Washington State Mandate Covid Shots for School Kids?

by Brett Nunn | Oct 27, 2022 | General

Summer is over. The rains have begun. I am back at my desk.

While we were enjoying the fine weather, our federal and state governments have continued with their plans to protect us from Covid. Let’s play a little good news/bad news and find out what they have been up to.

Good News! On August 31st the FDA authorized the new, fast-tracked, Covid boosters by Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech for adults and children. The fast tracking was determined to be necessary to get ahead of the constantly mutating virus because past efforts took too long to produce effective substances.

Bad News! It was only tested on mice.  Eight mice.

Good News/Bad News? They only needed to test it on mice because much of the data used to develop these fast-tracked shots came from the previous mRNA vaccines that the pharmaceutical companies, and our government, have told us — come on everybody, let’s say it together and make Allison Berry happy — are “safe and effective”.

Spoiler alert: this is sarcasm, but it is factual. I have paraphrased this information in effort to speak the truth plainly. If you think I am making this up, feel free to fact check by reading through the FDA document yourself.

We continue.

Good News for Pharma/Bad News for Parents

In what looks a lot like an end run around the many massive state-level protests against adding the Covid shot to the vaccines required for children to attend school, parents found the following in their news feeds on Thursday, October 20th.

Today, CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended updates to the 2023 childhood and adult immunization schedules, which includes incorporating additional information for approved or authorized COVID-19 vaccines. CDC only makes recommendations for use of vaccines, while school-entry vaccination requirements are determined by state or local jurisdictions.

How long before Washington State’s Board of Health reverses their decision from April 13th of this year, and makes the Covid shot mandatory to attend public school, stating that they “are just following CDC recommendations”?

If you don’t think this could happen, I point you to the continued medical tyranny of Jay Inslee as demonstrated in Directive of Governor 22-13.1 dated August 5, 2022. The Governor’s emergency powers were supposed to end on October 31; not true if you are a current or future state employee.

Here is the heart of the directive (bold emphasis mine):

To address this continuing threat and ensure the health of our workforce, I am directing a permanent COVID-19 vaccination condition of employment requirement for state executive and small cabinet agencies as follows:

1. New Employees. As a condition of employment, all new employees of state agencies must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
2. Current Exempt Employees. All current exempt employees must be fully vaccinated.

As defined by Directive 22-13.1, an employee is “up to date” with their COVID-19 vaccination when they have received all doses in the primary series and all boosters recommended for them by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. 

Just in case loyalty to Jay Inslee isn’t enough to assure compliance, the directive also authorizes the state Office of Financial Management to incentivize state employees to remain fully vaccinated.

On September 21 the Seattle Times revealed that a tentative deal between the governor and the Washington Federation of State Employees Union includes a $1000 bonus for each state employee receiving a Covid-19 booster shot. The cost of this bonus to state taxpayers has been estimated at close to $41 million.

Back at the federal level, why was this CDC approval necessary?

Was it because the federal government was concerned for our children’s health?

Or could it be that once the Covid shots are recommended for the list of official childhood vaccines by the CDC, there is no longer any legal liability for these corporations?

Direct from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s covered vaccines webpage:

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) covers most vaccines routinely given in the U.S.

For a vaccine to be covered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must recommend the category of vaccine for routine administration to children or pregnant women.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a federal government managed, no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system providing compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines.

The funding for this program comes from an excise tax on all vaccines administered across the country.

The latest information I could find that attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of this program was from a 2014 General Accountability Office report that calculated an average time to adjudicate claims at 3.5 years. Imagine how well the program is working now with the VAERS report listing 1,442,261 adverse effects just for Covid shots?

Could there also be a profit motive involved in being approved to the childhood vaccine list, a guaranteed income stream created for these pharmaceutical companies from now until well into the future?

In what has to be pure coincidence, only hours after the CDC recommendation, Pfizer management, on a call with holders of Pfizer stock, announced a 400% increase in the price of their Covid booster. They had been charging our government $30 a dose. Now that private insurance will be paying, Pfizer will be requiring $110 to $130.

Let’s end with some good news.

On Friday, October 21, the day after the CDC recommendation, the Informed Consent Action Network, ICAN, announced they will fund a legal challenge to any state that mandates the Covid-19 vaccine to attend school. That same day the governors of several states — and just in case you are planning a move, let me list them here: Florida, Virginia, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, Iowa, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, South Dakota, Montana, South Carolina, Ohio, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho — announced that regardless of recent CDC recommendations, they will not be mandating Covid-19 vaccines for school attendance.

Now is not time to sit back. Chris Reykdal, Washington State’s Superintendent of Public Instruction has been clear in his statements that he wants to mandate the Covid-19 vaccine for school attendance. He has been clear that this will be a statewide decision and no district can opt out.

Keep talking to your political representatives, find them here. Keep making phone calls (360-236-4110) and sending emails to the State Board of Health. Make it clear that the October 20th CDC recommendation changes nothing. If there is even the slightest doubt in their mind that this shot might not be safe and effective for our kids, then they have a moral obligation to keep the Covid-19 vaccine off the list of Washington State’s requirements for attending school.

—  UPDATE  —

This promotion was sent to PTSD parents after 10pm on Thursday, Oct. 27th.  This is how desperate they are.  Back in the day, our parents taught us to never take candy from strangers…

Where’s the Emergency?
Only in Jefferson County

by Stephen Schumacher | Oct 23, 2022 | General

Jefferson County will be alone in its own private State of Emergency if commissioners approve its 13th temporary Covid-19 response policy emergency declaration at their October 24 board meeting.  Meanwhile, Washington State and all its other counties (including neighbor Clallam) will have discarded their emergency declarations as of October 31.

County residents have been under the grip of multiple overlapping federal, state, county, and city emergency rules since both Jeffco and Port Townsend declared a State of Emergency on March 16, 2020, joining the February 29 state and March 13 federal declarations.

These unprecedented emergency lockdowns were originally sold by former Jeffco Health Officer Tom Locke and others as short-term measures to “flatten the curve” so it “does not overwhelm medical services,” which White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx recently admitted was an evidence-free deception to “make these palatable” while “I was trying to figure out how to extend it” since “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.”

In fact, there never appeared “any widespread over-utilization of hospitals, especially in locations with little or no lockdown” (except arguably in New York nursing homes when its governor drove up deaths by forcing them to admit covid patients for six weeks).

A careful peer-reviewed cost/benefit analysis found the emergency “lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19 deaths. … The costs were at least thirty-five times higher than the benefits. The reasonable conservative case is that the cost/benefit ratio is around 141 … Lockdowns are not just an inefficient policy, they must rank as one of the greatest peacetime policy disasters of all time.”

So the goal posts for lockdowns and emergency declarations kept moving as each old justification became discredited, eventually landing on little more than public health case-detection funding imperatives, perpetuation of Emergency Use Authorizations for the mRNA spike protein injections, and convenient ramping up for any future actual emergencies.

Public Comment About Extending Jeffco’s Emergency

That brings us to the County Commissioners’ October 17 meeting, whose agenda centered on discussion and potential action “In the Matter of Adopting a 13th Temporary County Policy Based on Emergency Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic”, about which I expressed the following Public Comment:

Commissioner Responses to Emergency Comment

Commissioner Kate Dean responded:

Commissioner Greg Brotherton responded:

Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour responded:

Health Officer on Emergency and Everyday Powers

Following Health Officer Allison Berry’s community update, Commissioner Brotherton asked her:

Berry answered:

Brotherton followed up about the emergency resolution:

Berry answered:

Public Comment After Emergency Wordsmithing

Commissioners returned in the afternoon to wordsmith their potential 13th emergency declaration together with public health staff. That draft would then be taken to the closed County Covid Coordination meeting on October 21 for further work. Afterwards I gave another Public Comment:

Commmissioner Dean responded:

Commmissioner Brotherton responded:

Commmissioner Eisenhour responded:

Commissioner Candidate Kelbon’s Emergency Response

On October 19, Ben Montalbano asked County Commisioner (District 3) candidate Marcia Kelbon this question:

Candidate Kelbon’s response:

Government by Law or by Emergency

Pushing back against Health Officer Berry’s maximalist view of her own powers, her public health order on September 2, 2021 requiring indoor restaurant/bar patrons to produce vaccination papers was inapplicably based on WAC 246-100-040:

This quarantine law provides narrow emergency detention powers to health officers for up to 10 days over infected persons posing serious and imminent risk, but only after a long series of provisions and recourses have been exhausted — none of which in any way applied to or authorized Health Officer Berry’s open-ended discriminatory regulation over restaurant/bar business practices, requiring them to demand HIPAA-protected private health information from their patrons.

