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3/9/2020, Ohio Gov. DeWine declares State of Emergency (with no end date) because of coronavirus.
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A year later, March 2021:
3/24/21, “Ohio lawmakers override DeWine veto, pass limits on governor’s coronavirus powers,” Cleveland.com, Jeremy Pelzer, Columbus, Ohio
“The Republican-led Ohio General Assembly on Wednesday voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of legislation to rein in his administration’s [rule by decree with no end date in the name of] coronavirus powers.
Senate Bill 22, which takes effect in 90 days, gives [elected] lawmakers the authority to cancel any gubernatorial health orders that last longer than 30 days, require the governor’s office to renew such orders every 60 days, and create a legislative oversight panel.
The bill also limits local health officials’ power [to rule by decree as the governor currently does] to require people to quarantine or self-isolate without a specific medical diagnosis and allows Ohioans to sue over the constitutionality of any state emergency order in their home county.
The Senate voted 23-10 to override DeWine’s veto; the House held a 62-35 override vote about 40 minutes later.It’s the first time that lawmakers have passed a law over a DeWine veto since he took office in 2019.
Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, told reporters after Wednesday’s vote that if DeWine’s coronavirus orders remain when SB22 takes effect in June, lawmakers will look at whether it’s necessary to rescind them.
Huffman also said he expects a court challenge to the new law, though he said it’s still unclear whether such a lawsuit would be filed by DeWine or someone else.
DeWine, a Greene County Republican, vetoed SB22 on Tuesday, arguing it would be unconstitutional and handcuff state and local authorities’ ability to deal with emergencies. He provided several scenarios in which the bill would hurt the ability of state and local officials to respond to everything from an Ebola outbreak to being able to cut off water and power to a prison during a riot.
But legislative proponents of SB22, many of whom have been fierce critics of DeWine’s coronavirus policies [by decree], dispute DeWine’s arguments and reiterated Wednesday that the bill is backed by their constituents and puts in place much-needed checks on the [current unilateral] power of the governor’s office [the same available to most US governors who chose to declare a Covid health emergency].
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for us to stand up for the legislative branch [which was elected to represent otherwise voiceless people] . It’s time for us to reassert ourselves as a separate and co-equal branch of government here in the State of Ohio,” said state Sen. Rob McColley, a Napoleon Republican who co-sponsored SB22, during a floor speech Wednesday. “We need to stand up and finish this for all the Ohioans who have been asking us to be their voice at the table.”
House Majority Floor Leader Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, said SB22 is “not perfect” and that lawmakers need to change it “down the line” to allow authorities to isolate someone who comes into Ohio from a pandemic hotspot while waiting for them to be diagnosed.
But such changes, he said,” should not obfuscate the principle purpose for which we passed Senate Bill 22, which was to restore…an element of checks and balances.”
State Sen. Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican, voted for SB22 to pass the Senate. But he was one of three Republican lawmakers (along with state Sen. Stephanie Kunze of suburban Columbus and Dayton-area state Rep. Andrea White) who voted against overriding SB22.
Dolan said in an interview he voted for SB22 because he hoped in vain that lawmakers and the governor could work out a deal to remove parts of the bill inserted by the House regarding curbing local health departments’ authority [to rule by decree as the governor currently does] and allowing people to file lawsuits in their home county against emergency orders. As no such deal was reached, Dolan said he voted against overriding DeWine’s veto.
“Finding the balance of powers between the legislative and the executive (branches) could have been resolved,” said Dolan, who’s considering a run for U.S. Senate. “But this bill goes way beyond that…We just didn’t focus on things that really matter.”
Since the start of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020, [when all 50 US governors were able to opt to suspend their state’s normal and rule by decree indefinitely in the name of a health emergency] DeWine administration has issued a wide range of health orders that have affected the daily lives of most-if not all-Ohioans. Relying mostly on a law passed by the Ohio legislature decades ago, various orders have, at times, shut down businesses for weeks, required most Ohioans to remain home, and imposed a mask mandate in many public locations.
Legislative Republicans responded by passing a number of bills [to prevent millions of Ohioans from ever again being forced by decree to lockdown indefinitely] to limit the DeWine administration’s coronavirus authority, including measures to strip away his authority to issue statewide health orders, block his ban on most county fair activities, and decriminalize violations of his health orders. DeWine vetoed all three of those bills, and proponents of them weren’t able to find the support needed to override them.
Democratic lawmakers have, overall, sided with the governor on such bills. Earlier this month, House Democrats urged DeWine to veto SB 22.”…
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Added: 3/19/21, “The End of America?” Naomi Wolf, AIER
“In early March of 2020, of course, a global pandemic was announced: Covid-19.
In the immediate wake of the announcement and narrativization of that pandemic, most of the elements of a locked-in 360 degree totalitarianism have been put into place, in most of the countries of the West, including in what had been robust democracies. It all happened very quickly and comprehensively.
In the United States we now have:
- Emergency measures in many states, which suspend due process of law. This is the hallmark of a police state. Covid-19 is invoked as the reason for the introduction of emergency law – but there is no endpoint for lifting these emergency laws.
- The closures of schools, which break the social contract with the next generation.
- Bills being passed for “vaccine passports,” which bypass the Fourth Amendment to the constitution by allowing the government and Big Tech companies to intrude on medical privacy and to create a comprehensive digital surveillance state.
