When I started the Belldumber I had no plan to ever grow it from more than just me. With the growth of my career has come the ability to grow this site and commission interesting and unique reporting. I’ve obtained the services of Mason Bindemann, an enthusiastic and incredibly bright Ohio State student with a knack for reporting and finding a story. He runs Generally Assembled, a great read about the absurdities of Ohio State student government.

Mason is being compensated for his work (a core value of mine) but if you like this story his Venmo is below and you should tip!

Tip Mason!

I’d love to keep having him, and perhaps more, new and different voices here and a free Belldumber subscription will help make that possible. Now, onto the good stuff!

Subscribe now

Two weeks after Ohio State Assistant Professor Luke Perez assaulted a local documentarian outside a Chase Center event, the university’s investigation continues.

But there’s a fundamental problem: Ohio law gives Chase Center Director Lee Strang “sole and exclusive authority” over personnel decisions at the center, raising serious questions on whether Ohio State can actually enforce its own workplace violence policy without Strang’s approval.

Last Monday night, February 16th, as the Chase Center hosted a lecture on the costs of free speech, I asked Strang on the record about how this plays out.

When Perez threw documentarian Mike Newman to the ground on February 10, for attempting to ask Vice President E. Gordon Gee a question, Ohio State responded swiftly. Within 24 hours, Perez was placed on administrative leave pending what spokesman Ben Johnson called a “very concerning” investigation.

Seven days later, the Chase Center hosted Professor John Thrasher from Smith College to discuss dissent, civil discourse, and the price society pays for open inquiry.

With The Rooster unable to access future Chase Center programming for the foreseeable future, I figured I’d attend as a registered student.

The Gatekeepers of Free Inquiry

Attending Monday’s lecture required advance registration and check-in upon arrival. Even free inquiry needs a guest list, apparently. Columbus’s wine-and-cheese crowd showed up in full force.

Being a student helped me blend in and Director Lee Strang greeted all students beforehand, including me.

I reminded him we’d spoken over the summer and once I jogged his memory, Strang smiled and said he hoped I’d ask good questions. I assured him I would try.

Professor Thrasher’s talk explored the philosophical foundations of free speech, the cost societies bear to protect dissent, and the importance of maintaining civil discourse even when disagreements run deep.

The finer points of political philosophy might not be my forte but the Fisher College of Business has given me an even more valuable credential, unearned confidence.

Putting Theory Into Practice

When the Q&A opened, I was the first to raise my hand. (For my troubles, I walked away with a copy of Thrasher’s page-turner, Introduction to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.)

I asked Thrasher whether last week’s incident gave him any pause about joining the Chase Center next fall and whether he had any concerns about the center’s free speech norms in practice.

[Note: A link to the full question and answer audio is available: Here]

His answer was a masterclass in evasion. He immediately retreated to semantics, distinguishing between “norms and practice.” The Chase Center’s norms are fine, he assured me. Whether everything happens according to those norms? “That’s a different story altogether.”

When pressed, Thrasher insisted he wasn’t worried about the institution or the people. Sometimes things happen that you don’t expect or want, he conceded, but he wasn’t sure if that even applied here.

That might be more convincing if the center had been around longer than two years. When your entire institutional history could fit on a note card, one assault isn’t a statistical anomaly; it’s a notable portion of your track record.

The Real Question

After Thrasher’s talk, another student asked whether DEI initiatives could be seen as affirmative for free speech. The question was intriguing enough that I caught up with her afterward to ask what she thought about critics who’ve referred to the Chase Center as “conservative DEI.”

We were mid-conversation when Director Strang walked over to thank me for my question during the Q&A. I excused myself from the other student and turned my attention to Strang.

As an Ohio Revised Code enthusiast, there was something that had been eating at me about the statute establishing the Chase Center. Section 3335.39 grants the center’s director, Strang, “sole and exclusive authority” over all personnel decisions, including hiring and firing.

Ohio’s Republican legislature designed the Chase Center to be insulated from direct university oversight.