Our counties’ restaurant vaccine mandate was a pure example of illegal emergency power overreach and the dangers of governance not by laws but by lawless “emergency” orders.  Anything goes in an emergency — which is not a good thing.

Emergency declarations risk replacing everything good about our government — laws, rights, and due process — with lawless orders by unaccountable executives and unelected health czars.

They are meant for genuine short-term physical emergencies like earthquakes, and if used to replace normal government indefinitely under the pretext of long-term conditions like flus and climate change, such perpetual emergency takeovers are indistinguishable from totalitarian coups.

———————————

“In the end it’s very simple:
Emergency powers are just another name for lawlessness.
You can be a nation of rights and laws, or a nation of emergency.
You cannot do both.”
– el gato malo

Should OlyCap Chairman Greg Brotherton Be Awarding Millions in Taxpayer Funds to OlyCap?

by Rosemary Schurman | Oct 16, 2022 | General

Greg Brotherton as county commissioner has steered millions of dollars to an organization he heads as its chairman. That organization is OlyCap. Brotherton has violated state laws prohibiting such conflicts of interest because he has voted for and actively lobbied the other commissioners to approve the unprecedented large grants and contracts to OlyCap, according to a formal complaint pending with the State Auditor. Rosemary Shurman, a licensed attorney living in Port Ludlow, filed that complaint. Because the State Auditor says they won’t be able to address the complaint until next year, we are publishing Shurman’s explanation of why she alleges that Greg Brotherton has broken state law.
— The Editors

———————————–

In an apparent conflict of interest, Jefferson County Commissioner Greg Brotherton has used his elected position to promote spending millions of dollars of county funds to benefit a nonprofit organization that he chairs. Contrary to State law, Brotherton has advocated for and voted to approve funding to Olympic Community Action Program (OlyCap) of over $3.5 million in the form of grant monies and real properties held by the County.

Most of this largesse has been in the form of grants and service contracts. Close to a million dollars was in real estate, including the sale of a county property for a tenth of its assessed value.

Brotherton began his term as County Commissioner in 2019. He is up for re-election this fall and is being challenged by Marcia Kelbon. I decided to explore the legal issues surrounding an alleged ethical violation by Brotherton based upon his dual roles as a County Commissioner and Chair of OlyCap’s Board of Directors. For full disclosure, I support Kelbon based upon her reasonable and practical responses to multiple issues facing our county.

From my reading of the law, I conclude that Brotherton’s actions violate ethics laws. A complaint has therefore been filed with the Washington State Auditor to address this issue. The WA State Auditor’s Office has indicated that they will be considering this issue next year during its regular audit process. The Assistant Director of Local Audits indicated that they lack the resources to conduct an audit at this time.

Contrary to the opinions of Brotherton’s supporters, the complaint is not simply “politicking.” It is a legal issue that deserves an opinion from an unbiased decision maker.

Mr. Brotherton is a Jefferson County Commissioner (a municipal officer) and is a member of the board of directors of a nonprofit – OlyCap. Brotherton has repeatedly advocated for passage of certain funding and land divestment resolutions, at County Commissioner meetings and in his capacity as a County Commissioner. He has showered OlyCap with millions of dollars and acres of land at below market value. Brotherton’s advocacy for resolutions which provide direct financial benefit to OlyCap is the type of “influence” contemplated by the legislature, which elevates what is otherwise a “remote interest,” to that which is prohibited under the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 42.23.

Jefferson County awarded a total of $2,709,163.70 in grant agreements and service contracts to OlyCap from 2019 through the first quarter of 2022, during which period Brotherton served as both a County Commissioner and as Chair of the Board of OlyCap. (See Exhibits A-E, documents received from Jefferson County in response to a public records request.)

In addition, in September 2019, Jefferson County sold to OlyCap a parcel of land (at 7th and Hendricks streets, Port Townsend) which was assessed at $362,280 for $36,200 — 10% of its market value and a discount of at least $326,080.  In 2021, Jefferson County purchased another parcel of land (on Mill Road, Port Townsend) for a price of $602,000, which has been dedicated exclusively for use by OlyCap. In August 2022 the County signed a 42 year lease with OlyCap for this property for rent of ten dollars ($10.00).

The following table summarizes the total contributions by Jefferson County to OlyCap through March 2022:

The amounts awarded to OlyCap from 2019 through the first quarter of 2022 reflect a steady increase from the historic level of payment by Jefferson County to OlyCap. In 2018, for example, $552,808.94 was awarded to OlyCap. Brotherton has routinely voted, as part of a three-member board of county commissioners, in favor of the award of service contracts and grant agreements to OlyCap. It appears that Brotherton has not recused himself from any OlyCap funding votes.

Influencing Officials to Award Contracts to OlyCap

In violation of RCWs, Brotherton routinely Influences or attempts to Influence other County Commissioners to award contracts to the organization he chairs. Below are some examples during 2022 of his efforts to influence the other two commissioners in connection with approving grant agreements or service contracts to OlyCap:

• January 3, 2022  – Workshop between the Jefferson County Commissioners and OlyCap concerning additional funding for the “Caswell Brown” tent shelter being run by OlyCap

As reported by the Port Townsend Leader on January 12 (Jefferson County to spend another $500k on open-air homeless shelter):

“Commissioner Greg Brotherton requested the special workshop around funding for Caswell-Brown Village. He advocated for spending $500,000 more of American Rescue Plan Act funding toward Phase 2, which would provide sewer infrastructure to the site. Phase 3 would see the installation of showers and a kitchen area.

‘There is a groundswell of funding for housing and affordable housing right now,’ Brotherton said. ‘I think we should be willing to spend up to another $500,000 to get the infrastructure squared away… Finishing the first permanent emergency shelter is something that I think we should commit to.'”

• March 28, 2022 – Meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners (Brotherton’s comments are shown in italics and obvious typographical transcript errors have been corrected. Time stamp 1:50:59)

Commissioner Eisenhour: “So now we’re gonna have a workshop on the Caswell Brown Village and this was an item that Commissioner Brotherton brought to the agenda.”

GB: “You know, I think we’ve all been waiting with baited breath for kind of a budget for what? Phase 2-A and 2-B look like for this kind of audacious and large program, which is critically needed. And I’ll just remind folks of where we were before we started this, which was an unmanaged encampment which was still costing us quite a bit of money at the Jefferson County fairgrounds and the um, that the impacts have been dramatic, both in the quality of life of the, of the residents who really have no other place to go as well as for the surrounding neighborhood and the fairgrounds and this is, I’m still proud of. This is a, as a visionary project which, which steps up and takes responsibility for a problem that doesn’t necessarily fall on our shoulders, but that is part of our community and so does fall on your shoulders. Thank you.

• April 4, 2022 – Meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners. (Brotherton’s comments are shown in italics and obvious typographical transcript errors have been corrected. Time stamp 1:56:49)

GB: “So can I just restate the ask to understand kind of where we are. The way that I see it, the million dollars that we committed so far is eaten. And we have operations to consider which are right around 30K a month, $875K, say a million dollars to get to the end of the year, and into the RFP process and for recording fees, and housing fund board funds for operations and potentially other funding mechanisms for ongoing operations. And I really like the possibility of a sale to recoup funds to help supplement this. I think we’ve got some other funding mechanisms that are, you know, that could do part of it, you know, I think this would be a really good candidate for 1590 funds, we still have no process yet and its, and we of course committed to a collaborative process with our housing fund board on figuring out that process. But you know projects like this and the Evans Vista work force housing project and habitat’s project, we’ve got some big projects in front of us, that look like. I mean I feel like we could really move the needle on some of these projects with those funds. So that’s just my personal and I have not talked about that with the housing fund board or anything. And as I say, that is a collaborative decision, we might have the final pen on paper but the whole idea is that we make those in partnership with our city and citizen representatives. But, to me, moving this project forward again, is really critical, a $500K lifeline right now to get this going and talking about what we want with the property, I’d be willing to certainly carve out those additional parcels and maybe even the Larry Scott trail piece that has more potential for future development down the line and then selling what’s left for Phase 2A and Phase 3 at the very least to OlyCap would be kind of my starting point for consideration.”

The meeting continued. Following deliberation, in which both other County Commissioners expressed concerns over this additional spending, Greg Brotherton moved for and the Commissioners approved the award of the additional $500K funding to OlyCap.

• April 25, 2022 – Meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners in which Brotherton argued for use of ARPA funding to further support the Caswell-Brown shelter operated by OlyCap in the face of concerns by the other commissioners. (Obvious typographical transcription errors have been corrected and Brotherton’s comments are in italics. Time stamp 4:53:24)

GB: “We could use that 262 would make a big dent on Caswell Brown.”

