The Board of Supervisors in Orange County, California, is attempting to allocate up to $20 million in public funds to Covid19 vaccine centers without naming the centers slated to receive the funding.
The allocation, originally set to be voted on at the May 25th meeting, was reportedly removed from the agenda within minutes of that meeting’s start after it was learned hundreds of OC residents registered to speak out against it.
A review of the BoS’ agenda for yesterday’s meeting indicates debate on the item has been rescheduled for June 22.
The funding measure raised additional concerns after it was learned the Board had not reached out to any of the existing Orange County vaccine providers either for consultation or inclusion in the initiative. “Why fund a brand new infrastructure if we already built that network?” Isabel Becerra, CEO of the Coalition of Orange County Community Health Centers, one of the county’s largest providers, said after the meeting.
The OC BoS has been facing increasing criticism since it announced – to residents’ surprise – the implementation of a digital vaccine passport system which would require residents to show proof of vaccination against Covid19 on smartphone application in order to access public areas and businesses.
Orange County has become somewhat of a ground-zero in the fight against the implementation of digital vaccine passports in the U.S. Its residents, many of whom distinguish between being anti-vaccine and anti-vaccine passport, see the latter as a massive invasion of privacy.
“Digital passports have no place in modern day society,” Human Rights Attorney and OC resident Leigh Dundas told ITN in an emailed statement today. “They are a combination of every sin of yesteryear: it is Rosa Parks meets 1984 George Orwell meets Nazi Germany. Special passports for the Jewish population is how Hitler began, separate is never equal as we learned during the Civil Rights era, and digital passports are the entry point for a surveillance state that makes 1984 look like Child’s Play.”
“Moreover, they disenfranchise huge sections of the population as 40% of the elderly, 20% of the poor, and 15% of most minorities do not own smartphones, and thus cannot show such digital passports regardless of vaccination status. Which is why the ACLU, the World Health Organization, and many travel associations have come out against such passports in recent months.”
“Digital dog collars are for pets not for people, nobody regardless of vaccination status or political party wants to be leaving an electronic trail of bread crumbs behind them that evinces every place they have visited every second of the day. No one wants this surveillance State on steroids, and rightly so,” she added.
The Board publicly declared it will use the multi-million dollar smartphone application developed for the passport system as a simple digital record keeping system instead in the wake of the firestorm. Many residents remain unconvinced and that distrust was on full display yesterday.
Citizens were kept waiting outside of the building in the heat for hours before the BoS allowed them to enter the chamber for the public comments portion of their meeting. By that point tensions were boiling over.
“Do you guys know what you’re doing to your citizens outside by making us wait out there?” the first speaker asked. “You’re making us want to look deeper and deeper into these agenda items that you’re illegally putting together.”
“We have mothers out there with their children in this heat. You’re making them wait on purpose because you want the public to go home. You don’t want us to talk to you about the crap that you’re putting on these agenda items. And it is illegal that you’re trying to silence our freedom of speech. How dare you? Communists!” the woman said as she was cut off.
Others warned the Supervisors of impending legal action.
“You guys are named in this complaint for Brown Act violations,” one speaker said alluding to the California law that mandates government bodies provide notice of, publish meeting agendas for and provide public access to their meetings.
“Except the only difference between this case and the one that’s coming is that it will not be settled. We will be taking your depositions. We will be making you testify at trial and we’re going to go over every contract, every appointment, every vote that you made and we’re going to make you testify and tell everyone just what you guys have been doing under the state of emergency.”
“See you in court,” the woman said as she walked away from the podium to applause.
My first reaction is, “Are you kidding me?” But no, I guess that’s not fair to you. You are just working as a scribbler for the owners of this journal, you haven’t dedicated yourself night and day to finding the truth beneath the covers. We, many of us in the larger community, are making sure that people are protected from an opportunistic government, as they have proven themselves to be. So, on balance, THANK YOU for reporting the truth as best you can make it out!
The bottom line is, they haven’t stopped their bad acts, they’ve merely gone to ground, to make a NEW plan to defraud the people and strip them of their rights and dignity. The “re-purposing of the vaccine passport” is just a cover story, and IT WILL NOT STAND! That technology is extremely DANGEROUS, and inherently violates the medical privacy rights of the people in that system, in direct contravention of the law. As well as empowering discriminatory acts by merchants. And the money was NOT properly allocated in accordance with the law! IT MUST BE RETURNED and the system SCRAPPED.
The last thing that happened was a “suddenly delayed” proposal which you did NOT cover, which is arguably the most important thing ever proposed by the Board. Investigate the deceptively-named Supplemental Agenda Item “S5F.” That is/was a plan to limit the number of speakers on any topic, and force the public to choose a representative spokesperson to speak on their behalf, with the excuse that they were unhappy with our “repetitive” comments! MAYBE THERE IS A REASON that so MANY of the public have the same concerns? This is on top of the clearly UNLAWFUL restriction that has been implemented of late (since so many people are so concerned with their hijinks!) which limits each speaker to 30 SECONDS TIME (and doesn’t even get properly timed by the clock on the podium.)
We have a message for them – WE ARE NOT SUPERFLUOUS TO THE PROCESS! This is OUR government, YOU ARE THE “PUBLIC SERVANTS,” and we are pretty darn sick of the supercilious attitude they have been taking. You are NOT getting away with the egregious restrictions you have been placing on the public, nor the clearly unlawful proposals that were not publicly disclosed and debated, plus contracts publicly negotiated with multiple bidders, as required by LAW. They are clearly hoping that we will get tired of the abuse and go away – IT’S NOT HAPPENING! They are too dangerous to be allowed to operate as they been accustomed, and WE ARE NOT SLAVES IN THEIR SYSTEM.