Even with Ohio State investigating Luke Perez for workplace violence, there’s a serious question about whether the university can actually do anything without Strang’s rubber stamp.

So I asked him directly: There’s a university investigation underway, but the statute gives you sole authority over personnel decisions at the Chase Center. Given that tension, what happens from here?

He deftly pivoted to process, saying the goal was to ensure they’re on the right path going forward and that the appropriate decision would be made based on what the investigation finds. He didn’t engage with the statutory question.

The Letter and the Spirit

It’s worth unpacking why that matters. Ohio State’s Workplace Violence Policy (7.05) clearly prohibits “threatening behavior and/or violent behavior that causes a disruption to the work environment.” Luke Perez, according to his personnel file, is subject to this policy.

But state law gives Strang final say. The statute doesn’t carve out exceptions for university investigations or HR policies.

In this case, I’d like to believe Strang will do the sensible thing and fire Perez; the assault was clearly caught on video. But it raises a question about what happens in the future when a fireable offense occurs but isn’t nearly as blatant.

The Chase Center has provided a fascinating case study on Thrasher’s central question: What costs are we willing to bear to protect free speech? As it turns out, those costs can include being wrestled to the ground by a professor.

This is the first real test case of what happens when university rules collide with the Chase Center’s statutory independence. Can Ohio State actually enforce its own workplace violence policy, or is it limited to strongly worded suggestions?

Perhaps this incident will prompt the state to reconsider its approach to fostering intellectual diversity in our public universities. But given the track record, I’m not exactly holding my breath.

We’ll see how long it takes Ohio State and Director Strang, separately or together, to do the right thing.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this article please consider sending Mason a tip and subscribing to The Belldumber for more.

Subscribe now

Nowhere is this more evident than Ohio. Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland all have powerful local machines that have never-ending controversy. In Columbus, of the last 37 city council members over 30 were first appointed rather than elected. Make no mistake, this is intentional. If you’re in the machine and play ball, you too can earn an appointment to city council to make your re-election a piece of cake. If you’re leaving council, perhaps for an appointment to a county or judicial position, you just have to step aside a little early as a courtesy and make way.

That isn’t enough rigging for them. Take the new (circa 2023) ward system for electing Columbus City Council. This seems like a no-brainer, lots of cities have wards and each ward elects a member who can, ideally, speak to hyper-local issues and better represent where they live. In a big city, like Columbus, this is essential. There are lots of different parts of the cities with different needs and expecting a councilman to represent the whole city is asking for too much. Chicago, obviously much bigger, but still a large-Midwestern city, has 50 Alderman for 50 wards. Each of those Alderman are voted on solely by their ward and represent their ward. This makes sense.

Columbus, in sharp contrast, went a different route. Councilmembers have to live in the ward they run in, but rather than just the ward voting the entire city gets to vote on each ward. This poses the logical question of why you should be voting on someone else’s representative. Whatever the answer people may tell you, it’s to ensure that the party machine stays in charge of the city. It is much easier to run a renegade campaign in one of the nine wards then it is to run against the party in the entire city. The Franklin County Democratic Party’s endorsement, and their holy grail the Sample Ballot, have far more sway combined city wide.

This of course isn’t new, but in the context of how the party machines control all of city politics I think it’s vitally important to understand. There is no dissent when the party controls your destiny, because why would you want your political career to end.

All of this leads up to the much-publicized Jesse Vogel v. Tiara Ross City Council Ward 7 race. The race is compelling, Ross is the party choice and Vogel is a progressive outsider.

Just read through his site and you can get the sense that Vogel cares deeply about Columbus and wants it to be better. Perhaps, in a city of one-party control, the only thing standing in the way of some of these much needed reforms is the Franklin County Democratic Party machine.

Tremendous reporting from The Rooster (Editor’s Note: I am paid in the low 7 figures for my work on their staff) showed that Ross racked up thousands of dollars in parking fines, drove on a suspended license, and moved to the ward mere days before the election registration deadline.