County Administrator: “Well, right. I mean when Heidi and I were monkeying with this sheet, I put 18 in there for Mill Road and then we went To -37000 down below. And then Heidi consulted with Kate. Okay. They take out that 300 because we haven’t committed it yet. So that’s the only reason we have the 262 at the bottom.”

Commissioner Eisenhour: “Yeah, this is what’s committed.”

GB: “Well, I mean we don’t have something else to use it will have that money and we need it, it would start the project again. If we could get this…”

Commissioner Dean: “We could also take um, you know, commit a chunk of capital funds to the Hadlock sewer instead of ARPA.”

GB: “Oh right Mhm. I mean if we could get you know, 400 that would turn everything on again. They just finished Phase 2-A.”

Commissioner Eisenhour: “So when is it gonna stop though? I mean we’ve spent, well if we do that we’ll have spent two million of our funds on it and then it was that enough.”

GB: “That’s enough to get Phase 2-A. And they’re looking for housing trust fund and other funds.”

Commissioner Eisenhour: “So that would be other sources of funding that get mobilized for it.”

GB: “Or for any future development. That’s what yeah, that’s what OlyCap has presented to us and that’s the plan. So yeah, that would be the end of the infrastructure investment from us. There’s operations, they think they can get some funds for operations and shift stuff around but if they’re not moving to permanent supportive housing for years, which is what I think will happen. It’s I don’t I’m not sure if this operation funds are actually realistic. Um So but you know, we have other revenue streams, you know, our normal Um you know, recording fees and everything that we have RFPs for already. So they’ll look for it but you know, 400 would finish Phase 2-A. Mhm. Yeah and capital funds could be used for the sewer. Right, that’s not a problem. What do you guys think about that?”

Commissioner Eisenhour: “I don’t know, I would love to see us putting more money into other segments of housing.”

• August 26, 2022 – Commissioner Brotherton made a motion to approve the 42 year term lease with Olycap for $10 a year. The motion was approved. (Time stamp 09:20:02 & Agenda pg.2)  Although the county retains the deed for the property, the appearance of impropriety remains, in light of the overwhelming favoritism shown to this organization by an elected official who sits on their board.

Revised Code of Washington – Code of Ethics Laws Prohibit Influencing Officials

The Jefferson County Civil Deputy Prosecutor’s analysis of RCW 42.23.030 and conclusion that Commissioner Brotherton’s conflict of interest is nonexistent — merely because he does not directly receive monetary compensation from OlyCap — completely ignores both the stated purpose of Chapter 42.23 and RCW 42.23.040.

The purpose of Chapter 42.23 is to “prohibit certain instances and areas of conflict,” particularly with respect to “the transaction of business” by elected officials, such as Brotherton. However, the statute also permits certain conflicts of interest which are “deemed to be only remote” (RCW 42.23.010).

RCW 42.23.030 prohibits municipal officers from being “directly or indirectly” “beneficially interested” in a contract. RCW 42.23.040 defines scenarios when a conflict of interest is “remote” and thus the municipal “officer is not interested in a contract within the meaning of RCW 42.23.030.” The scenario where a municipal officer holds a position as a “non-salaried officer of a nonprofit corporation” is explicitly labeled a “remote interest.”

This type of remote interest is considered a conflict of interest, but it is one sanctioned by the legislature when the conflict is disclosed because it qualifies as only a “remote” conflict. However, RCW 42.23.040 also reverses the “remote interest” distinction where the municipal “officer influences or attempts to influence any other officer of the municipality.” Under this scenario, the municipal officer is considered “interested… within the meaning of RCW 42.23.030.”

RCW 42.23.040 can be read as follows:

“A municipal officer is… interested in a contract, within the meaning of RCW 42.23.030, if the officer has only a remote interest in the contract… [and] the officer influences or attempts to influence any other officer of the municipality of which he or she is an officer to enter into the contract.”

Under RCW 42.23.040, the legislature classified this specific scenario: a municipal officer also holding a position as a non-salaried officer of a nonprofit corporation, who exerts influence or attempts to exert influence over other municipal officers when making a decision related to a business transaction involving the same nonprofit, as a prohibited conflict of interest “within the meaning of 42.23.030.”

That is the exact scenario which took place in the examples above.

Jefferson County conveniently ignored RCW 42.23.040 when concluding there is no conflict under RCW 42.23.030, even though .040 expressly addresses an ethics violation for a County Commissioner who is a “nonsalaried officer of a nonprofit corporation.” Furthermore, the argument that there is no ethical violation because there are more than 50 nonprofit organizations that have Jefferson County Commissioner board members and no one has ever been challenged, is illogical.

A practice that has not received judicial review does not mean that the practice is lawful. Nor does the County’s citation to a 1996 Court of Appeals decision resolve the legal issues when the decision does not even address RCW 42.23.040 and its provision which specifically addresses Brotherton’s position as a “nonsalaried officer of a nonprofit corporation.”

Mr. Brotherton advocates for financial awards to OlyCap, as well as votes for such awards, contrary to RCW 42.23. Even the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington (MRSC) states:

“It is accordingly recommended that the officer with a remote interest should not participate, or even appear to participate, in any manner in the governing body’s action on the contract.” (Knowing the Territory: Basic Legal Guidelines for Washington City, County and Special Purpose Districts, January 2022)

Moreover, if the County is so confident in its legal position with respect to Brotherton’s ethical dilemma, why hasn’t it requested an opinion from the Washington State Attorney General? The Jefferson County prosecutor is one of the few government officials who can make such a request. Private citizens cannot make a request.

In addition to the law which prohibits Brotherton’s conflict of interest, there is an appearance of fairness issue. Deciding to donate almost four million dollars to a nonprofit (primarily for homeless shelters and housing) and then serving as the chair of the nonprofit’s board of directors has the appearance of impropriety.

No one is criticizing the nonprofit. But you would think that Brotherton would follow the MRSC advice and refrain from participating in County decisions that give money to the nonprofit that he is significantly involved with. Brotherton is taking an unnecessary risk. RCW 42.23.050 states that a contract made in violation of the ethics laws “is void” and could be “grounds for forfeiture of his… office.”

Why not take the high road and just refrain from participating in those decisions? The citizens of Jefferson County deserve that.

“This Is Not Over” – Sorting Truth from Deception in YMCA Blame Game

by Jim Scarantino | Oct 10, 2022 | General

“This is not over,” Julie Jaman told the Port Townsend City Council on October 3, 2022.

At that meeting Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with Rebel News, confronted Mayor David Faber with his own words about having sex with dead chickens and a dog, and declaring that, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant.” Faber has yet to explain using his title as mayor in connection with such statements.

Women’s rights advocate Amy E. Sousa addressed council about sexism and the misogynist lies of transgender ideology. She promised she would be back to seek council’s support for a declaration like the one it issued to “especially” recognize people who have declared themselves a man though born a woman, and vice versa. The forthcoming declaration, Sousa said, would call upon council to stand up for women and girls. Will Port Townsend City Council lift up women and girls as much as it has wrapped its arms around people who say they are transgender?

Earlier that day Daviscourt had attempted to deliver to the YMCA more than ten thousand signatures on a petition circulated by Rebel News to “Let Julie Swim.” But the Y and Mountain View Pool were again closed. Was another day of locked doors and dimmed lights due to lack of staffing or to duck Daviscourt?

The Mountain View Pool has been closed quite a bit since August 2 when we published the first story on how Jaman — an 80-year old woman who had been using the pool for much of her life — was banned for stating her objection to a man in the women’s showers. Jaman encountered “Clementine” Adams in a woman’s swimsuit when she was naked. She states she saw him watching little girls in states of undress. Jaman has also said he was leering at the little girls. She told him to get out and repeated herself to the Y’s pool manager who had entered the room. Unknown to Jaman at the time, this man was a Y employee who in March of this year decided he would henceforth be a woman. He acknowledges he is biologically still quite male and “interested in women.”

Adams, we learned from his interview on a Stitcher podcast, never returned to work. Thus Jaman accomplished her objective of getting him out of the women’s showers. The Y has since been advertising an opening for an “Aquatics Program Lead,” the title of the person who banned Jaman on the spot, as she stood naked and wet from her shower. As we reported, both the male employee in the woman’s bathing suit and the aquatics manager failed to safeguard children in accordance with basic YMCA policy and the common sense of anyone with the slightest concern about the dignity, privacy and safety of women and children.

Adams gave his only public statement in that Stitcher podcast that we wrote about on September 10. His admissions hurt himself and his former employer. Public officials for their part (the pool is public property, owned by the school district and leased to the city) have chosen to hide behind a bland and inaccurate statement drafted by City Manager John Mauro. That statement repeats the smear that Jaman had a history of misbehavior that justified her permanent banishment — allegations never explained or supported by the plentiful documents we were once assured existed. Two months after publicly spreading accusations that Jaman had a history of misconduct, the Y still has not told even Jaman, let alone her attorneys or the media, what horrible things she allegedly did that justified barring an elderly woman from using a public pool to keep up her health and fitness.

