A couple of weeks back, venture capitalist Mark Kvamme crawled out of his opulently appointed sewer to wax poetic about the “public-private” sinecure syndicate that is JobsOhio.

Kvamme, writing as a guest columnist in The Columbus Dispatch, cited his expertise in founding JobsOhio before christening the organization “better” than paying $60,000 for a pod…

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We have a special freelance edition of The Rooster today.

Thanks to the generosity of the brave and noble soldiers in the Patriots Caucus, we were able to obtain the services of Elephant in the Room, a new Columbus-based freelance correspondent to spill the tea on the Republican junta’s most inner machinations.

Last week, I mentioned that The Rooster doesn’t target Statehouse staff, because generally speaking, they’re fresh out of college and being treated like human furniture by some of the worst people alive.

House Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe is an exception to that rule.

The Rooster envisions at least a three-part deep dive into Dittoe’s ascension to power and how he maintains it on Capitol Square.

COLUMBUS, OH — In the volatile ecosystem of the Ohio Statehouse, leadership transitions usually trigger a total clearance of top-tier staff.

When a Speaker falls, or a new regime takes the gavel, down-ballot staffers are routinely cleared out in waves of political retaliation. Yet, through two decades of unprecedented political scandals, federal investigations, and explosive structural shakeups, one name consistently survives the cull: Mike Dittoe.

Currently serving as the Chief of Staff for Speaker Matt Huffman in the Ohio House of Representatives, Dittoe has perfected the art of remaining indispensable to the powerful.

However, a deeper look into his long-standing tenure reveals a lucrative triple-income pipeline that critics say exploits taxpayers and utilizes structural conflicts of interest to keep the legislative machine running.

The Bulletproof Operative: A history of controversial connections

To understand Dittoe’s immortality in Columbus, one must look at the graveyard of modern Ohio political leadership. While other top-tier staffers’ careers ended in ruin alongside their bosses, Dittoe has successfully navigated ties to some of the most controversial and scrutinized figures in the state’s modern history.

He cut his teeth as a key communications director under former House Speaker William Batchelder, before sliding seamlessly into the role of Chief of Staff to Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, ultimately leaving his post four months before Rosenberger resigned amid an FBI investigation.

When the House transitioned through the turbulent and deeply controversial eras of Larry Householder and Senate President Larry Obhof, Dittoe managed to protect his institutional leverage.

He did this through a revolving door mere steps from the Statehouse, becoming a partner at High Bridge Consulting two months after his former boss, then-Speaker Rosenberger, resigned.

The Public-Private Straddle: The multi-client machine

Dittoe “left” High Bridge in Dec. 2024, a month before resuming his old role under Speaker Huffman.

In reality, Dittoe’s former business partners are keeping his seat warm while he ensures the firm’s 60+ lobbying clients receive the funding and legislation they need to continue growing their firm’s influence on Capitol Square.

For example, the submetering company Nationwide Energy Partners employs every partner at High Bridge Consulting as a lobbyist.

Last week, in one of its final moves during an hours-long session before a five-month hiatus, the Ohio House passed HB-173, which exempted submetering companies from pesky consumer protections.

But Dittoe’s conflicts only deepen when the calendar turns to election season.

For twenty years, a highly lucrative pattern has repeated itself: Dittoe commands immense private consulting fees from legislative campaigns across the state, then transitions right back into institutional government roles that control the legislative fate of the lawmakers whose campaigns padded his private business accounts.

Who does the machine serve?

Dittoe’s two-decade career reveals a troubling double standard in Columbus politics.

He enjoys ironclad job security through major statehouse scandals and draws massive simultaneous payouts through a never-ending revolving door into public and private entities alike.

As lawmakers continue to preach fiscal responsibility and conservative values to the public, grassroots activists and Ohio taxpayers are left wondering: Why is an elite insider permitted to run the gatekeeping operations of the Ohio House and collect a near-six-figure government salary while simultaneously stuffing his pockets with cash from the campaign trail?

The Rooster will have more on Mike Dittoe in the coming days.

But if you have something we should know about him… You can submit that information through the Dirt Box.

Those WMDs. One city might have cracked the housing crisis… When the heat steals your smile… Why Alexi Lalas sucks… Brutal oppression and beautiful humanity exist in every grocery store… Deadlocked wars: How major partners misread the regions they attacked.

Last week, we learned former Ohio governor John “No. 1 Asshole” Kasich signed a 40-year sales tax abatement with the three biggest data center conglomerates: Amazon, Google and Meta.

Those secretive agreements that caught the current State Legislature by surprise will cost Ohio tens of billions of dollars.

The question becomes, which bureaucrats did the dirty work? Because it almost assuredly wasn’t Kasich in the mud.

One anonymous tipster pointed the finger at former Kasich Policy Director Merle Madrid, who now, coincidentally, works for Amazon after a multi-year stop with the Secretary of State’s office.

But Madrid is one of those guys who nobody says a bad word about, a rarity in Ohio politics. And I’m not saying that because we shared a couple of beers at the Bier Stube once upon a time.

In a conversation late last week, Madrid said he didn’t know what a “data center” was until the early 2020s. I believe him.

However, he did mention that the data center deal was unknown to him, even as a senior staff to Kasich.

That would seemingly implicate JobsOhio, the liquor-sales-slush-fund that Kasich ordained to sign shadowy, unaccountable deals with businesses throughout the state.

But there is another longtime Kasich aide, who, coincidentally, is now the senior advisor to the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign: Jai Chabria.

Here’s how Chabria self-flagellates himself while describing his role as “Senior Advisor to the Governor,” which he held from 2011 to 21016:

While he works on a number of issues which are important to Ohio’s future, Chabria has a concentration on economic development and job creation. Additionally, he has taken the lead on formulating Ohio’s gaming policies in a rapidly changing environment.

While touting his next job as a project manager at Mercury, a public relations firm, Chabria touted his role in creating the liquor slush fund that also serves as a sinecure syndicate for the politically connected:

He also focused on job creation for the state, playing a key role in the creation of JobsOhio, Ohio’s cutting edge private economic development entity.

Chabria and Kasich go back decades, with Chabria serving as a personal aide to Kasich while the duo worked at Lehmann Brothers. Their tenures overlap perfectly from Jan. 2001 to Sept. 2008.

As does their next stop at Barclays Capital, which hilariously only lasted two months, from Sept. 2008 to Oct. 2008.

With the decades-long relationship, the involvement in JobsOhio, and the focus on economic development, it’s hard to believe that Chabria was unaware his boss was selling the farm for pennies to Amazon, Google and Meta.

Chabria is the anti-Madrid, in that many Republicans have negative things to say about him. (Know something? Say something!)

Chabria, like many Ohio Republicans, followed Kasich off a cliff with his dead-end presidential campaign. If only that had been the last we heard from them.

Kasich now gets to actively defraud MSNow audiences, pretending to be the last sane Republican in America.

Almost as impressive, Chabria now advises Ramaswamy, the guy who pitches himself as a new era of leadership despite maintaining Kasich’s chief advisor, the endorsement of the current Republican governor, and the party that has unilaterally controlled Ohio for the past 15 years.

Kasich has ignored multiple requests from legacy media to defend the merits of the deal his administration signed.

Ramaswamy should be asked about his chief advisor’s role in the corrupt backroom deal. But as The Rooster reported last week, Ramaswamy didn’t cover himself in morning dew on the campaign trail throughout May.

Over the weekend, he got popped at Legoland in Carlsbad, California—likely on his way to the United States Men’s National Team game in Los Angeles.

Ramaswamy refuses to gaggle with credentialed Ohio political media, due in large part to his uncanny ability to say something out of touch or dumb every time he speaks off script.

Thus far, the Republican standard-bearer has been able to avoid saying whether the 40-year abatement deal is good or bad for Ohio, let alone what role his top advisor most likely had in crafting it.

It’s a sad state of affairs, to say the least.

Tony George eats shit on planned data center in Slavic Village

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The FBI raided the Cleveland offices of the pro-democracy organization Ohio Organizing Collaborative on Thursday.

Carol Leonnig, Will McDuffie, Alex Tabet and Laura Barrón-López of MSNow broke the story.

The Rooster can also confirm that two Columbus-based organizers received a “knock and talk” from the FBI on Thursday, though one source described the agent as someone who was “bored” and “clearly didn’t want to be there.”

This is a blatant attempt to terrorize organizers and chill voter turnout in a city where Democrats need robust turnout to win statewide.

This so-called “raid” came hours after the Republican-dominated State Legislature went on break for five months, and days after famed pollster Charlie Cook reported that a Fox News poll showing Senator Jon Husted trailing Sherrod Brown by eight points was “not an outlier.”

Ideally, this deeply un-American activity would backfire on the Trump Administration. But a majority of Republican voters won’t hear about it thanks to their media consumption habits, and a large portion will agree with it.

Vivek Ramaswamy and Ohio Republican leadership won’t speak out against it in any meaningful manner.

