Boo Ben Konop Turns Ten
Les Wexner knows nothing about Jeffrey Epstein, Mike DeWine kisses the racist pumpkin, and more.
Sending positive energy to the couple I found squabbling over drugs on my front porch at 7:30 a.m. yesterday. Always a helluva wakeup call to hear what I assumed was a child screaming bloody murder outside.
Turned out was a woman who was fending off a man trying to rifle through her pockets. “She’s got drugs in her pocket!” He yelled.
I’m thinking, “Buddy, it’s Franklinton. Everybody has drugs in their pocket.”
I try to avoid calling the police at all costs. Once you make that call, people’s lives could change forever. But I wasn’t about to witness a woman getting shaken down for her hard-earned drugs on my watch. So I announced I was calling the police.
They took off running in opposite directions as if I had pulled a shotgun on them. And so went another day in my life without having to contact the cops.
A LEGENDARY HECKLING TURNS 10
Ben Konop was one of the first aspiring politicians that impressed me, the dipshit teenager with a melon-sized head, when he came to Marion for a Meet the Candidates Forum during his campaign against Rep. Mike Oxley for the Congressional seat that now belongs to the odious Jim Jordan.
He seemed destined for greatness, though I had yet to understand how rigged Congressional races are in Ohio. Oxley, the guy with a son named “Elvis,” obliterated Konop, who eventually retreated to Toledo and secured a County Commissioner seat.
Once elected, Konop signed an ethics pledge — always a perilous scenario for a politician — to serve his entire term before seeking another office.
Konop broke that pledge shortly thereafter to run for mayor. He might still be mayor today hadn’t a heckler destroyed a rally in what became perhaps American politics first viral moment.
The infamous heckling turns 10 this year, and the two participants went on wildly different paths since fate brought them together that one summer day. Konop now works for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while his muttonchopped nemesis went on to become a successful pedicab businessman.
From Liz Skalka of toledoblade.com:
At the CFPB, [Konop has] served as lead counsel on lawsuits including one targeting a lending company accused of swindling 9/11 first responders, and one against a for-profit college that resulted in millions in loan forgiveness for students. He recently led a suit against a mortgage broker accused of targeting military veterans in a deceptive mortgage refinancing scheme.
“It was sort of fortuitous, the timing for me,” the now-43-year-old said recently. “My term as commissioner was up and the CFPB was just starting. Elizabeth Warren [the Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate who founded the agency after the financial crisis] was holding all-hands meetings in an elevator bank with, like, 50 people.”
While Mr. Konop was in Washington, Mr. Austin — who lived in upstate New York and San Diego before moving here in 1998 and again in 2007 — was continuing to grow his business, Glass City Pedicabs, which was just taking off at the time of his viral fame.
Now 41 and living in Temperance, Mich., Mr. Austin owns a fleet of pedicabs, golf carts, and pub cycles based in Toledo. Under the name Midwest Fest Transportation, he’s also the exclusive pedicab vendor for music festivals across the country, including the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California’s Colorado Desert.
Konop finished 5th in a six-way race, which ain’t great.
I think America would be better if more politicians were heckled, and Konop absolutely deserved what he got for abandoning an ethics pledge he signed publicly. Shit like that is nothing but ego.
The whole article is worth reading, if only to read Konop claim how he’s not mad he got owned, he’s just thankful he no longer has the brain disease that makes him seek public office.
Give the author a follow on Twitter too. She’s definitely a rising star in state political reporting and comes from a needed perspective outside Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.
LES WEXNER: WHO IS THAT JEFF EPSTEIN FELLA, ANYWAY?
New York federal prosecutors revealed yesterday that they found “billionaire” pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in possession of an expired Saudi Arabian passport under an assumed name located in his safe along with cash and diamonds.
Why would someone need a fake passport from a notoriously corrupt nation like Saudi Arabia? It’s tough to say. But make no mistake: Columbus’ Les Wexner had no idea about any of that nonsense despite being the only publicly known client of Epstein’s.
From Mark Williams of dispatch.com:
L Brands founder Leslie H. Wexner has issued his first personal statement in the unfolding scandal involving his former business manager, telling employees Monday that he “was never aware of the illegal activity” that Jeffrey Epstein is charged with committing.
“I would never have guessed that a person I employed more than a decade ago could have caused such pain to so many people. My heart goes out to each and every person who has been hurt,” Wexner said in an email to employees obtained by The Dispatch.