The Mayor distinguished himself by excreting infantile and sick comments on Twitter that have made Port Townsend a national embarrassment. His glib and cruel dismissal of the concerns of rape victims prompted the women’s press conference on August 15 that turned into an ugly mob scene more fitting of Portland and Seattle than the “welcoming” laid-back Victorian seaport and arts community of Port Townsend. His comment the day after older women were knocked to the ground outside City Hall — that the previous evening’s confrontation had been “beautiful” — only further fanned flames, leading to the September 3 rally by members of the Proud Boys and Washington Three Percenters who cast themselves as champions of women and free speech.

There was at least one gun among the mob on August 15 assaulting women’s rights advocates. According to law enforcement sources, there were plenty of guns on both sides at the September 3 rally. An overwhelming law enforcement presence, including a police spotter on City Hall’s roof and the Washington Highway Patrol Rapid Deployment Team at the ready, kept things quiet and even comical. At one point, a burly Three Percenter danced with willowy counter-protestors to The Village People’s iconic “YMCA.” A more recent version of that tune, adapted specifically to the Julie Jaman/YMCA controversy, was released this summer by comedian Mr. Menno. Called “Y Chromosome.” It’s cringey and wickedly funny.

It has been an interesting past couple of months, and as Jaman promised, it’s not over.

On October 6, Daviscourt returned to the Mountain View Pool with a camera crew, Sousa and Jaman. Daviscourt was attempting again to deliver more than 10,000 signatures on the petition calling for the Y to “Let Julie Swim.” As of this writing the signatures on that petition now exceed 11,000.

Daviscourt checked to make sure the pool would be open. It was, but minutes later, a sign went up banning media from entering. The doors were locked and it went dark inside. When Daviscourt knocked, a business card for the Y’s communication director along with the sexist pink and blue banner of the trans movement (remember when boy/girl stereotypes were condemned?) were slipped through the door. Minutes after that the Y called police and the women were ordered to leave and threatened with arrest if they returned. Daviscourt’s video report may be viewed here.

Enter Councilor Wennstrom

Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom

Which brings us to Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom. Following the August 15 mobbing of older women who were calling for respect for women’s dignity and safety, she posted on her Facebook page a call to expel all “TERFS” from Port Townsend. That acronym for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists has become a sexist term used to justify violence and threats against women who do not buy into the fiction that a man or boy — human males — can magically become a woman or girl — human females — by snapping their fingers and switching around the blue and pink in their wardrobe. Ana Wolpin covered that bit of hate-mongering from Wennstrom in her article, “City Officials Lead Hate Campaign Against Women.”

Wennstrom’s Facebook post with the tagline “Libby Urner Wennstrom updated her cover photo.”

Wennstrom removed the post once The Free Press reported on it here and at our Facebook page. Her comments, which were partially preserved by one of our readers, show an even deeper malevolence, particularly towards Sousa. Wennstrom later said she “never intended it to go public, but in retrospect as a public official she doesn’t think she should have posted it.” She only meant to share it among friends, not publicly, as if that excuses her actions. If she does not want her actions to be those of a public official, she should not have accepted elected office.

Shortly afterward, Wennstrom participated in the Stitcher podcast released September 1 that revealed much about the YMCA’s failures to safeguard children, including Adams’ bizarre, unsolicited claim that he was so blind — due to not wearing his eyeglasses, though he was on duty as a children’s caretaker — he had trouble seeing around the women’s showers.

The podcaster, a fellow named Garrison, repeatedly expressed his misogynist contempt for women. He’s a man who says he’s been taking hormones for a year, presumably testosterone suppressants. Somehow that qualifies him to judge which women are really feminists and which are “so-called feminists,” the latter identified as any woman who does not embrace transgender ideology and holds to biological truths about men and women.

The podcast also interviewed some anonymous local residents who disclosed they’ve been training themselves in “gun clubs” with members of the “queer community” and people who say they are trans. They claim they are “getting this really good organic network building throughout the community” to kick Jaman “out of their businesses on sight.” Despite all the calls for calm and the prudent discretion of other city officials (with the exception of the warped Mayor), Wennstrom chose to participate in this broadcast.

Contrary to the desires of anonymous thugs on Stitcher, Jaman has not been kicked out of any Port Townsend business. She is not having to do all her shopping and dining in Silverdale and Sequim. Instead, she has been given surprising support from local businesses. I was interviewing her when she received well-wishes from the head of one of downtown’s largest business operations. On that same day she had received several letters of support, including one envelope with a gift of cash. The only operation that has excluded Jaman is the YMCA.

Lies and Agitprop

According to Wennstrom’s podcast statements, Julie Jaman “attacked” the young man in the women’s shower area and “made a jerk of herself.” Further, the Port Townsend Free Press itself was responsible for causing the mob scenes, the Proud Boys event, the months of disruption and civic discord and PT’s bad international press. “Right wing media” piled on and Amy Sousa tried “to force her way” into the Mountain View Pool to film patrons as they were undressing, Wennstrom lied. And, Proud Boys are everywhere, also PTFP‘s fault.

Wennstrom uttered so many false, derogatory and inflammatory statements in her few minutes in the interview, it’s difficult to believe anything she said.

She is apparently greatly impressed by Port Townsend Free Press’ impact. She thinks we have the ability to ignite a global firestorm about the trampling of women’s rights in little Port Townsend. She says we got “so many” facts wrong, and in the same breath accuses us of not reporting that Adams was a YMCA employee. Hold on, councilor Wennstrom… that’s contradicted by the fourth sentence of PTFP‘s first report about the incident, which states: “The woman [Jaman] had to stand naked in the presence of the male, a YMCA employee, despite her pleas that he leave.”

In blaming — crediting? — Port Townsend Free Press for igniting the firestorm Wennstrom completely ignores the broader coverage — much of it original — from the feminist and LGB media (that’s lesbian, gay and bi-sexual, and no “T” for transgender). While PTFP wrote the first story, it was the widely-followed Reduxx that launched it nationwide. Reduxx describes itself as a publication of “pro-woman and pro-child safeguarding and commentary.”

While Adams’ name was available in the police reports (that’s how we identified the man in the woman’s bathing suit described by Jaman), Reduxx was first to publish a photo of Adams in connection with the story. They didn’t have to dig very deep. Adams has published his photo for the world to see on a GoFundMe page, where he is asking for money so he can pay for amputation of his penis and testicles and cutting of his vocal chords.

And though our photos and initial reporting were sometimes used or mentioned, coverage by Matt Osborne of LGB United (a lesbian, gay and bi-sexual platform) propelled the story even further. Post Millenial journalist Andy Ngo and Substack commentator Mattie Watkins were the first to uncover Mayor David Faber’s sordid, sick alter-ego in which he identifies himself as a “chickenfucker,” discusses sex with a dog, defends child pornography and public masturbation, and aligns himself with a YouTube character who calls for decriminalization of child pornography and lowering the age of consent so adults can have sex with children. Then Mandy Stadtmiller, a New York magazine and former Penthouse columnist, asked aloud in an article by the same title, “Why is Self-Described ‘Pervert and Deviant’ Mayor David Faber So Excited About Terrorizing an 80-Year Old Woman Who Doesn’t Want Men in Little Girls’ Changing Rooms?”

We did not write the first coverage of the mobbing and bullying of women permitted by the City of Port Townsend on August 15. Osborne beat us to it. He had his story up within hours of Julie Jaman and her daughter being escorted to their car by four Highway Patrol officers.

We did enjoy unprecedented traffic to our website, far more readers in those days than the Peninsula Daily News and The Leader regularly attract. But our big numbers pale in comparison to the readership in the hundreds of thousands of the Twitter posts and stories by Osborne, Sousa and Watkins, and the more than a million hits we understand Reduxx got on its Twitter posts.

Left Wingers Now “Extreme Right Wing”

That was all separate and independent of what Wennstrom may consider “right wing media,” unless she dumps women’s advocates, lesbians, gays and bisexuals fighting against pedophilia and the sexualizing and grooming of children into her mental “right wing” basket of deplorables. Mayor Faber apparently does, as he dismisses all those concerned about men around naked women and girls — including rape survivors — as suffering from “right wing moral panic.”

Wennstrom labelled The Port Townsend Free Press as “extreme right wing” and “the blog of one person.”

How did we earn the “extreme right wing” label? By writing about how a mob shouted down, intimidated and bullied a rape victim and a Black woman pleading for the same rights and consideration as claimed by people who call themselves transgender? Or was it by reporting on how the cobalt needed for those expensive electric cars being purchased by First World white progressives is mined by Black adult and child African slaves? Or was it by exposing the waste, fraud and corruption in the Cherry Street Project and the utter foolishness of Fort Worden’s $2 million glamping fiasco?

