🐓 Ohio Pays Wendy's For Some Reason 🐓

Our leaders remain groveling corporate shills.

Well here we go… another Thursday in Ohio! I wonder what today will bring? Probably more unseasonably warm weather that will feel good until you remember it was all caused by industrialists who valued their profits over our grandkids dying in a desert.

Please take this moment when you’re plotting your inevitable death to consider paying me $5 a month for five depression dispatches to your inbox every week.

WE’RE IN DEBT TO WENDY’S NOW

I remember a time in my life when Wendy’s was considered a slice of a home. I truly considered it the premier fast food chain in America on account of it being created by a WASP from Central Ohio.

Unfortunately like everything else in my life I eventually learned that Wendy’s was bad. That Nintendo 64? Produced by exploited overseas labor. The hallowing of my city’s manufacturing core? Produced by NAFTA.

That kindly Central Ohio businessman who peddled burgers to the point of being a billionaire? Actually he was a fascist and Ohio’s state government serves his company to this day.

From Randy Ludlow of dispatch.com:

The state highway department owes damages to the owner of a Granville-area Wendy’s because road reconfigurations cut off easy access to the restaurant off Route 16, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

In a 4-3 ruling, the justices found that the closure of direct access to Cherry Valley Road and the fast-food restaurant by the Ohio Department of Transportation constituted a state “taking” that must be compensated.

The majority found that although the highway department compensated the prior owner of the land in 1961 for the right to end direct access to Route 16 at Cherry Valley Road, the department said that it would maintain a “point of access” to the highway at the now-closed intersection.

New Wen Inc., owner of the Wendy’s since 1992, argued that the changes in late 2016 heavily damaged its sales. Motorists who had driven a quarter-mile to the restaurant instead are required to take new ramps from Route 16 and drive about 1.5 miles.

America is a land of cut-throat capitalists who have pulled themselves up by their own boot straps. Right up until a fast-food franchisee claims to lose $1 million in sales — a number I’m sure that would be backed up by honest accounting — because the state government abolished an intersection near his beef patty sweat shop.

Like seriously… how does this work? We bulldozed black neighborhoods to build the interstate system and none of them got anything. Yet somehow this franchisee cried about an intersection and now our state government owes him a settlement? I doubt you’ll see anyone in our state media wondering where this money will come from.

GET OFF YOUR PHONES YOU COWARDS

I normally don’t endorse more punitive punishments as a policy solution because the harshest sentences will undoubtedly be doled out to the brownest and poorest people among us.

However I am sick of people operating 2,500-pound death-missiles on the highway who can’t drive without talking or texting on their phone. If I have to put down the phone and deal with my mental illness while I drive then everybody else should do the same.

From clevescene.com:

In the near future in the Buckeye State, you could end up paying a fine for checking your Instagram direct messages. 

A bill introduced yesterday in the Ohio House of Representatives would allow police to pull over drivers they witness using their phones, tablets or other electronics while driving. 

Distracted driving is already illegal in Ohio. But currently, driving and texting (or whatever you're doing on your phone) is a secondary offense, meaning you can be ticketed for such use only if police pull you over for some other reason. The bill by Democrat State Rep. Mary Lightbody would change that, making use of an electronic device while driving a primary offense and allowing police to pull you over as soon as they see you send that tweet. 

Once again I’m torn between my hatred of mass-incarceration and also my desire to see my political enemies imprisoned for 25 years at least.

Do I want to further empower the Ohio State Highway Patrol? Absolutely not. Am I tired of worrying about dying on the highways because some simpleton can’t drive in a straight line without looking at their phone? Absolutely true.

NERDS DISCOVER FAKE URINE

One of the many great things the Baby Boomers did for America is expand the drug-testing industry because if there’s one thing your boss deserves to know it’s what drugs you ingest in your off-time to tolerate working a job with threadbare benefits.

Naturally the “free market” that these drug warriors claim to love produced the product of fake urine. Somehow it’s 2020 and Ohio’s state government has just discovered it. Of course their answer is how we can punish workers????

From Keith Arnold of akronlegalnews.com:

A mainstay of so-called head shops and pipe stores, synthetic urine is marketed to consumers who need to cheat a urine test.

The fake substance resembles human urine, containing the appropriate balance of water and minerals, to ensure an optimal pH level free of drugs or other substances that otherwise would result in a failed test.

A Bowling Green lawmaker wants to prohibit the manufacture, sale or possession of synthetic urine in an effort to improve public safety.

