For small business owners, even the day-to-day can be difficult. If you are a small business owner just starting out in the food industry, you will find fairly quickly that regulations and red tape often create an unfair playing field favoring larger distributors. Local pierogi makers in Parma learned the hard way in 2020 that deciphering what permit was needed to distribute free samples to patrons of the local farmers’ market was one thing, but dealing with the inquisitori from the Ohio Department of Health under lockdown restrictions was a nightmare onto itself.
Perla Pierogis owners David and Daniel Serban learned firsthand how difficult things could get when they took the bold stance of refusing to destroy their business in March of 2020. We all recognize that date now as the date when everything changed. Businesses closed up shop, citizens hunkered down in their homes and the U.S. Government facilitated one of the greatest wealth transfers in history to a global investment firm that has its fingers in everyone’s pie and Ohio was no different. The Department of Health, led at the time by Amy Acton, moved quickly to impose strenuous restrictions that sent a stark message to small business owners: shut down, muzzle up or face the consequences.
“We did not comply with any mandates and we were threatened by the Health Department,” Owner David Serban said. “We were threatened with an investigation and told it was a second-degree misdemeanor.”
For refusing to comply with the Health Departments mandates, the Serbans were told they could face charges of “Creating a Public Nuisance”. Whether or not one was aware of the science of masking or on lockdowns, no doubt most of us examining this issue were probably wondering why small businesses, especially those which focus on commercial sales to restaurants, were targeted as potential “super-spreaders” while major retailers which serve hundreds or thousands per day were left to freely operate. It seems as backwards as the CDC stating that the BLM protests during the “Summer of Love” 2020 were totally safe while Americans gathering to protest the destruction of their livelihoods was dangerous. It would seem counterintuitive to join the droves of citizens lining the aisles of Costco or Walmart while you are unable to purchase goods from smaller stores that service fewer individuals, until you realize that this has never really been about health.
When analysts discuss the great “wealth transfer” of the 2020 pandemic, they are not simply referring to the massive bailouts certain industries received as part of the “relief packages”. The shuttering of local businesses forced citizens to spend their relief money and savings at the only retailers available, which were all owned by the same entity. From Costco to Kroger and everyone’s favorite delivery service, The Vanguard Group profited immensely from the covid cycle. According to available metrics, Fiscal year 2021 (from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021) represented the firm’s peak earning thus far, with Vanguard reaching $6.9 billion in revenue streams alone, not including new asset acquisitions. But what is the connection? Surely during the early days of the covid cycle, health officials and our own elected representatives were simply taking the best possible action they could given the unknown circumstances and would not intentionally empower a globalist superstructure at the expense of their own citizens.
Governor Mike DeWine is certainly a fundraising force to be reckoned with, as his primary opponents have discovered. His gubernatorial campaigns have been managed primarily by experienced lobbyist Douglas J. Preisse of Van Meter Ashbrook and Associates. Preisse’s experience has taken him from several previous successful campaigns, including noted mook John Kasich and George Voinovich. He is a direct lobbyer with background getting the Ohio Senate to spread eagle over their desks. His expertise has brought in major donors from energy companies like First Energy to major contributors such as law firm Bricker and Eckler. It should be noted that Preisse is the chair of the Franklin County Republican party. During his time as a financial prostitute, Preisse has represented a number of companies, including Depont De Nemours Inc, Burford Capital (controlled primarily by Mithaq Holding, a Saudi money laundering firm located in the Cayman Islands and Ameriprise Financial Inc., an investment firm shell company controlled by Vanguard). If one were looking to play a game of six-degrees of Vanguard influence, Preisse would end the game in two moves.
While DeWine backed and signed the healthcare mandates of the covid cycle, he was not the face of them. For that, we have the intrepid Department of Health Director Amy Acton. Acton rose to prominence in 2020 by spearheading the lockdown initiatives and mask mandates for the state but her rise to prominence seemed to come from the most unlikely of places. Acton previously worked at the Columbus Foundation and Project Love, a childhood vaccination organization in Columbus, Ohio, before being tapped to take the position of ODH director. She was hailed as being one of the rare “MD’s” to actually sit in the chair. Wearing her signature white coat of authority, Acton paraded herself before the cameras weekly with frequent updates on how the wealth transfer pandemic was progressing. She was aided in her endeavor by an impressive team of influencers, including Rajeev Venkayya, whose resume includes close work with vaccine manufacturers and jab pushers such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he worked as the director of vaccine delivery. Today he currently works with Iavi and Takeda as president of the Global Vaccine Business Unit (which works closely with Moderna). It should be noted after her resignation from the post, Acton returned to work with the Columbus Foundation, whose governing committee includes Nancy Kramer, Chief Evangelist, BTS for IBM. If you can guess who owns that company, give yourself a gold star. It should be noted Acton has left the foundation and is no longer pushing needles on children and now works for a nonprofit startup called Rapid 5, seeking to do…something…with the waterways and parks of central Ohio.