“I severed all ties with Mr. Epstein nearly 12 years ago. I would not have continued to work with any individual capable of such egregious, sickening behavior as has been reported about him. As you can imagine, this past week I have searched my soul ... reflected ... and regretted that my path ever crossed his.”
Exactly the kind of statement expected from a guy like Wexner who could see his entire life’s legacy turn to ash depending on the outcome of the criminal proceedings against Epstein.
No sense in confessing anything that hasn’t been alleged in court.
MIKE DEWINE KISSES TRUMP’S RACIST RING
Governor Mike DeWine successfully threaded the Republican needle between his predecessor John Kasich and the diseased game show host currently serving as our nation’s president in a way that only he could during the 2018 General Election.
His legacy secured, DeWine is now much less hesitant to kiss the racist pumpkin’s ring. He will do so next week when he heads to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia to attend a fundraiser at a coal magnate’s behest.
President Deals’ latest racist outburst won’t keep DeWine from stacking that cash, baby.
From Andrew J. Tobias of cleveland.com:
Dan Tierney told cleveland.com there is “no change” to DeWine’s plans to attend a July 24 fundraiser in Wheeling, West Virginia. The private event is being hosted by Robert E. Murray, the Ohio coal magnate and GOP mega-donor, at an arena in Wheeling, according to the Wheeling Intelligencer and News-Register.
DeWine in an interview with WKYC gently criticized Trump’s tweets, in which the president falsely described four Democratic congresswomen as foreign born and told them to “go back” to the countries from which they “originally came.” Three of the four were born in the United States and the fourth, a Somali refugee, is a naturalized United States citizen who has lived in the U.S. since she was 10 years old.
“It’s not appropriate,” DeWine told WKYC in an interview the Cleveland TV station published Monday. “We’re all Americans. We’re a country that was founded by immigrants and we’ve been replenished with legal immigrants through the years. They’re all Americans, and one thing our Constitution guarantees is, you’re a citizen, you’re a citizen. There’s no grades of citizenship, and that’s one of the great things about this country.”
It’s wild to watch self-professed Christians get behind an amoral, godless clown like Trump. But guys like DeWine clearly value their position of power more than their relationship with Christ, who undoubtedly would have some things to say about our nation’s president.
DeWine knows Republican voters in Ohio are more loyal to Trump than him, so he has “no choice” but to fall in line. This would be much more hilarious if the Republican version of America were quarantined and not something I had to live under.
OHIO RACIST TO DIE IN PRISON
James Alex Fields, a 22-year-old Ohioan, drove to Charlottesville, Virginia last year and plowed his car through a crowd of anti-racist counter-protestors, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Justice came down on Fields yesterday.
From the Associated Press of cantonrep.com:
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — An avowed white supremacist was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years Monday for deliberately driving his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters during a rally in Virginia, killing one woman and injuring dozens.
James Alex Fields Jr., 22, remained stoic as Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore formally imposed the recommendation of a state jury that convicted him in December of murder and malicious wounding charges for his actions in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.
Fields showed no visible emotion as victims of the car attack described severe physical and psychological injuries — broken bones, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression — inflicted by Fields when he plowed his car into them.
One of the many reasons I’m against the death penalty is cases like this. Fields doesn’t deserve the sweet release of a state-sanctioned execution. He deserves to rot away in prison and reflect upon his miserable existence until one of his vital organs taps out.
BAD NEWS AT THE BUREU OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
One of the worst fates in America would be going to prison for a crime you did not commit. And yet that happens every day in America, in no small part because corrupt crime lab employees.
Two years ago, Massachusetts dismissed 6,000 drug cases due to a “rogue chemist” at its BCI.
Seems we could have a similar problem in the great state of Ohio.
From dispatch.com:
Dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal convictions in Ohio could be in jeopardy because a longtime forensic scientist at the state crime lab now stands accused of slanting evidence to help cops and prosecutors build their cases.
The credibility of G. Michele Yezzo, who worked at the Ohio attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation for more than three decades, has been challenged in two cases in which men were convicted of aggravated murder. One has been freed from prison because of her now-suspect work.
A review of her personnel records by The Dispatch shows that colleagues and supervisors raised questions about Yezzo time and again while she tested evidence and testified in an uncounted number of murder, rape and other criminal cases in the state.
Intentionally lying on somebody and putting them in prison is evil. G. Michele Yezzo better swap places with everyone she ever lied on if this case gets proven against her.
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