Rooster: America Would Crumble If We Paid College Athletes
The Mt. Carmel fentanyl serial killer should probably be in jail, a root of Ohio political corruption, and more.
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ME, AFTER LEARNING THE COLLEGE STUDENT WHO MADE AN AMAZING PLAY FOR MY FAVORITE TEAM ALSO HAS MONEY IN THE BANK: “FUCK! THAT RUINS EVERYTHING.”
Duke freshman phenom Zion Williams helped inflate Duke-UNC tickets to a $4,000-floor before a rupturing Nike Shoe sprained his knee and forced his exit minutes into the first half.
The debacle ignited the perennial “Should college players be paid?” debate, which means you can set your watch to a concern troll taking a break from the Breitbart comment section to wag their hideous finger and lecture on how economics “actually work.”
The latest example is from Cody J. McDavis of nyt.com. He played basketball for UCLA and never rose to a marketable level despite his obvious skill, so now he’s using that experience to prevent players of similar caliber from tasting financial fruits originally denied to him.
The 30 largest universities in the country each routinely generate annual revenues exceeding $100 million from sports, but according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most of those revenues are spent covering operating expenses for the school’s athletic programs and paying tuition for their student-athletes. The majority of Division I colleges in the N.C.A.A. operate at a loss. In fact, among the roughly 350 athletic departments in the N.C.A.A.’s Division I, only about 24 schools have generated more revenue than expenses in recent years. The nation’s top five conferences made over $6 billion in 2015, billions more than all other schools combined, according to an ESPN analysis of N.C.A.A. data.
For the have-not universities, however, to continue operating means relying on millions of dollars in debt, funding from their main campus and student fees. Even with that help, some of the major athletic departments are struggling. A recent N.C.A.A. study determined that only about 20 of the 1,000 or so college sports programs in the nation were profitable. What is going to happen when the competition to offer students money is supercharged?
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Gene Smith, the athletic director at Ohio State University, has said that if the N.C.A.A. pay ceiling were lifted and he were pushed to pay basketball and football student-athletes more than their full-ride scholarship packages, he would not expect to maintain the same number of sports. The chancellor at the University of Wisconsin, Rebecca Blank, has also said that her school would consider cutting sports programs altogether.
You’ll be shocked to learn a 922-word article in the paper of record about how paying basketball and football players would “ruin” college sports doesn’t include the phrase “black market.” Which is hilarious considering most elite players are getting paid in a black market that local media outlets ignore because what idiot assassinates the golden goose?
Any media preening over paid athletes ruining the purity of the game is a false flag. That toxic mentality is actually about predominantly white media keeping the predominantly black bread-winners in a vortex of economic explotation.
The idea that paying players would create a gap between “haves” and have-notes” either willfully or ignorantly ignores the current system of haves and have-nots. It ain’t like Bowling Green has a shot at the national title, folks. They play in the same division as Ohio State for some reason.
And yes, I realize it makes me an asshole to type 1,200 words five days a week about institutions that would benefit from a more socialistic mindset only to look at one of my most beloved (albeit extremely problematic) institutions in college football and declare, “I’m the Monopoly Man now, mother fucker! Welcome to Capitalism 101!”
But it’s not a coincidence the one socialist system conservatives love is college sports, where an extreme minority of predominately black labor created a tax haven that produces lacrosse scholarships for the tight-hipped sons of banking executives.
Universities sold out their mission statement when they waded into multimillion television deals. Their cartel pays the piper because they know the exposure is worth every penny.
Coaching pay has exploded. Executive pay has exploded. Yet players can’t even profit off their likeness or earn workman’s compensation for the long-term effects of injuries suffered during their playing career.
I’ll never stand with millionaires over labor. And in this situation, I don’t care if paying bread-winners and subsidizing Title IX requirements means Ohio State demoting its championship pistol team to intramural to make the math work. Send the baseball team down, too, just in case.
Then, and only then, can we retire bagmen to their local 24/7 message board.
UH, SHOULDN’T YOU BE IN JAIL?
Mount Carmel goofed and let a doctor pump 35 patients full of fentanyl. The hospital is still not compliant with Medicare requirements and has since admitted at least five of those patients may have survived with proper care.
Perhaps, like me, you thought “Dr.” Husel assumed a new identity and moved to the Communist utopia of Laos to evade American authorities. Maybe you thought he was in jail already. That’d be reasonable, too.
Alas, both lines of thinking are wrong. This asshole appealed the decision to suspend his medical license.
From Paige Pfleger and Gabe Rosenberg of wosu.org:
Fired Mount Carmel doctor William Husel has requested a hearing before the State Medical Board of Ohio, to appeal the suspension of his medical license. The hearing’s date has yet to be determined.
