January 14, 2019

Kitchens assembles his staff, Ohio State's profitable athletes, Ohio's sorry-ass roads, and more.

You lament another Monday. Consider, though, it’s legal to murder your boss on the second Monday of every month.

Don’t take my word. Shoot your boss in the head right now and ask the cops when they arrive. (They’re undercover bosses if they tell you anything different, and it’s legal to kill them, too.)

One boss who won’t be murdered by employees this morning is Browns head coach Freddie Kitchens. I spent all weekend expecting his hiring to be like one of those sex dreams I used to have in seventh grade: Not real in any way.

Instead I watched a bunch of JV teams squabble over the last Lombardi Trophy that won’t belong to Cleveland for the next 15 years.

While other sides war, the Big Chungus assembled his disciples.

From Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com:

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Freddie Kitchens will have all three of his coordinators in place by the time he’s introduced as Browns head coach in his introductory press conference at noon on Monday at FirstEnergy Stadium.

He’s hired former Bucs offensive coordinator Todd Monken for the same position here, and former Cardinals coach Steve Wilks as defensive coodinator, a league source told cleveland.com.

He’s also hired James Campen as associate head coach/offensive line coach.

I would have put my fat Irish head through the screen of a running microwave if Hue Jackson had hired a Steve, Todd and James. But this is a new era!

Monken took over the Buccaneers' preseason play-calling and never gave the responsibilities back because he only hits dingers.

The most curious thing about the Browns offense will be how Freddie Kitchens, Todd Monken, and Baker Mayfield fit their swollen brass testicles through the corridors of whatever some conglomerate wants us to call Cleveland Browns Stadium these days.

If you imagined college sports like a strip mall, it would be two profitable stores paying the bills while every other store sells artisan cupcakes or candles before going out of business in a month.

The law of averages allows bad-faith actors to pretend all of college sports is a booming business.

From watchdog.org:

Ohio State University sports programs brought in $167,510 per athlete in revenue in 2016, meaning its athletes on average generated the most sports revenue of any school in Ohio that year, according to a Watchdog.org analysis of U.S. Department of Education data.

The university’s sports programs brought in a total of $175,885,823 in 2016. 

The agency's office of postsecondary education collects athletics data annually from all institutions with intercollegiate athletics programs that receive funding through federal financial aid programs. Data for 2016 – the latest year available – includes more than 2,000 schools nationwide.

What a crock. The football team is profitable. The men’s basketball team is too when isn’t missing the NCAA Tournament.

I’d believe a lacrosse player generated $167K a year for Ohio State if more than 15 people attended their games.

Stories like this skew whats happening in college sports. For swimmers and field hockey players, college sports is a luxurious racket. The deal ain’t so sweet for the workers generating the big bucks.

There used to be a time when America respected Ohio roads. It made sense with the state being a distribution hub due to 50% of America’s population falling within a 500-mile radius.

That was before our Republican leaders decided cutting taxes for the super rich was good for the rest of us. Now our roads have craters in them that look like they belong on the moon.

Our national ranking is just as bad as you might imagine, too.

From Laura Morrison of clevescene.com:

Ohio's streets rank within the Top 5 worst in the country. 

Following research on autonomous vehicle safety, the company has released a report ranking the worst and the best roads winding through the country. Pulling data from millions of miles worth of road, with help from the Payver app supplying videos of streets, the roads in Ohio were found majorly wanting in four key areas: cracked pavement, potholes, paint fading and surface flatness. 

The only states worse than Ohio are Michigan, Iowa and Indiana, all places where snow, ice and salt heavily effect overall road conditions. The best spots to drive were in Florida, Hawaii and Washington (a state where salting the roads is banned in many cities). 

At least we’re better than Indiana, a state that had dirt highways until 1999.

Somehow, it gets worse. Ohio is out of money to fund major road projects and will probably have to raise the gas tax.

From Jim Siegel of dispatch.com:

Ohio legislators and the incoming DeWine administration will start off the new year staring down a huge transportation-budget problem: The state has run out of money for major new road-construction projects.

State revenue for road and bridge construction is trending in the wrong direction, and the prospect of significant delays in major projects has prompted the formation of a coalition that will push policymakers to find new transportation money, particularly through an increase in the state gasoline tax.

The status quo means no money for capacity-building projects awaiting funding. Those include improvements to the Interstate 270/Interstate 71/Route 23 area on the South Side, improvements to Interstate 70 ramps at I-270 and at Brice Road on the Far East Side, the I-71 interchange with Routes 36/37, and reconstruction of I-70 and I-71 Downtown.

They can raise the gas tax, we still won’t have proper roads until the state government restores the local government fund instead of hoarding money in a rainy day fund.

Until they do, it means higher local taxes and shittier services for the rest of us.

Speaking of areas where Ohio lags behind West Virginia, our beloved state might finally allow medical marijuana patients access to their medicine.

State officials rolled out the program in typical bumblefuck fashion because we’re still a state that imprisons people for non-violent drug offenses.

From JD Malone of dispatch.com:

The state’s long-simmering medical-marijuana program, authorized by the legislature in 2016, will record the first legal sale of cannabis in Ohio sometime this week, probably in a suburb of Steubenville in Jefferson County.

“We’re very, very close,” said Thomas Rosenberger, executive director of the National Cannabis Association of Ohio, a trade association.

Although sales will begin this week, it will be months before the program’s cultivators, processors, testing labs and dispensaries fully join the supply chain. The initial quantities of marijuana will be small, the dispensaries selling it few, and the supply spotty for weeks, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce.

Due to a lack of processors ready to operate, the only form of cannabis available at the start will be dried flower — the stuff you might be familiar with if you have ever smoked a joint (or saw someone doing it). In Ohio, though, smoking marijuana remains illegal, so patients would have to vape the dried flower using vape pens.

This is why I back ballot initiatives. It’s the only way for the people to circumvent a state legislature that sandbagged a process it created to avoid a public referendum.

Michigan voted for recreational weed in November and instituted it in December. It has yet to fall into a lake of fire.

That our Statehouse refuses to see the light speaks to how old and conservative Ohio’s electorate is.

We all know processed cheese is disgusting despite our deep, passionate love for queso sauce. (Am I projecting? Absolutely not.)

Apparently, however, America’s declining appetite for milk has led to a mind-rattling surplus of cheese.

From Samantha Raphelson of npr.org:

While Americans consumed nearly 37 pounds per capita in 2017, it was not enough to reduce the country's 1.4 billion-pound cheese surplus, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The glut, which at 900,000 cubic yards is the largest in U.S. history, means that there is enough cheese sitting in cold storage to wrap around the U.S. Capitol.

The stockpile started to build several years ago, in large part because the pace of milk production began to exceed the rates of consumption, says Andrew Novakovic, professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University.

Over the past 10 years, milk production has increased by 13 percent because of high prices. But what dairy farmers failed to realize was that Americans are drinking less milk. According to data from the USDA, Americans drank just 149 pounds of milk per capita in 2017, down from 247 pounds in 1975.

Normally this surplus goes to string cheese and other processed abominations. But American’s ain’t digging those anymore, either!

This gives me hope our country may one day awake from the shackles placed upon us by the diabolical baby boomers. Just because they were raised on a steady diet of SPAM and nacho cheese doesn’t mean we have to suffer the same gastrointestinal fate.

THOSE WMDs. How police found man accused of sending racist letter to Kevin Sumlin… Career criminal breaks convict code, saves self… Lots of choices in a house with 16 bathrooms… Why Tucker Carlson plays a critic of capitalism on television… Thief breaks into two State Department buildings, steals phones.