If that’s not it, maybe it’s the in-depth reporting that undermined the imposition of dictatorial decrees by the Governor and local health officer, coupled with commentary favoring liberty and personal choice? If that’s not it, maybe it’s reporting on how the YMCA banned a family from its facilities for reporting the display of child pornography. And if not that, maybe we’re “extreme right wing” because of those articles opposing turning over public parking spaces to a handful of downtown businesses, and exacerbating the already severe parking problems in our fair city’s commercial core?

One last shot in the dark: were we “extreme right wing” because we were the only media reporting on the human tragedy — the drug abuse, crime and suffering — in the troubled encampment at the Fairgrounds that left one young woman dead and led to another suicide? That’s it… writing about the suffering of the homeless and how they were ignored by the city makes us “extreme right wing”!

The current editors of this publication (I started the Free Press in 2018 but handed it off more than a year ago) would laugh at being called “extreme right wing.” They have been fixtures of PT’s progressive, liberal and peace activist community for decades. And as for this being “the blog of only one person,” this site has published articles by over two dozen authors.

We haven’t surrendered our critical thinking abilities. We do our own research, believe what our eyes and ears tell us, and reach our own conclusions. We’re independent thinkers still capable of seeking objective truths. We are not helplessly, blindly “woke.” To Wennstrom, that equates with “extreme right wing.”

Proud Boys Under Every Rock

Anyone who doesn’t toe Wennstrom’s ideological line is “right wing,” and probably a Proud Boy, too (even if female). For example, Wennstrom brought up the Back the Blue rally organized by wives of local law enforcement. She had been asked if Port Townsend had seen much in the way of large-scale protests, and this was what came to her mind.

As we reported on August 31, 2020, a car and truck parade in support of law enforcement stretched over six miles from H.J. Carroll Park in Chimacum to downtown Port Townsend. I personally counted about 400 vehicles in the cavalcade. A former judge, local business owners, law enforcement families, members of the Rakers car club, and local citizens participated in showing support for law enforcement during a summer when they were under attack by the Port Townsend City Council.

Mayor Faber, then a city councilor, had wanted city police disarmed and there was serious talk of defunding and cutting the police department. Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County (now virtually defunct, along with the international, multi-million dollar scam umbrella organization) tried to humiliate our sheriff and police chief. A KPTZ travesty of a radio program subjected the sheriff to fantastical, delusional accusations from a BLM leader who, in addition to having a long history of substance abuse-related incidents — including crashing his bicycle into the Fort Worden gate and urinating himself — had just months before been arrested for trying to break into an occupied Port Townsend residence.

So the community rallied in huge numbers for the men and women of the Port Townsend Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office… about which Wennstrom deceived podcast listeners by calling it a Proud Boys event.

That Evil Amy Sousa and Inciting A Mob

Wennstrom has some grudge against Sousa. She leveled personal attacks against Sousa in Facebook comments to her now-deleted post (preserved partially by one of our readers) calling for the expulsion from Port Townsend of all women who don’t like having men in their bathrooms. She implied that Sousa was in this fight just for the money and insinuated that Sousa had caused a young child’s suicide — then disingenuously distanced herself from her own words.

In the Stitcher podcast, she said that Sousa, accompanied by a camera crew “tried to force” her way into the Y’s locker rooms while they were being used by patrons. Wennstrom admits she wasn’t there, but makes the accusation anyway, just as she spread the rumor that Jaman had “attacked” Adams.

Katie Daviscourt, the Rebel News reporter mentioned previously, did politely ask to film in the Y and left when her request was denied. Daviscourt recorded this in her report and you can see her request to film at the 2:22 mark.

That’s not the only lie Wennstrom has spread to inflame people against Sousa, Jaman and her boogey-men of the “right wing media.” In her comments accompanying her hateful “TERFS Out of Port Townsend” call to action, Wennstrom wrote:

“The narrative that’s circulating is that a ‘known pervert’ (sometimes it’s a ‘sex offender’) was masturbsting [sic] and touching/undressing little girls in the locker room. Which is a crime, and would be charged as such. But that’s not even remotely what happened.”

I’ve read almost everything published on the Jaman matter, but I have never seen any allegation anywhere that Adams was masturbating or that he was a sex offender. Jaman distanced herself from claims he had touched the little girls. It was Adams himself in his later Stitcher interview who admitted to touching at least one young girl as she was dressing/undressing.

Wennstrom condemned herself in her own comments when she wrote that “creating outrage from a false or misleading story is part of a larger political playbook.” She herself helped organize the counter-protests against Jaman at the Y and whipped up the crowd that turned into the mob that tore down suffragette flags and called women TERFs and c-nts at the same spot where previous Women’s Marches had rallied.

Indeed, This is Not Over

Conflicts between women’s rights and men invading women’s spaces are being repeated across the country. In Vermont, most of a girls’ high school basketball team was banned from their own locker room because they dared express their true feelings about having to undress in the presence of a young man who calls himself trans, and having to be with him as he undresses and showers. Lawsuits challenging men invading women’s sports are pending in many jurisdictions.  A growing number of states are not tolerating the nonsense of men gaining access to women’s private, vulnerable spaces by putting on a bit of make-up for the day.

Wennstrom and other council members will be asked to issue a proclamation in support of the dignity, safety and privacy of women and girls, as Sousa will be coming back to City Council. It was Wennstrom’s suggestion to issue the proclamation declaring that the city is “especially” supportive of people who call themselves trans. Faber and council members Owen Rowe and Amy Howard have cheered on Adams’ quest for funds to cut off his penis by giving him money to pursue “gender reassignment” surgery.  Where will she and the rest of city council stand when called upon to affirm by official proclamation that women’s rights are human rights?

The meme “Trans Rights are Human Rights” is on yard signs across PT, along with the slogan “Science is Real.” But it is biology that stands in the way of men magically becoming woman. As Mr. Menno’s fun parody song drives home, that persistent Y chromosome that makes men men resides in every cell, sinew, muscle, bone, nerve and speck of brain matter. It does not go away when a man puts on women’s attire and cosmetics — the truly sexist equivalent of blackface.

One last time. If you haven’t watched Mr. Menno’s message, take a few minutes. This is a very gay man speaking through his music and comedy, not someone Wennstrom can blithely deride as “extreme right wing.”

When a skeleton is unearthed, its very structure speaks “male” or “female”.  Transgenderism is denial of science and biology. It is ideology pulling us back to the dark ages when logic, reason and the scientific method were suppressed in service to tribalism and religious orthodoxy. Indeed, transgenderism is best understood as tribalism and a faith system. Only by pounding it into people’s heads — by indoctrination of the impressionable or the intimidation of mobs like those Wennstrom whipped up screaming “Trans women are women” — can this lie take hold. It is the stuff of totalitarianism rooted as it is not in any immutable, verifiable, objective truth, but in a fabricated narrative imposed by various manifestations of force.

J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has become a leading opponent of the trans agenda that erases women and sexualizes and victimizes children. She has stood up to attacks far more vicious and threatening than those Wennstrom has leveled against local women. The horrors of the trans agenda now coming to light in the United Kingdom are proving her right. Rowling’s challenge to the “genderists” can be leveled with equal justification against Wennstrom and her fellow council members.

On the heels of revelations about the massive injuries inflicted on children by puberty blockers and mutilating surgeries, Rowling recently wrote in response to the exposure of pedophilia in Britain’s “establishment” trans activist lobby:

“You know, I thought things were pretty bad when you were arguing to put convicted rapists in women’s jails, when you shrugged off masked men roughing up lesbian protestors and tried to shout down de-transitioners talking about what was done to them by ideologically-captured doctors. Women, gay people and vulnerable kids have suffered real harm and you? You cheered it all on. You still prefer wilful blindness and four word mantras to considering you might have got this badly wrong. You became part of an authoritarian, misogynist, homophobic movement and you didn’t even notice. Enjoy the sense of your own righteousness while you can. It won’t last.”

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Top photo (L-R): Katie Daviscourt, Julie Jaman, and a Port Townsend Police officer, from Rebel News story YMCA calls police on Julie Jaman after dropping off petition to allow her to swim

Will a Smart Meter Harm Your Health?

by Ana Wolpin | Sep 28, 2022 | General

“I cannot sleep… and I am feeling so fatigued and muddle-brained that I can barely think straight and even have trouble standing up straight. I have literally done nothing since [the Smart meters] have been put in and feel achy all over and disoriented, slightly dizzy.”

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“I have been feeling sick since they installed 16 smart meters on a panel 6 feet away from my building. I have developed respiratory problems and insomnia and anxiety and pressure in my head… My husband has also developed asthma, coughing, bloody nose, headaches.”

