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www.newbuffalotimes.com
THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2022
Mayor denies second claim in recall attempt
Global Health Security’ Covered in Chicago
BY STAN MADDUX
REPORT CALLS FOR MORE WHO EMPOWERMENT
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ew Buffalo Mayor John Humphrey denies he instructed a police officer to remove a citizen from a city council meeting and claims to have proof. That’s the other reason behind his appeal of a May 3 decision by the Berrien County Election Commission to approve the language in a second petition seeking his recall. The second recall petition states Humphrey at a city council meeting on March 21 “instructed a New Buffalo Police officer to remove an individual while she was speaking during her allotted time at the session of the meeting reserved for public comment.” Humphrey said he has a copy of a police report that shows he did not order the person from the meeting. According to the police report, realtor Carie O’Donnell, who’s opposed to the city’s ban on additional short-term rentals, was gaveled and advised by Humphrey that she was out of order and would be asked to leave if she didn’t stop. O’Donnell continued to speak and raised her voice talking over Humphrey while he repeatedly warned her to try and regain order, police said. According to the report, Humphrey then stated “Rich” to New Buffalo Police Chief Rich Killips. In her report, officer Courtney Severn said Humphrey mentioning her police chief’s first name combined with O’Donnell’s disruptive behavior caused her to walk to the podium where the woman was speaking and escort her out of the meeting. “She was screaming and yelling at the top of her lungs. Never at any point did we say throw her out,” Humphrey said. Humphrey also said he suspects her behavior judging from the police report was staged to fuel a recall attempt his opponents were planning to file. In the report, Killips said O’Donnell before she began speaking was pacing in and out of the meeting room.
Killips also said O’Donnell told him she felt like she was going pass out and “I can’t believe I’m about to do this,” according to the report. “All of this led me to believe that a crime or some sort of political act was about to take place,” Killips wrote in the report. Had he ordered her removed from the meeting, Humphrey said his actions would have complied with the city’s longstanding rules on behavior at council meetings. “I took an oath to uphold those rules. You can say anything you want but there’s a limit on civility on how you do it,” he said. A number of other realtors, along with people wanting to convert their homes into short-term rentals, have expressed strong opposition to the ban and dislike for Humphrey at public meetings He said many of those people live outside the area but have in interest locally in short-term rentals.
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umphrey said a select number of people might be hurt financially from the cap but there’s been no harm to the “greater
public.” “In my opinion, this is a cohesive effort to try and limit or remove power from the people that live here and give it to the other people that don’t,” he said. No hearing date has been set for the appeal to be heard by Berrien County Circuit Court Judge Donna Howard. If the appeal fails, supporters of a recall must submit 219 valid signatures to have a recall election in November, where Humphrey and Flanagan would face opposition. “We’ll proceed through the process and see what they say. Either way, we will use our rights forwarded to use by law to challenge any signature submitted and we’ll see if this makes it to the ballot or not,” Humphrey said.
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BY MARK ANDERSON
hite House global health official Raj Panjabi and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark told Chicago Council of Global Affairs (CCGA) host Ann Veneman for a May 16 virtual program that stopping “future pandemics,” overcoming covid “complacency risks,” and “boosting covid testing and vaccinations” are on the agenda in global-governance circles. The program’s chief sponsor was Abbott Laboratories, an Illinois-based multinational health care and medical devices company founded by a Chicago physician in 1888. Its pharmaceuticals branch, Abbvie, frequently sponsors CCGA programs. So, there is some question as to the objectivity of the Council’s covid presentations. Liberian-born, Harvard-educated physician Raj Panjabi, the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for biodefense and global health security, told Veneman that, in his view, “there are still too many unvaccinated people in the world” and that covid reportedly is still sickening and killing “thousands of people every week.” Panjabi stressed that a G20 task force and a “World Bank awareness fund” are preparing to deal with possible new variants—presumably “every four to six months”—and for possible “new pandemics.” “We need more testing now to track the level of virus in the community,” Panjabi said, adding that developing a new vaccine “within 100 days of the next pandemic” would be ideal from his perspective—along with rapid diagnostic tests. He did not specify whether such tests are the common PCR tests whose late inventor, Kary Mullis, is on record saying they’re
unreliable as a diagnostic measure and are prone to false positives. Panjabi added that improving the vaccination rate and boosting testing is one of five major parts of President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2023 pandemic preparation plan, regardless of whether the next pandemic that may come along is “accidental, natural or deliberate,” as he phrased it. Other parts of the FY2023 plan include: modernizing and streamlining regulations; and increased biosecurity in case of a pathogenic attack. Former PM Clark, who remarked that “populism, political polarization, fake news and complacency” may become obstacles to battling covid, commented: “If we take our eye off the ball, we’ll be blindfolded again.”
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n Abbott representative who commented at the start of the CCGA program recalled that the company, in March 2021, launched the Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition, comprised of 14 scientific-public health entities on five continents that “hunt” for viral threats—via tracking and testing. Interestingly, Clark did not mention her leadership role on the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparation and Response. In the Panel’s recent report, “Covid 19: Make it the Last Pandemic,” pages 45-49 contain recommendations that call for a significant transfer of national authority to the World Health Organization, including calls for: • A more “independent” World Health Organization; • A world pandemic treaty; • A senior Global Health Threats Council; and • Creating a “Framework Convention” to address “gaps in the international response” to pandemics.
