January 28, 2019: Freddie Kitchens is Cleveland Sexy
January 28, 2019: Freddie Kitchens is Cleveland Sexy
Corporations finance DeWine's inauguration, SERB rules in favor of Wright State strikers, and more.
The Browns made headlines with the hiring of Freddie Kitchens, who started the season as a running backs coach, as the next head coach.
I’m thankful the NFL slept on Coach Thicc. It didn’t keep me from wondering why Kitchens didn’t draw interest from other teams.
NFL.com reporter Ian Rapoport offered a reason why on The Rich Eisen Show.
“It’s possible Freddie Kitchens didn’t get head coaching consideration because he doesn’t look like a head coach. I have no idea, but it’s the only thing I can come up with. … Perhaps if Kitchens looked like he came out of an L.L. Bean quarter-zip pullover ad, he’d more in demand.”
Thanks to the success of Sean McVay in Los Angeles, NFL owners are currently obsessed with hiring handsome Millennials to coach their team and/or fuck their wife.
Them passing on Kitchens makes sense. Not even a billionaire’s bloated ego could withstand coming home and seeing Kitchens’ sweaty ass cheeks all over the $8,000 leather couch.
L.L. Bean will wish they had signed Kitchens for a XXXL quarter-zip pullover line when the Browns are 8-0 entering November. Kitchens, by that point, will be a sexual icon with offers to model his peak pink American physique in Milan.
Jokes aside, Browns should hire a nutritionist for Kitchens. He already had a heart attack in 2013, and the stakes are too high to risk heart disease short-circuiting a 30-year dynasty in Year 8.
As our criminal president will soon prove, it’s a terrible idea to outsource inaugural ceremonies and governmental transitions to ultra-wealthy donors and corporations.
Mike DeWine’s gubernatorial inauguration is a smaller example of this principle. Former Ohio lieutenant governor Mary Taylor spent her primary campaign accusing “D.C. DeWine” of being a master operator of the pay-to-play culture that has gripped Ohio since the mid-80’s.
From Kaitlin Schroeder of daytondailynews.com:
Local companies were among donors who collectively gave $1.7 million to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted for inauguration related events and transition expenses.
The maximum that companies can give under state law is $10,000 and several local companies gave up to the limit, including CareSource, Premier Health, Fuyao, Dayton Power & Light, Woolpert, The Ohlman Group and Heidelberg Distributing Co.
…
Many of the donors could be affected by policy issues to be considered by the DeWine administration.
Dayton-based CareSource is an insurer that primarily manages private Medicaid policies and the largest check the state writes each year goes to CareSource. Both of its entities, Caresource Ohio and Caresource Management Group Co., gave $10,000.
Well, at least this means Medicaid Expansion is likely safe in Ohio.
Fuyao is the crown jewel of John Kasich’s “JobsOhio” boondoggle. It’s owned by Ceo Dewang, the Chinese billionaire pictured above who bragged about American trade policy exterminating his local competitors. His employees make $14-an-hour in the same factory unionized GM workers used to make $35+.
He intimidated workers into voting down a UAW unionization effort in 2016. A year later, 636 workers sued for systemic wage theft in a lawsuit still pending.
Very cool how this guy, thanks to our antiquated practices, has a direct line to the most powerful elf in the state.
The powerful minds of Wright State management that helped produce articles like “7 Controversies That Cost Wright State Millions of Dollars” tried to mandate a contract on unionized professors that removed class caseload limits and increased healthcare costs.
The professors told them to go fuck themselves and went on strike. Management ran to SERB, the State Employment Relations Board, in effort to have the strike declared illegal.
I expected the state to order the teachers back to work within 24 hours (even though union leaders could have declared another strike in 10 days) because the big guy shitting on the little guy is how Ohio has worked as long as I’ve been alive.
I was wrong… thankfully.
From Max Filby of daytondailynews.com:
COLUMBUS — The State Employment Relations Board ruled against Wright State University’s administration Sunday, allowing the faculty strike to continue.
The board’s decision came after an emergency meeting was called for Sunday during which attorneys for the administration and the Wright State chapter of the American Association of University Professors each made their cases.
…
“We are delighted but not surprised. We knew it was a ridiculous filing,” [WSU history professor and union contract administration officer Noeleen] McIlvenna said. “We have done everything right and everything legal and this is just one more example of wasted student tuition dollars spent on attorneys filing these ridiculous complaints.”
The strike will enters Day 7 today and is already the longest education strike in state history.
The administration has no other choice but to strike a fair deal. That didn’t stop them from throwing one last Hail Mary at blaming workers.
Prediction: The strike ends this week and Wright State staff becomes the latest segment of American educators to earn a larger slice of the pie with labor’s most potent weapon, the strike.
Hopefully it emboldens educators across Ohio. Legislative gremlins have underfunded schools and universities long enough.
Every Millennial knows a former high school classmate who brags about making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on Instagram despite nobody knowing what it is they do besides post about sleeping when they’re dead while using hashtags like #entrepreneurmindset and #bosslife.
The offenders are part of larger, more troubling movement of young people seeking to turn working long hours into a lifestyle.
From Erin Griffith of nyt.com:
New media upstarts like the Hustle, which produces a popular business newsletter and conference series, and One37pm, a content company created by the patron saint of hustling, Gary Vaynerchuk, glorify ambition not as a means to an end, but as a lifestyle.
“The current state of entrepreneurship is bigger than career,” reads the One37pm “About Us” page. “It’s ambition, grit and hustle. It’s a live performance that lights up your creativity … a sweat session that sends your endorphins coursing ... a visionary who expands your way of thinking.” From this point of view, not only does one never stop hustling — one never exits a kind of work rapture, in which the chief purpose of exercising or attending a concert is to get inspiration that leads back to the desk.
Ryan Harwood, the chief executive of One37pm’s parent company, told me that the site’s content is aimed at a younger generation of people who are seeking permission to follow their dreams. “They want to know how to own their moment, at any given moment,” he said.
“Owning one’s moment” is a clever way to rebrand “surviving the rat race.” In the new work culture, enduring or even merely liking one’s job is not enough. Workers should love what they do, and then promote that love on social media, thus fusing their identities to that of their employers. Why else would LinkedIn build its own version of Snapchat Stories?
The greatest lie the devil ever told is you must love your job. Only people with rich parents can afford to delude themselves into thinking the only job worth working is one they’re passionate about.
THOSE WMDs. The Baby Boomers — not Millennials — screwed America… MI6’s covert mission to woo West Indians… Missing three-year-old found alive, says he made friends with a bear… The whole Weezer/“Africa” thing was my fault, and I’m sorry… Perp walk? Blame Giuliani… Howard Schultz gave out $3.50 Starbucks gift cards… How the alt-right exploits the internet’s largest commenting platform.