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“We had a Smart Meter installed on our home. I got sick and two weeks ago had a mini-stroke.”

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“My family recently moved into a new home which has 4 smart meters, we had wifi also initially. I began feeling ill: symptoms included a sensation of electricity coursing through my body, headaches, my blood pressure soared, the sensation of my brain feeling like it was being squeezed, and a sensation of burning on my skin and eyes. I could not find relief anywhere in my home. The symptoms of my three sons are less than my own and more vague: headache, ‘feeling sick upon waking,’ feeling a jolt type feeling sometimes.”

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“[After a Smart meter was installed] our children started to exhibit health symptoms and health signs that alarmed myself and my husband [a doctor]. The children began to have fevers out of nowhere, essentially their bodies were boiling and their fevers would go from 101 to 104 and sometimes to 105… Our children also began to have problems with the inability to control their bodily fluids, our five year old began peeing and pooping herself, our four year began to display the same problems, soon many of the smaller children were all displaying these symptoms and concerns.”

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“We are just miserable here. We can’t sleep at night, are dizzy, have headaches, ear pain, and more.”

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“I managed to have smart meter installation delayed at my house, but suddenly became sick overnight with palpitations, chest pain, insomnia, dizziness, inability to concentrate and memory loss and fainting spells. AFTER becoming sick I found out that the day I became suddenly sick was the day the smart meter roll-out was completed in my area and the smart meters were remotely turned on from base… I can no longer drive, I can’t work (I’m a doctor).”

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“Shortly after the smart meter was installed my health took a terrible downturn. I began having heart palpitations, trouble sleeping, unexplained anxiety attacks, dizzy spells, nausea and fatigue. I have been battling anxiety for months and I had no idea why. I’ve never had these types of symptoms plague me like this before. Then I found out that so many others have had the same reactions to smart meters in their homes and neighborhoods.”

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“I am an engineer. I have used technology my entire adult life – cell phones, smart phones, wi-fi, laptops, you name it. I really enjoyed all of this and had no issues or fears related to technology.

Then, when a bank of smart meters were put next to our apartment, both my wife and I starting experiencing headaches, insomnia, heart palpitations and tinnitus. Within a couple weeks, I could no longer use a cell phone without the same symptoms. Within a month I could feel the microwave radiation from cell towers. I have had to completely change my life because of this.”

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The statements above are among hundreds posted by the EMF Safety Network. Thousands of reports like this can be found online from people whose health was damaged following the installation of a wireless Smart meter. The last quote is from engineer-turned-EMF-educator Jeromy Johnson, who we featured in our article, Smart Meters Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!

As reported in that article, having one of these meters installed at your home or workplace raises multiple concerns. While we provided an overview of many of those concerns, this article focuses specifically on the health issues that can be caused by the high-intensity pulsed microwave radiation from what the utility industry calls Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), or Smart meters.

Common symptoms attributed to Smart meter exposure include:

• Sleep problems (insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, night waking, nightmares)
• Stress, agitation, anxiety, irritability
• Headaches, sharp pain or pressure in the head
• Ringing in the ears, ear pain, high pitched ringing
• Concentration, memory or learning problems
• Fatigue, muscle or physical weakness
• Disorientation, dizziness, or balance problems
• Eye problems, including eye pain, pressure in the eyes,
• Cardiac symptoms, heart palpitations, heart arrhythmias, chest pain
• Leg cramps, or neuropathy
• Arthritis, body pain, sharp, stabbing pains
• Nausea, flu-like symptoms
• Sinus problems, nose bleeds
• Respiratory problems, cough, asthma
• Skin rashes, facial flushing
• Urinary problems
• Endocrine disorders, thyroid problems, diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Changes in menstrual cycle
• Hyperactivity or changes in children’s behavior
• Seizures
• Recurrence of cancer

It is because of health impacts like these that when Smart meters began rolling out in the U.S., utility companies were forced to provide customers with a safer meter option. Requesting a non-transmitting meter is commonly known as an Opt-Out (more on that below).

It is well-established that we are bioelectrical beings and that exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and radio frequencies (RFs) can have profound impacts on our biology. It is estimated that 3% to 10% of the population are so vulnerable to these fields — electrosensitive — that they struggle to live in the electromagnetic soup of our modern world.

Following publication of our last article, a reader challenged the assertion that electrosensitivity (aka electromagnetic hypersensitivity) is a valid medical disability. She asserted that EMFs and RFs — like the microwave radiation from Smart meters — do not impact a person’s health, that reports like those cited above stem from mental illness or are psychosomatic. The problem, she said, could be summed up in four words: “These people are crackpots.”

An obvious argument disproving that these health impacts are “all in their heads” is that when their symptoms first manifest people are often unaware that a Smart meter had been installed. Silicon Valley engineer and tech enthusiast Jeromy Johnson describes his unexpected “Wireless Wake-Up Call” in this TED Talk:

“If anyone had told me that wireless technology could have health effects, I would have thought they were crazy. But this all changed for me over the period of about one week. I started experiencing headaches, ringing in my ears, insomnia, fatigue, and a brain fog that I’d never experienced before. And I shared this with a colleague at work, and she said, you know the exact same thing happened to her husband when a wireless Smart meter was installed in their home. So I went home that evening and I checked downstairs, and sure enough we’d had a bank of wireless Smart meters installed right below our bedroom in San Francisco.”

Bank of Smart meters shown in Jeromy Johnson’s TED Talk.

Stories like these are common, following this typical pattern: “I — or my husband/wife, child, friend, co-worker — started having terrible headaches, feeling dizzy, couldn’t sleep, lost cognitive function… and then days or weeks later discovered that a Smart meter had been installed the day the problems began.”

But beyond the anecdotal evidence, there are now literally thousands of studies and scientific papers demonstrating the negative impacts of EMFs/RFs on people’s health.

The Science

A decade ago, an international consortium of 29 doctors and scientists produced the 650+-page BioInitiative Report 2012. They explain:

“Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. In some cases, this may cause discomfort, or sleep disruption, or loss of wellbeing (impaired mental functioning and impaired metabolism) or sometimes, maybe it is a dread disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.

It may be interfering with ones’ ability to become pregnant, or carry a child to full term, or result in brain development changes that are bad for the child. It may be these exposures play a role in causing long-term impairments to normal growth and development of children, tipping the scales away from becoming productive adults.

We have good evidence these exposures can damage our health, or that of children of the future who will be born to parents now immersed in wireless exposures.”

Their report presents evidence of genetic damage, immune impairment, neurological injury, effects on the blood-brain barrier, childhood leukemia, breast and other cancers, fetal effects, brain tumors, fertility damage and much more. Updates to the report just this year include coverage of RF and EMF studies from the genetic and neurological literature, studies of free radicals (oxidative damage), and electrohypersensitivity.

In 2015, 220 EMF scientists from 41 nations who had published in peer-reviewed journals signed the International EMF Scientists Appeal. Their warnings included cell phones, Wi-Fi, and ‘smart’ meter/grid technology.

“It is our opinion that adverse health consequences of chronic and involuntary exposure of people to non-ionizing electromagnetic field sources are being ignored by national and international health organizations despite our repeated inquiries as well as inquiries made by many other concerned scientists, medical doctors and advocates.”

According to these experts, public safety limits for electromagnetic and radiofrequency fields are thousands of times higher than exposure levels shown to be associated with serious health impacts.

Why haven’t our regulatory agencies and government protected us? Industry capture of the FCC and other agencies puts industry profit over public safety. “Just Don’t Bring Up Health” is one of the opening chapters of Harvard University Center for Ethics’ exposé, “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates.“

As with so many of our public agencies, we cannot trust the FCC or any other “official” guidelines. The authors of the BioInitiative Report counter these corrupt regulators:

“The great strength of the BioInitiative Report is that it has been done independent of governments, existing bodies and industry professional societies that have clung to old standards. Precisely because of this, the BioInitiative Report presents a solid scientific and public health policy assessment that is evidence-based.”

Will a Smart Meter Harm YOU?

As noted earlier, we are swimming in invisible frequencies in today’s world, commonly called electrosmog. Chances are you already have Wi-Fi in your home, carry a cell phone, use a computer wirelessly, maybe even have a cell tower in proximity. All of this wireless technology creates oxidative stress, opens your blood-brain barrier allowing toxins to enter your brain, causes DNA damage, and alters your cellular function.

How much of these pervasive EMFs and RFs our bodies can withstand varies. Some people may be so electrosensitive that their ability to function is compromised by the slightest exposure to these frequencies.