The final piece of this puzzle may be the fifth major donor to Mr. DeWine’s gubernatorial campaign, Bricker and Eckler. This law firm currently boasts its commitment to the widely known conservative principles of diversity, equity and inclusion.
The firm boasts a number of clients in the energy and finance industry, familiar customers to DeWine’s emporium of government asks. However, that changed in 2018 with the addition of managing partner James F. Flynn. Flynn’s experience focused almost entirely on the healthcare industry and helped the firm “navigate the covid pandemic”. No doubt his experience was also instrumental in helping them pick up more Vanguard-owned clients including JP Morgan Chase and Key Bank and I am certain his background representing hospital networks and “healthcare” clients had no influence at all on the firm offering guidance on imposing vaccine mandates on their workers.
It we kept things simple and superficial, we have a situation where the two most prominent individuals involved in the Ohio lockdowns were surrounded by, and inundated with, money and mouthpieces for an investment firm that not only profited from the shutdowns themselves, but also from offering the only government approved solution either individual in the seats of power would accept, a vaccine. When conspiracy theorists say things like “Problem, Reaction, Solution,” what they are actually referring to is the real-world crime of racketeering. Racketeering is when an individual or group creates a problem and sells the only solution available. Sort of like what would happen if you threatened a business owner to close down his business and wear a muzzle with the only way out of it to buy a product said entity is selling.
The problem with major crimes like racketeering, is you have to prove intent. You have to prove that those holding the money bags had direct influence over the actions of those who helped them make the money, at least when it comes to those in power. Unfortunately, we can’t jump into the minds of DeWine and Acton in March of 2020 and see what gears were turning, but we can see what the outcome is. We know who is benefiting from these wheels being greased and who is being crushed under their weight and knowing that is how we fight back.
In 2020 when business owners David and Danial Serban were threatened for refusing to participate in this charade, they acted. Joining together with local business owners from around the state, the Serban brothers helped form the Local Liberty Association. The LLA is a consortium of small businesses located throughout the state of Ohio dedicated to oppose what they saw as the unjust and unconstitutional mandates. Together their passion forms a network of small businesses dedicated to helping each other oppose the government-enforced squeeze on small businesses. This network has been working together to assist in business-to-business transactions as well, such as helping the Serban brothers find a local liberty minded flour vendor to make their signature dish.
“We have a list of probably some 200 businesses,” David said. “We said we always wanted to do this and we started recruiting and we explain to them that if you get messed with a bunch of us are going to unite with you and it doesn’t cost anything to actually have a network to support your livelihood.”
Thanks to their membership with the organization, the Serbans were able to make connections with a lawyer who assisted them with their Health Department investigation, eventually getting them to back off their intimidation tactics.
“They helped us and we got with our lawyer and we started asking questions,” David said. “We started sending them questions asking if they were aware that demanding people wear a medical device without a practitioner’s license was a crime.”
If we are to defeat this monster, we cannot rely on traditional means of confrontation. We cannot hope to rely on a judicial system to hold conspirators and corrupt officials accountable and we cannot wait for a savior to rise through the ranks of our political parties. We have to take cooperative action now and starve the beast before it swallows us all whole. That means shopping local and shopping small and the website for Local Liberty Association is the perfect way to get started. Using the search function on the website, you can filter the search parameters for geographic location within the state or specific business type and find local liberty-minded businesses near you for you to support with your patronage. Alternatively, if you are a business owner yourself and want to join the grassroots resistance, simply reach out to the group through the contact form on the website to join the ranks of Ohio residents who are taking the fight to corruption and civil liberty violations.
“Working to unite people for freedom is one of the most important things you can do because we saw what happens if you are not united,” David said. “Alone, people are too scared to stand up, but if you have a united front, you can count on each other and you have a lot more courage.”
Change will come to those who work for it. While it is far easier to continue to feed the beast of Vanguard, its vice-like grip is already forming a stranglehold among the heartland. As the saying goes, “As Ohio goes, so too goes the nation.” If we lose the heartland to this monster, what will be left of the American dream?
For more information on the Local Liberty Association, check out their website at https://locallibertyassociation.org.
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