Ohio Welcomes Refugees

Mike DeWine tells President Business Deals that Ohio is fine with foreigners.

Welcome to New Year’s Eve, the easiest day to tell which of your friends are raging alcoholics by whichever ones unleash a vitriolic rant about “amateur hour” whenever you ask them if they’re doing anything to ring in the New Year.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing tonight other than not writing a Wednesday dispatch. I went on a fourth date last night and things went dangerously smooth. I’m starting to worry I might have no choice but to fall in love.

But that’s a question for 2020. It’s 12:30 a.m. on the last day of 2019 and I just ordered some fancy coasters so clearly my year is headed out with a bang. What I’ll remember most about 2019 is that time the Browns somehow bullied the Super Bowl champion Ravens in their own building while I drank spicy margaritas out of the skull of Art Modell.

The only excitement I have about 2020 is being able to use the phrase “Roaring 20’s” again. That will be a fun consolation prize whenever another global depression overtakes us because the cocaine wolves on Wall Street got a little too rowdy.

OHIO TO TRUMP: WE WANT THE REFUGEES

Ohio has lost population since the manufacturing industry absconded overseas to cheaper labor pools. Young people are not flocking to our shores, either.

So that leaves a question for state leaders… how are we going to attract new blood to a state without proper infrastructure, mass transit or affordable housing in any of the big cities?

The answer is relocating some of the most desperate people in the world to Ohio.

From Jackie Borchardt of cincinnati.com:

COLUMBUS – Ohio plans to continue accepting refugees fleeing war, violence and persecution following an executive order from President Donald Trump allowing states to opt out of resettlement efforts.

Gov. Mike DeWine officially acknowledged Ohio's consent to receiving refugees in a Dec. 24 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

"The State of Ohio has a long and successful history of welcoming and assimilating refugees from all corners of the globe," DeWine wrote. "Ohio also has a well-developed support network to welcome and assimilate refugees, primarily led by our faith-based communities."

Trump's September executive order says Department of State officials will only place refugees in states and localities that have consented to placement. A DeWine spokesman indicated then that Ohio would accept refugees under the order.

Kudos to Mike DeWine for pausing his friendship with the racist criminal president one time to do the humanly decent thing.

I regularly speak with refugees and immigrants in Columbus and I’m always amazed by their tenacity. Most of them come over to our racist country with $200 in their pocket and somehow made it work. Meanwhile I’m scared to relocate to a real Ohio city like Cincinnati or Cleveland.

If you are willing to travel half the world to live in Ohio then you’re somebody I want on my team. We are lucky to have any of them, because they come over here work their asses off and pay taxes and raise their children. That’s what makes America great despite the cacophony of racist nonsense bleating from the White House every day.

WORKERS STILL LOSING GROUND IN OHIO

Maybe 2020 will be the year Ohio reverses the economic policies that have decimated the state’s middle class and spurred wealth inequality unseen since the Gilded Age. I for one am not holding my breath.

From Rudy Fichtenbaum of dispatch.com:

We have witnessed thousands of workers with good-paying union jobs with benefits forced to choose between leaving their homes to take jobs in different states or sticking around and hoping they can find jobs that have the same pay and benefits. There are a lot of promises right now about jobs that might or might not be coming to Lordstown and surrounding areas, but uncertainty still plagues the region.

President Trump also inherited an unemployment rate that was on the decline. Four years ago, the U.S. unemployment rate was 5.3%% and Ohio’s was 4.9%. In 2019, the U.S. unemployment rate has dropped to 3.6% while Ohio’s unemployment has dropped to 4.3%.

The Trump administration touts the low unemployment rate, even though Ohio’s unemployment rate has gone from being below the national average to being above the national average.

Moreover, jobs that are created too often are part-time and low-paying and workers don’t have the protection of a union. If Ohioans are working two to three jobs just to make ends meet, something is broken. That’s why unions are seeing a rise in popularity, led in large part by young people joining the work force. When workers have a voice on the job, conditions improve.

One of my biggest pet peeves is whenever some corporation announces a new outlet in the city and the local news is boasting about “500 new jobs” in the region. Jobs are not equal. Maybe they were back in 1970 when you could support a family on minimum wage but those days are long gone. We didn’t even raise the federal minimum wage this decade!

MURDEROUS PSYCHOPATH DOUBLES DOWN ON DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR

Sometimes you have no choice but to admire a psychopath who murdered 25 people. Because what other kind of person has the audacity to be in jail for murdering 25 people at your day job and then turn around and sue your boss for $500K for defamation.

