The BCC Weekly – Taking the “Blind” out of the BCC
Commissioner Chris Barnett has become infamous this year for preaching “unity in the community” while a camera is pointed at him and then posting negative hit pieces about local people on his various social media outlets. Barnett’s various owned and operated Facebook “news” pages such as Real Live News Southern Oregon, Josephine County Tribune (likely named to damage the Grants Pass Tribune), and Josephine County News have posted a significant number of what I would call negative hit pieces on a wide variety of individuals, organizations, and even a couple local businesses.
And the negative hit pieces, sometimes containing false statements, have gone into overdrive since the filing of recall petitions against Commissioners Chris Barnett and Andreas Blech on August 25th. The common thread of the targets of the hit pieces seems to be anyone or any organization that uses their constitutional right to criticize Barnett as an elected official or someone that may be exercising their constitutional right to gather signatures for a recall petition.
The negative hit pieces right alongside Commissioner Barnett’s self-promotional positive videos would be a comedic contradiction if there were not real-life negative consequences to the false statements and negativity posted all over the Barnett “news” pages. Real people are being hurt by Commissioner Barnett and Commissioner Blech and their supporters making false statements about what individuals and organizations are actually behind the recall petitions.
The false statements, hit pieces, and intimidation by supporters of the commissioners and the commissioners themselves have turned so awful that there may be legal and law enforcement consequences. Restore Jo Co PAC, the political action committee supporting the recall petitions, reported this week that one of their volunteers who only helps on a very part-time basis in gathering signatures received close to 50 death threats between him and his family. He also claims to have lost a couple job opportunities due to anti-recall folks making false public statements about him and plastering his picture and info all over social media.
Recall volunteers simply spending time gathering signatures have reported many instances of people driving by yelling obscenities. Several people singled out in attacks by Barnett’s “news” pages and other social media posts by supporters of the commissioners aren’t even involved in the recall effort.
As mentioned last week, the “whitepaper” put out by Commissioners Barnett and Blech blame the recall on individuals and organizations that have nothing to do with the recall, to make it look like this is a left-leaning political effort. In reality, the majority of the leadership of the recall committee are republicans. And the chief petitioner never even heard of the organizations being blamed for the recall until after the recall petitions were filed.
Many of the hit pieces on Barnett’s news pages don’t have a listed author, but lately many of the hit pieces say authored by Brad Barimez. Brad has been busy lately, authoring no less than 10 hit pieces just in the last month. Mr. Barimez has posted hit pieces on a local radio station, the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune, individuals volunteering their time to gather recall petition signatures, and even a generic article about toxic online political rhetoric with a picture of a Nazi Swastika and telling people to report hate groups to the FBI and local authorities.
The article by Brad Barimez that included a picture of the Nazi symbol was titled “Enough is Enough: Calling Out Political Violence and Hate Groups.” The short article ended with saying, “It’s here and real.”
Except, what may not be real is Brad Barimez himself. Nobody with that last name was a registered voter in Josephine County as of last year (registered voter names are public information). Do an internet search for Brad Barimez and the only thing you will find are the articles supposedly written by him and posted on Barnett’s news Facebook pages. Not only will you not find someone by that name in Oregon, internet searches and AI programs can’t seem to find any real person by that name.
It’s awfully strange that someone who nobody local knows is writing all kinds of articles and hit pieces about local people with a great amount of detail on these local people and local organizations. Is Brad Barimez a pen name for Commissioner Chris Barnett himself, so that he can deny writing all these negative hit pieces on his constituents?
Either way, Commissioner Barnett is the owner and operator of these “news” Facebook pages, and the buck stops with him. The fact is, one of our top County elected officials keeps calling over and over for “unity in the community” in public while consistently attacking his constituents with negativity and false information on his Facebook pages.
The next time you see Commissioner Barnett, ask him “who is Brad Barimez, and why is he writing all these negative articles on your Facebook pages?” This is a fair question to ask of a commissioner, since Brad Barimez covers local politics, covers local government issues, and Barnett’s “News” Facebook pages are the only place you can find his name.