We saw how the dismantling of ACORN played out, which never should have happened in the first place. This intimidation raid attempts to repeat that dastardly feat.

These are not the actions of a political party feeling confident heading into November. These are the actions of a video game boss, low on health, emptying its arsenal in a last-ditch effort to stay alive.

Voting isn’t a silver bullet. We wouldn’t be in this position if it were. But it’s imperative that you talk to your non-political friends about voting in November.

Subscribe to the Patriot Wire today!

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This week in Ohio Man…

Sex offenders cannot live within 1,000 feet of a school in Ohio, which is about 1/5 of a mile. But there is no such restriction (or mandated mailings to neighbors) for convicted plotters of mass shootings.

And now, an Ohio man, Tres Grenco, has made national news by moving within blocks of Ohio State’s campus after planning a mass shooting at a sorority.

From Corky Siemaskzo of NBC News:

An Ohio man and self-described “incel” who was convicted of plotting a sorority mass shooting now lives two blocks from one of his potential targets — the Ohio State University campus.

[…]

“We support the DOJ motion,” an OSU spokesperson said Wednesday. “Student safety is our top priority.”

In its motion, the Justice Department requested that additional conditions be added to Genco’s supervised release. They would include requiring Genco to reside “more than 2 miles from any Ohio university or college and that his residence location be pre-approved by the probation office.”

I’ll give his parents this much: “Tres Grenco” is definitely the name of an incel who got caught planning a mass shooting of a sorority, and then moved blocks away from one of the largest campus universities in the world.

I probably could have seen the writing on the wall for Mr. Grenco in high school, where he was almost assuredly radicalized by Big Tech algorithms into thinking his problems with women started with their inherent evilness and not him being a socially stunted creepazoid.

This week in The Rooster…

It’s been another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, where I’m starting to get back into the groove after last week’s unfair arrest at the Ohio Statehouse.

Here’s what you missed as a freeloading hog in the parking lot. You can rectify that problem by helping sustain the newsletter that Ohio’s corrupt political class hates almost as much as they love to read:

🐓 Subscribe to The Rooster! 🐓

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• Data centers are a generational Democratic opportunity in rural Ohio. Data centers offer a window into the main evils of 21st-century politics. Dr. Amy Acton would be wise to reverse course on them.

• John Kasich can’t keep getting away with it. The former governor gave away the farm in the dead of night, with a 40-year data center tax abatement for Google, Meta and Amazon.

• The junta can’t hurt us until November. The Republican-dominated Statehouse hits the bricks for five months, which is good news for any Ohioan who makes less than $250,000 a year.

• The Rooster’s June Mailbag. Answering the readership’s burning questions about Amtrak, data centers, the best sandwich in Columbus, and more.

We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. The earthquake that will devastate California… Young, ambitious and out of work… Inside the White House freakout about the Epstein Files… In the OALC Church, child sexual abuse has gone unchecked for generations… Was Ray Howell responsible for his crimes?

Welcome to the June Mailbag, the monthly installment of answering the readership’s most burning questions.

As always, some questions have been lightly edited for grammar, syntax and clarity.

Questions come in bold with my responses in standard text.

Why do you not go after any of the staff?

Staff aren’t civilians. But it depends on which staff you refer.

I’ve gone after staff before—like that time Frank LaRose fired his longtime spokesperson, Rob Nichols, after The Rooster exposed his anti-Trump sentiment on a burner Twitter account.

But generally speaking, the Statehouse is filled with young adults fresh out of college, not making a livable wage and being treated like human furniture by their bosses.

The threshold is higher with staff. But if you know something nefarious, the Dirt Box is always open for that information.

If you could only get one win, either Acton or Brown, who would you choose?

This question is unfair! And I don’t like it.

But it all depends on whether Democrats retake the United States Senate. To do that, Sherrod Brown must defeat Senator Jon Husted, who has an embalmed gerbil where his brain is supposed to be.

Donald Trump is a unique and malignant force in America. Retaking the Senate wouldn’t solve every problem with his administration of clowns, but it would serve as a massive check on his agenda.

But please note that I’m making this choice with tears streaming down my face, which is often mistaken for famous actor Brad Pitt. Electing Vivek Ramaswamy as governor would be nothing short of a disaster for Ohio.

Surprised no data center deal with all the hullabaloo, any details on why things fell apart at the last minute?

Anna Staver of cleveland.com reports that former governor John “No. 1 Asshole” Kasich secretly signed a 40-year deal exempting data center conglomerates from sales tax, which threw a wrench into the last 24 hours of negotiation.

My understanding is that it was House Republicans, not Senate Republicans, that killed the deal. House Republicans couldn’t break 48 votes. They could probably have gotten three Democrats on board because of a couple of good things in an otherwise tepid bill, but they don’t move bills without 50 Republicans.

And frankly, we thank them! The data center issue won’t be going away any time soon, especially with PJM set to raise electrical rates before the election.

DJ, even as a Republican, I can appreciate your work and how you hold everyone accountable. What I don’t understand is your view on communism or making Maoist t-shirts. Could you explain why so many millennials think being a communist is cool when Mao is directly responsible for over 50 million deaths?

I appreciate the kind words and value my non-insignificant Republican readership, which I think stems from my not being a partisan hack.

We didn’t grow up during the Cold War, so communism wasn’t drilled into us as a boogeyman by government and pop culture.

The root of all evils—the exploding wealth inequality which only seems to benefit the worst people alive—happened under capitalism.

I don’t know if I have any Millennial friends who would describe communism as “cool.” The concept of social democracy, as expoused by the likes of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is a different matter, though a social democrat is well within the political mainstream of every other country in the world not burdened by a two-party system.

As for the shirt… my friend sent it to me as a joke after my arrest. Say what you want about the communists, but it’s a cool aesthetic, which led me to commission the Chairman Rooster shirt on sale now.

I ordered a shirt from Supporter Supply. What does the text read on my Chairman Rooster shirt?

“Best Dick Under the Sky,” as translated by my friend’s Chinese wife. As explained by him:

Lao Er (老二） is colloquial Chinese slang for dick. But is also used as homie in some contexts.

Tian Xia Di Yi (天下第一) is the most poetic way to say the best under the son.

But any Chinese four letter phrase that uses a numeric structure like “something one, something else two” is haiku level reverence. So number one (第一）

And dick (老二) is a common taunt on the court after you get shook.

But throwing dick on the end of a poetic phrase for best under the sun is top notch poetic vulgarity. So it works on about a thousand levels.

The more you know!

I wish we had someone like you in Cincinnati. Lots of tail-wags-dog sports arena subsidy bullshit.

It’s a common problem! But Cleveland and Cincinnati would be ripe for a similar business model. What I do can be replicated easily with dedication.

What are the odds that the Ohio Legislature will do a “North Carolina” on Dr. Acton if she wins the Gubernatorial election?

You can take that to the bank.

He would never admit it in public, but I believe Speaker Matt Huffman would prefer Dr. Acton to win in November, even if he loses his supermajority in the chamber.

He would become the most powerful Republican in Ohio, which is what he’s addicted to. And he could unite his caucus around Acton and consolidate more power in the legislature.

What is the best sandwich you’ve had in the Columbus metro area?

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The Friday dispatch will be the June mailbag.

Please submit any questions—not pertaining to my arrest and ongoing criminal case, of course—through the Jotform.

Feel free to sign your question if you’d like credit in the dispatch.

An eclectic mix …

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There’s a famous and correct tweet that if you assume that demon Ronald Reagan is the cause of any bad thing you encounter in America, you’ll be right way more often than wrong.

Replacing Reagan with former governor John “No. 1 Asshole” Kasich and “Ohio” with America maintains the veracity of the tweet, albeit on a smaller scale.

We got another example, as if one were needed, from Anna Staver of cleveland.com on Tuesday:

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio lawmakers are trying to reduce a controversial tax break for data centers, but contracts signed during the Kasich administration leave the state’s largest tech companies largely untouched.

Amazon, Meta and Google all signed statewide agreements between 2014 and 2018 that granted 100% sales tax exemptions for up to 40 years on any facility built in Ohio if the companies met certain investment targets.

[…]

Huffman said he, too, was surprised by the scope of the agreements.

“I don’t think the Department of Development should be signing 30-year contracts without the legislature knowing about it,” he said.

Speaker Matt Huffman’s has dedicated his entire political career to rewarding corporations at the expense of working people, so it’s no surprise he views Kasich’s chief sin as being that he kept the State Legislature in the dark about a 30-year contract that will siphon billions of dollars from schools and other public works.

A forecasting chart obtained by cleveland.com said the tax breaks would cost Ohio $600 million annually (or $2.3 billion since inception), though a footnote warned that the numbers could be “significantly higher” given the “uncapped” nature of the exemptions.

The forecasting chart also doesn’t include the other costs to the environment and the electrical grid.