Sebastian (Seb) Eggert, nearing completion of his ElectroMagnetic Radiation Specialist (EMRS) certification with the Building Biology Institute, says, “I have personally interacted with over fifty people who are greatly or severely affected by the various forms of electromagnetic radiation, and at least a dozen of them live here in Jefferson County.” That was before the rollout of Smart meters.

Eggert expands on some of the people he has seen challenged by wireless technologies:

“One client was unable to have deep and restful sleep in her home until she turned off her computer, wifi, printer, portable phone and cellular phone. Another client is so sensitive she can sense when someone enters the room with a cell phone in their pocket or when a ship with a strong radar signal passes by. The only place she can escape from her splitting headaches is deep in the Olympics where the radiation is extremely low, or in rural Alaska.

Another who is a medical professional has removed all the EMFs from his office for the comfort of his patients. A naturopathic physician thought she had eliminated all RF devices from her office and treatment areas until a survey revealed that her computer was still sending a contact signal to the hard-wired modem.”

Then there are individuals like Jeromy Johnson, immersed for years in wireless tech, who don’t notice a problem until a Smart meter is installed.

Broadcasting RF frequencies every few seconds or even faster all day and night, these devices emit up to 190,000 bursts of pulsed microwave radiation in a 24-hour period. Reports show that adding that stress to an already-toxic wireless environment often causes a tipping point, pushing people over the edge to electrosensitivity. And once that threshold is breached, as Johnson learned, tech that once seemed harmless is suddenly no longer bearable.

Additional factors come into play. Eggert explains:

“Often the signs of EMF sensitivity are masked by other influences, such as multiple chemical sensitivities, mold and fungus exposure, medical interventions and deep trauma. All these things together contribute to poor health.”

Proximity to the meter(s) and levels of exposure are also significant factors in whether you will be harmed by a Smart meter.

How close is the meter to your living environment? Smart meters near bedrooms are especially dangerous. Since they operate 24/7, one of the most ubiquitous symptoms following their installation is loss of sleep. The critical downtime for the body’s rest and repair is interfered with by the constant pulsing of the RF.

Multiple Smart meters transmitting RFs multiply the danger. That’s especially true where there are banks of meters. Meter utility rooms for apartments, condos and commercial complexes massively increase the radiation levels, as Jeromy Johnson learned. Even though the room of meters for his apartment building was on a lower story, that ground-level bank of Smart meters proved to be too much for him and his wife. In that type of scenario, even those who opt out can still suffer health issues because the vast majority of other meters in their building are all broadcasting high-intensity microwave radiation.

Opting Out in Jefferson County is Easy

Jefferson PUD’s Opt-Out Program offers non-transmitting analog and digital meters that are read on-site monthly by a meter reader. We recommend the analog meter as the safest option since digital meters generate some high frequency voltage transients, also known as ‘dirty electricity’, which can also have negative health impacts.

While those of us against our PUD’s adoption of Smart meter technology argued for no-cost opt-outs as established in both New Hampshire and Vermont, there is a $5 monthly fee added to your bill here. That is lower than many utilities charge. Some utilities set punitive fees to intentionally discourage opt-outs, with a significant one-time charge for initial installation and exorbitant recurring monthly charges.

According to a 2019 article from the National Conference of State Legislatures:

“The fees can vary considerably. A utility in Rhode Island charges a one-time fee of $27, while a Texas utility’s one-time fee is $171. The monthly fees range from around $9 to $32.”

California’s state policy established a one-time fee of $75 and a monthly fee of $10, however for income-qualified customers the one-time fee drops to $10, with a $5 monthly fee.

Jefferson PUD has clearly avoided punitive charges. With all meters needing replacement in the county, our utility has waived the one-time installation fee, adding only a $5 monthly surcharge to offset the cost of a meter reader coming to your property every month to manually read your power usage. In addition to providing you with a safe meter, your $5 is supporting local jobs that are being eliminated by wireless tech.

This RF Transmitting Meter Opt-Out Application is on the last page of the PUD packet here. For more information on the Smart meter rollout in progress in Jefferson County and for additional details on our PUD’s Opt-Out Program, see Smart Meters Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!

$1.5 Million Judgment Against
Art Frank for Misconduct
Weighs on Campaign, Prosecutor
[Updated with comment from Sheriff Nole]

by Jim Scarantino | Sep 20, 2022 | General

Unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, making false statements, misleading the prosecutor.

A California Federal District Court jury ruled that Art Frank and another Glendale, California police officer unlawfully arrested and caused the malicious prosecution of Edmond Ovasapyan. The case arose out of a 2005 home invasion in which a teenage son was murdered in front of his mother. The federal jury in 2009 found that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest Ovasapyan, misled the prosecutor and withheld exculpatory evidence from her.

The case has surfaced in Jefferson County as Frank campaigns to unseat his boss and incumbent Sheriff Joe Nole. Frank serves under Nole as a detective and previously held the number two position in the Sheriff’s Office under Nole’s predecessor, Dave Stanko, another former Califiornia police officer relocated to Jefferson County. Stanko hired Frank and made him Deputy Sheriff, ousting Nole from the position he had held under Stanko’s predecessor, Sheriff Tony Hernandez. During Stanko’s years in office Nole served under Frank. When Nole defeated Stanko’s bid for re-election and was elected Sheriff, he moved Frank over to a detective position and made Andy Pernsteiner Deputy Sheriff and his #2.

Word of the case against Frank has been quietly circulating for months. On September 16, 2022, Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy issued a letter to criminal defense lawyers notifying them of a judicial ruling of misconduct by a law enforcement officer that could impeach the officer’s testimony. Kennedy restated the jury’s findings, but also said he believes the jury ruled incorrectly. Nonetheless, the jury verdict poses a headache for Frank’s effort to persuade voters to put him in charge of the Sheriff’s office, as well as possibly giving defense lawyers ammunition in any case where Frank is a witness for the prosecution.

Edmond Ovasapyan versus Art Frank, et al.

Jefferson County Detective Art Frank

Frank has addressed some of the facts in the case when asked at election forums what his biggest regret is in his 43 years in law enforcement. Frank has served with distinction through those decades in many positions, from patrol officer, to working on a SWAT team, to training other officers, to accomplished detective work. He has saved lives and taken killers off the street. He saw his partner die next to him. He has seen the worst side of humanity in his years in Los Angeles County, and, let’s be honest, also here in Jefferson County. Though he is opposed in his bid for office by local first responders and all the men and women he serves with in the Sheriff’s Office, I am told by some of those same people that he is respected for his skills as a detective. But they do not think he should be Sheriff and do not want to work for him if he is elected to that position. Those feelings are strong, and account for the unprecedented support among first responders and law enforcement for the re-election of Sheriff Nole.

The Ovasapyan case was as bad as anything he had encountered. Frank has in campaign forums related how five men invaded a home and how the teenage son was shot in the chest in front of his mother. He says he regrets that Ovasapyan spent months in jail for something he didn’t do and says it was he who eventually exonerated Ovasayan.

Frank has left out of those accounts the fact that a jury found he had engaged in very serious misconduct, so serious that the trial judge deprived him of law enforcement officer “qualified immunity.” That means Frank was held personally liable for the judgment because, as the court found, no reasonable law enforcement would not have known that the conduct in which Frank engaged was illegal. This is an uncommon finding by a trial court judge.

Ovasapyan was awarded $1.16 million in compensatory damages. The jury also awarded him $75,000 in punitive damages against Frank and $75,000 against the other officer. The trial court awarded the plaintiff $271,495.57 in attorney fees and $5,543.85 in costs. Frank was ruled jointly and severally liable, meaning personally responsible, for all but the punitive damages against the other officer. The City of Glendale paid the judgment, attorney fees, and costs though it was not legally required to do so. It paid approximately $1.7 million after unsuccessful appeals.

The trial court denied Frank’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, meaning that the court found there was enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict. The judgment was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which specifically ruled that the District Court was justified in finding enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict.

Prosecuting Attorney Kennedy Says the California Jury Got it Wrong

JeffCo Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy

In his letter to defense attorneys, Kennedy wrote that “it has recently been brought to my attention” that Frank was found liable for misconduct in a civil case. Kennedy stated that he conducted a public records request of the City of Glendale, spoke with a Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney familiar with the case and obtained and reviewed the entire trial transcript.

Kennedy told defense lawyers he had concluded that the jury was wrong. He concluded that Frank had been blamed for actions taken by others. He concluded that the evidence Frank allegedly withheld was, contrary to the jury’s ruling, already in the possession of defense counsel and not of any material exculpatory value. Frank allegedly failed to investigate alibi evidence; but Kennedy concluded that alibi evidence, even if true, would not have ruled the plaintiff out as a participant in the crime. Lastly, Kennedy credited Frank with ultimately exonerating the plaintiff when DNA evidence pointed to another individual whom Frank tracked down. Frank learned from that individual that Ovasapyan did not participate in the crime and relayed this information to the DA who then dropped charges. By then, Ovasapyan had been in jail for about eight months.

