What do Columbus residents gain from their local officials taking free apartheid vacations?
It's an honest question that the county prosecutor and select county commissioners and city council members should have to answer.
Last Friday morning, I was packing for a trip to Jackson, Michigan, when I received a call from Ohio’s senior Senator Bernie Moreno.
It was a calm and cordial conversation, though the Senator wanted me to know I done goofed in Friday’s dispatch, when I labeled “Holly,” the woman who got knocked out in the Cincinnati brawl, as a Russian national who fled the country hours after the flight.
Holly is an Ohioan, the Senator clarified. Her friend was the Russian who fled the country.
Well, I said, I was relaying what The New York Post reported.
He said he doesn’t read The Times.
No, no. I said. The Post, with the implication being that this wasn’t some communist rag that reported the news. It was an outlet near and dear to the conservative movement’s heart.
We left the conversation there. As of this writing at 9:37 p.m. ET Sunday night, there has been no correction to The Post’s story.
However, Mike Dardis of WLWT in Cincinnati spoke with Holly and confirmed that she, in fact, lives in Ohio.
Which makes me wonder… if you can’t trust the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, who can you trust?
Nevertheless, The Rooster regrets the error.
Accepting responsibility for mistakes is what separates this publication from the grifters and propagandists, which is why we have fired the intern ultimately responsible for the gaffe like a dog.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
And what did Columbus residents gain from local officials taking free trips to Israel?
Last week, I asked Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce a simple question: What benefit do county residents get from our commissioner taking an all-expenses paid vacation to an apartheid state?
Boyce didn’t have an answer to that question outside of his well-known arrogant puffery.
But it got me wondering; how many of our local officials have taken that same free trip to Israel, courtesy of American Israel Public Affairs Committee?
It’s a sizable list:
County Commissioners Boyce and Erica Crawley.
County Prosecutor Shayla Favor (as a then-member of City Council).
City Council President Shannon Hardin
City Council member Lourdes Barosso de Padilla
County Treasurer Cheryl Brooks Sullivan, while not having taken a trip to Israel, is an avowed Zionist who has consistently invested in Israel Bonds despite the country’s worsening credit rating.
From People’s World in 2024:
This apparently extends to personal social media accounts. Sullivan and Kathe Turial, regional representative for the Development Corporation for Israel, have exchanged frequent comments on Facebook since at least 2018, liking and commenting on each other’s public photos and posts. “Never takes a bad photo,” Turial wrote on a 2019 headshot of Sullivan. The two evidently enjoy a close friendship, commenting on family events and life milestones and referencing times spent together.
Back at the office, an analysis of emails between staff at the treasurer’s office and representatives of Israel Bonds reveals a consistent pattern in which Israel Bonds representatives initiate frequent and persistent communication with the county when one of its bond holdings nears maturity.
[…]
Representatives of the county appeared disorganized in their contacts with Israel Bonds, however, missing or struggling to schedule meetings and rushing to meet the reinvestment deadline. At one point, Franklin County seems to have reached out to Turiel for records on how much of Franklin County’s money was invested in Israel Bonds. It is not clear why Franklin County did not have internal records of its own investments readily available.
It makes sense why Israel has interests in the Franklin County Treasurer when she’s the single lever of power that determines if we invest millions of dollars into a genocidal state’s bond market.
It makes sense why Israel fêtes Ohio’s Democratic Congressional delegation in Joyce Beatty, Shontel Brown, Greg Landsman, and Marcy Kaptur. They provide key votes to keep the financial and military aid flowing.
I disagree with it all, of course. But at least it makes sense in the grand scheme of things.
However, it’s somewhat baffling to see Israeli’s involvement in courting and “educating” local politicians who, on the face of things, have nothing to do with foreign policy or Israel’s bond market.
But then you remember last year, when, despite the clear and intentional ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza, it took city council months to pass a toothless ceasefire resolution that didn’t even mention the word “Israel.”
Over a year later, the bottom has fallen out of Israel’s support in America. Only 32 percent of Americans support Israel’s military action in Gaza, with only eight percent of Democratic voters in that increasingly small coalition.
Those numbers were unthinkable even a couple years ago, and Israel has nobody to blame but itself for its seemingly insatiable bloodlust of innocent men, women and children.
There is no going back to the way things were. There is no more centrist handwaving about a “very complicated issue” that, in fact, is not complicated at all. Democrats—at least ones that didn’t suffer severe brain damage like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman—can no longer falsely equivocate Hamas with Israel’s intentional targeting and butchering civilians while backed by the most powerful military in the world.
Israel is a lot like the Ohio Republican Party in a way. As I’ve written before, it’s not like former Speaker Larry Householder and his cronies awoke one day and decided to attempt the largest bribery scheme in state history in a vacuum. They existed in a corrupt environment where the largest bribery scheme in state history seemed like a walk in the park. And you know what? They were almost right.
Israel didn’t arrive at the intentional starving of a civilian population overnight.
Israel exists in an environment where they’ve been enabled by the American government, from the president down to city council members, to the point they think they can get away with war crimes committed in broad daylight.
And again, they might be right!
However, the politicians who took these propaganda trips can claim all the “education” they want. There is almost quite literally blood on their hands, and there should be a public reckoning with that before they ask for our votes again.
Dr. Acton looks to fill void left by Sherrod (probably) running for Senate
Last week, The Rooster reported on the latest tea leaves pointing to former United States Senator Sherrod Brown running for a return to the Senate in 2026, and why that would be in line with his long and documented history of poor political instincts.
Adding more credence to that belief, Dr. Amy Acton called numerous state legislators over the weekend, looking for their endorsement for his gubernatorial campaign since Sherrod is running for Senate.
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