Rooster in Review: Fraudsters of a feather
The Republicans claim to be working very hard to fix the widespread Medicaid fraud that their party let fester.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley and the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy are set to hold a press conference later today about the so-called billions of dollars in Medicaid fraud.
I assume my invite got lost in the mail.
But I talked to a well-connected Republican this morning, who said Ramaswamy is pushing this hoopla as a way to differentiate himself from Governor Mike DeWine.
“Ramaswmay thinks it gives him an issue to ‘to fix,’” the source said. “And if he can’t, he can just blame DeWine anyway.”
You expect this nonsense from Ramaswamy. He’s a slick-talking charlatan who has to convince millions of people that he’ll reinvent Ohio despite belonging to the moribund party that has controlled Ohio unilaterally for the past 15 years.
But it’s especially rich coming from Huffman and his lapdog McColley, who’s also Ramaswamy’s running mate, considering the duo eliminated the Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee at the 11th-hour of budget negotiations in 2025.
From Celine Castronuovo of Bloomberg Law in Sept. 2025:
Hours before Ohio legislators voted on the must-pass state budget, top negotiators slipped in a provision to disband a committee probing multi-billion dollar contracts with the nation’s largest processor of Medicaid claims.
The Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee, or JMOC, had spent months seeking information from Ohio Medicaid officials on issues including delayed reimbursements to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and other health centers that threatened their ability to pay employees and treat patients.
The provision, which hasn’t been previously reported, leaves oversight of some of Medicaid’s biggest contracts in flux. The panel’s dissolution also occurred as the federal government has pressed to root out fraud and waste, and passed nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the federal-state program providing health coverage for roughly 70 million low-income and disabled Americans.
The well-connected Republican said it was Senate Medicaid Committee chairman Mark Romanchuk (R-Ontario) that led the charge to abolish the oversight committee.
Huffman went along with it, because he had a years-long vendetta with the committee not “staying within its lane.”
But that won’t stop Huffman from standing alongside McColley and Ramaswamy and pretending the allegations of “billions of dollars of fraud” are anything other than electioneering propaganda.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t fraud within the Medicaid system. But the idea that it’s billions of dollars of fraud happening in broad daylight would only indict the Republican junta:
I guess I can’t get too made at the bad-faith machinations. They’re the desperate tactics of an unpopular party that’s staked itself to corrupt sex criminal and a jetsetting huckster.
It’s hard to blame Sleepy Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2026 when your party has controlled America for the past four years and Ohio for the past 15.
You would hope Ohioans can see through the scam. You would hope.
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This week in Ohio Man…
Brendan Conklin, a 45-year-old man from Westerville, is the latest American about to learn why it’s a bad idea to impersonate any law enforcement official, let alone a federal one.
He has nobody to blame but himself.
From Dean Narcisco of dispatch.com:
According to the news release, which cited court documents and trial testimony, Conklin was driving a former police SUV with police lights in December 2023, when he unlawfully pulled over and pointed a gun at a motorist who had just left her Westerville home with her underage child.
Wearing a vest with various badges and insignias, Conklin identified himself as a federal officer, according to the release. He also had an illegal license plate registered to the Columbus police headquarters.
Conklin searched, detained and eventually handcuffed the victim, placing her in his vehicle, according to the release. He then accidentally locked himself out of the vehicle with the victim still inside and had to get Blendon Township police to let her out.
Seems like a lot of effort, only to have to call the real police to free the woman that you falsely imprisoned.
Not sure I would have gone down that road in that scenario. But thankfully for me, I wouldn’t have put myself in that position because I learned at an early age that I’m not good at crime, either.
This week in The Rooster…
It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC.
This work is made possible by the brave and noble subscribers in the Patriots Caucus.
We’d be honired if any of the free-loading hogs in the parking lot took this moment as a divine sign to purchase a membership to help sustain the project that Ohio’s corrupt political class loves to hate.
Here’s what you may have missed in your inbox this week:
Ohio State’s series of unfortunate events. Former Ohio State executives claimed under oath that they had no knowledge of Dr. Richard Strauss’ criminality. But that goes against what they knew about the sexual depravity happening inside Larkins Hall.
The fossil fuel foray. Governor Mike DeWine and the State Legislature granted county commissioners the ability to kill “large” solar and wind projects early in development. It’s led to predictable results.
The Rooster’s May Mailbag. Can Dr. Amy Acton win? Why does Speaker Matt Huffman need an alibi for April 19, 1995? Does Hilltop Husband dress me for work? Those quesions—and more—answered in this month’s mailbag.
OPERS laughed Vivek Ramaswamy’s anti-woke business partner out of the room. Strive Asset Management co-founder Anson Frericks tried to use backchannel influence to get America’s 11th-largest public employees pension to invest with his company. They laughed him out of the room.
We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.
Until then… stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDS. The grand tradition of suing the city for tuition… The men who want women to be quiet… The doomsday organism… The empire of baloney… I work in Hollywood; everyone who used to make TV is now secretly training AI.
Shouldn’t there be audits done periodically on theses Medicaid programs? Why aren’t you on xtwitter anymore? I miss your reporting on there.
One man’s nonsense is another many’s rather common sense politics. The proof is down the road of course.