Despite all of that, prior to a face-off in a primary (where 2 of the 3 candidates, all Democrats, would advance) all 9 incumbent members of city council endorsed Ross. It’s hard to have a thriving democracy when the party is more than willing, and more than eager, to try to tilt the scales.

For all intents and purposes they failed miserably too, Ross barely eeked out a victory with a 41-39 advantage in the city-wide primary. When you’re endorsed by every incumbent, it is astounding to not achieve a majority in a primary. It’s even more shocking to barely achieve a plurality.

That two-point victory was enough to sway the Franklin County Democratic Party endorsement for Ross, with it being the stated reason behind it. This is ridiculous, but they would’ve found a way to endorse their preferred candidate no matter what. Another, more compelling component, is that Ross actually lost Ward 7 to Vogel. Vogel won the ward in question, the ward that they’re of course running to represent, 49-31. For an outsider, with no machine backing, that is a tremendous result and clearly shows the will of the voters in the actual ward. It didn’t matter to the Franklin County Democratic Party Central Committee.

During the endorsement meeting, which ended in a 106-48 vote for the endorsement of Ross, State Rep. Dontavious Jarrells (infamous for being one of the worst bosses in the statehouse) had one of the most bizarre endorsement reasons I’ve ever heard, from WOSU,

State Rep. Dontavious Jarrells countered what Duffy said, arguing Ross’s driving record would be a positive to low income voters who may also have driven on a suspended license, breaking the law. “And who not better than someone who comes from the same community that is going to inspire them to believe that they can be a Tiara Ross,” Jarrells said. “With driver’s license issues, with some issues of debt, with the issues of navigating family trauma. And so don’t sit here and be high and mighty in this Democratic Party, because reality wise, the most of these things and the least of these things are going to come from all of us.”

Driving on a suspended license and racking up over $3,000 in parking tickets is not something to aspire to. It is not going to be positive to anyone, you do not want to see yourself in someone who has racked up that much in fines of any sort. It is a ridiculous notion to say, demeaning to low-income people, and quite frankly hilarious.

Sure, have it both ways. This is the exact same logic that was floating in politics with, “Trump as a felon will actually help him with felons votes because they see themself in him.” It’s ridiculous logic and not something that anyone remotely serious thinks. But the party has to have a reason, because you can’t just blindly support someone, you need some blind reasons behind your blind support.

Again, none of this is breaking news, but I think it’s helpful to be reminded of the scale of the problem a month before the election. Hell, it was even worse in the Columbus City School Board Race, where the party endorsed candidates before the primary. Endorsing people like Real Estate Developer Patrick Katzenmeyer (*this only makes sense if you look up the name of his father-in-law) over really anyone, but especially my friend Mounir Lynch, was absolutely nuts.

There are no repercussions though, and there can’t be in this system, because as long as the party decides they think that will be enough. Their entire syystem is predicated on their belief that people will look down at their sample ballot, punch the circles for whoever the party says, and go home.

I’d like to prove them wrong. Columbus has a chance to fix that a tiny bit next month, by voting for Vogel, voting for Lynch, and not just rolling over. I sure hope enough people take it.

If you’re new here, the Belldumber is a free publication by Max Littman. It is published sparingly but you can still subscribe to read it every once in a while.

Subscribe now

Brandon Simmons, a young, unqualified, and woefully incompetent member has tanked the board with a bizarre, probably illegal, and astounding series of inept events.

As The Rooster covered in-depth it is very clear that a lot of the board is, in fact, the problem. We can, and should, work to fix that.

The School Board is a notoriously thankless job, an old boss of mine said that if you want to get your start in politics, you should start literally anywhere else. Parents hate you, teachers hate you, administrators hate you, it really is the worst of all worlds.

With that in mind, when a qualified, competent, and incredibly bright friend of mine launched his campaign I almost texted him calling him an idiot.

I didn’t, because he is exactly the type of leader that this city needs. To move on from the Simmons fiasco and the years of terrible board mismanagement we need fresh voices that aren’t from the same cocktail party circuit.

