Rooster: Your Electric Bill is About to Go Up
Kroger fending off Amazon and Wal-Mart, what the Hell is Tim Ryan doing, and more.
Perhaps, like me, you look at your electric bill and think, “You know what? I wish this number were higher. Let me go and run some more lights around my house to make sure more of my hard earned money goes to unaccountable utility companies!”
Well, friend, today is our lucky day.
OHIO GOVERNMENT AT ITS WORST
Ohio’s Republican government has three major accomplishments since assuming power earlier this year:
A favor to the gun lobby that fixed another favor to the gun lobby that accidentally banned popular guns in the state with ambiguous language.
A 10-cent gas tax hike after Governor Mike DeWine declared anything less than 16-cents would lead to people dying.
An unconstitutional abortion ban.
We love it, folks, don’t we? Government working for the people—truly the best.
Ohio would be better off if these hogs just collected their check and did nothing. But alas, for their next trick, they will hit consumers for $300 million to bailout aging FirstEnergy nuclear power plants.
From Laura Bischoff of mydaytondailynews.com:
COLUMBUS — Ohio consumers would pay $300 million through new fees in their electric bills to create a new pot of state money — more than half of which could go to bailout two nuclear power plants along Lake Erie.
At a Friday press conference, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, detailed legislation he is pushing to eliminate surcharges electricity customers currently pay for energy efficiency, peak demand and renewable energy, which he says aren’t accomplishing goals.
The new monthly fees — $2.50 for residential, $20 for commercial, $250 for industrial and $2,500 for very large energy users — will be less than the current surcharges, he said.
The dirty secret about Republican campaigns is they can’t raise money from actual voters, because they’re all cynical and hate government. Instead, Republican politicians cut them out entirely and go straight to the rich and powerful with their hat in hand.
As Bischoff notes in the article, FirstEnergy has donated $1.35 million to political candidates in the last cycle, including $61,957 to the DeWine-Husted transition fund. That’s not counting CEO Chuck Jones donating $12,7000 worth of food and beverage to the campaign as well.
When you look at it like that, it’s no wonder these clowns think taxpayers bailing out two shitty power plants sounds like a good deal.
Heads would roll over this scandal if Ohio were a functioning government. Instead there is nothing the minority of thinking people can do as Big Business and their political cronies trundle over us once again.
KROGER WINNING A HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHT
Amazon and Wal-Mart are hellbent on being the only two stores from which Americans can purchase any legal product under the sun.
But Cincinnati-based Kroger—or “Kroger’s” as I called it until I was about 22-years-old—is standing tall against the two titans.
From Alexander Coolidge of cincinnati.com:
"Kroger is used to this type of warfare," Kelly said, adding Kroger adapted early in the millennium when Walmart appeared poised to wipe out all competition. Still, he noted Amazon has only owned Whole Foods for a year and competition will remain fierce.
"Call us back when Amazon has fully implemented its strategy," he said.
The data comes just weeks after Amazon loudly declared another round of price cutting at its Whole Foods subsidiary. The digital juggernaut said prices would be reduced by an average of 20 percent on select items throughout the store as well as further discounts for Prime members.
Arun Sundaram, an analyst with CFRA Research in Washington, D.C., said Kroger has been steadily cutting its food prices as part of its ongoing competitive strategy.
Meh, Whole Foods doesn’t have the heart to operate in 80% of the neighborhoods that Kroger feeds, so I’m not worried about their scam organic merchandise.
What I love most about Kroger is it’s fully unionized, which goes to show that union labor can compete against predators like Amazon and Wal-Mart.
TIM RYAN: WHAT U DOIN’, BRO?
When Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan announced his bid for presidency, my first reaction was, “Who asked for this?”
Roughly a week later, it’s still not clear anybody is asking for this… not even fellow Ohio Democrats.
From Jessica Wehrman of dispatch.com:
WASHINGTON — On the night that the news broke that U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan was planning to run for president, former state Sen. Joe Schiavoni was asked if he’d talked to the nine-term lawmaker and fellow Democrat from his corner of Ohio.
Not recently, Schiavoni replied. He had, however, talked to two other presidential contenders in recent weeks: South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
The next day, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, also considered a force in Democratic politics in the state, was asked if she’d talked to Ryan about his decision. No, she replied. “He doesn’t even call me when he comes to town.”
…
“I kind of don’t get it,” said former U.S. Rep. Dennis Eckart, a Democrat. “It’s funny — the folks who have called me... are mostly calling with, ‘what’s this about?’”
Tim Ryan not even bothering to call Nan Whaley or Joe Schiavoni let’s you know what his campaign is actually about: Ego. He’ll be humbled quickly.
GET RID OF MAYOR’S COURTS
If our beloved attorney General Dave Yost weren’t too busy fighting unconstitutional abortion bans at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, perhaps he would have an opportunity to look at reforming the racist and corrupt institution known as “mayor’s courts.”
From Kevin Stankiewicz of dispatch.com:
Mayor’s courts handle traffic violations and low-level misdemeanors, disproportionately affecting people in minority and low-income communities and perpetuating inequalities present across the rest of the criminal-justice system, according to the ACLU.
Just under 300 mayor’s courts operate in 64 of Ohio’s 88 counties, the report says.
“What I found is a broken system that harms many Ohioans and has the most unjust consequences for low-income and black Ohioans,” Sri Thakkilapati, a senior policy researcher for the ACLU of Ohio and the report’s main author, said at a Downtown news conference.
The ACLU, which analyzed data from 2016 and 2017, levies two main criticisms against mayor’s courts: a profit-making incentive and a lack of transparency and oversight.
When the state won’t fund municipalities properly, they will look for new revenue streams. And in America, those new streams are likely to fall on the backs of the poor and vulnerable who don’t have the clout to throw the bums out of office.
UBER: NO FRIEND TO PUBLIC TRANSIT
Uber, a company that has never turned a profit and is run by tech vampires, has sworn for years that it’s not trying to destroy public transit… just supplement it.
It was an obvious lie to anyone who spent more than 30 seconds researching the company. For some reason, however, Cincinnati took Uber at its word and shared public transit data.
We now know Uber was lying.
From Aaron Gordon of jalopnik.com:
While the filing does mention the company’s efforts to offer riders “multi-modal trips” that may include public transportation should they choose, the vast majority of the filing’s mentions of public transit make plainly clear the company sees buses and trains as a competing service. Far from being a partner in helping people move around cities, Uber regularly slots public transportation as “competition” or an obstacle to the company’s “growth strategy.”
Bruce Schaller, a transportation analyst who has extensively studied the for-hire vehicle industry, says this is one of the benefits of the public filings. “They have to be correct. They can’t misrepresent. It’s nice to see Uber being frank about its relationship with public transportation for once.”
From the time Uber enters a city, the filing says, the company aims to “reach efficient scale and liquidity rapidly to attract consumers to use our platform as an alternative to personal vehicle ownership and usage of public transportation and to achieve leadership in the ridesharing category.”
Bang up job, Cincinnati!
THOSE WMDs. Man seeks $87,000 after Michigan parents destroy massive porn collection… Guantánamo’s darkest secret… It may be the most cursed film ever… Watching the internet react to the worst night of my life… Are the humanities history?