Rooster in Review: We want our beautiful busses
Plus, why has Vivek Ramaswamy been in New York City for 72 hours?
In April, The Rooster reported on the tragicomedy that has been COTA’s installation of the Bus Rapid Transit lane on West Broad.
It came on the heels of COTA’s shock firing of Derinda Jones, the LinkUs Project manager, with a COTA spokesperson laughably claiming that construction would begin in October as scheduled.
Pullin also claimed that COTA isn’t behind on the W. Broad BRT and they still expect to break ground in late October or early November.”
Maybe they’ll arrange a picture with local politicians in hard hats in late October or early November. But there is no way they’ll be breaking meaningful ground by then, and The Rooster expects to have the public records to prove that soon enough.
On Friday, COTA admitted to The Columbus Dispatch that the groundbreaking would be delayed.
It does not appear that we’ll be getting the Bus Rapid Transit lane by Dec. 2028, either:
Justine Belizaire, a vice president and senior program manager at HNTB, told the board then that the agency's goal of starting construction on West Broad this October was "aggressive" and reaching their launch date of December 2028 would be "extremely aggressive".
This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy. We’re talking about installing a bus lane—not going to the moon in hydrogen-powered shuttles—and yet there will not be a single bus lane operational roughly four years after Central Ohio voters approved the LinkUs project.
From my vantage point, this is more smoke to the probable fire that COTA CEO Monica Tellez-Fowler’s days are numbered, with Mayor Suburbs likely to duff the replacement hire in his search for a dutiful lackey to install ahead of next year’s contested mayoral race.
The notorious conman eclipses 40 percent of 2026 outside of Ohio
Earlier this week, The Rooster crunched the numbers on the unprecedented amount of time that Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has spent outside of Ohio.
At the time of publication, he had spent 38.9% of the calendar year outside the Buckeye State.
On Monday, Ramaswamy boarded his $10 million private jet for a 48-hour stay in Aspen, Colorado, likely for the Aspen Institute’s summit where rich perverts like Ramaswamy got face time with Republican governors to pitch the gospel of more tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy.
On Wednesday, Ramaswamy returned to Ohio, only to board the private jet for a jaunt to Cleveland to accept the endorsement of the Ohio Manufacturers Association, where he promised to “unleash a golden age of manufacturing” upon our polluted backwater outpost of a state if only we elect him as our next governor.
Ramaswamy flew back to Columbus, but only for a moment, before flying to New York City, where he has remained as of this writing at approximately 11 a.m. Friday morning.
It’s worth remembering that Ramaswamy’s phone number includes a New York area code. And it’s where he lived after graduating law school, only returning to Ohio in 2020 when he decided to enter Republican politics.
Ramaswamy’s previous travels have seen him land at Teterboro, New Jersey, which is also a stone’s throw from the Big Apple.
Does Ramaswamy maintain a residence in New York City, especially since his net worth has doubled during his campaign?
It’s the kind of question that would be worth asking if Ramaswamy’s handlers weren’t working overtime to ensure he never gaggles with the remnants of Ohio’s political press.
Regardless, Ramaswamy’s time in New York means he has spent 86 of a possible 206 days in 2026 outside of Ohio, a staggering 41.7% of the calendar year.
In Ramaswamy’s defense, he’s not hiding his disdain for everyday Ohioans and our hardscrabble lives in flyover country.
I assume that my time outside of Ohio would only increase if I were a billionaire. But I would simply spend my time doing literally anything else than running for governor.`
This week in Ohio Man…
An Ohio Man thought he had the perfect crime in paying an Indonesian youth to commit heinous acts of torture and sexual abuse against monkeys in order to sell those videos for obscene profit.
From Lucas Daprile of cleveland.com:
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An Ohio man was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to funding and distributing animal torture videos.
On Tuesday, Nicholas Dryden, a Cincinnati man who used the name Niko Bellic online, received the sentence after pleading guilty in the Southern District of Ohio to charges of conspiracy to create and distribute videos of animal cruelty.
Prosecutors said Dryden and his codefendants paid for a minor in Indonesia to create videos “depicting acts of extreme violence and sexual abuse against monkeys,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
Normally, I would say that most Americans don’t understand how long nine years in prison would be on the psyche. But in this case, nine years doesn’t seem long enough!
I think Mr. Dryden has lost his right to participate in a functioning society.
This week in The Rooster…
It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC. And frankly, it was one of those weeks that showcased the unique depth and scope of Ohio’s fifth-ranked political blog.
We’d be honored if any of you freeloading hogs in the parking lot considered this moment as a divine sign to throw some rubies into the coffers and help sustain the train of psychic damage delivered onto Ohio’s corrupt political class:
Here’s what you might have missed in your inbox this week:
Data: Vivek Ramaswamy has spent nearly 40 percent of 2026 outside of Ohio. The Rooster crunched the numbers to show that above all else, the notorious conman doesn’t appear to love spending time in the state he seeks to govern.
A knife for Husted, a pardon for DeWine: Killing the competition for Vivek Ramaswamy. Columbus-based operative The Elephant in the Room returns to shed light on the possible machinations that went into Governor Mike DeWine appointing Jon Husted to the United States Senate.
The $40 million public schools swindle that can’t be blamed on Republicans. A job-hungry bureaucrat with the Columbus City Schools allowed a third-party vendor to treat the district like a personal ATM.
Senator Michele Reynolds’ sex pest problems just got worse. Reynolds has previously escaped scrutiny for her role in the murder of Ohio State student Reagan Tokes. Things only got more bizarre from there.
We’ll do it next week at the same time and place.
Until then… stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDs. What I learned debating fascists on a phone sex hotline… “We started calling it baby prison:” Private equity’s impact on chain daycares... Prioritizing profit over public health, corporations target Black and Latino children with “junk food” marketing… At the bottom of the biggest underground cave in the world… Her rape kit had a DNA match, but in San Francisco, that’s not enough.