This is why a well-connected State Representative told The Rooster on May 28 that Governor Mike DeWine's pausing sales tax breaks for data centers would be “functionally meaningless.” It’s also why any movement from the Statehouse junta later today on “tax incentives” will also be functionally meaningless.

The No. 1 Asshole sold us out in the dead of night. But hey, at least that creepy thong magnate Leslie Wexner, whom Kasich once tapped to “improve” Ohio’s image, made a couple more billion dollars in the speculative bubble of artificial intelligence.

From Jemima McEvoy of Forbes in July 2025:

Instead, the fashion mogul has more than doubled his fortune thanks in large part to some savvy bets in a different industry: technology. Over just the past three months, the mogul’s net worth–which includes assets held in his children’s and wife Abigail’s names–has soared to $10.1 billion from $7.9 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates.

The biggest driver of this increase: a 4% stake in CoreWeave, one of the buzziest artificial intelligence companies around. On Monday, CoreWeave announced it is buying crypto miner Core Scientific in a roughly $9 billion all-stock deal. Coreweave’s market capitalization has almost tripled since its March IPO to nearly $73 billion today, and Wexner’s stake is now worth $2.8 billion.

Sure, it’s true that CoreWeave didn’t receive any tax breaks for its Cleveland data center under the deal Kasich signed. But in April, CoreWeave expanded its deal with Meta from $14 to $21 billion.

You don’t need to be a political pervert like me to understand how this issue condemns the Republican junta on data centers, the most salient political issue of our times.

It’s the type of scandal that Dr. Amy Acton could center an entire media blitz around, if that were something she were interested in doing. But unfortunately, as The Rooster reported in April, she’s not shown an interest in bludgeoning the Republicans on Wexner or data centers, let alone an issue that ties them together.

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The Rooster is still passing the hat for the Freedom Defense Fund for legal fees attached to last week’s arrest for telecommunications harassment constitutionally protected free speech.

We should be where we need to be to litigate the matter at hand after today’s final push. Sharing the link (www.rooster.fund) with your network goes just as far as a donation:

DONATE TO DEFEND FREEDOM

DONATE TO DEFEND FREEDOM

DONATE TO DEFEND FREEDOM

You can also defend freedom by purchasing a “NEVER SURRENDER” shirt or by purchasing a subscription to help sustain the depravity-based newsletter that Ohio’s political class loves to hate almost as much as read.

Thank you to everyone who has donated. You will have played an outsized role in the victories to come.

Democrats will commit political malpractice if they don’t shape up on data centers

The Democratic Party has a problem in rural Ohio.

It’s not a national problem, not unique to the state party, despite Ohio’s demographics, the party’s history of ineptitude, or the large swaths of information deserts filled by Fox News and other oligarch-funded propaganda organs.

But Ohio Democrats haven’t proven they can win statewide without robust turnout in Cleveland. And barring an unexpected reversal of depressing trends in that arena, chipping away at the rural margins becomes that much more important.

The days of winning rural counties are probably over for Ohio Democrats.

This cycle, however, offers the greatest opportunity of my lifetime to make inroads into rural Ohio.

The Republican Party is tied to an unpopular president whose incompetence has led to runaway inflation (the issue he was ostensibly re-elected to fix) and America’s third disastrous foreign war in nearly 30 years.

Though Ohio voted for Donald Trump three times, he’s not on the ballot in November. And despite all his flaws, nobody makes the hogs stomp the floor harder than President Business Deals.

Worse for Ohio Republicans, their party coronated the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy, whose favorability is still underwater despite spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns.

This would be a troublesome scenario for the Republicans in any election. But Ohio is also ground zero for corporate colonization. Residents from Piqua to Grove City organizing against data centers coming to their neighborhood.

From Gallup in May:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.

Heatmap also found the same margin opposing data centers, noting a decisive swing that has occurred in the past nine months:

When Heatmap first asked Americans how they would feel about a nearby data center project last September, Americans were evenly split: 43% said they would support it, 42% were opposed, and 15% said they weren’t sure.

[…]

Now, 55% of Americans — an absolute majority — “strongly” oppose a data center project built near where they live, and an additional 16% are “somewhat” opposed. Only 21% of Americans would support a new nearby data center. The public has swung 49 points against data centers in just nine months, underscoring the heightened political salience of the facilities and the AI industry that they embody.

Last week, Fox News released a poll that showed opposition to data centers cut across party lines.

By more than 2-to-1, Buckeye voters oppose having an AI data center built in their area (32% favor, 65% oppose). That opposition is across the political spectrum, as majorities of Democrats (72%), independents (64%), and Republicans (59%) are against building data centers.

Opposing data centers is good politics by any measure.

Ramaswamy cannot speak meaningfully against data centers; he is a prostitute, albeit a high-class one, for Big Tech and the “Silicon Heartland” pipe dream. He is also heavily invested in the same companies colonizing Ohio with environment-ravaging, energy-sucking behemoths that don’t pay any meaningful taxes.

His party is the one that allowed the problem to fester in the first place.

And it’s all little more than the latest scam by Big Tech, as laid bare by my friend Carl Setzer of the MidwesTurn podcast, moments after he taped my arrest at the Statehouse last Monday.

It’s testimony worth watching in full, if you can spare 510 seconds in your day:

Opposing data centers allows Democrats to stand tall against the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other lesser-known villains—along with private equity.

It’s the cross-through on everything from wealth inequality, to corporate greed, to unchecked oligarchs trying to circumvent every level of our government and install themselves as the permanent ruling class.

Dr. Amy Acton’s campaign, in typical consultant fashion, seems intent on triangulating the issue, given her support from the building trades. She’s said she will “take steps to ensure” data centers will “pay their own costs,” without clarifying how she will do that while facing healthy Republican majorities in both legislative chambers at best.

As The Rooster explained in April, the building trades—God bless them—haven’t been reliable coalition partners. The Allied Construction Trades endorsed Ramaswamy, and even the ones that have endorsed Acton can’t deliver most of their members to the ballot box for Democrats.

The trades look at data centers like liquid gold. But the dirty secret is that they import thousands of workers from outside Ohio to plug the labor gap. And we love that for our out-of-state tradesmen.

But here in Ohio, but we’re in the fourth quarter, down 10, and the Republicans seem intent on electing a billionaire con artist who’s only running for governor as a profit-seeking venture.

It’s a fool’s try to find a third rail on this issue in this era.

Dr. Acton should take a page from Setzer’s book and speak with easy-to-understand moral clarity on an issue that defines the golden epoch of scamming in which we live.

Anything short of a full moratorium will squander a generational opportunity at making inroads among rural voters.

Dr. Acton is currently tied with Ramaswamy, one of the most repulsive and unqualified figures to ever stumble out of Republican Central Casting in recent memory.

She will come to rue her deference to trade unions on a salient issue if she loses within the margin of error.

There’s still time to change course. But she should start now, before Ramaswamy’s team unleashes millions of dollars on advertising campaigns painting her as a drunken, pill-addicted philanderer who drank goblets of children’s blood with Dr. Fauci.

What the hell was the notorious conman doing last month, other than getting rejected from the New York Knicks security zone?

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Thanks to the resounding support of the Patriots Caucus, we are tasking Cleveland-based law firm Berkman Gordon Murray & DeVan with litigating the so-called telecommunications harassment charge from Lake County.

Any future media inquiries can be sent to my counsel, Bill Livingston.

However, the fight is far from over, because there will be no plea deal, no apology, and no surrender.

On the advice of a trusted advisor, I am consolidating future fundraising efforts for the Freedom Defense Fund through GoFundMe.

DONATE TO THE DEFENSE FUND

DONATE TO THE DEFENSE FUND

This will allow me to solicit funding from sources that don’t want their names associated with their patronage, for reasons known only to them and God.

If you have already donated, sharing the GoFundMe link on Social media goes a long way, too.

You can also support the struggle by subscribing to the award-winning newsletter for the full experience.

We’re also selling “NEVER SURRENDER” shirts through our friends at the Columbus-based Supporter Supply Company. A more Chinese design will be available in the coming days.

Any excess funds at the end of this struggle will be donated to a non-partisan organization in support of free speech.

Actually, we already have enough Republicans in state government

My biggest piece of unsolicited advice for Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton is to come out swinging against data centers.

All politics is local.

There is no bigger issue animating voters from Piqua to Grove City than the specter of some corporation colonizing their neighborhood in the dead of night with energy-sucking monstrosities that don’t pay taxes and only employ a handful of tech gremlins when operational.

Seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their neighborhood, and the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy is little more than a high-class prostitute for Big Tech and the hilarious pipe dream that is “the Silicon Heartland.”

Dr. Acton won’t be taking that advice anytime soon, though there’s still time to change course before the normies start caring about this election after Labor Day. That’s due to her support from the building trades, who are addicted to the paychecks of building these behemoths while also failing to deliver a sizable majority of their members to the ballot box.

