Rooster in Review: Michelin Mike Turner, little piggie out to lunch
We've lost the plot if it's "legal" for an Ohio Congressman to expense a luxury dinner in Hawai'i of all places.
There’s a crisis in American politics with campaign finance laws—and not just a single oligarch being able to funnel $250 million into a presidential race under the guise of “free speech” and become a trillionaire two years later.
The laws around campaign spending are way, way too lax in Ohio and America.
State Senator Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) is the best example of the former; he spends campaign funds like a drunken sailor in a brothel, meaning his salary is north of $300K a year.
We now have a federal example, as if one were needed, in longtime Dayton Republican Congressman Mike Turner.
From Thomas Gnau of Dayton Daily News:
$9,000 at the Dayton Engineers Club.
$8,500 at the Monocle, a Washington, DC steakhouse.
Over $7,600 at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington.
Over $3,400 at the Pine Club, Dayton.
Over $2,900 at the Oakwood Club.
Over $1,900 at Osaka Japanese Steakhouse in Beavercreek.
$1,900 at Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse in DC.
Over $500 at Lanai at Mamala Bay, in Hawaii.
This complaint charges that Turner’s campaign spent in excess of $55,000 on restaurants and tens of thousands on lodging, including on the “Trump International Hotel DC,” but also in Dayton and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas where Turner has homes.
It’s not hard to see what’s going on here.
Turner is taking multiple people out to expensive meals and chalking it up as a “campaign expense,” likely after glibly mentioning to the table that he hopes he gets re-elected in November.
That he’s expensing a $500 dinner in Hawaii offers insight into how comfortable he's become with running this little scam.
The nastiest part, however, is Turner spending “tens of thousands of dollars” in lodging at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., which is a thinly veiled loyalty payment to the Big Man to curry favor with the party’s kingpin.
If we had the media environment we deserved, Turner would be grilled for the next four months about how, exactly, an $8,500 dinner at the Monocle in D.C. helped his re-election bid or why he’s spending tens of thousands of dollars in lodging in D.C. and Dayton when he has homes in both metro areas.
But that’s unlikely to happen in Ohio, a state of 11 million already condemned souls, with only a single Congressional reporter on Capitol Hill. (Shoutout to Sabrina Eaton of cleveland.com.)
But this is another example, again, as if one were needed, about the swindling that Republican politicians run on their primarily rural voters: The only thing they will ever get to own in the future is the liberals. Now, that might be enough for a certain kind of hate-filled simpleton, of which there’s no short supply in Ohio.
But it should be driven home to them that their beautiful Republican politicians feel much more comfortable in swanky steakhouses in liberal neighborhoods than they would ever feel living among their hog voters.
Ohio’s statewide election is just around the corner, and there may never be a better time to subscribe to The Rooster.
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This week in Ohio Man…
An Ohio Man likely learned a lesson this week about the dangers DNA services like Ancestry.com pose to murderers and other classes of wanted criminals.
From Mark Walker of nytimes.com:
For nearly 40 years, the clues sat in silence.
Some were left in an Ohio hotel room where John Warren, a 44-year-old auto parts salesman, was found dead in October 1985. Others turned up hundreds of miles away: his Oldsmobile abandoned on Florida’s Gulf Coast, and a scattering of belongings discarded behind a Cracker Barrel in northwest Georgia.
The pieces were never quite enough to arrest anyone. Detectives chased leads, interviewed witnesses and watched the case grow cold.
Now, investigators in Warren County, Ohio, have identified two men they believe were responsible for Mr. Warren’s killing, based on what they called a renewed forensic analysis.
One of them, Randy McAllister, 62, of Columbus, was indicted in June on charges of aggravated murder and murder.
To be clear, prosecutors have refused to clarify how they landed on Mr. McAllister and his since-dead alleged accomplice, whom they’ve also refused to identify.
But given they reopened the case in 2019 and resubmitted the forensic evidence for analysis at a later, unspecified date… there’s a good chance they nabbed him when one of his relatives submitted their DNA to a genealogy website.
It would appear that I have no murderers or stone-cold criminals in my extended family, as I submitted my DNA to Ancestry.com in 2018 like a rube. It’s probably best that you learn from me and don’t sell your DNA to a private company to do whatever they want with it, in exchange for a sketchy “ancestry” analysis that comes with several risks of exposing your personal information to scammers.
But hey, I suppose the upshot for me is that I can rest easy knowing my father or mother or any of their kin didn’t murder a traveling salesman in Middletown, Ohio, in 1985.
This week on The Rooster…
It was a brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, with two dynamite freelance pieces that The Rooster can afford to finance thanks to the generosity of the Patriots Caucus.
Please consider purchasing a membership for the full experience at The Rooster:
The Armchair Quarterback and the Statehouse Swindle. Columbus-based Republican operative Elephant in the Room returns to shine light on the many ways Ohio House Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe profiteers on Republican House candidates.
No surrender means no surrender. I ventured to Lake County on Tuesday and rejected two plea deals that would have seen me admit guilt in Shrextgate.
Grifters… everywhere. What do Kirk Noden, Max Miller, and Frank LaRose all have in common? Their misdeeds were highlighted in The Rooster’s Thursday dispatch.
Why is an ordained huckster advocating for mass surveillance in Cleveland? Cleveland-based freelancer Saint Claire returns to expose Pastor Aaron Phillips’ paid role with Mayor Justin Bibb and their common cause of Flock expansion throughout the city.
We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.
Until then… stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDs. How U.S. soldier Jess Cunningham exposed a war crime in Iraq… The real-life mermaids of Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs… How Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” changed America… I played football in Guantanamo Bay—this World Cup is a stain on humanity… Why did Hana Sherif leave Arena Stage?