Throw DeWine Off the Honeymoon Boat
Throw DeWine Off the Honeymoon Boat
This motherfucker cut Medicaid during a pandemic.
I’ve long maintained only an elite television show can produce five quality seasons. Season 5 is the benchmark that differentiates the good from the elite.
After a couple good seasons the attention to detail tends to collapse and suddenly you have a product that looks less like prestige TV and more like an endgame cash-grab orchestrated by two coked-out grifters who lost interest in getting themselves out of the corner into which they wrote themselves. (No, I’m still not bitter about Game of Thrones. Why do you ask?)
For years I’ve defended Billions on Showtime in no small part due to it being the first television series in American history with the courage to show Paul Giamatti in a gimp suit during the pilot episode.
Yes, the show is basically a billionaire version of Entourage. It didn’t stop me from enjoying every episode until the Season 5 premiere. It was like when the lights go on at a bar (remember those?) at 2:30 a.m. and you look around like who the hell are these aliens? I don’t know any of you. Nor do I care. I would like to be in my bed immediately.
Maybe Billions turns it around, but I’m not counting on it. This is why I don’t watch a lot of TV. Once I’m interested in something I have no choice but to watch every episode ever. That is how I came to watch every episode of Sons of Anarchy despite the series walking off a cliff after Season 2.
Jesus, enough about my television habits. I unlocked today’s post as retribution for accidentally locking yesterday’s post which was supposed to be public. Please forgive me. Or better yet subscribe to The Rooster so you never miss a dispatch regardless.
It’s been over 12 hours and I’m still mystified by the strict Constitutional constructionist pizza tycoon in Orville who sagely pointing out the dead racists (who didn’t know what a germ was) that wrote our Constitution did not mention personal protection equipment for a virus in the Bill of Rights.
Glad to see assholes out themselves. If you’re not interested in maintaining sanitary conditions in a pandemic, then I don’t need to know anything else about your standards in normal times. My money won’t be spent there in either time.
MIKE DEWINE IS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS
The American standard for leadership during a crisis is pretty pathetic. Even President Business Deals enjoyed a surge in approval ratings before we learned his idiot criminal son-in-law played a direct role in the PPE shortage we now endure.
Ohio is no different. Mike DeWine has done the bare minimum during this pandemic and he enjoys an 80% approval rating among Democrats. Yes, he led the Republican response for governors. Unfortunately that’s like being the smartest cartel chemist at a 7th-grade science fair.
DeWine has done jack shit on the social policy front. He has refused to vacate adult and youth prisons which are now lit up like Christmas trees.
His overwhelmed unemployment system is now asking employers to snitch on workers who refuse to work in unsafe conditions.
He’s caving to political pressure from conspiracy freaks in the state legislature despite Ohio lacking the adequate testing that the CDC says is the No. 1 prerequisite to safely “re-open” the economy.
Now he’s cutting education and healthcare in the middle of a pandemic.
From Andrew J. Tobias of cleveland.com:
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday the state will cut nearly $800 million in spending — most affecting education and health care — to offset the loss of tax revenue stemming from the coronavirus crisis.
The cuts include a $300 million reduction in K-12 public-school funding, $210 million from Medicaid spending and $110 million from college and university funding, DeWine said.
DeWine said all state government agencies will see their budgets cut, adding up to $100 million, except for the state Department of Corrections, which operates state prisons.
What’s the purpose in having a Rainy Day Fund if you’re not going to tap it during a global pandemic in which 23 million Americans have already lost their jobs? Instead we’re talking about stripping healthcare from poor people while further robbing Ohio’s already-underfunded public schools.
The pathetic thing is this has been a goal of DeWine and the Republicans for a long time. They don’t believe in Medicaid. They don’t believe in public schools. So it makes sense for them to attack those things — things they already have no problem attacking in the best of times — instead of asking the ultra-wealthy or business owners to pay their fair share in state taxes for the first time in their life.
It’s cowardly and ghoulish. And any Democrat praising DeWine from here on out can kiss my ass. The Republicans buried Ted Strickland for “losing jobs” during the Great Recession and Democrats should return the favor. We won’t though because we’re addicted to loser philosophy like “going high” when your opponent pushes you into a wood chipper.