From the Associated Press via nbcnews.com:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio doctor accused of ordering drug overdoses in the deaths of 25 hospital patients has sued his former employer for defamation, saying in a lawsuit that he did nothing wrong and did not deviate from hospital policy on end-of-life care.

Dr. William Husel, who is accused of murder, filed the lawsuit Thursday in Franklin County against the Columbus-area Mount Carmel Health System and its parent organization, Trinity Health Corp.

“It would not be an exaggeration to state that Dr. Husel has suffered perhaps the most egregious case of defamation in Ohio's recent history,” according to the lawsuit.

I’m sorry but I’m going to need a lot more than $500K if a boss ever “falsely” accuses me of murdering 25 people. I’m going to need at least three more zeroes on that check if my enemies got to share local news headlines about my one-way ticket to death row.

Jokes aside this Husel guy is clearly disturbed and doesn’t deserve to have freedom of movement ever again. But somebody else’s head needs to roll because how the hell did this guy get away with murdering 25(!) people in an environment as regulated as a hospital.

SOME FARMERS ARE STARTING TO REALIZE THEY’VE BEEN HAD

Farmers went to bat for President Business Deals in the 2016 election and their ayatollah repaid them by launching a disastrous trade war that crippled their businesses and destroyed their overseas markets.

Deals shelled out some bribery cash to quiet their ranks but in typical fashion that hush money went to corporate farms least hurt by the trade war.

While I thought it dissension in the ranks would come much sooner, it does appear some cracks are starting to show.

From Andrew Whalen of newsweek.com:

Appearing on MSNBC, North Dakota wheat farmer Bob Kuylen provided a dramatic example of the trade war's effect on American agriculture, citing $400,000 in losses since Trump took office.

"We lost pretty much all of our markets since Trump took over," Kuylen said. "Older guys like us, we built up equities all our lives. Most farmers are land-rich and cash-poor, so we'll take out loss loans and stuff against our land and go backwards on the land that we paid for. But there's a lot of young farmers out there who don't have equity and I worry about them, because they're not going to be able to withstand this."

Since 2017, revenue from Chinese agricultural exports dropped by more than half, from $19.5 billion to $9.2 billion in 2018, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures. The USDA also found that farm income has dropped 45 percent over the same period. According to the American Farm Bureau, farm bankruptcies have increased 13 percent since 2018.

Kuylen, the vice president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, which has more than 50,000 member families, described his own farm's dire situation. Formerly, Kuylen could expect "up to a dollar bonus" on the high protein wheat crops he sold to Asain markets, but the additional margin has shrunk to five cents. "We're losing by harvesting a little bit above average crop right now," Kuylen told MSNBC, citing a per acreage cost that now exceeded the depressed prices he would earn in returns.

It’s frustrating to read about “younger people” getting screwed in almost every industry in America when we’re the largest voting bloc in the country yet most of us can’t even be troubled to show up and pull a damn lever once a year. These two things might be related.

OHIO MAN REUNITES WITH DOG 50 MILES AWAY

I lost a cat named Betsy Ross while in college. She wanted to go outside on a Wednesday night in January while I watched the Lakers battle the Jazz. I let her out as I had done hundreds of times before and she never returned. This happened over a decade ago and I still think about her from time to time. My best hope is some drunk sorority sister mistook her for a stray and swept her away into a new life of luxury.

So my heart breaks whenever I read of someone losing a pet. But I will always boost any story about a pet being reunited with their family against all odds.

From Noelle Bye of times-gazette.com:

As the days turned into weeks, Krichbaum made missing posters, putting up the signs for miles and distributing them to area animal shelters and veterinarians.

He also posted photo after photo of Lucy on Facebook, hoping someone might recognize her. Many reached back and shared his posts, but no one had seen Lucy.

“My biggest fear was she was stuck in an Amish puppy mill or something like that,” Krichbaum said. “Not knowing was just the hardest thing — not knowing her condition or where she was.”

…

The message came from Lauren Ashley Prater, a veterinary technician in Huron.

Krichbaum spoke with Prater on the phone, and he asked if the dog responded to the name Lucy.

“I said, ‘She does,’ which I was totally shocked about,” Prater said. “Her head tilted, her ears perked up, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is really it.’ ”

I was a little concerned by the phrase “an Amish puppy mill or something like that” but apparently there’s a subset of Amish culture that runs puppy mills? Boy I tell ya, you learn something new every day.

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