I listened intently to the candidate forums, and I saw exactly what I wanted to see. My friend, Mounir Lynch, is a fighter with the will to lead and help turn the district around.

Him and his team were kind enough to partake in the first candidate interview in Belldumber history. The unabridged interview is below, along with some extra thoughts.

1. What inspired you to run for school board?

In many ways, my inspiration for running for school board comes from my time as a student in CCS, and my years of experience teaching in CCS schools. When I was a teenager, I went to board meetings to advocate for safer facilities for my teachers, support staff, and classmates, and for equitable resource distribution among schools in the district. The advocacy of myself and my peers for our schools came to no avail, and the systems continued to fail us. As an educator, I heard personal testimonials, including on the picket line, about how the board has left teachers, staff, and students behind. Now, as public schools are facing existential threats from the state and federal government, it is time that a fresh perspective is offered to champion our public schools and lead through a period of uncertainty, while also steadfastly focused on student success and outcomes.

2. What will you bring to the board different from what they already have?

As a public health professional, I bring personal experience and expertise in systems that overlap with education, but work within a different framework from how the district has been operating. I bring experience as a community organizer and classroom educator, and plan on bringing a fresh, younger perspective that also comes with education, experience, and understanding of the board's role in our community. I have roots that are deeply planted across disciplines and neighborhoods that I believe the board has not engaged with throughout recent history.

3. What would you say to a detractor saying you're 'too young' or 'inexperienced?

This is a question I face pretty often. I like to remind people that Sherrod Brown was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives at the age of 23 and served over 10 years in that position before becoming the household name and progressive champion he is now regarded as. Youth is not a weakness, especially in a school board role. Further, I do have education and experience that qualifies me for this position. I have worked in the classroom, engaged with students, planned curriculum, navigated public health and sexual health education programming through funding challenges and losses. I know what it means to work collaboratively and creatively to address systemic challenges. Most importantly, I have connections and shared experiences with people that are under attack. I am a graduate of CCS, a Muslim-American, and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. These lived experiences inform much of my policy and worldview.

4. How will you handle the school closure issue?

This is a complex issue, and tough decisions have to be made in large school districts like ours. This may include closing schools. However, these decisions must not be made without proper community engagement, right? For example, when a nearby elementary school was slated for closure, the district held a community feedback session at my neighborhood library, the Shepard Library, on a weekday morning. How many staff, students, and families can attend that meeting and provide their feedback? When schools close, neighborhoods lose a pillar of their community. Schools are not just the buildings we learn in, they are a resource for job training, English language learning, healthcare, recreation, and more. In a district that is already under-resourced, we must make sure that these decisions are made with proper engagement from not just families, but the staff that work in these buildings. I would ensure that we are doing proper, data-driven investigation in to the possibilities of school closure or consolidation, and making sure that we consider every factor behind a school closure, including

5. Do you support Jake Diebler staying as Ohio State Men's Basketball Coach? What's your favorite moment from Ohio State Football's playoff run?

Look, I am not impressed by AD Bjork, and Bjork wants to give Diebler the benefit of the doubt. This makes me cautious to begin with. At the time of me answering this question, Diebler was given the job full time, and so we will just have to see how that plays out. However I'm a Cincinnati Bearcat (undergrad at least), and my concern from a MBB perspective is the fact that our *basketball school* hasn't been able to put together a decent basketball team in years.

My favorite moment from Ohio State's playoff run was Sawyer returning a fumble 83 yards to the house against Texas. I live for the satisfaction of crushing any southern team and proving ourselves worthy. Although I would assume Sawyer and I do not get along politically at all, it was still a pretty big moment for us and pretty exciting. We have no excuse to lose to Michigan again any time soon.

How’s that for an interview? I particularly enjoyed his answers about school closures, classroom educator experience, and Jack Sawyer.

If it isn’t evident I am giving Mounir my full and complete endorsement.

