Rooster in Review: Price of the Brick

Plus, more evidence the FBI should be notified any time an Ohio Republican travels to Naples, Florida.

So-called “business consultants” approach me on the street all the time. Their first piece of advice is always to double my subscription rates.

Longtime readers of The Rooster will have no problem imagining my reaction.

“But sir,” the consultants say, wiping their tears with wads of $100 bills. “Would half your subscribers leave if you doubled your rates? The juice, mathematically speaking, justifies the squeeze!”

But in a world of rising costs, led by an inept Republican-dominated government that derives immense sexual pleasure from seeing working people get screwed over, The Rooster will never raise prices on current subscribers.

The price at which you subscribe will be the price you maintain until your death, my death, or the Earth’s death. Whichever comes first. I look at that bond as a small token of my appreciation for the reader’s choice to spend their hard-earned rubies in my humble shop among a seemingly infinite pool of other choices.

However, I can’t say the same for the potentially damned souls who lack the common decency to subscribe to The Rooster.

On Thursday, Rooster Worldwide LLC debuted its latest innovation, colloquially called “The Little Ben Yoho Buster,” which is an SMS texting service that will allow me to instantly distribute big, breaking news (and other tidbits of psychological damage) to my worldwide cabal, no matter my current location.

That service is provided free of charge to brave and noble subscribers to The Rooster.

On Monday, the costs of the SMS text service will be baked into future subscriptions, with the monthly price adjusted to $12.99 and the yearly package being $99.99.

The Rooster is crawling before it walks with the newswire. Eventually, the service will be opened to the masses—likely at $5 a month to start.

The best way to save money, in this hardscrabble businessman’s opinion, would be to subscribe today at a price that will never be offered again:

Thanks for your attention to this important matter. Now let’s get on with the show.

The FBI should be notified any time an Ohio Republican goes to Naples, Florida… Chapter 1,892

[VIDEO: Senator Casey Weinstein (D-Hudson) on the Governor’s last State of the State, the fallout from the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about), and his views on corporate PAC money with AEP looking poised for another HB-6-like gambit.

Sam “The Randazzler” Randazzo died by suicide rather than face the consequences of his career in white-collar crime that somehow culminated in Governor Mike DeWine and then-Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted appointing him as chairman of the PUCO Board.

We now know, by FirstEnergy’s own admission, that the corporation paid a $4.3 million bribe to the Randazzler days before that appointment to grease the tracks for the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about).

Energy watchdogs went ballistic over the appointment at the time, given the Randazzler’s deep connections to the utility companies he was ostensibly charged with regulating.

It turns out… that was a good call on their part! Because we’re now only learning the true extent of the Randazzler’s corruption.

From Lucas Daprile of cleveland.com:

Between 2010 and 2019, IEU-Ohio handled $37 million, but Randazzo embezzled $9.4 million of that, Ebadi said.

Assistant Ohio Attorney General Matthew Meyer described Randazzo’s spending as “lavish.” A full list of Randazzo’s spending was not immediately available to the public, but court testimony highlighted a few examples.

Randazzo spent an unspecified amount of money on a down payment on a home in Naples, FL. He spent money at art galleries, country clubs and PGA Opens, Ebadi said.

As I’ve written before, these losers love nothing more than Naples, Florida. If you gave them a billion dollars—as the Randazzler was on his way to earning—they would live in Naples, Florida.

I missed a chance to bust up Randazzo in Sept. 2023, and it’s one of my biggest professional regrets. I have much more respect for the armed robber who knocked over a corner store for $60 to feed his drug addiction than I ever will for someone like Randazzo, whose lifetime of piggish greed will now pass to his descendants because he died “without ever being convicted of a crime.”

Fuck him. But more importantly, fuck the Republican-dominated monopoly over our utilities that allowed him to prosper in the first place.

The Rooster hits the airwaves…

Another business trick the consultants tell me about is the art of the podcast.

Longtime readers might remember the since-defunct Crowcast, but it’s certainly a wide-open lane given the growth of the business since the halycon (read: drunken) days.

We hope to have more information in that arena soon.

However, in the meantime, I’d like to highlight two recent appearances on widely respected podcasts:

• Care for Ohio with Dr. Bryan Hambley, Democratic candidate for Secretary of State. [Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube]

• Six One Forward with fellow Marionaire Betsy Goldstein. [Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube]

Please smash the follow on these podcasts, if only to flex the power of the Patriots Caucus.

This week in Ohio Man…

Treasurer hunter Tommy Thompson

There’s going “beast mode,” and then, three levels above that, is defrauding wealthy investors and insurance companies for a $100 million prize from a 19th-century shipwreck.

From Shalid Morgan of The Columbus Dispatch:

An Ohio scientist and treasure hunter who is accused of bilking some 160 investors out of millions of dollars in gold recovered from an 1857 shipwreck and refusing to tell anyone where he stashed the gold has been released from prison.

Thomas “Tommy” Thompson, 73, was released from federal prison March 4, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to The Dispatch. Thompson had been ordered incarcerated since 2015 after refusing to tell a federal judge in Columbus – or his own lawyers – where he stashed a trove of gold coins and gold bars from the shipwreck.

[…]

Thompson maintained he had forgotten the location, but Marbley and the plaintiffs believed he was faking. In addition to the prison sentence Thompson just completed, Marbley also ordered Thompson to pay a fine of $1,000 for every day he was imprisoned, and to pay $3,335,000 in civil contempt fines and a $250,000 fine in the criminal contempt case.

You might not like the move. But you have to respect it, given that roughly $3.5 million in fines is a small cost of doing business to someone as rich as Thompson.

This week in The Rooster…

It was a brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, with The Rooster being featured in everything from The New York Times to billionaire-funded right-wing propaganda organs like The Daily Wire.

Such is the depth and scope of the so-called Ohio-based newsletter. Subscribe today at a soon-to-be-gone rate and help sustain the project that everyone from Mayor Suburbs to Speaker Matt Huffman loathes.

Here’s what you may have missed, with two(!) emergency dispatches hitting the press on Monday:

• Ohio’s next HB-6 is already here. AEP, which paid $19 million to end an SEC probe into its HB-6 role, has positioned itself for a nuclear takeover while a $100 million pile of “low-interest” loans sits in the wings.

• 🚨 “Slapshot” Carter resigns in disgrace from Ohio State. 🚨 Soyanorra to one of the biggest losers in the Buckeye Cinematic Universe, an especially impressive feat considering he only materialized two years ago.

• 🚨 The woman at the center of Ted Carter’s “inappropriate relationship.” 🚨The Rooster broke national news that Krisanthe Vlachos of “The Callout Podcast” was Carter’s girlfriend seeking “public resources for her private business.”

• The State of the State 2026. Governor Mike DeWine’s final State of the State. Save us, Dr. Acton! Save us!

• The Rooster’s Little Ben Yoho Buster is here. Debuting the new psychic whip that’s only available to subscribers (for free) at this current time, plus a bevvy of videos from the State of the State soiree.

• Inside Leslie Wexner’s third, least-known sexual abuse scandal. Mike Jeffries, the Noselessman, and a private security operator in Epstein’s Black Blook: Everything to know about Wexner’s least-known Central Ohio scandal.

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

Until then, stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. Why populists love dead soldiers and hate live officers… The year I was supposed to die… Punching, slamming, screaming: A chef’s past abuse haunts Noma, the world’s top-rated restaurant… Meta’s AI glasses: Workers say they see everything… How the Bernie Goetz shootings explain the Trump era.