The State Medical Board temporarily suspended Husel’s medical license on January 25, following Mount Carmel’s report that the doctor ordered “excessive” doses of pain medication for dozens of patients. The hospital now says at least 35 patients were affected by Husel's actions.
In mid-February, the board issued Husel a citation, saying they were working to determine if they should permanently revoke his license. The citation, which was obtained by WOSU, discusses six cases in which Husel ordered 1,000 micrograms or more of the pain medication fentanyl.
Apparently the Franklin County prosecutor Ron O’Brien is currently investigating Husel for any possible crimes. Unfortunately O’Brien looks like an actor hired to play a crooked prosecutor in a move that culminates with an arch-criminal like Husel escaping justice:
Either way, the fact Husel isn’t already in jail proves if you’re going to murder 35 people, the best way to do it is as a doctor charged with your victim’s care!
REPUBLICANS RELUCTANTLY RENOUNCE INCESTUOUS FLORIDA FUNDRAISER
I would wager less than 50% of Ohioans could correctly identify Governor Mike DeWine on the right in the header photo, which is exactly how the swamp captain likes it.
I would wager less than 10% of Ohioans could identify the woman standing next to the most powerful elf in the state. Her name is Virginia Ragan, a 73-year-old Republican activist whose primary life skill is being the daughter of former Greif Inc. chairman John C. Dempsey.
Her stake in the company was worth about $186 million in 2012, so you can imagine how her net worth probably mushroomed under the reign of President Business Deals.
She’s not nearly rich enough to be a major player in national politics, so she deftly chose to be a big fish in the small pond of Ohio.
Ragan leveraged a $1.7 million spending spree on Republican campaigns and her longtime friendship with then-retiring Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder to anoint 33-year-old Cliff Rosenberger as his successor.
Almost as if to flaunt ethic laws, the rotund legislature making $100K a year rented a 2,237-square-foot luxury condominium from Ragan.
The cash didn’t stop there.
From Jessie Balmert of cincinnati.com:
Smith ultimately left the space, saying he could not afford the rent. Rosenberger no longer lives in the condo. He made $100,798 as speaker in 2017 and had little other income.
Ragan also financed a $209,354 mortgage for one of Rosenberger's former aides, according to Franklin County records. Aide Hunter Wright, who has said he is also a family friend of Ragan, purchased a $210,000 home in April 2016.
The FBI eventually came knocking about his financial relationship with Ragan and a series of overseas trips he took on the dime of the payday lenders while Rosenberger coincidentally stalled regulatory legislation over the industry.
Rosenberger claimed he did nothing wrong before retaining a lawyer and resigning.
Please pour out a bottle of your finest liquor for Republicans who missed their annual February trip to Florida to stroke corporate interests and brainstorm new ways to make life harder for poor and minority Ohioans.
Golfing. Brunches. Boat trips. Fishing excursions.
For a weekend in chilly February, Ohio lawmakers and lobbyists flock to the "Winter Warmer," a huge fundraiser held at the exclusive Bay Club in Bonita Springs, where Ragan is a member.
Batchelder hosted the first event, which was attended by a dozen people. The former speaker was initially skeptical that people would travel that far.
"Ginni understood far better than I," Batchelder said. "People would like to go to Florida in the winter."
The most infuriating thing about Ohio Republican politicians is they’re not even interesting villains. A majority are useful idiots content betray the interests of constituents in exchange for a free ticket to Florida, a round of golf and brunch with rich people who dictate the legislation they will sign in the coming weeks.
No, that’s not me going off the deep end about Republicans. Lobbyists literally wrote state ethics laws. Thankfully for the FBI, Rosenberger was dumb enough to put his shady travel junkets on Instagram.
Meanwhile, the law gives large swaths of latitude to politicians who don’t flex on the Gram. This strikes at the heart of corruption in Ohio.
From Jessie Balmert of cincinnati.com:
But there's a big loophole: lawmakers are not required to list travel to conferences of national or state organizations that receive dues from the Legislature. That list includes the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which recently held meetings in Grand Rapids, New Orleans and Nashville, and the National Conference of State Legislatures, which held its annual conference in Los Angeles last summer.
Several lawmakers attended these conferences, but none were required to detail who paid for their flights, hotels or food. Some used campaign money for the travel and reported the expenses there, but many did not.
Groups like ALEC draft model bills for lawmakers nationwide and have "tremendous influence," said Catherine Turcer, executive director of the good government group Common Cause Ohio. "We should be able to follow the money of lawmakers who travel to those conferences."