Maybe her advisors will reach the Promised Land of finding a third rail on the issue, but I remain skeptical. Nobody wants data centers in their neighborhoods, no matter how many internet-connected devices they have at home.

But there is another nefarious centrist thought obviously polluting the higher echelons of her campaign advisory team: That she should appoint multiple Republicans to her gubernatorial cabinet.

I understand the concept that you go to war with the electorate that you have, not the one you want.

I also understand that Dr. Acton would be foolish to fire every competent bureaucrat in state government for the high crime of being a stone-cold Republican.

But she has nothing to gain and everything to lose by adding Republicans to her cabinet when she’s campaigning against all the problems their party has caused through unilateral rule over the past 15 years.

Then-Vice President Kamala Harris tried a similar gambit with the daughter of a blood-soaked Republican war criminal in 2024. Her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, explained that campaigning with Liz Cheney gave Republicans a “permission structure” to vote for a Democratic ticket.

I’m sure that, in the beautiful mind of the Democratic consulting class, campaigning with a Republican was a more viable electoral strategy than calling J.D. Vance a stilted, coach-fucking pervert.

But it’s not like Harris became the first female president in American history.

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Last Friday, The Rooster mentioned in the Patriots Caucus chat that settlement negotiations between survivors of Dr. Richard Strauss and Ohio State were in the endgame.

Yesterday, NBC4 and 10TV reported a $100 million settlement with 279 of 280 survivors. Ohio State’s Board of Trustees approved the settlement hours later, with federal judge Michael Watson

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As you may have heard, a handful of State Troopers arrested me at the Statehouse on a warrant out of Lake County on Monday afternoon.

I spent 23 hours at the new Franklin County Corrections Facility on Fisher Road, charged with a first-degree misdemeanor of telecommunications harassment. While the facility is fairly new, it is by no means nice, or clean.

I was eventually released with a bag of snacks and a prepaid debit card for $5, which can’t be used to directly purchase a ride on a COTA bus, even if a route did run on Fisher Road. It was yet another reminder of the stranglehold car culture maintains on Columbus.

I was treated with professionalism by State Highway Patrol and corrections officers throughout the saga. A saga which, sadly, would have transpired even longer if I were the drug-addicted bum living underneath a bridge that some of my powerful enemies think I am.

Much more of this story will be revealed in time. Until then, here’s the official statement from Rooster Worldwide:

I originally planned to publish a longer dispatch as usual on Wednesday, but that notion seemed to be the product of adrenaline after my release.

As of this writing, at roughly 9:23 p.m. ET Tuesday night, I am physically and mentally exhausted. Rather than force my sleep-deprived brain to further contemplate the horrors, I am instead going to enjoy the comfort and serenity afforded by Hilltop Husband’s bed.

The Rooster will resume its normal publication schedule on Thursday at 4:33 a.m. with the boots-on-the-ground content its readers have come to love and know.

In the meantime, we’re passing the hat for the Freedom Defense Fund, because these lawyers won’t be compensated by gazing upon my movie-star good looks.

If you feel inclined to assist in this noble quest, you can donate through:

• Venmo

• PayPal

Or, for the freeloading hogs in the parking lot, you can purchase a subscription for a front-row seat to the many battles to come.

That powerful cabals conspire against The Rooster is perhaps the most significant endorsement of the work.

THOSE WMDs. Online trolls harassed her six-year-old; it was only the start… My students can’t read… A bracing and eccentric epic of espionage and hippos… The FDA’s gamble on America’s drugs… Nuclear fatality at Wood River Junction.

Last Thursday evening, the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy melted on Elon Musk’s “X” platform while denying referring numerous times to an unspecified “leftist blogger with mental health issues” and a sourced report about him getting stonewalled by New York Knicks security after Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Ramaswamy said he posted the piss-baby novel despite his political team's wishes.

Likely because his team of vipers is at least smart enough to understand the age-old political adage that, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” But also because Ramaswamy, just months ago, went crying to the Wall Street Journal to smarmily declare his exit from social media to protect his own mental health.

He could have accomplished the same goal by declaring the story “100% false” and leaving it at that.

But Ramaswamy couldn’t help himself by also fabricating his “decades-long” Cavs fandom while also lobbying a confession cloaked in an allegation that ultimately betrayed his understanding of how right-wing media operates.

The most recent example being the Ramaswamy campaign platforming debunked propagandist Luke Rosiak and his fictitious reporting about “$6 billion in Medicaid fraud.”

This is the latest example in a pattern of behavior by Ramaswamy that begins with his frequent citation of Cincinnati as his “hometown,” when, in reality, he lived in the affluent village of Evendale and only attended Cincinnati’s prestigious private Catholic academy, St. Xavier.

But it’s most exemplified by Ramaswamy’s tall tales about sports that he’s spun throughout the past six years in the public eye. Starting with his high school tennis career.

There’s no proof Ramaswamy was a “nationally ranked” high school tennis player

There is no doubt that Ramaswamy was a talented high school tennis player at St. Xavier High School.

In 2020, Sheelah Kolhatkar of The New Yorker described Ramaswamy as a former “nationally ranked” high school tennis player in a soft profile about the author of Woke Inc.

In 2023, Benjamin Hart of The Intelligencer, the digital wing of The New Yorker, described Ramaswamy as a former “nationally ranked junior tennis player” in an article that (rightfully) described him as the best tennis player in a GOP presidential primary that included physical specimens like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

But there is a massive gap between “talented high school player” and one that’s “nationally ranked.” It’s hard to envision where The New Yorker got that claim other than Ramaswamy himself, because there is zero evidence that he was nationally ranked throughout his high school career.

Ramaswamy wasn’t included in the 16-player high school state championship tournament his junior year in 2002, thanks to a drubbing from Brad Goleski of Spingboro:

In his senior year, Ramaswamy wasn’t even viewed by his coach as the best or second-best singles player on his team to start the season:

Ramaswamy failed to make the 16-player championship tournament in his senior year, with the crown ultimately going to Eric Thomas of Cincinnati Walnut Hills.

And again, it’s clear Ramaswamy had some talent. But the record shows he was never even the best player on his team, let alone someone who would have been “nationally ranked” by any reputable organization.

Ramaswamy wouldn’t be the first, nor the last, Cincinnati-area high school graduate to hilariously exaggerate their achievements in high school athletics.

But the habit of embellishing his love and talent for sports has continued on the campaign trail—despite another prolific social media meltdown about American culture venerating “the jock” over “the valevictorian” (read: himself) on Dec. 26, 2004.

Self-declared “Cincinnati Guy” morphs into a Buckeyes fan to predictable results

On Aug. 5, 2023, The Rooster duped Ramaswamy using the pretext of meeting the Ohio State football team into holding a one-man stump speech in a sweltering parking lot outside Raisin’ Canes parking lot on the pretext.

It was made possible thanks to a five-star general in the Patriots Caucus texting Ramaswamy as head football coach Ryan Day months earlier:

It showed not only that Ramaswamy could be bought with a single compliment, but that he had no passing familiarity with Buckeye football.

He later confirmed that in our impromptu interview, declaring himself a “Cincinnati guy” when responding in the negative about any favorite memories from watching the Buckeyes in his youth:

In the first Ohio State football season as a Republican gubernatorial candidate, Ramaswamy appeared not once but twice at the Horseshoe wearing bootleg Buckeye jerseys.

It would probably be the most “Ohio Man” thing Ramaswamy had ever done, if he were not an alleged billionaire who was apparently too cheap to spring for officially licensed gear from the university he was too good to attend as a student.

In Ramaswamy’s defense, we know he at least tailgated once at Harvard, appearing in a Boston Globe article about students sidestepping a university ban on alcohol at football games:

It’s unclear if Ramaswamy meant he smuggled alcohol into the tailgate or performed Eminem and Libertarian raps under his stage name “Da Vek.”

The “decades” of Cavs fanship is Ramaswamy’s latest con

Which brings us to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Again, Ramaswamy could have accomplished his goals by saying, “Not true.” But in typical fashion, he added an unnecessary rhetorical flourish that shows he’s lying through his teeth.

In the third and fourth paragraphs of his meltdown, Ramaswamy claimed to be a Cavs fan who had been going to “their games for decades.”

He didn’t deny The Rooster’s reporting that he paid roughly $60K for his two courtside seats, but said that he and his wife, Apoorva Ramaswamy, watched the entire second half “dejected,” with “faces in their hands” before peacing out at the final whistle.

But when did Ramaswamy attend Cavs games? As a “Cincinnati guy” in his youth? When he attended Yale and Harvard? Or when he lived in New York with the area code still attached to his phone?

Because we know Ramaswamy moved back to Ohio in 2020 to pursue a political career. But there is no evidence that he attended any Cavaliers game until his gubernatorial campaign.

He has, however, repeatedly used the NBA as a prop in his nonsensical culture war:

Please note that’s Ramaswamy showcasing his acerbic wit by recycling the same point four times for more than a year, but he invoked DEI ruining the NBA much more than that.

