We used to be a proper country

An unlikely alliance of Building Trades unions and polite racists are about to learn a lesson in who really runs the Statehouse.

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Some days I go to the Statehouse to walk around like a twink and gossip with my fellow perverts. Some prefer the politically correct name for this activity: “Lobbying,” but I’m honest in my whoredom.

Yesterday, I found myself in a Commerce & Labor Committee hearing on HB-327.

The bill would mandate Ohio employers with 75 workers or more must vet new hires with E-Verify.

Its website describes E-Verify as “an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility.”

Polls would probably show that 70 percent of Americans support mandating employers use E-Verify. It sounds like common sense to the average voter.

Like most proposed silver bullets, however, things aren’t as always simple as they appear. A bill in this form has been around the Statehouse since last year.

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The main problem I have with the legislation is that it’s sponsored in part by State Rep. “Hot Head” Scott Wiggam (R-Wooster), a man who looks like the reanimated corpse of a syphilitic sailor who has been embalmed since the 1850s:

State Rep. Scott Wiggam (R-Wooster) is one of two primary sponsors of HB-327. The Rooster profiled his career in March 2022.

I personally believe Wiggam to be racist. Considering the time an aide accused him of calling her “the good type of Mexican” and his taped racist comments about State Senator Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg). A good rule of thumb in life is to generally oppose anything an asshole like Wiggam proposes.

Secondly, it’s been proven that E-Verify, like seemingly all other Big Tech simple solutions, is hocus pocus bullshit.

From Alex Nowrasteh of politico.com in October 2019:

The first state to mandate E-Verify for all new hires was Arizona in 2008. Former Arizona Republican state Sen. Rich Crandall said E-Verify “was promised as the silver bullet to immigration problems. E-Verify was going to solve our challenges with immigration.” Terrified by the prospect of an effective E-Verify program, about 17 percent of Arizona’s undocumented immigrant population left the state in response to its implementation.

But the exodus slowed after E-Verify went into effect because workers and businesses figured out how to get around it. Those lessons quickly spread to the other states where E-Verify was mandated, like Mississippi, whose undocumented immigrant population has remained roughly constant for a decade.

In August, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided several meat processing plants in Mississippi and detained 680 undocumented immigrant workers, eventually letting 300 go. If E-Verify was the silver bullet program sold to state legislators like Rich Crandall, then ICE raids should not have been necessary, as undocumented immigrants would never have been employed in the first place.

Given the reactionary nature and overall ineffectiveness of the proposed law, it’s hard for me to take the effort to pass this nonsensical piece of legislation as anything other than a chance to do some light racism.

When Wiggam’s constituents at the Wayne County Fair complain to Wiggam about “The Border,” he can say well, if it were up to me, I’d crash the state’s economy. And have it be taken as a serious proposal by a serious person.

Unfortunately for guys like Wiggam, Ohio would be increasingly irrelevant on the national stage if we followed his lead. Ohio's population would be hemorrhaging without the influx of immigrants.

From Peter Gill of dispatch.com:

Because native-born Americans are having fewer children and are moving away from Ohio, the state’s population shrunk by about 13,000 between mid-2020 and mid-2023. But it would have shrunk by about 61,000 more if it weren’t for the flow of immigrants moving in, according to Census Bureau estimates.

In Columbus — Ohio’s fastest-growing metro area — international immigrants accounted for more than half of the population growth over the three years, according to the bureau. 

This includes everyone from refugees like [Congolese immigrant Kikandi] Lukambo to high-skill workers on H-1B visas, people admitted based on family ties and undocumented individuals. Franklin County’s largest foreign-born groups come from Asia, followed by Africa and then Latin America.

I wish those numbers were higher, honestly. Unless you're indigenous to America or the descendants of slaves, the odds are rather high that your ancestors came to this country during a time of open borders in search of another life.

I’ll always roll the dice with immigrants willing to move to a country that is overtly hostile to them in search of a better life for their descendants. It’s no different than when my great-grandfather, Charles O’Byrne, made the mistake of leaving the Emerland Isle for America’s shores.

We don’t do databases!

The funniest part of the hearing came inadvertently from State Rep. Nick Santucci (R-Warren), who seemed concerned that the law, which would draw on current federal databases to vet workers, would somehow establish a new database.

Please do not put in the newspaper that we do databases in Ohio. We don’t!

Shady lobbyist doesn’t want to talk about his “good friend” getting appointed as foreman of a grand jury investigating Larry Householder

Matt Szollosi, the former Ohio House Speaker Pro Tempore and current Executive Director of the Affiliated Construction Trades of Ohio, also made an appearance to support HB-327.

Szollosi didn’t have a good answer when State Rep. Dontavius Jerrells (D-Columbus) asked what would happen if suddenly tens of thousands of undocumented workers were out of a job. Would those jobs suddenly go to documented workers?

The answer is obviously no. But for some reason, Szollosi said his organization decided to “take a stand” on HB-327. I would argue there are better uses of time and resources. But this is the ultimate effect of doing business with the Republican junta that controls the Statehouse: It’s death by a thousand papercuts.

