Welcome to Scam City
Buckle up, folks. It's about to get frosty.
Welcome to the first week of President Business Deals' second term.
Don’t fret. Things are dire, but we’ve been here before, and we’ll get through this together—no thanks to Joe Biden.
We only have to survive the next 208 weeks. Sadly, we need the big man to survive those 208 weeks, too, because the only thing worse for this country would be the unelected tenure of Vice President Boss Baby.
Trump hasn’t even officially taken office yet, and he already scammed his supporters with a farcical cryptocurrency coin (redundant, I know) that seems like a helluva way for foreign governments to pay bribes.
Even his wife got in on the ruse, launching her own coin last night.
It is hard to feel any sympathy for the soon-to-be victims for their negligence in investing in unregulated securities backed only by the word of a career con man. But that’s not my problem.
I can only weep for my fellow son of Marion, President Warren G. Harding. At this point, his only crime was being born a century too early. Harding’s corrupt cabinet, colloquially dubbed “the Ohio Gang,” looks quaint and whimsical compared to the looting that will happen under President Business Deals.
On Friday, I contracted a freelance piece from Saint Claire, Carnegie’s long-forgotten mistress.
The dispatch detailed why a notoriously corrupt, self-dealing insider like Kenn Dowell should not be allowed to serve on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections despite an endorsement from Cleveland-area Congresswoman Shontel Brown.
Patriots, I am pleased to announce the mission was a direct strike into the mental interior of Cleveland’s political hobgoblin class.
Early Saturday morning, Dowell emailed Cuyahoga County Democrats saying he’d withdrawn his name from consideration.
He weirdly tried to make it a race issue, which is humorous given that the seat will most likely go to former Supreme Court Justice Melody Joy Stewart, a Black woman of unimpeachable character.
I talked to Saint Claire yesterday. We agreed that Dowell removing himself from consideration did nothing to stop our train.
God willing, Saint Claire will return to these pages on Friday as we dive deeper into the works of Dowell and his known shady associate, the alleged pastor Aaron Phillips.
To survive this golden era of corruption, we must be ruthless in policing that type of behavior within our own party’s ranks. We can’t whinge about Business Deals while we tolerate the same low-rent behavior from local Democrats.
Dowell and Phillips are two easy examples from a notoriously corrupt county primarily controlled by Democrats.
But if you have any other examples of corruption, whether from Democrats or Republicans, you can always anonymously submit that information through the Jotform.
“Jon Husted is the biggest pussy in Ohio politics,” one Republican told The Rooster after lauding him on Twitter.
Former Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, who has an unplayable banjo where his brain is supposed to be, is off to Washington D.C. as Ohio’s junior Senator.
There may be no better illustration of Ohio’s political corruption of the past 30 years than Husted.
The Friday announcement came at a conspicuous time, hours after federal authorities indicted former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Vice President of Bribes Michael Dowling on racketeering and bribery charges.
Neil Clark, the late disgraced lobbyist who died by suicide while wearing a “DeWine for Governor” shirt after federal authorities charged him for his role in passing HB-6, called Husted the “Golden Boy” of FirstEnergy in his ostensible tell-all memoir that he published shortly before his death next to a retention pond in Naples, Florida.
Prosecutors already identified Husted as “State Official 2” in charging documents of Sam “The Randazzler” Randazzo, the former PUCO chairman who died by suicide after being charged for his role in the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about).
Before his death, Randazzo talked about how Husted drew him out of retirement for the PUCO chairmanship. We can only hope Randazzo’s damned soul visits Husted in his sleep.
The corruption started early for Husted, who rose to power in the House of Representatives.
He quickly earned the nickname “Little Larry” among his colleagues after he succeeded Larry Householder after Householder’s first Speakership ended in a cloud of FBI investigation, which in the end was a lesson for neither of them.
In the State Senate, Husted was caught residing in Upper Arlington with his family despite representing Montgomery County though a Republican-dominated Supreme Court cleared him of any wrongdoing.
As Secretary of State, Husted began devolving Ohio’s chief election office into the stepping stone for partisan careerist hacks we know it as today.
“I'll never forget Husted coming to a class at the [Ohio State University] Glenn School as Secretary of State,” Rooster commenter Maud’dib wrote in 2023.
“[He got] called out on the possibility of fewer absentee box drop-offs. He claimed he’d never do that because he knew that it’d be blatantly racist and meant to reduce the turnout of poor and minority communities... and then he did exactly that.”
And like most statewide Republicans, Husted was neck-deep in the ECOT scandal, the $800 million “public school” swindle that saw roughly 10,000 students kicked into the streets in the middle of the school year when the criminal conspiracy began to unravel. Nobody, not even ECOT founder Bill Lager, has been criminally charged for the scheme.
As Lieutenant Governor, with Husted already “earning” a higher salary than Mike DeWine as part of the backroom deal the two made in 2018 to avoid a costly and divisive primary, he still couldn’t resist taking a $21,600 salary to sit on the board of a joker-ass bank regulated by the state.
That was the subject of our first encounter in May 2023:
It’s hard to blame Husted at this point. He’s shown who he is at every step of the ladder, and Republican voters have continued to reward him.
But that makes it even funnier how Husted delayed his lifelong dream of being governor by taking the Senate appointment.
Husted has never really had to campaign on his own, which is why many Republicans privately trash him behind the scenes.
Husted rose to power through the gerrymandered State Legislature. He won two down-ballot terms as Secretary of State during two Red Wave years in backlash to Ohio twice electing Barack Obama, America’s first gay Muslim Marxist president.
When it came time to test his mettle against a proven winner like Grandpa Sleepy Tea, Husted folded his tent (and promptly remarked to former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones that he hoped he was “proud” of Husted’s decision).
And now, Husted is running scared from a notorious conman in Vivek Ramaswamy, a juiceless Attorney General who can’t raise money like Dave Yost, and a barely known state treasurer in Robert Sprague—all because Husted failed to earn a promise for an endorsement from President Business Deals.
Husted will run for Senate in 2026 and again in 2028. But his likely plan is to return to Ohio at the earliest possibility after 2028—hoping that Republican primary voters aren’t quite as vitriolic about the idea of him being their governor.
Ultimately, it’s like I wrote about Husted going to Washington on January 3rd.
Most folks would be happy with a free ride to the United States Senate. Not our beautiful junior Senator! And that will be to our state’s detriment, with Husted never earning clout in the higher legislative chamber because he’s a career ladder-climber who doesn’t have the chops for federal legislation and issues.
Here comes notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy, who is reportedly leaving DOGE after acting like a notorious conman
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