You want to fight against Trumpism? The swamp starts in Ohio with clown politicians that sit atop gerrymandered kingdoms with a smug attitude of “Well? What are you going to do about it?”
Politicians loved town hall meetings until a large majority of constituents got reliable internet access and started carrying video cameras in their pockets.
The lazy despots of gerrymandered districts eschew town halls through obfuscating their repulsion to campaigning by claiming claiming they don’t see the point in standing around and getting yelled at.
Cincinnati Republican Congressman Steve Chabot, who took absorbed body blows for not holding town halls from failed challenger Aftab Pureval, has admirably tried to get back on the horse.
From Scott Wartman of cincinnati.com:
Once a staple of congressional recesses, lawmakers have increasingly opted for town halls over the phone, the Internet or not at all. During the August recess in 2018, in-person congressional town halls decreased by 70 percent from the previous year, Politico reported.
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Chabot held five town halls this month through his Southwest Ohio congressional district, which spans old city neighborhoods, fast-growing suburbs, and rural areas. It was targeted heavily by the Democrats in 2018 and is likely going to be targeted again in 2020.
He heard from many dissatisfied with President Donald Trump, the Republican tax plan and health care. None of Chabot's town halls sparked the fiery outrage that beset Republican lawmakers right after Trump's inauguration. But some voices were raised in agitation at times.
The criticism didn’t rattle the veteran lawmaker. Back to that question in Lincoln Heights. Why hasn’t he impeached Trump?
Chabot said he hasn’t seen any evidence Trump has committed a crime. That drew some incredulous murmurs from the audience in Lincoln Heights.
Being comfortable with getting screamed at should be the No. 1 quality of elected officials. You should not be in office if you can’t shut the fuck up, nod your head, and listen to folks who feel marginalized by the mainstream political process—whatever their views may be.
Ohio gerrymandered Chabot’s district in a way he never has to consider the opinion of the crowd he met in Lincoln Heights. Kudos to him for doing the bare minimum—it puts him ahead compatriots like Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH08) and Jim Jordan (R-OH04) who would rather die than hold a town hall.
Chabot still publicly stooged for President Dementia. Chabot pretended the president’s not a tax cheat at best or a treasonous sociopath at worst. Kudos to the Lincoln Heights residents who reminding him of his complicity.
Ohio is outdated in many ways. However, the state never ceases to amaze me in archaic laws that somehow haven’t earned enough of a bipartisan consensus to say “This is dumb law we no longer need.”
Enter the state requirement for county commissioners to personally inspect drainage ditches.
From Marc Kovac of dispatch.com:
“I have no idea what we’re looking at,” said Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce, an investment banker and former state treasurer with no formal schooling in drainage engineering. The in-person site inspection “really serves no purpose,” he said.
The law requiring inspections is one that county commissioners hope to persuade lawmakers to change — to allow ditch viewing by electronic means, including video recorded by drones.
“There’s just no way you can get that perspective, that you can see from 200 to 300 feet (in the air),” said Licking County Commissioner Tim Bubb.
A panel of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio has been working for several years on a package of changes for the drainage ditch law. Legislation expected to be introduced in the Ohio House in coming weeks would be the most comprehensive reform in decades of the archaic ditch code.
I’d like to think I live in a state that can absolve this problem in a prompt matter. If not, I’ll relish living in a state that makes investment-bankers-turned-county-commissioners look at ditches for tens of hours a year.
Want to feel old? Budweiser’s shaming of Miller brewing with corn syrup happened a decade ago.
Just kidding, of course, but that’s how non-Cleveland fans will feel this time next year when the Browns are coming off a 19-0 Super Bowl season and all the elite players on other teams want to come to Cleveland for the veteran’s minimum.
Jokes aside, that ad torpedoed a planned P.R. blitz about the benefits of low-alcohol beer owned by international conglomerates being a worthy investment for hard-working Americans.
From Saabira Chaudhuri of wsj.com:
A fight between America’s two biggest brewers is jeopardizing a proposed “Got Milk?”-style campaign intended to help struggling beer makers win back drinkers who have defected to wine and spirits.
Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, BUD -0.24% Molson Coors Brewing Co. TAP -1.44% , Heineken NV and Constellation Brands Inc. STZ -1.13% have for over a year discussed a potential multimillion-dollar, brand-agnostic campaign aimed at improving the overall health of the beer category.
But the campaign could now be dead in the water after MillerCoors, Molson’s U.S. unit, pulled out of a meeting slated for next month and said the initiative should be paused following a public spat with Bud Light maker AB InBev.
We all laugh now despite being on a timeline where the Anheuser–Miller beef could easily spark the next Civil War.
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