A document from the Larry Householder investigation: An email sent by Matt Szollosi, the Executive Director of ACT Ohio, instructing his team on the importance of continuing to invest in then-Speaker Larry Householder and his leadership team.

Afterward, I asked Szollosi about David Wondolowski, the ACT Ohio executive and major financial donor to Larry Householder, who found himself as foreman to a grand jury investigation into Householder’s campaign finance malfeasance.

Szollosi called “Wondo” a good friend. But when I broached the subject of the suspicious appointment as foreman to the latest Larry Householder grand jury, Szollosi threw up his hands and said he didn’t want to talk about any of that.

I would have pursued the matter if Szollosi hadn’t been accompanied by regular tradesmen who came to testify in favor of the doomed bill.

But it kills me that Szollosi can glide around the Statehouse and testify for various bills without anyone asking him if he’s been interviewed by the FBI about his organization’s support of HB-6, the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about).

The Rooster originally covered ACT’s HB-6 predicament back in October 2023.

There are a lot of lobbyists and organizers in the Statehouse labor circles that I trust and respect. I can’t say that about Szollosi and Wondowlowski. In my opinion, they’re the exact type of sleazy, self-interested operator that led to unions losing political power in America for the last 40 years.

Through that lens, it’s not surprising that these guys fell in line behind Householder, a career white-collar criminal.

Polite Racist treated as credible witness during Ohio House committee testimony

A cool feature about the Ohio Statehouse is you can watch a woman throw around the phrase “illegal aliens” a bunch of times and then learn in a Statehouse chat on Signal that she belongs to an organization dedicated to securing the future for white children.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR’s founder, the late John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group’s main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a “mistake.”

I don’t deny that politics makes odd bedfellows. I believe in the radical theory that a good idea is a good idea, and a bad idea is a bad idea. But if I were ever to find myself on the side of M. Shari Rendall and FAIR, I would probably reexamine some of my life’s choices that led to that moment.

Ultimately, however, FAIR and the Affiliated Construction Trades are about to earn a reminder that groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Farm Bureau run the Statehouse.

The Chamber of Commerce and Farm Bureau, and to a lesser extent, the Ohio Restaurant Association, will stifle this legislation in the crib. The business models of their biggest clients rely on a healthy stream of undocumented labor.

Anybody who doesn’t realize that is either a paid flunkie (the best kind of flunkie to be, honestly) or a mark.

Announcing unauthorized Statehouse tours for brave and noble subscribers

I’ve been thinking of new ways to reward brave and noble financial supporters of The Rooster.

And yesterday, I decided to offer free, unauthorized, hourish-long Statehouse tours to members of The Patriots Caucus. You can join today for a discounted price:

My plan over the next two weeks is to learn as much Statehouse lore as possible and then create some sort of Google Calendar that will let subscribers book tours at their convenience.

An official Statehouse portrait of Jamie “The Gigachad” Callender, perhaps the only respectable Libertarian in the world.

Apparently, State Rep. Jamie “The Gigachad” Callender (R-Concord Twp.) gives a one-of-a-kind tour, so I’m going to try to get him to take me on one and put my own little demented spin on it.

I realize that not every subscriber can come to Columbus for a tour led by a neighborhood sewer blogger. This is only the start of an expansion of subscriber perks, so don’t fret, just stay tuned!

Odds & Ends

An AI-generated image of a Gnome casting a spell. The Rooster is a pro-gnome publication.

• Franklin County judge Michael J. Holbrook, one of the last Republicans in elected office in Columbus, issued a two-week stay keeping HB-68 from going into effect. The legislation, spearheaded by odious hog State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), would ban gender-affirming care for anyone under 18 and keep transgender women from participating in their respective sports divisions. Click responded by turning off replies to his tweets.

• Columbus paid $260,000 to a marketing firm to promote the city’s zoning reform plan, including drafting letters from fictitious Columbus residents to the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch. The leader of firm Paul Werth’s team is Dan Williamson, a longtime loyalist to former mayor and current City Hall lobbyist Michael B. Coleman. My prediction is “Team MAG,” as “Team Mayor Andy Ginther” is colloquially known, understand that Mayor Suburbs will resign before the end of his current team to appoint current City Council president Shannon Hardin to the role. That means it’s favor time for friends on their way out the door.

• Fraternal Order of the Police Lodge #9 President Jeffrey Simpson, whom The Rooster has covered before, surprisingly resigned. Executive Vice President Brian Steele will step into the role.

• The Long Shadow of the Columbus Vice Unit: With Stormy Daniels back in the news, it’s worth revising the deep dive from Matter News into the police unit behind her corrupt arrest, which the city settled for $400,000.

THOSE WMDs. The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat… The far-right spammers of Falmouth Bottom… In memory of Nicole Brown Simpson… Top five regrets of dying—and what we can learn from them… He makes a fortune by buying abandoned shipping containers.