“In conclusion,” Kennedy wrote, “it does not appear that Det. Frank personally authored any reports or directly engaged in any aspect of the investigation that lead [sic] to the false arrest or malicious prosecution of the Plaintiff. Contrary to the findings made by the jury… it appears that Det. Frank’s actions are what actually lead [sic] to the charges being dismissed against the Plaintiff.”

Res Judicata

The matter has been decided. Res judicata is a legal principle that “a decision by a competent court in a case fully and fairly litigated is final and conclusive as to the claims and issues of the parties and cannot be relitigated.” Prosecuting Attorney Kennedy may be absolutely correct that Frank got a raw deal from a California jury. The verdict against Frank may have been as great an injustice as the wrongful imprisonment of Ovasapyan. Justice is sometimes ill-served in our judicial system. Maybe Frank’s lawyers were incompetent. Mr. Kennedy said in an e-mail that the city of Glendale chose to use its in-house lawyers instead of contracting with more skilled and experienced outside counsel, and those lawyers did “a pretty poor job.”

However wrong the Ovasapyan jury may have been, its decision was upheld by a United States Federal District Court judge and later by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument that there was insufficient evidence to find that Frank did the things he was accused of doing was rejected by both courts.

Kennedy’s independent review of the records may blunt the impact of the Ovasapyan verdict outside of court. The reputation Frank has built since moving here may remain intact, though bruised. Frank can point to Kennedy’s conclusions in defending himself on the campaign trail. But when Frank testifies in court, and the defense seeks to impeach him with the Ovasapyan verdict and findings, the trial judge will likely not entertain arguments that the Ovasapyan jurors and several federal judges messed up or that Frank was screwed over by his lousy lawyers. Relitigation of the facts of that case will in all likelihood not be permitted, and Mr. Kennedy’s conclusions–regardless of how well they may be reasoned–will not be allowed in a court of law.

Frank Responds

Good morning Jim,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Ovasapyan case. The civil verdict is just one part of the story and has to be viewed in the context of the original investigation in order to be properly understood.

Though it is one small event in my 43-year career and history in law enforcement it is something voters should consider. I have always been transparent about it.  I have spoken about it openly and publicly during the campaign, including at the Democratic Party forum and the League of Women Voters forum, both of which were recorded and are available online. I have answered questions about it from voters and community leaders.  Both the fact of the verdict and the underlying investigation were fully known and understood by my opponent prior to my hiring in 2016 as he was the person who hired me.  He has never raised it as an issue in the campaign because he understands the facts.

Like any career or life experience the case investigation itself did have an impact on my leadership to the extent that it reinforced that it is always important to follow the evidence no matter where it leads and that as police officers, with power comes responsibility.  In this case I had the responsibility to see the investigation through to exonerating and freeing Mr. Ovasapyan, which I did. This is a value and ethic that I live and work by and I would instill and expect from all of my staff if elected.

I did not pay any part of the judgment or costs because the investigation was part of my official responsibilities as an employee of the City of Glendale.

Regarding how the fact of the verdict reflects on credibility, the elected Prosecutor has reviewed both the civil trial as well as the facts of the underlying investigation and concluded that the allegations regarding any wrongdoing on my part are not supported.  I expect his letter re same will be released next week. The fact that I saw the investigation through to exonerating and freeing Mr. Ovasapyan proves my commitment to transparency and justice and should reassure voters that I will always do the right thing.

In my experience you have been fair and given me a full opportunity to respond.  In this case I would appreciate it if you would wait to run any story on the case until I can provide the letter from the Prosecuting Attorney.  You have a powerful voice and it is important that you have all of the information before running a story.

I will send the letter from the prosecutor as well as a more full response as soon as I have the letter, which should be early next week.

As always, thank you for your interest in the campaign and in the truth.

Art

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Mr. Frank subsequently sent a longer statement and other materials when notified we had obtained Mr. Kennedy’s letter to defense lawyers.

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Mr. Scarantino,

To best understand what happened in this case it is necessary to know some of the facts related to the crime and original investigation itself, which I have outlined below. 

There were at least six individual suspects involved.

The initial victim, a mother of two adult men, was home alone.  She heard a knock at the door and looked out to see a man who she recognized as a construction worker and associate of her older son who had done tile setting work for her at her business.

She opened the door and a group of men – including the man who knocked at the door – forced their way into the house and tied her up. They then demanded money indicating they had some familiarity with her older son, using his name.

Minutes later, her younger son walked into the house from the rear driveway access door and confronted the home invaders. He fought with the invaders to save his mother and one of the men – though not the one who knocked on the door who she recognized as her son’s acquaintance and tile setter – shot her son in the chest. He died at the scene.

All the invaders fled the house. Typical of a case of this seriousness, several detectives were assigned to work various aspects of the case.  Some of the evidence they gathered: Mr. Ovasapyan had done tile work at the mother’s business in the past. Mr. Ovasapyan had a dispute with one of her sons over a construction project.  Witnesses identified at least two vehicles outside, including a dark colored Honda sedan. Mr. Ovasapyan was known to drive a Black Honda.  The mother was shown a photographic lineup by a detective which included Mr. Ovasapyan’s photo.  She told him it looks just like him, but younger, but maintained it was the tile setter.   While running from the scene one of the suspects (not the man who knocked at the door) dropped an item of clothing. DNA analysis of this item of clothing provided a lead that identified the possible shooter. There was no DNA evidence left by the suspect the victim believed to be Ovasapyan.

I was assigned to gather all of the various reports from the group of detectives who worked the case and to present the case to the prosecutor’s office.  The prosecutor’s decision to file charges in the case was based on an evaluation of the totality of the evidence and not solely the photo identification of Ovasapyan.  As the case moved through the court system Mr. Ovasapyan maintained his innocence.  I did not rest and I continued to investigate the case, and when the DNA results returned they provided the lead that helped me to exonerate Mr. Ovasapyan prior to any trial or conviction.

I am including a letter from Steve Dickman, a prosecutor intimately familiar with the original case as well as the civil trial that followed. His letter is in the form of an endorsement written earlier this year in which he touches on the case and from which this case can be seen in the continuum of my entire career.

I am also including a motion written by Mr. Dickman which discusses the case in detail and explains why the result of the civil trial has no impact or bearing on my credibility as an investigator or witness. Every court that heard this motion did not allow evidence of the verdict or my role in the investigation to be presented to any jury on the issue of my credibility because there was no evidence of wrongdoing. 

Art Frank 

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The letter from Mr. Dickman is available on Mr. Frank’s campaign website. The motion Mr. Frank mentions is a 27-page legal brief from one party in a criminal case, not a judicial ruling. We have not been provided the motion to which this brief was filed as a response, the reply to this brief nor the ultimate ruling by a court. We print in full all written responses to questions we pose, but publishing this full brief — without knowing anything about the surrounding case and the court’s ruling — is beyond the scope of our policy.

Sheriff Joe Nole has not responded to a request for comment on the statements made by Mr. Frank. I specifically asked Sheriff Nole about Frank’s claim that Nole hired him and was aware of the Ovasapyan verdict at the time. Frank’s account would mean that Nole, not then Sheriff Stanko, hired Frank as Stanko’s second-in-command and demoted himself from the position he had held under Sheriff Hernandez and put himself under Frank’s supervision. Nole, as Frank states, has not used the case against him in debates.

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[Update to original story] It appears that the Ovasapyan veridict was known at the time of hiring, and the information was passed along to Sheriff Dave Stanko, who made the decision to hire Mr. Frank. Sheriff Nole provided the following answers to the questions we posed last week. He just got back to us after publication of the story. We can also now provide Mr. Kennedy’s full letter to defense counsel.

Q & A with Sheriff Nole:

Q: Was the judicial ruling against Mr. Frank known at the time of his hiring?

A: Yes. Mr. Frank’s pre-hire background investigation developed information on the ruling and that information was discussed with Mr. Frank.

Q: How could he have been hired with this matter so recently in his background? (He was hired a few years after the 9th Circuit upheld the verdict).

A: The information developed in the background investigation and discussed with Mr. Frank regarding the judicial ruling was presented to then Sheriff Dave Stanko, who made the hiring decision.

Q: How does the case impact his ability to do his job?

A: At this point it does not impact his ability to do his job.

Q: Does it detract from his credibility as a witness when he must testify?

A: It could, depending on the circumstances presented at trial and a judge’s interpretation.

Q: How could this detract from his ability to lead the Sheriff’s Office and defend against charges of misconduct?

A: How it could detract would be dependent on the particular situation occurring at the time.

Here is a link to Mr. Kennedy’s letter: PID Letter Det A Frank