Coincidentally, there is evidence that Ramaswamy attended an NBA game before his gubernatorial campaign.

On May 21, 2023, Ramaswamy attended Game 3 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, a blowout win for the Miami Heat over the… Boston Celtics… in Florida.

Lamenting that the “Celtics didn’t show up tonight,” while noting the “series isn’t over yet,” would indicate that Ramaswamy was cheering for the Celtics, a team that he would have loathed if he spent the last “decades” cheering for the Cavaliers.

But it would track with Ramaswamy spending the prime of his life at Harvard and Yale.

And yet, neither Ramaswamy nor Apoorva appears “crestfallen” over the loss. They appear to be a rich couple enjoying a rare night out on the town, with the outcome of the game having little effect on their psyche.

In my opinion, that’s exactly what happened last Monday night. Ramaswamy and his wife enjoyed a rare night out together, even stopping by the gift shop to acquire Cavs-branded shirts to let everyone know which team they were ostensibly cheering for.

Sadly for him, that’s not how Ramaswamy framed it, going so far as to paint them as a catatonic couple who could do little more than evacuate the arena at the final whistle despite the game being decided by halftime.

The final lie is that he was with “state-provided security” the entire time.

It’s a unique choice of words. The Ohio State Highway Patrol is currently protecting Dr. Amy Acton at the command of Governor Mike DeWine.

Ramaswamy didn’t say the Ohio State Highway Patrol, though. While it’s possible they were with him that night, they were not with him when he was denied outside the Knicks security area.

According to the private security source who denied Ramaswamy, there is a “1000%” chance that he was with private security, as was his wife, when he attempted to stroll into the Knicks celebrations.

Introducing the Conman Cavaliers Caniac Challenge

Do YOU have proof of Vivek Ramaswamy attending a Cleveland Cavaliers game before 2023?

The Rooster would love to see it, and we’ll provide you with a $20 Raisin’ Canes gift card or the equivalent monetary value if you’re vegetarian or vegan like Ramaswamy.

Please email rooster@substack.com with any proof and claim your prize!

THOSE WMDs. The politics of abanonment and the future of district representation in Columbus… Of course we’re fighting on the lawn… Love in a fallen city: Shanghai’s marriage market… The internet has become too American to trust… Boarding China’s last bus… The Big Little Penis Panic.

Laura Bischoff, the venerable political reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, went to war for the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy earlier today.

Earlier this week, The Rooster reported on Ramaswamy trying to bum-rush the New York Knicks. It relied on a single trusted source who had provided verified intelligence in the past and had first-hand knowledge of the encounter.

Given that my credibility has been impugned by a reporter for whom I’ve held nothing but respect for over a decade, here’s a portion of the conversation, with the original time stamp from Monday night:

Bischoff, whom I’ve described as “the GOAT” numerous times in the past, did not discuss the sourcing or even link to the report, leaving readers to judge its veracity.

Instead, she dropped this oblique line:

Byrnes reported other unproven allegations about Ramaswamy in the recent past.

This is in reference to an April 27 dispatch about infidelity rumors swirling around Ramaswamy’s campaign and his former employee.

The word “rumors” was intentionally included because The Rooster is dedicated to providing hard news and insight into insider gossip not available to the average citizen.

This style of coverage invites certain criticism and naysayers, and we accept that as the cost of doing business.

But it’s unfair to categorize The Rooster with that unspecified generality when this is the same publication that nuked Ramaswamy’s selection of Josh Mandel as a running mate and also liquidated the billionaire’s private security team in the last five months alone.

For Bischoff to quote Ramaswamy’s pissbaby novel at length in an attempt to discredit my reporting is a perfect example of why The Dispatch is on the way out and The Rooster is on the ascendancy.

It’s the same playbook the corporate press ran in Sept. 2025 against our report about Ohio State’s planned moment of silence for Charlie Kirk that public records later vindicated in spades… to radio silence among the same naysayers who lobbed the same tired criticisms.

Ramaswamy, like most politicians, is a living testament to the futility of fact-checking.

It defies belief that he would be treated as the authoritative final say on a story that obviously embarrasses him. As if there’s a reality in which Ramaswamy would have given kudos to The Rooster for gumshoe reporting.

Instead, Bischoff is reduced to stenography on a post where a storied liar like Ramaswamy laughably claimed to be a lifelong Cavaliers fan and used curious phrases like “state-sponsored security team” in place of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which currently protects Dr. Amy Acton.

The Dispatch obviously wants The Rooster dead. And that’s fine. We welcome the loathing.

But I would have at least thought they’d be better than using a social media meltdown in an attempt to discredit me, while offering no original reporting of their own.

I now know better.

The Rooster stands by its report and hopes to have more in the near future about Ramaswamy’s “state-sponsored security.”

In the meantime, we will continue cultivating an audience that knows the difference between hard news and gossip—no matter how many tears Ohio’s corrupt political class and their corporate cronies shed about our work.

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This week in Ohio Man…

The other day, while walking out of the corner store, I noticed a Bitcoin ATM… a petrifying sight to say the least in a neighborhood like the Hilltop.

For years, I have said that Bitcoin is little more than fake internet nerd currency preferred by pedophiles, drug dealers, money launderers, and other low-rent swindlers.

And this particular ATM was emblazoned with two signs declaring that any patron who arrived at the fake internet currency machine at the direction of “someone on the phone” was the victim of a scam and warning them not to proceed further.

But it would appear the scam artists are upping their game by impersonating sheriff deputies to spur their victims to the nearest Bitcoin ATM.

From the Logan County Sheriff’s office:

This male was wearing a Ohio "Deputy Sheriff" Patrol uniform representing himself as a member of law enforcement came into the Village of Timberlake on 05/19/2026 and added a team of individuals via telephone to aide in convincing a resident to withdraw $9,300 in cash and deposit it into a Bitcoin machines and hand over confirmation information to them.

The unidentified male advised the resident that he had a warrant for his arrest for failing to appear for jury duty.

Good time to remember that a sizable portion of the Ohio State Legislature wanted to invest public money into the fake internet nerd currency that saw its “value” tank over the past two years.

This week in The Rooster

It was a brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC despite the shortened work week, in large part thanks to the notorious conman being a clout-chasing nerd.

• From the Archives: The Origins of The Rooster. No original dispatch in observance of Memorial Day. But here’s a hit from 2023 tracing The Rooster’s origins to December 2001.

• Vivek Ramaswamy failed to bum-rush the Knicks’ championship celebration. This week’s most-read dispatch if you can believe that.

• On that auditor appointment. Columbus’ new auditor comes from a law firm that’s billed the city over $900K for bond work since 2019. A continuation of that relationship would open a web of conflict.

• The Cincinnati Enquirer’s All-Star Contributor calls your neighbors pedophiles. Cincinnati-based freelancer, Scott Templeton, debuts with a piece about the dangers of corporate media’s addiction to social media “engagement” at any cost.

We’ll do it again at the same time and place next week.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

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You can’t call a local business a breeding ground for pedophiles with no evidence and get it published in the Cincinnati Enquirer. But post it on the Enquirer’s “Greater Cincinnati Politics” Facebook group, and you’re in business.

For years, Darbi Boddy has treated the Enquirer’s Facebook group as her personal attack page. These aren’t comments buried in a thread; they’re top-level posts with the same prominence as anything the Enquirer posts itself.

Boddy was elected to the Lakota Local School Board (a large suburban district in Butler County, just north of Cincinnati) in 2021. What followed was less a political tenure than a sustained public meltdown.

Within months, she was censured by the board after posting a link to a porn site on her public Facebook page while railing against sexual content in schools. She was issued a trespassing notice for wandering into school buildings uninvited, where security cameras caught her photographing students without permission.

She compared a student suicide prevention program to “the Nazi Handbook.”

She accused the district superintendent of sexual misconduct with zero evidence, driving him to resign. And she harassed a fellow board member so relentlessly that he obtained a civil stalking protection order requiring her to stay 500 feet away from him at all times.

Unable to attend meetings because she literally could not be in the same room as a colleague she’d terrorized, she was removed from the board in March 2024. This is the person the Enquirer has decided deserves an unmoderated megaphone.

In April, Boddy posted a “Potential pedophile Alert!!” about a small, local coffee shop, Coterie Lounge & Cafe, describing it as “a breeding ground for potential pedophiles,” for the high crime of hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour.

She urged readers to “Tag every parent you know” and “Share this far and wide”. No evidence. No basis. Just potentially defamatory and dangerous accusations published under the Enquirer’s banner.

Potential pedophile Alert!!

Just saw this pop up in our neighborhood and I’m honestly sick to my stomach.

Coterie Lounge & Cafe is hosting a “Drag Queen Story Hour” for little kids on April 16th. Absolutely disgusting and it has NO business happening here…

If you search Boddy’s name on the Greater Cincinnati Politics page, it’s a cesspool of unfounded accusations and personal attacks.

