Fuck Lady Liberty, I Guess
Great country we got here.
Made the mistake of watching Kobe Bryant’s last career game in which he dropped 60 points on the vile Utah Jazz. I still haven’t returned a phone call or text since Sunday. Maybe I’ll get around to that later today.
I suppose I should look at the positive in my life, which is how I could be living in a socialist country with universal healthcare like Ireland right now because there’s no way my Irish great-grandfather Charles O’Byrne would have been let into this country by the racist cartel that currently controls the White House and judicial branch.
The cruelty is the point, of course.
Bernie Sanders, please save us. You are only hope. You can donate to him here.
BIG BUSINESS BOYS STARTING TO TAKE CLIMATE CHANGE SERIOUSLY BECAUSE IT’S EATING INTO THEIR POCKETS
The Big Business Barons of Ohio have had it good for a long time in this state, where they’re not forced to pay their fair share of taxes and dutifully do their part to send pro-business, anti-science freaks like State Senator Andy Brenner or Rep. Candice Keller into powerful positions in the state government.
While states like Washington lead the way in the fight against climate change, our state can’t even invest in any other mass transit than roads and cars (and we can barely do that).
As such you might have noticed we’ve had like 2 inches of snow over the last three winters. The Barons are starting to take heed of the changing weather because it’s chewing into their profits.
From Mary Kuhlman of cleveland.com:
"Ohio is an economic juggernaut," Doyle said. "And Ohio's economy is based on how central it is, and how efficient its infrastructure is. And severe weather threatens that infrastructure and threatens that competitive advantage."
He noted two dozen Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Ohio, and 20 of them have issued warnings to investors about severe weather risks. According to the research, since 2014, Ohio has experienced 15 climate- or weather-related disasters that each topped $1 billion in damages.
Doyle contended state and national political leaders should end the climate change debate, and focus on the challenges businesses are confronting. He said rising temperatures, flooding and drought are changing the ways companies build, where they locate and how they insure their assets.
"Severe weather is hurting their commodity prices. It's hurting them on their supply chains. It's damaging plants and equipment, and it's also messing with consumer demand for their products," he said. "Ohio companies are doing a great job mitigating these costs, but they're rising - and it's going to get tougher and tougher."
And yet our state government just bailed out two failing nuclear power plants, a coal plant in Ohio and one in Indiana too for good measure.
So don’t expect our state government to show any leadership and spine on this issue. Most of them are rich enough to afford a luxury bunker while the rest of us poors die of heat exhaustion.
OHIO SENATE LOOKS AT HOLDING PUBLIC SCHOOLS HOSTAGE BECAUSE FUCK ‘EM THAT’S WHY
[Chart via the wonderful Innovation Ohio]
The Ohio Legislature has until February 2nd to correct an “error” in the way state funds school vouchers. As it stands, public schools (of all sizes and stripes) are loosing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — money that’s being sent to unregulated private schools that can teach abortion is murder and how women have a different number of ribs.
The Senate’s solution appears to be put a band-aid on the crisis until they can re-examine the issue in two years and figure out another way to funnel public school money away from public schools.
As you might imagine.. the people who teach for a living are not amused.
From Patrick O’Donnell of cleveland.com:
Thus far, the compromise is a no-go for some stakeholders.
Barbara Shaner of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials has coordinated some opposition to voucher expansion and strongly disagrees with the proposal because schools with A, B and C overall grades still remain EdChoice schools, the income-based scholarships will expand and there is no money going to districts that have already been hit with added costs.
The Ohio Federation of Teachers opposes the proposed income eligibility expansion, saying the money should instead be used to help districts currently experiencing funding losses due to vouchers.
“They’re bleeding money to these vouchers and the legislature is doing nothing to make up the difference,” said Melissa Cropper, the union’s president.
The organization also disagrees with how the changes are being made, which Cropper described as “an abuse of power.” Significant policy changes need to be made in stand-alone bills that go through the legislative process, with hearings and time for the public to vet them and provide input, she said.
At some point it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy with Ohio’s public schools. Why would any self-respecting professional want to work in a state where Liberty University graduates hold positions of power if they have the means to move somewhere else?
Why would any parent want to send their child to public schools that are underfunded and have to cancel 20 days a year due to the heat because they don’t even have air conditioning.
It’s depressing to see what these clowns are doing to our schools. They have no respect for the institution and their hobgoblins are winning that war.
