The ideal office commute is a one-mile walk. It’s short enough that any inclement weather won’t matter, but it’s long enough to “get the juices flowing” as my father is fond of saying.
Walking to work allows you to gather your thoughts without having to navigate a 2,000-pound steel missile on a highway or risking your boss chewing your ass (not in the good way) about being late because some uninsured joker couldn’t handle driving in a straight line and crashed.
Like most Americans, there are some days heading into the office when I already know I don’t have my fastball. That I’ll have to conjure the energy needed to confront some of the biggest losers in state and local government.
Yesterday was no such day! Maybe it was the balmy February morning thanks to the Chinese hoax known as “global warming,” but by the time I crossed the Broad Street bridge into downtown, I could tell there was something special in the air.
Even then, sometimes that’s not enough. It takes two to create content. The Statehouse is a lot like Pawn Stars. You never know who is walking through those doors.
But yesterday was no such day! The content gods delivered in full.
Mayor Suburbs, in the flesh!
I was in the Statehouse rotunda setting up my camera when I looked over and thought I was back to drinking a pint of Tito’s Handmade Vodka for breakfast.
Thankfully, my eyes did not deceive me. There was Mayor Suburbs and his coterie of advisors admiring the scene like a bunch of tourists.
Coincidentally, I cut a video two weeks ago after the State Legislature overrode Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of HB-68, the dual-pronged attack on transgender existence in Ohio.
In that video, I took issue with Mayor Suburbs, who could only be bothered to send a tweet that didn’t even mention the word “transgender” about the heinous act of state-sanctioned violence.
As I told the Mayor—we need more than tweets from him! He’s not some random joker on the street like I am.
It would have been nice to see him lend the credibility of the mayor’s office to the Statehouse protests against HB-68. Instead, he left that to normal people who, God bless them, don’t have any political power.
But I’ve learned that the Mayor can’t be bothered with that kind of stuff because he legitimately hates interacting with regular citizens, which says all you need to know about Columbus’ local politics is that an asocial nerd was able to win the mayorship.
Needless to say, I appreciate the Mayor’s aides for giving a new textbook reaction image of watching their boss get put in a blender:
Mayor Suburbs was meeting with House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) to get more money for cops if you can believe that.
A friendly lobbyist relayed that there’s a three-year solvency gap in the 40-year forecast for the state pension for police and firefighters. Those unions want an increase in employer contributions to cover that gap, and the mayor was doing his “due diligence” on the state of the pension before inevitably backing the request.
Gary Click as dishonest as ever
State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery) finally passed HB-68, the single legislative goal he’s had during his entire putrid existence in the State Legislature.
The silver lining was going to be finally learning what other ideas were rattling around that wasteland he calls a mind. But it turned out to be more discrimination.
Last week, Click went on a Twitter Space hosted by various Michigan State Legislators, and he divulged that HB-68 was never about “protecting little girls” or “saving women’s sports.”
It was about the long game of enforcing his weird religious view that transgender people shouldn’t exist.
From Erin Reed of erininthemorning.com:
While the beginning of the Space focused more on transgender care for youth, 49 minutes into the discussion, attention turned to transgender adults. Representative Shriver asked, "In terms of endgame, why are we allowing these practices for anyone? If we are going to stop this for anyone under 18, why not apply it for anyone over 18? It's harmful across the board, and that's something we need to take into consideration in terms of the endgame."
Representative Click then responded, "That's a very smart thought there. I think what we know legislatively is we have to take small bites.”
He then turned to Governor DeWine's targeting of transgender adult care clinics, stating, "The other thing is Planned Parenthoods; they pass out hormones like candy, he's put a stop to that. That's one of the places a lot of adults go. There's also Euphoria and Plume."
I staked out Click in the Civil Justice Committee yesterday in which Click barely looked away from his phone while the room collectively learned about proposed changes to estate planning and will-making.
Afterward, I confronted Click about his own words. And wouldn’t you know it? That dusty old man refused to be honest about his political worldview.
Feel free to stay until the end of the video, after Click unsuccessfully tries to okie doke me at the security checkpoint like a loser, when I ask if he, as a diabetic, consulted with an endocrinologist for his insulin prescription or if he’s working to “resolve his diabetes without hormones” — the kind of medical care he’s looking to enforce on adult transgender people.