- Forced closures of businesses. By intervening directly in the economy and allowing certain businesses to flourish (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target) at the expense of small businesses, Main Street shops, restaurants, and sole proprietor businesses in general, the State has merged government and corporations in a way that is characteristic of Italian fascism, or of modern Chinese communism. (Indeed the fact that tech stocks rose by 27% in one quarter of the pandemic shows one driver of this war against human freedoms and human society: every minute human beings spend in a classroom, at the pub or restaurant, or in a church or synagogue, is time that tech companies lose money by being unable to harvest that data. Covid policies driven by “Covid-19 Response”-tech companies–ensure that humans are not allowed to connect except via digital platforms. The reason is profit as well as social control).
- Restrictions on assembly. Some states such as California are fining people for seeing their friends in their homes, and making it unlawful for kids to have playdates with their friends. Massachusetts restricted gatherings of more than ten people at a time, forcing synagogues and churches to stay closed, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling against states forcing churches to close. Parks, playgrounds and beaches have been closed off. In countries such as Britain, people are fined for leaving their homes for more than an hour’s exercise a day.
- Forced face coverings. In Massachusetts, people are fined if they are not wearing masks outdoors – even children as young as five are forced to do so by law. Again this mandate has not been undergirded by peer-reviewed studies showing medical necessity; and there is no endpoint proffered for these extraordinary violations of personal freedom.
- Suppression of free speech. Big Tech companies are censoring critics of Covid policy and vaccine policy, as well as censoring views that are on the right hand of the political spectrum. “Incitement,” a word that has a long history in the 20th century for closing down free speech, has been weaponized by the left to shut down First Amendment freedoms of expression. In other forms of censorship and management of speech and public debate, tycoons such as Bill Gates have been funding major news outlets, with millions of dollars directed to “Covid education.” As a result, dissenting voices are marginalized and shamed, or even threatened with legal action or job losses.
- Science has been hijacked in the interests of “biofascism.” By heavily funding scientific commentators such as Dr Fauci in the United States, Imperial College and SAGE in the UK, and Dr Christian Drosten in Germany, a dominant set of policies and pronouncements about Covid that benefit a small group of bad actors – notably tech and pharmaceutical interests, acting in concert with governments – have had secured credentialled supporters. But when other scientists or institutions seek debate or transparency, they are threatened with job loss or reputationally attacked, as in the case of Dr Simon Goddeke of the Netherlands, who was told to keep quiet by his university, when he challenged the flawed Covid PCR test protocols.
- Data have been hijacked to serve the interests of this biofascism. This manipulation of truth, which I foreshadowed in The End of America, is typical of the Soviet censors. Covid platforms such as Covid19tracking and John Hopkins University, funded by technocrats such as Michael Bloomberg, serve unverifiable Covid data that directly affect the stock markets. Again, while this un-American merger of corporate interests and public policy is reminiscent of Italian Fascism, the twist provided by digital data presentation and its relationship to the stock market is very much of the 21st century.
- Attacks on religious minorities. The orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, and Christian churches in California, have been singled out for punishment if they do not follow Covid rules – a targeting of religion that is characteristic of Communist policies on the left, especially in China.
- Policies that weaken bonds between human beings and weaken the family have been introduced and policed. This is the most serious development of all.
The new biofascism in the West, very much driven by Big Tech leaders, and soon to be exploited by our enemies geopolitically, is a war against free human beings and against the qualities that make us human.
Masks break human beings’ ability to bond face-to-face and enjoy human contact, smiles and jokes. Masks turn down the effectiveness of human “technology,” by making it hard for us to “read” each other and to pick up social cues. Forbidding assembly keeps us from forming human alliances against these monstrous interests. Forbidding human assembly also prevents new cultures, new heroes and new business models from arising. We are all stuck with the Rolodex and the ideas we had in March of 2020.
Forcing kids to distance at school and wear masks ensures a generation of Americans who don’t know HOW to form human alliances, and who don’t trust their own human instincts. Those are counterrevolutionary training techniques.
Driving all learning onto (already prepared) distance learning platforms ensures that kids do not know how to behave in human space, space not mediated by technology.
Many Covid policies seem designed to ensure that humans will have no “analog” space yet or “analog” culture left – no way to feel comfortable simply gathering in a room, touching one another as friends or allies, or joining together.
Lastly, driving all human interaction onto Zoom is not only a way to harvest all of our tech, business secrets and IP – it is a way to ensure that intimacy and connection in the future will be done online and that human face-to-face contact will be killed off.
Why is this? Why develop policies that punish, encumber and restrict human contact in analog (unsurveilled, unmediated) spaces?
Because human contact is the great revolutionary force when it comes to human freedom and resistance to this form of comprehensive biofascism – the biofascism represented by the New Normal – the medico-fascist Step Ten.
Now let me recap from the year 2008, and read you my intro to The End of America, as well as the warning at the close of that book.
Its message has never, sadly, been more timely. This time, threats to freedom justified by terrorism then, have reclothed themselves in the trappings of a medical pandemic.
But this time we do not just face a war on freedom. This time we face a war on human beings, and on all that makes us human.”
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1/5/21, “Terrence K. Williams@w_terrence….Trump supporter just got kicked off my flight to Washington DC. #stopthesteal She made a joke about wearing a mask so they kicked her off. People on the plane begged the flight attendant to leave her alone @AmericanAir Flight 2198 RT!!! #BoycottAmericanAirlines”
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