POLICE LOOK FOR A “KINDER” WAY TO DEAL WITH PROSTITUTION AND HONESTLY IT KINDA SUCKS
The Columbus Police Department Vice Unit ran wild for years until one of their gang members abducted a sex worker named Donna Dalton and murdered her in broad daylight. The unit remains under FBI investigation today.
That unit is gone, and it’s now been replaced with something called the Police and Community Together team, or PACT. As someone familiar with what the “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” team (STRESS) did to Detroit, anytime I hear any horse shit like “Police and Community Together team” from a bunch of my cops my suspicions go on high alert.
From Adora Namigadde of wosu.org:
“I want them to associate the officer’s uniform with someone who cares what happens to them,” [acting Deputy Police Chief Jennifer] Knight says. “And that is a game changer.”
…
“One of the things we do in the secure staging area, after we search them and identify them, is we un-handcuff them and pair them with a counselor to talk to them about services,” Knight says. She adds that officers then give the women a sack lunch provided by the Salvation Army.
See, this is the half-baked ideas that pass as criminal justice reform. Why are we handcuffing women for having consensual sex, even if to feed a heroin addiction? This is not a criminal justice problem at all.
Now compare the response to probably the most heroic woman in the Hilltop:
The increase in arrests made be welcome news for Harrison and police, but it’s concerning to Esther Flores. She runs 1 Divine Line 2 Health, which operates a part-time drop-in center for sex workers in the Hilltop.
“I’m a firm believer that incarceration is not rehabilitation,” Flores says. “That is a mentality most police officers believe.”
Flores says she doesn’t know if any women who visit her offices have encounters with PACT officers, so she has not heard personal stories about the unit.
But Flores wishes PACT would work more with grassroots organizations like hers, saying that large organizations aren’t typically open when women need them the most.
At the end of the day, cops need people going to jail to continue to justify their salaries, pensions and union benefits. Giving them any power to arrest some of society’s most vulnerable women is a grave mistake.
OH HELL YEAH: OHIO REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DRAMA
One of the bad things about the era of President Business Deals is he inspired a generation of conservative crackpots to think, “Hell, I could do that too!”
One such loon is State Senate candidate Melissa Ackison — rancid politics aside — can at least be applauded for making her opponent, car-dealing State Rep. Bill Reineke, sweat to the point that he has released an ad accusing the fellow Republican of not paying taxes and having the audacity to give a former non-violent drug offender a job.
From tiffinohio.net:
TIFFIN — Ohio Senate candidate and current State Rep. Bill Reineke (R-Tiffin) on Monday released a new video advertisement along with a website dedicated to attacking his conservative primary challenger, Melissa Ackison (R-Marysville).
Reineke’s campaign purchased a domain name, MelissaAckison.com, to host a website where they paint Ackison as a failed businesswoman, attacking her for fines and complaints her Marysville-based surveying company, Ackison Surveying LLC, has received over the years.
Reineke and Ackison are facing off in the March primary election for the Republican nomination to run for the 26th district Ohio Senate seat.
…
Ackison says the fines against her business are the result of an “intrusive government” with regulations “on par with New York and California,” as well as “institutions of government” attempting to take her down.
“Unlike you, I wasn’t born as an heiress to an immense car dealership. I wasn’t born to be a tycoon. I came from the bottom and I had to work and claw my way up to the top despite the government breathing down the back of my neck every time I turn around to make a life for myself, to run my farm, to run my surveying company, to run our excavation company,” Ackison said. “You know what Bill Reineke, I still had time, as a private citizen, to go out and to activate myself and get legislative reforms for things that mean something to the people.”
Reineke would be running this ad if his team hadn’t gotten some alarming poll numbers. I’m not sure how far accusations of not paying taxes will go in a Republican primary of voters who hate paying taxes. But I think Ackison will win.
The worst thing you can be in politics is boring. And say what you want about Ackison, but she’s certainly not that.
THOSE WMDs. When a sheriff’s jail is emptied… Wisconsin landlord restricts hip-hop and “urban” music… Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez electrifies Iowa; no Bernie Sanders required… Saudi Prince and Jeff Bezos now sworn enemies over phone hacking… An ER doctor was charged with abusing a baby, but 15 medical experts say there’s no proof… Two thirds of American adults report feeling lonely.