Oregon Gym Fined $90,000 For Staying Open During Covid Shutdown, As County Commissioners Take Trips To Hawaii

 

Photo via the Courthouse Club Fitness Facebook page

OSHA has fined a Salem, Oregon, gym $90,000 for daring to keep their business open during Democrat Governor Kate Brown’s arbitrary covid shutdown orders. Courthouse Club Fitness, which has five locations in the Salem area, opted to defy the orders and remain open, citing the need to do so in order to remain in business. The club’s owner, John Miller, posted this since-deleted letter to their facebook page, explaining what is going on:

His reward for trying to hold onto his livelihood, provide for his employees, and serve his customers is OHSA inspectors levying a multitude of fines against his gyms. KGW reports:

The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined Courthouse Club Fitness $90,000 for keeping four Salem area locations open during Oregon’s statewide COVID-19 freeze, which began Nov. 18.

 The total amount of the fine is the result of citations against each of the four Courthouse Club Fitness facilities. Each inspection resulted in a $22,500 fine; a  $17,500 “willful penalty” for being open to the public and $5,000 for violating “red warning notices” the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services said it posted at each location last week, according to spokesperson Mark Peterson.

Daily penalties are possible in the future if Courthouse Club Fitness doesn’t comply with Gov. Brown’s executive order, which limited gatherings and closed certain businesses statewide, including gyms. The maximum fine for a “willful penalty” is $126,749, Peterson said.

KGW also provided a video report as the recent “two week freeze” was starting:

During this “freeze”, 11,000 hysterical Karens have snitched on businesses that are apparently violating Her Majesty’s orders. There also appears to be little data that suggests that the shutdown orders have stopped the spread of the virus, as Willamette Week reported.

Meanwhile, county commissioners in Oregon who have continually parroted Governor Brown’s orders and pleas to leave home as little as possible have been caught taking luxurious vacations to Hawaii during the shutdown. The Oregonian reports:

As coronavirus cases surged in Oregon, county commissioners representing some of the most hard-hit areas in the state decided to travel — two to Hawaii and one to Mexico.

While two of the trips began before Gov. Kate Brown’s “freeze” travel advisory went into effect, the optics of taking these vacations while Brown was asking Oregonians to take all available precautions to stem the tide of the disease, is causing some county workers and members of the public to wonder about a double standard.

KGW reported Monday that Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran called in to public meetings from her vacation in Hawaii earlier this month.

On the same day, another area commissioner was also on vacation in Hawaii, KGW reported.

Washington County Commissioner Dick Schouten joined a Zoom meeting that day, the TV station reported, while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and talking about how great the weather was.

He said he was three days into his vacation at that point. Schouten told KGW Tuesday that he was back from Hawaii and was quarantining for two weeks.

During the same meeting, Washington County Commissioner Jerry Wiley announced that he was leaving for Mexico on Nov. 16. KGW reported that a county spokesperson said he would be back Dec. 1.

Wiley’s trip came after the governor joined California and Washington governors on Nov. 13 in urging people not to travel unless it is essential.

All three officials are facing backlash, but possibly none as much as Meieran, a practicing ER doctor, who told Willamette Week on Nov. 12, from her Hawaiian vacation, that Brown should impose another, tougher, statewide lockdown.

“At this point, I think the only thing that’s going to work is really not a pause but a real shutdown,” Meieran told Willamette Week.

Meieran didn’t appear to see any problem with her vacation, even as many Oregonians are forgoing planned trips to see family over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“I really am sorry and regret what this has become, and I should have thought it through more,” Meieran told The Portland Tribune on Tuesday. “Not because of any COVID risk, but because of the whole distraction.”

As we all know, the edicts and orders only apply to us peasants. The political class is exempt and can do whatever they want. Because reasons.