I was extremely disappointed when the Franklin County Democratic Party endorsed in this race, of which there are 3 open seats, while not endorsing in the open City Council race. The FCDP endorsements helped get us into this mess, I think it’s only fair that outsiders help get us out of it.

If any other candidates see this you’re more than welcome to reach out to me on social media for your own interview, of which I will evaluate for endorsement in a fair process and will also publish your own interviews.

A full Belldumber Sample Ballot will arrive before election day.

Writing articles about ridiculous legislation introduced by a single lawmaker, with no hope of ever getting as much as even a committee hearing, needs to end.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look at some of the media coverage of Ohio State Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sixth Circle of Hell) newly introduced legislation:

Sports Illustrated, Columbus Dispatch, Associated Press, New York Post (lol), and on and on.

This is an absolutely ridiculous bill, to make flag planting at sports games a felony, that has no hope of ever becoming law. But that’s not the point, he laid an obvious trap and all of our vaunted news media took the bait.

This “legislation,” if you can even call it that, was most likely drafted up in mere hours by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission. They exist to draft any legislation that Ohio Legislators want whipped up at their command. LSC is a good bipartisan service but are frequently abused by attention-craved State Reps who want their name in the headlines.

This is easy work if you know how it’s done, Williams (or his Legislative Aide) most likely emailed LSC last week asking for flag planting banning draft language. They probably had a quick meeting, fleshed it out, and the language was brought back to him and introduced today. Nothing to it.

As I mentioned, this isn’t new or special, but it’s particularly bothersome when it paints my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes football team in a bad light.

In fact, this happens all the time. It’s the game that these legislators play with an attention-wanting media that is mutually beneficial.

Williams knows that this ridiculous legislation will instantly garner headlines, the media knows that in this clicks-for-cash world these headlines will get hits, and they quickly ship out these stories.

The problem being, again, that these things have absolutely no-shot of ever becoming law, and the general public largely isn’t savvy enough to know that. Sure, at the bottom of the article it mentions it, “probably won’t become law,” but most folks will never even click into the article. To a lot of people, “[Blank Bill] is introduced,” is analogous to it becoming a law. That’s dangerous!

Let alone that the legislative session is basically over, a bill like this will never have a hearing, yet it’s covered around the country intently.

We saw this play-out exactly the same last week too, Rep. Bill DeMora (D-ODP Tailgate) introduced a stupid bill to ban whiskey re-sale and it went all over the news. This bill has a lower chance of passage than I have being elected to the legislature next year, but it made headlines across the state. Maybe we should look around and start asking ourselves why these ridiculous bills keep getting exactly the attention that the sponsors are practically begging to get.

Of course, this isn’t limited to Ohio it’s a national issue as well. Congressman wanting their time in the spotlight introduce things like the “TRUMP Act” to get Donald Trump on a $500 bill. Obviously this will never pass, but Rep. Paul Gosar (R-It’s Really Hot Down Here) gets to make national headlines.

As long as reporters and representatives have their dance of introducing bullshit legislation and writing about it we’re always going to be in this merry-go-round of nothing.

It’s far from our biggest issue, but if anything, it’s stupid and makes us look all the dumber for talking about it in the first place. Maybe one of these days the media will learn that if they just stop reporting on it perhaps (although unlikely) legislators will take their jobs slightly more seriously. I won’t bet on it, I’ll just write angrily to my wonderful readers instead.

If you liked this, read my most recent work -

The Rooster

How Slapshot Stole Christmas

It was 6:30 p.m. the Friday before Thanksgiving when Jessica absentmindedly checked her work email from home…

Read more

a year ago · 24 likes · 4 comments · Max Littman

The Belldumber is a free publication sent out whenever I get the motivation to and don’t desire to be paid. It is free because I enjoy it and will stay free unless I really need money or something. Thanks for subscribing!

Subscribe now

In some respects, it’s genuinely impressive that this has spread this far. Springfield is about as unremarkable of a city as you could think of. While just 45 minutes outside of Columbus it occupied about zero thought in my mind until this week.