In just the past month, she’s used the Enquirer’s platform to go after:

• Several Ohio school systems for “sexualizing our students,” which she ties, without evidence, to a few things, including suicide prevention programs.

• A Republican candidate for the Ohio House over her “obsessive focus on ‘mental health’ in public education…”

• A new superintendent in a local school system, who she claims “sees every kid through the lens of skin color instead of character, merit, or actual learning.”

• A local school district for “influencing children’s minds” by allowing a “Hate Has No Home Here” poster in a classroom.

Go back further and you see more of the same: targeting politicians, businesses, educators, and student groups.

She hasn’t stopped targeting Coterie.

In the weeks since, Boddy also targeted West Chester Township Trustee Ann Becker, whom she apparently blames for helping the coffee shop receive a SPARK Small Business Revitalization Grant.

Notice the “All-star Contributor” badge under Boddy’s name:

Coterie hosts Drag Queen shows for CHILDREN – and Ann Becker is rewarding them with YOUR taxpayer money!

Lovely. Nothing new for Ann Becker!

After all the exposure of the perverts in our community who support the sexualization and perversion of children through Drag Queen Story Hour, the West Chester trustees and administration are now publicly endorsing this disgusting behavior in their official newsletter…

This is not about one inflammatory activist. This is about a legacy media company knowingly amplifying defamatory accusations.

After all, you can’t blame a pigeon for crapping on your car; that’s what birds do. But while Boddy continues soiling the page with culture war outrage, we have to question why the Enquirer provides her with such a lovely perch.

On her own, Boddy’s platform has minuscule reach, with less than 500 followers to her Access Ohio by Darbi Boddy Facebook page.

But the Enquirer’s Facebook group has more than 25,000 members. Her frequent posts routinely get hundreds of reactions. Most of those reactions are negative, meeting her vitriol with vitriol, but it’s not hard to imagine the Enquirer’s social team becoming addicted to the type of engagement that her baseless, extremist posts bring.

When I reached out to Carl Weiser, the Enquirer editor who runs the page, to ask why they continue to allow content like the “Potential pedophile Alert!!” post, his response lacked substance:

He said they “allow a robust discussion” and that Boddy’s baseless post “didn’t violate any of the group’s rules.”

Thanks for joining the Greater Cincinnati Politics Facebook group and thanks for reaching out.

We have a list of specific rules that we require of participants - no personal attacks on other members, making sure the post is local for example - but beyond those we allow a robust discussion.

[Boddy’s] post didn’t violate any of the group’s rules.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

After Weiser’s non-response masquerading as a response, I escalated to Beryl Love, the Enquirer’s Executive Editor, and then to Gannett corporate, citing the company’s own Principles of Ethical Conduct, which commit its properties to “observe common standards of decency” and “consider the possible consequences of our actions.”

Neither Love nor Gannett responded.

So, a disgraced former school board member is using the Enquirer’s platform to accuse local businesses of harboring pedophiles, call community members perverts, and target elected officials for standing near a coffee shop. Not once. Not twice. There are dozens of posts like this.

The Enquirer’s editor says it doesn’t violate the rules. And neither the Executive Editor nor Gannett corporate will respond.

And Darbi Boddy has an All-Star contributor badge to show for it.

The Enquirer’s group rules, all nine of them, cover things like staying on topic and limiting posts to one per day. There’s nothing about accuracy. Nothing about defamation. Nothing about accusing your neighbors of sex crimes against children.

The Enquirer made its decision: accusing local businesses of grooming children is acceptable content on a platform carrying its name. And nobody at the paper is willing to do a thing about it.

THOSE WMDs. Stunning video shows body fall out of bottom of casket at funeral as horrified mourners scream… Dayton is covering its Flock cameras with trash bags… As data centers boom, Virginians breathe the exhaust of 10,000 diesel generators… Inside FAFSA fraud: How Kenyan cybercriminals siphoned millions of dollars from America’s Sh12 billion dollar loan system… The end of trans rights in the UK is the start of democratic collapse.

Last month, Columbus City Council appointed Jacquelin Lewis as the new city auditor to replace the venerable Megan Kilgore, who vacated her longtime post to co-found something called “a technology consulting firm.”

The council meeting ostensibly served as a…

Read more

The notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy celebrated “date night” in Cleveland on Monday night, watching the New York Knicks tombstone the hometown Cavaliers in Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Ramaswamy sat courtside with his wife, Ohio State doctor Apoorva Ramaswamy, in courtside seats that cost Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate at least $60,000 for the privilege.

To show his pride, he appeared to have purchased a still-creased, ill-fitting t-shirt from the gift store, which, in his defense, is better than he appeared at an Ohio State football tailgate wearing a bootleg jersey in 2025.

Spending 90% of Ohio’s median income for a front-row seat to watch “your team” get smoked by 37 points would make most sports fans catatonic for the next 72 hours.

For Ramaswamy, allegedly worth north of $2 billion, that’s only .00003 percent of his fortune. And he’s not much of a Cavs fan, either, as evidenced by his attempting to gladhand with villainous Knicks owner James Dolan and the victorious Knicks players after the game.

A private security source with direct knowledge of the incident told The Rooster that Ramaswamy attempted to breeze into the Knicks’ restricted area after the contest, declaring that he was “running for governor of Ohio and wanted to welcome everyone to Ohio.”

Ramaswamy’s efforts were instantly rebuffed, with a Knicks security officer telling him to leave as he “didn’t have access to the area.”

Visibly flustered, Ramaswamy slinked away with his much smaller private security guard in tow.

Ramaswamy already had probable cause to know that he didn’t have that kind of juice. Before the game, Ramaswamy attempted to park near Cavs ownership and players but was turned away by arena security.

The final blow came from an unexpected place when New York’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, mockingly reposted Ramaswamy’s date night declaration that the Cavs would be coming “all the way back” from a 3-0 deficit.

Read more

The Rooster is off today in observance of Memorial Day. We’ll resume the standard publishing schedule on Wed., May 27, at 4:33 a.m.

But don’t worry if you’re thirsty for #content. Here’s a classic from the archives about the origins of the brand name, originally published on Sept. 12, 2023.

Strangers on the street routinely approach me and say, “Sir, where did the name The Rooster come from?” It happened three times yesterday.

My usual response is that a rooster is a dumb barnyard animal that crows at all hours of the day—but will also defend its turf to the death.

However, new customers have recently swollen the ranks of The Patriots Caucus. And to mix it up, I thought I’d finally explain how this humble operation got its name.

It’s a story that starts when I was 16.

The world was a different place in 2002. I was a high school sophomore and considered Jack Black one of the funniest people alive. He had some skit I’ve since long forgotten the parameters about, but it had a part with him hiding in the bushes where he exclaimed, “You’ll never catch The Rooster!”

For whatever reason, my two best friends and I thought that was the height of comedy. We rewound it countless times and died laughing like the puerile juveniles we were.

A couple weeks later at school, I started a running bit where I would write ransom notes for pets and drop them in random lockers. The idea of people reading them utterly confounded was the type of thing that I found funny at 16. But I always signed the letters as The Rooster.

That winter, as my birthday approached, my parents were incessant about buying me a gift. Even then, I was one of the most humble people alive, and I rebuffed numerous attempts. But I finally broke down and said you know what? I want a domain name. I had been writing short stories about Marion Harding High School in my AOL Instant Messenger profile, and they were a hit with my classmates.

The name of that domain? The-rooster.com, a URL that you can use today.

The blog was a 16-year-old’s attempt at reproducing Maddox’s “Best Site in the World,” which, again, was the kind of internet content I found funny as a 16-year-old virgin. It was basically the common gripes you’d hear from any teenager about their high school, only with more typos, butchered grammar and misspellings than a normal dispatch I’d write today.

My life changed over Christmas break. While attending a basketball game, I was walking to the concession stand (probably to buy something healthy like Twizzlers and a Pepsi) when my high school principal stopped me.

“Hey, D.J.,” he said.

“Hello, Coach Mac, sir,” I said to the man who hadn’t coached in 20 years, but everyone still called him coach because we Marionaires love our monikers.

“When school is back in session, we’re going to have to talk about your website. What is it? The Rooster.”

I can still feel the frosty chill that went down my spine because I was your standard-issue middle-class nerd. My biggest crime in school had been stealing pencils from the elementary school office until the guilt got the better of me, and I returned them all while crying. I hadn’t been in trouble in my life.

But weeks later, I would learn that my dumb little blog—I don’t even know if “blog” was a word in 2002—that I wrote every night after school for my dumb little friends had traveled beyond my circle of comfort.

One article I wrote was entitled “Spanish with Miss Pannett,” and it was about how much I hated Spanish class with Miss Pannett. The principal told me she came to him in tears over the post. She would later fail me by one point on my final exam. My name, “Fidel,” was hereby banned from his classroom.

An article called “Fat Black Girls” also complained about fat Black girls in the hallways. In retrospect, the post was wildly racist and something I would kick the shit out of 16-year-old me if given the chance.