Sen. Theresa Gavarone, a Republican, has proposed Senate Bill 156 to create the offense of "defrauding an alcohol, drug or urine screening test," generally is a second-degree misdemeanor, but a first-degree misdemeanor for any subsequent offense.

"Currently, synthetic urine is easily accessible," Gavarone said in testimony before a senate committee. "A quick Google search shows the sheer (number) of brands and locations where you can purchase the product.

"If you need to pass a drug test, there is no shortage of stores you can visit to acquire synthetic urine."

My favorite type of legislation is when some small-government Republican hears about a way the people have been short-changing the government an their first instinct is to ban the product and punish anyone trafficking in it.

This answer might make sense if it were 1980. Instead it’s 2020 and people can order fake urine online and have it delivered to their door step. But no, let’s criminalize synthetic urine instead of reckoning with our invasive drug-testing industry. Totally makes sense!

THE CORPORATE COLUMBUS DEMOCRATIC MACHINE DESERVES TO BE TORN BRANCH FROM BRANCH

The Corporate Democrats that run Columbus pretend they are progressive. According to them nothing about this city is wrong.

It’s an interesting position considering they stacked the deck against any electoral challenges. And despite all the obstacles placed in front of challengers, the staffers of the Establishment throw a tantrum whenever anyone has the audacity to challenge their power.

This week the chief policy advisor of the mayor (who ran unopposed in the 2019 local elections) felt so threatened by what he labeled an out-of-state astroturf campaign to takeover the Central Committee of the Franklin Democratic Party that he cried about it on Facebook.

From Scott Woods of columbusalive.com:

Without getting in the weeds, I wanted to point out the way that Clark’s statement described grassroots efforts. He is concerned that voters might be misled by these candidates, using lots of unnecessary quotation marks in an attempt to discredit things that are exactly as he describes them. He puts quotes around “movement,” as if that isn’t exactly what this campaign is. He puts quotes on “boots on the ground” and “volunteers,” as if volunteers aren’t out knocking on doors. He name-checks organizations such as the Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America, Yes We Can and Morgan Harper. He name-checks Bernie Sanders, as if Sanders isn’t one of the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination. He charges Central Committee candidates with the crime of not having lived in Columbus long, as if they were some kind of anchor voter, which is an interesting charge for a city that actively seeks to absorb 10,000 new residents annually.

Clark’s is a particularly wild-eyed strain of criticism. The whole effort has the air of desperation and left me wondering where I had seen such energy before. And then it came to me: Republicans.

The Columbus political machine may have disenfranchised Republican candidates to the point that they don’t bother running for local offices of note anymore, but the things they value are still quite present in the mainstream Democratic agenda. The controlling Democratic bloc of Columbus is pro-police to the detriment of citizen safety, pro-big business, pro-gentrification, anti-education and has never seen a backroom deal it didn’t like. It ignores citizens unless they run for office, at which point the machine maneuvers to discredit them as zealots and anarchists who wish to — get this — amplify the democratic process with progressive issues.

Take note, anyone moving to Columbus: According to the Democratic Establishment you are not worthy of a political opinion. But on the other side if you have lived in Columbus for your entire life then there’s no reason why you can’t be priced-out either.

OBVIOUSLY NOT THE BEST MURDER PLOT EVER HATCHED

I’ve never hatched a plot to murder anyone. But if I did, one thing I would ask if any of my co-conspirators had a child with our target. Because if they did it would seem like that would be the first doorstep that the cops would visit.

From Kayla Crandail of wpta21.com:

JAY COUNTY, Ind. (WPTA21) - The head coach and assistant coach of an Ohio High School just over the Indiana line are now facing charges in the shooting death of a Jay County man.

Court documents filed in the case point to frustrations in a child custody battle between the victim and one of the suspects.

Esther J. Stephen, 29, of Portland, and Shelby N. Hiestand, 18, also of Portland, are facing murder charges in the death of Shea Briar.

Sunday morning, Shea Briar was found suffering from a gunshot wound on County Road 125 W. near County Road 850 N in Jay County.

An autopsy found he died from a gunshot wound from a small-caliber bullet.

According to charging documents filed Wednesday, Stephen and Heistand admitted to the crime.

Stephen and Briar had a child together.

Lawyer advice: If you and a friend murder a deadbeat father… don’t immediately admit the deed to the cops. Now that guy is dead and y’all are going to jail. What the hell is that about?

THOSE WMDs. The secret to a relaxing vacation: meticulous, detailed plans… A Maine paper mill’s unlikely savior: China… Why your candidate sucks: Mike Bloomberg… The surprising psychology behind people who are perpetually late… Justin Amash: “Most members of Congress don’t think anymore.”