BAD TIME TO GET RELEASED FROM PRISON
It’s a good time to get released from prison in that there’s a global pandemic on. It’s a bad time to get released from prison as that same pandemic has closed the BMV and your an identification card identifying you as an ex-con is still a scarlet letter within our society.
From Jennifer Rodriguez of wdtn.com:
Deryk Bankston recently finished a 12-year prison sentence. Since coming home, he is eager to get his life back and begin moving forward.
“What I’ve really been trying to do is just get back into society. Get a job, bank account, drivers license, car, just the essential things that you need to be productive,” Bankston said.
Bankston has a couple of jobs lined up. However, because he cannot apply for a state ID or a driver’s license, he is at a standstill. He can’t even open a bank account.
“The ID they gave me, a prison-issued ID which says ‘offender release ID,’ I can’t get anything with. I can’t open an account, I’ve been to multiple banks, they refused to accept it. They tell me I need a state-approved ID or a driver’s license,” he said.
Bankston said he’s tried calling different departments and talking to different people, but there isn’t much that can be done.
What the hell is this guy supposed to do? He paid his debt to society and is trying to do right yet can’t because our governor is too worried about stripping healthcare from poor people while the state legislature peddles unbridled conspiracy theories.
This is how people fall back into a life of crime.
SOMETHING AIN’T RIGHT IN NURSING HOMES
Ohio is refusing to release specific COVID-19 numbers related to nursing homes which leads me to believe they’re a war zone right now which isn’t surprising considering 70% of nursing homes in America profiteer on the death of elderly people.
This is only one nursing home in the state, but something fucked up must have happened if Attorney General Dave Yost is sending his goons to a wealthy suburb like Worthington.
From Jacob Myers of dispatch.com:
Investigators from the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost raided a Worthington nursing home Tuesday afternoon after receiving tips about problems at the facility related to COVID-19.
Bethany McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the attorney general said agents from the health care fraud unit executed a “COVID-related search warrant” at Bickford of Worthington, 6525 N High St., after the attorney general’s office received tips about the facility.
She would not say the nature of the tips.
A complaint sent to the attorney general’s office and the Ohio Department of Health that was obtained by The Dispatch alleges that sick patients were not tested or properly separated from healthy residents, and not all employees had proper personal protective equipment (PPE).
In a statement, Alan Fairbanks, the executive vice president of Bickford Senior Living, said the company did not know why the Bickford of Worthington was raided.
Ohio’s elder care network was a disaster before coronavirus. We won’t know the carnage unleashed within the for-profit industry until years after the pandemic has passed.
If societies are judges on how we treat our most vulnerable population, we failed that dawg check awhile ago.
CORONAVIRUS CANCELS MARIJUANA BALLOT INITIATIVE (AMONG OTHERS)
Voter referendums at the ballot box are not perfect. Sometimes they lead to out-of-state interests trying to push some half-baked tort reform law or some shit.
In a state like Ohio, it’s the only vehicle we have to pass legislation that hasn’t been preordained by the upper echelons of the Republican party.
It’s for sure the only chance we ever have of seeing weed legalized in this state without federal intervention. Legal weed won’t pass this year, though. You can thank coronavirus for that.
From Jackie Borchardt of cincinnati.com:
COLUMBUS – Referenda on recreational marijuana, voting rights, a minimum wage hike and more had been potentially headed to the ballot in Ohio this November.
But the coronavirus pandemic has effectively ended those campaigns.
Ballot initiative efforts involve armies of signature collectors – often paid – stationed on city street corners, outside libraries and on festival grounds.
They walk up to strangers, speak with them about the petition and share clipboards and pens.
"During this pandemic, that’s dangerous," said Freda Levenson, an ACLU of Ohio attorney representing the Ohioans for Fair and Secure Elections campaign.
This means I won’t be able to try marijuana this year?? That’s a shame. I was really looking forward to my first puff of the Devil’s Lettuce. I guess this means I’ll have to wait until next year at the earliest before the law allows me a toke.
THOSE WMDs. Michael Jordan the story vs. Michael Jordan the man… To prepare for a crisis, read fiction… The eruption of Instagram Island… A crash course in choosing kitchen countertops… Why you hate contemporary architecture… Can you die from a broken heart?