I also wrote short stories about my experiences at Harding High School. One, entitled “The Fall of a Warrior,” was about my friend blasting a special needs student in the face during a game of dodgeball. Looking back, I’m still unsure how my two gym teachers never got sued or lost their jobs.

One day, I quoted my friend about jizzing in a girl’s hair. Again, this is the type of thing 16-year-olds talk about at the lunch table like it’s something they’re actually doing.

The football coach incorrectly thought my friend “JHarry” was talking about his daughter. He tried to get the star middle linebacker, one of my good friends, to punch me in the nose. He later fired me from the gig of cutting football film every Saturday morning in exchange for cold, leftover pizza.

I spent more time in the principal’s office that year than I had in my entire career. It reached the point where teachers offended by my writing would call me to the office to air their grievances.

And again, the only thing shocking about the original Rooster is that a student was writing his deranged thoughts down for public consumption. I’m sure teachers have become enured to that in the age of social media.

The other problem was that my mom was on the school board, and the teachers were heading for contract negotiations. How could my mom negotiate in good faith when she lets her son personally insult them on the internet?

In retrospect, my antics were merely a cry for help. My parents were going through a divorce that I would only realize, years later, thanks to hours of therapy, how much it affected me at the time. But I had burned too many bridges by that point.

My career at Harding High School culminated in Biology class under a teacher we called “The Colonel.” He had never served in the military, and we used the name mockingly.

The Colonel always had a saying for kids who scrambled to complete their homework before the bell rang class into session. “Homework is for home.”

Well, The Colonel also had a nasty habit of not teaching through the end of class. On those days, he would expect us to work on our homework.

One day, he caught me doodling on my homework assignment and told me in no uncertain terms to get my ass in line.

“Homework is for home,” I said.

“D.J.,” he said, “If I come back around and you’re not doing your work, I’m sending you to the principal’s office.”

And that he did minutes later on a charge of “insubordination.” Years later, he would admit that he thought serving three days of in-school suspension (sitting in a concrete cellar and doing busywork throughout the day in silence) would “be good for me.” I carry a vendetta against him to this day.

I knew the game had changed when my mom picked me up after the vice principal called her and explained the situation.

“You can transfer to Pleasant if you want.” My mom and I hated Pleasant High School. I would rather die than attend there, but I somehow knew at the time that I would never see the inside of Harding again as a student.

I transferred to River Valley High School in rural Marion County. Naturally, the administrators had some questions about my website. I agreed to tone it down, and I did, to the detriment of the site. It was never the same at River Valley, which was probably good as I did my best not to graduate anyway.

The Rooster died somewhere in the back half of my sophomore year. When Harding High School built a new school, my mom bought a commemorative brick that said, “The-Rooster.com.” She placed it in the center of the display in front of the new school.

Coach Mac would eventually have the school groundskeeper chisel it out. It was only returned under threat of a lawsuit by my mom.

The incident only solidified in my mind how much psychic damage you can do to those in power by typing blunt, poorly edited sentences into the internet.

In retrospect, I should have weathered the storm and gone back to school until the administration eventually expelled me for my internet posts. That’s what a kid at Delaware Hayes did with a similar site, and he got a $250,000 check because the court ruled he was entitled to his free speech while only posting from his home computer like I did.

But it’s probably for the best. I would have only done something stupid with the money, though paying off my mom’s house for all the troubles I caused her in a thankless profession that she loved would have been nice.

In December 2018, I was still personally reeling from Jena Powell dumping my ass in our Statehouse race.

Though I had deluded myself into thinking I had a chance, my ultimate plan was to work for more impressive Democratic candidates I had met on the campaign trail.

Unfortunately, they all lost by similar margins as I did. In a rookie move, I had put a picture of me and Democratic gubernatorial Richard Cordray on my campaign literature to present an aura of legitimacy for a blogger running for Statehouse.

I didn’t anticipate Mike DeWine loaning himself $4 million to bury Cordray in commercials that painted him as personally responsible for Ohio’s backlog of rape kits. It probably would have been wiser to stand next to Bozo the Clown.

The Republicans swept the statewide executive offices in the last competitive General Election that Ohio will have in 20 years. Worse, I had quit my job blogging for Eleven Warriors to pursue this suicide mission because, for better or worse, it’s impossible for me to do anything in moderation.

I licked my wounds in Piqua by running to my favorite crutch of alcohol. Though I wasn’t yet depraved enough to drink Tito’s Handmade Vodka by the pint, I thought drinking six IPAs after dinner was “taking it easy.”

One day, however, I read about Substack, a new platform for independent writers. Typing insane sentences for strangers was and is my most marketable skill. I had a bit of a social media following from my Eleven Warriors days and my campaign.

All I needed was a name.

“What about The Rooster?” my ex-girlfriend said. The suggestion hit me like a thunderbolt. I created this blog that night with a post, “Adios, Urban” that enraged Ohio State fans and led to my old boss declaring it “The Worst Take of 2018.”

I think it aged well.

I originally planned The Rooster to be like the Skull Session I used to write for Eleven Warriors. But instead of remixing ways to propagandize the local football team, it would feature news from around Ohio.

I think initially, it had like 50 paid subscribers. But through personal successes and total failures, the business line has continued to rise, even as my drinking became problematic in 2020 and reached a point in the summer of 2022 where I had to decide if I wanted to keep drinking Tito’s or alienate my friends and family and die alone in a gutter.

Retiring from alcohol was the best decision I made. I used to think that catching a buzz made me a better writer. I have since realized that I was producing content that other deranged people wanted to read in spite of my drinking. Anybody who has followed me from then to now will agree, even if the typos persist.

On January 3rd, after publishing a picture that I knew Speaker-Elect Derek Merrin and his Holy Rolly backers didn’t want on the internet, I asked myself, “What is the last thing these guys would expect me to do?”

Minutes later, I pedaled my bike to One Capital Square to witness Merrin learn the lesson of a lifetime. Seeing his followers, who had traveled from across the state, looking aghast at the voting board on the TV screen was what I’d imagine heroin is like. My only regret is that I didn’t regret them feeling 1/10th of the pain their policies have inflicted on Ohio’s most vulnerable citizens.

But that day, I realized that state government is just like high school. Worse, it’s as if the worst, most insufferable nerds stuck around high school for 20 years and deluded themselves into thinking they’re important people worthy of respect because they “work at the Statehouse.”

And standing amongst them, clad in my Hawaiian shirt and reeking of weed that I was still smoking like a numbskull, I realized that, despite my flaws, nobody was up there who played ball like I did. I could run the same playbook as I did in high school and garner the same results.

And that’s precisely what happened. A prominent Republican recently relayed that Lt. Governor Jon Husted has a deep loathing for me. All because I busted him up outside the Statehouse for drawing a $21,600 salary from a bank he regulates.

I welcome his hatred as much as I welcome the support of The Patriots Caucus. Because it goes back to that age-old lesson I learned as a youth. Most people would be surprised to learn how much psychic damage you can inflict on ostensibly powerful hobgoblins by routinely posting poorly edited sentences on the internet.

THOSE WMDs. How The Onion decided to release its first post-9/11 issue… The troubled life and death of Cindy James… What we really know about the CIA and crack… Why I sleep in a different bed than my husband… That’s what I call Ponzinomics.

The Rooster will not publish an original dispatch on Mon., May 25, in observance of Memorial Day.

But don’t worry if you’re that desperate for #content, we’ll recycle one of the classics from the seven years of publishing in the archives.

The Rooster will resume its standard publication schedule on Wed., May 27, at 4:33 a.m.

If you’re one of the freeloading hogs huffing fumes in the parking lot, we’d be honored if you considered this moment as a divine sign to join the ranks of the Patriots Caucus, the most feared bipartisan cabal in Ohio politics.

You can click the banner below:

The on-the-ground videography, the social media presence, and even the occassional free dispatch is all supported through a 100% reader-supported funding model.

No corporate sponsors! No AI-loving executives! No dark money! Just hard-working patriots dedicated to putting psychic damage on Ohio’s corrupt political class.

Guy whose business is based on intellectual property theft: Actually, Slapshot and his mistress tried to steal my intellectual property!

The venerable Sheridan Hendrix of The Columbus Dispatch published a hilarious update to the fallout from Ohio State’s firing of former president Ted “Slapshot” Carter over his efforts to funnel university (and state!) resources to Krisanthe Vlachos, Carter’s podcasting paramour, in a tradition dating back to his days as president at Nebraska.

An app developer named in Ohio State’s investigation of former president Ted Carter called the university’s report misleading, saying the report damaged his company’s reputation and inaccurately described his relationship with Carter and Krisanthe Vlachos.

“They lied in their report,” said Paul Hylenski, a Marine Corps veteran who founded an app that would eventually get caught in the middle of Carter and Vlachos’ misconduct.

In fact, Hylenski claimed that Carter and Vlachos tried to steal the intellectual property of that app.

