Machine Wins Again
A whopping 21% of Columbus’ 840,564 voters managed to vote in the 2019 local elections which is pretty pathetic.
But those are the types of numbers political machines love so it’s no surprise the corporate lackeys at the Franklin County Democratic Party continued their vise grip on City Hall and City Council.
The loss of the latest Yes We Can! slate would be easier to stomach if the FCDP could get their minion voters to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot. Sure you sharks maintained your autocratic hold on City Hall but you lost two out of the three races for municipal judge! Hell you couldn’t even get Clarence Mingo’s sister off the environmental bench! Thankfully Jessica D’Varga put Amy Solerno in a trashcan otherwise the election results would have been grim.
So I have no doubt the four incumbent members of the council are drinking from chalices tonight and chuckling at the latest attempt to dethrone them. But I never want to hear anyone ever boast about Columbus Ohio being a progressive city ever again. It’s not in any sense of the word.
Am I mad online about this? You’re damn right I’m mad. Life would be a lot easier if everybody agreed with my political opinions. We sure as hell would be represented on a local level by people a helluva lot cooler than Emmanuel Remy and Andy “I wouldn’t want my kids living in Franklinton” Ginther.
In the meantime I’m going to concentrate on Democratic wins in Kentucky, Virginia and Philadelphia.
FRAUD IN THE CITY OF KINGS
Ohio Republicans love to pretend their purges of voter rolls are about preventing election fraud and not preventing traditional Democratic voters from casting a ballot.
Like most things with these guys however it’s always projection because if there’s ever a case of election fraud it’s always some thumb-headed right-winger with their hand in the cookie jar.
We now head to the City of Kings where a County Auditor candidate got caught breaking the law and basically told investigators “Yeah I did it and guess who helped me?”
From Jim Woods of dispatch.com:
The Republican candidate for Marion City Auditor and a Marion County Republican Party official were charged Tuesday with circulating false sample ballots.
Robert Landon III, 29, a Republican who is on the ballot Tuesday as a candidate for Marion city auditor, was charged with two first-degree misdemeanors. The charges are that he violated the law by falsely implying that a communication was from the Marion County Board of Elections and that he circulated false ballot material.
John R. Matthews II, 53, of Caledonia, Ohio, was charged with a single count of circulating false ballot material.
The two are accused of circulating false sample ballots that looked like real ones. Under the law, sample ballots are supposed to be of a different color.
Marion City Law Director Mark D. Russell filed the charges on Election Day in Marion Municipal Court, based upon an investigation by the Marion city police department. If convicted, a first-degree misdemeanor charge carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
In typical Marion fashion they elected the crime-doer to watch over city funds. You might be thinking like I did “wow it seems odd you can commit election fraud and still win an election” but it’s possible since election fraud is only a misdemeanor.
However a well-connected City source says Landon has also been nailed for campaign finance violations which are big-time felonies and disqualify him from office. But again shoutout to the City of Kings for trying to elect a guy who can’t even manage his own campaign money properly. Wonder how he would have done with other people’s?
Speaking of Marion politics and I swear we’re moving on to another topic here soon but congratulations to Mayor Scott Schertzer for being a Democrat holding down City Hall in Trump Country.
Also congratulations to my mother on her victory to the Marion City School Boards. Hopefully The Rooster’s opinions don’t force her into resigning this time around.
JOSH MANDEL WORKED SIX HOURS A WEEK FOR A YEAR TO DEVISE A PLAN THAT BROKE STATE LAW
Urban Meyer’s good friend Josh Mandel worked six hours a week during the last year of his State Treasurer job that paid him $108,000 a year. He devised a plan to allow the businesses to pay taxes in Bitcoin the preferred currency of online drug dealers and pedophiles.
More technically speaking Mandel enlisted a no-bid third party vendor who accepted the Bitcoin payments from businesses and paid the state in cash. Only one businesses took the state up on the offer and current Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague scrapped the system in October for being a waste of time.
From Catherine Cadinsky of dispatch.com:
Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel violated state law by accepting Bitcoin from business taxpayers to settle state obligations, according to a legal opinion released Tuesday by Attorney General Dave Yost.
Essentially, Mandel failed to obtain required approval of the State Board of Deposit, Yost said.
“The State Board of Deposit must approve the collection of state taxes using OhioCrypto.com, or a similar financial transaction device ... before the treasurer may collect taxes using OhioCrypto.com or a similar financial transaction device,” Yost concluded in the four-page opinion.
The State Board of Deposit requested that Yost evaluate the matter.
In October, Ohio Treasure Robert Sprague suspended the use of bitcoins, citing concerns that the contract with a third-party payment processor was not competitively bid by Mandel which would have been required if the Board of Deposit had approved the arrangement. OhioCrypto.com, a website launched in 2018 under Mandel, was the first state portal to facilitate cryptocurrency as a form of payment for businesses.