Hylenski founded Vet Mentor AI, a tech company that developed an app to help streamline the disability benefits application process for veterans, in December 2024.

Hard to pick a side in this particular conflict.

In one corner, you have Ohio State, which has devolved into little more than an organized criminal conspiracy that cannot be trusted to investigate itself.

In the other corner, you have some AI-loving reptile crying about his “intellectual property,” when “artificial intelligence” wouldn’t be possible without the theft of other people’s intellectual property in the first place.

I just hope both teams have fun out there, though I’d be remiss without noting that “Vet Mentor AI” appears to have been little more than a do-nothing app whose relevance depeneded entirely upon improper, backchannel relationships.

Many such cases!

This week in Ohio Man…

Last month, a coalition of Jeffrey Epstein survivors sued Leslie Wexner and The Wexner Foundation in New York State Court.

The lawsuit states there would be no Epstein without Wexner, a sentiment echoed by U.S. House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA).

Coincidentally, a little over a month later, the Wexner Foundation is “spinning off” flagship leadership programs after alumni questioned Wexner’s longtime business partnership and friendship with the most infamous dead pedophile in the world.

From Gabby Deutch of Jewish Insider:

The Wexner Foundation told alumni on Thursday that it will spin off its flagship leadership programs into an independent nonprofit, marking a major development within the Jewish philanthropic landscape that comes as the foundation’s benefactor, Les Wexner, continues to face pushback for his past ties to financier Jeffrey Epstein.

[…]

Wexner Foundation President Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson said in a Thursday email that the foundation’s North American leadership programs will be moved to a new nonprofit beginning next year with a $40 million gift from Wexner and his wife, Abigail. Abrahamson told the Wexner alumni that the spin-off was a long time in the works.

[…]

Abrahamson announced that Wexner will shift the focus of his personal foundation to supporting Jewish programming in his hometown of Columbus and in Israel.

It’s hard to envision how Wexner won’t maintain massive, albeit non-official, influence over these leadership groups if they accepted a $40 million check from the problematic pervert on the way out the door.

I’d also note that Columbus isn’t Wexner’s hometown. He’s from Dayton and lives in Bexley before moving to New Albany, the patch of farmland he transformed with Epstein, in the late 1980s. But that’s another blog post for another day.

In the meantime, this is another example of why I’m over the word “billionaire.” The average American cannot process “one billion dollars,” let alone a multi-billionaire like Wexner who can drop $40 million at the drop of a hat to end some public relations problem.

The proper term is oligarch, which legacy press traditionally reserved for Russian businessmen in the post-Soviet era—a population that looks like patriotic paupers compared to America’s current overlords.

This week in The Rooster…

It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC.

• It sure looks like Music Man’s paramour did some light credit card fraud. Instacart records obtained by The Rooster indicate that Congressman Max Miller’s girlfriend fraudently ordered thousands of dollars in groceries to his home in Bay Village and apartment in Washington D.C.

• Ohio Medicaid fraud allegations are based on a fraud’s fraudulent work. Daily Wire “investigative reporter” Luke Roziak is the basis of new claims about “up to $6 billion in Medicaid fraud” in Ohio. He has a history of fantastical claims later debunked.

• Ohio Republicans’ one weird trick. Look for the Ballot Board to attach Donald Trump’s name to the proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine current voter photo ID laws.

• Jimmy Haslam rubs Central Ohio Democrats’ face in it. Haslam, fresh off a $50 million heist in Franklin County, is set to host a fundraiser for Senator Jon Husted with several low-rent con artists later this month.

The Rooster will resume its standard publication schedule on Wed., May 27 at 4:33 a.m.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. Biotech Barbie had a hard year... How AI deepfakes tore a high school apart… The rise and fall of the only female yakuza… As floods get worse, Britain tries a new strategy: Beavers… That “viral” song, movie, meme, influencer and celebrity drama was probably the product of a stealth marketing campaign.

The Rooster would have opposed the Columbus and Franklin County’s deal for an NWSL expansion franchise if it included one cent, let alone $50 million, in public money to the parasitical billionaire class.

But it was especially sickening that the money went to Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, a man who once cut a $92 million check to settle a federal lawsuit against Flying Pilot J for systemically defrauding minority truck owners in a scheme one former executive said Haslam “loved.”

Haslam, like all oilgarchs, has a brain disease where no amount of money will ever be enough. Days after successfully extorting $600 million from the Republican-dominated State Legislature, Haslam and his wife “Sweet Dee” closed on a $25 million beachfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

Before the ink was dry on the NWSL deal—which will see Columbus’ poorest census tract lose its only public green space for the new training center—Haslam participated in a fundraiser for the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy at the Junto Hotel in Columbus.

A month after the deal, Haslam and “Sweet Dee” are set to host a fundraiser for Jon Husted, who has a petri dish of frog sperm where his brain is supposed to be, in Cleveland on May 28.

The woefully understaffed legacy press doesn’t spend much time covering fundraisers. And it makes sense in a way; gangs of rancid perverts shuffling into a room to throw jewels at the feet of their favored prostitute isn’t exactly breaking news in American politics.

But this particular fundraiser, like the Columbus Partnership’s fêting of Ramaswamy, offers insight into who, exactly, would like to see one of the dirtiest politicians in recent Ohio history re-elected to the United States Senate as a rubber stamp to Trump’s open corruption in order to ensure the tax cuts keep flowing.

The Haslams need no introduction as the couple that gave the largest guaranteed contract in NFL history to Deshaun Watson, a brittle sex-pest who has hampered the already tepid Browns offense any time he’s stepped on the field for the past four years.

The special guest, Senator John Kennedy, is the type of fraud that pretends to be some country bumpkin from the sticks in Louisiana when he graduated from Vanderbilt, Virginia and Oxford.

Other headliners shouldn’t be ignored.

They includes the likes of Jay Lucarelli, the CEO of MinuteMen Staffing that one Cleveland-based source described as a “union-busting scumbag.”

That Lucarelli would find comfort at Husted’s hearth should further embarrass the regional trade unions that endorsed the Senator. But that’s a topic for another day.

Another headliner is John Cafaro, a Youngstown-area businessman who looks like a Paul Bearer cosplayer who just drunkenly stumbled out of a bar near Wrestlemania.

Cafaro has a history of patronizing “transactional” politicians, like the comically corrupt former Congressman James Trafficant.

From The Youngstown Vindicator in 2010:

A pretrial services officer had sought information pertaining to Cafaro’s income and value of his home and cars. Instead, she said she got only “general information.”

And that’s when the smack down took place. The judge wasn’t in any mood to listen to excuses or explanations.

It certainly was a change from when Cafaro admitted to providing an “unlawful gratuity” (a bribe?) to former Congressman James A. Traficant Jr. and to committing perjury in federal court — and not spending a single minute in prison.

Instead, he walked away with a fine and probation. The justification for that kid-glove treatment was his testimony against Traficant, who was found guilty of 10 criminal charges including racketeering, bribery and tax evasion.

Traficant spent more than seven years in the penitentiary.

In a functioning society, a politician advertising a fundraiser with a huckster convicted for an “unlawful gratuity” would result in an automatic loss at the ballot box.

But this is Ohio, where Husted could get caught on tape, naked and cackling while accepting a cash labeled “unlawful gratuity,” and he would still earn 40% of the vote thanks to the (R) next to his name.

But that’s not all!

Also appearing in the hobgoblin nest is Kevin Stein, the “retired” former CEO of TransDigm who got caught fleecing taxpayers for $21 million during Trump’s first term, only to work his way back into political good graces by opening his check book to Trump and his concubines.

From Hunter Woodall and Eleanor Watson of cbsnews.com in July 2025:

TransDigm may be little known to the public at large, but the company has attracted attention in the halls of Congress. Within the last decade, Stein has testified to lawmakers amid scrutiny of the business, which deals in parts for both military and commercial aircraft.

“As my oversight has exposed, TransDigm has spent years fleecing taxpayers to the tune of millions of dollars,” Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a statement.

“The Department of Defense Inspector General needs to conduct aggressive oversight of TransDigm’s abuses and ensure proper accountability is had. At the same time, the Defense Department must step up its game to implement enhanced internal controls and explore alternative pathways of production, including through reverse engineering of spare parts, to avoid being swindled by contractors like TransDigm.”

Guys like Haslam have always run the Republican Party in their quest to establish their permanent ruling class over America.

But Trump’s second term has opened the flood gates to lesser-known parasites like Cafaro, Stein, and Lucarelli as long as they put the apropriate number of zeroes on their donation checks.

That they’re all flocking to Husted should be all any Ohio needs to see to make their decision at the ballot box in November.

If Ohio Democrats are going to win… this might be the year (emphasis on “might”)

Covering Ohio politics is dark and full of terrors.

Even for me, a well-compensated professional, my mind oscillates between “never let the bastards take your hope” and “you can’t get hurt if you always expect the worst.”

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