Mandel is one of the biggest assholes in the history of Ohio politics which you always have to respect considering all the yawning anuses that have lorded over our dwindling state in the last 20 years alone.
Maybe if we had an actual prosecutor in Franklin County we could get Josh Mandel getting frog-marched to the clink on the six o’clock news and I could die a happy man. Instead Mandel has filed paperwork to keep his political action committee afloat in case he decides to run again.
Still I can’t get too mad considering only a couple years ago Mandel was seen as a rising star in Ohio politics and worthy of taking on Sherrod Brown for a Senate seat.
I’m sure he’s somewhere in the Cleveland area hatching hobgoblin plots but at least he’s nowhere close to public office.
ANOTHER BLOW DEALT TO DAYTON?
Cox Media sold The Dayton Daily News to a cabal of private equity ghouls who may now gut the paper due television being more profitable as well as FCC rules pertaining to local media monopolies.
From daytondailynews.com:
A recent federal court ruling reversing a 2017 FCC decision to eliminate an outdated rule prohibiting ownership of both a daily print publication and radio or TV broadcast stations in the same market may impact Cox Media Group’s sale to Terrier Media.
This decision will potentially make it necessary for the Dayton Daily News, the Springfield News-Sun and the Journal-News to reduce the number of days of print publication so that they are no longer considered daily papers subject to the rule.
It is not clear that the papers will need to go to non-daily status in order for the deal to be approved.
“That is just one potential scenario we are considering,” Cox Media Group President Kim Guthrie said. “However, to plan for this contingency, we are working on a strategy to move quickly to ensure the Ohio papers return to daily print publication as soon as possible post-closing.”
Dayton Daily News was like the last legitimate paper available in the rural parts of the Miami Valley. If that goes down people will just turn to corporate-owned TV stations that poison people with propaganda and further pollute our political system.
ROB PORTMAN MUST NOT KNOW WHO HE’S DEALING WITH
Rob Portman spent his career crafting an image as a sensible and steady leader who also had no problem with rewarding rich people and making life harder for those that have to work for a living.
And then Frankenstein’s monster of racism and megalomania finally got off the table and took control of the Republican Party and now Portman is reduced to whimpering platitudes as President Business Deals shreds our Constitution and pimps our foreign policy.
Portman is smart enough to know Deals could end his career with a tweet. So instead of making a principled stand Portman is left offering deferential advice to a pig-headed president incapable of any personality changes.
From Alex Bolton of msn.com:
One instance came late last month during a meeting between Trump and Republican senators at the White House, when Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) urged the president to follow the model of how President Bill Clinton handled impeachment in 1998 and 1999.
The GOP senator, who is an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), urged Trump at the Oct. 24 meeting to keep his focus on the agenda and let Republican lawmakers do more of the heavy lifting in fighting back against the Democratic impeachment push.
The senator's comments reflected the belief among many Senate Republicans that the public cares more about issues such as the strength of the economy, health care and national security than impeachment.
"The dual-track strategy would be a better strategy. He's been told this a number of times. Let us worry about impeachment, that's our job. You worry about your job," said a person familiar with communications between Senate Republicans and the president.
The only thing Donald Trump and Bill Clinton have in common is they’re both wealthy and white and also sexual predators who happened to become president.
If Portman thinks Trump can flip a switch and let his minions in Congress defend him against the “sham impeachment process” than Ohio’s Senator is even dumber and more naive than I thought.
AH HELL THE OHIO LEGISLATURE IS BACK IN SESSION SO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
While most of politically connected Ohioans were watching local election results yesterday like normal people the Ohio Senate used the opportunity to ram two psychotic anti-abortion bills through committee that the chamber will vote upon today.
From Jo Ingles of statenews.org:
An Ohio Senate committee has paved the way for the two controversial bills to hit the chamber floor tomorrow. Both would put restrictions on doctors performing those procedures.
One bill requires doctors to tell medication abortion patients about a controversial procedure known as abortion reversal. Under this bill, women receiving the two pills that cause abortion will be told they can reverse it by taking progesterone after taking the first pill. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that method is not based on science and could be dangerous.
The other bill mandates doctors report if a fetus isn’t completely destroyed via abortion and requires them to preserve it or face penalties.
God these people are freaks. And I don’t mean that in the good way like when I refer to a resident of Freaky Franklinton. I mean the word in the worst way possible. Anybody this obsessed with fetal remains and pseudoscience like “abortion reversal pills” in a state with a sagging economy and graying population is a freak. There’s no better word to describe them.
THOSE WMDs. The (extremely true) story of the cat that streaked MetLife field… Why most Americans are terrible at making biscuits… Deep sleep gives your brain a deep clean… The power of one push-up… Why I stopped being busy.