The idea that Springfield is the classic Midwestern post-industrial city has been written to death but it’s true. The town has seen better days, and the population has been shrinking for decades.

Recently a boom of Haitian immigrants, fueled by ample jobs, came to somewhat revitalize the town. Hardly the first or last time that this has happened but it still feeds right into Republicans hateful hands, as usual.

It’s even a bit surprising that it’s taken this long for Republicans to use the Haitian immigration story to fuel their xenophobic and racist talking points. Usually they’re much quicker on the racism trigger.

A bit more surprising is the legs on this story and the coordinated effort to spread it.

Not every ‘dog whistle of the week’ gets spouted by the former President during a Presidential debate and makes international news.

Perhaps it’s just that the associated vicious lies about the Haitians is salacious enough to go hand-in-hand with the classic immigration fear mongering and it created a perfect racism storm.

While it is the classic Republican playbook, it is hard not to laugh about the pure ridiculousness and callousness of the cats and dogs claim. Even for them it’s a new place that they hadn’t quite gone before.

The sheer presence of these hard-working immigrants has, like clockwork, fueled 1800’s style know-nothing alarm bells throughout the state.

It’s easy to see how this is effective in small towns with Fox News brain that are always looking for the next existential threat. To fuel it further, the states most prominent officials are doing their best to lie, obfuscate, and signal boost.

It’s the same as every other time.

JD Vance, world renowned psychopath, said on X,

“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?”

Not one to be out-done by Vance, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost took it a step further in his rhetoric. Similarly on X,

“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield. Citizens testified to City Council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”

Yost has also ordered a, ‘deep dive,’ into the Springfield immigration, whatever the hell that means.

The first rule of Ohio politics is that the depravity of Ohio Republicans knowns no bounds, and that all fits right in.

What is surprising though, is the pushback on these accusations from another Ohio Republican, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

DeWine, in a press conference, said, “I think we should take the word of the city manager and the mayor that they have found no credible evidence of that story, of Haitians eating pets.”

This is an interesting rebuke against a line that is being used up and down the ballot by his own party and it hits at a theme we see in Republican politics over and over. Depravity and racist undertones are fine, until they directly impact me.

In DeWine’s case his personal impact is that he, until recently, operated a school in Haiti, the Becky DeWine School, named after his late daughter.

The school, which the governor has visited over a dozen times, gave over 10,000 children an education, food, and healthcare until the rampant gang violence forced its closure.

Clearly operating the school, and denouncing the bullshit cat and dog story, are both good things by the governor. It’s equally disappointing that something that simple is a notable act from an Ohio Republican.

The Governor and Attorney General of the same state and the same political party completely at odds over a conspiracy is rare but not particularly courageous. You shouldn’t need to have a vested interest in anything to speak out against racism and hatred.

And yet we’ve seen this over and over.

Take for example, the Republican Jewish Coalition, who was so shocked about the Trump, “good people on both sides” reaction to the Charlottesville alt-right march that they issued a statement pleading for Trump to have, ‘more moral clarity.’

It was fine when it was happening to others, but supporting a Nazi rally made it just a little too directly antisemitic for them. It was only temporary too, as they’re back to supporting Trump while he claims that any Jews who won’t vote for him, “hate their religion.”

When you have a xenophobic and racist demagogue as the head of the party you can bend and beg all you want but at the end of the day Republicans lack of spines always lead back to their inevitable endorsements of him.

The machine keeps on turning, even if you disagree personally on this one particular racist claim.

For all his slight moral clarity on this issue, DeWine still said he’s voting for Trump. He also still endorsed Bernie Moreno who is every bit as bad.

That’s what it all comes down to. Every single Republican official is as bad as the next. They are all complicit and equally depraved, even the ‘good ones.’

Not being particularly racist enough on one issue should never win you applause or headlines, and it’s appalling that we’ve reached the point where DeWine denying a racist myth has reached that level.

I desperately hope that one day we can stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and take Ohio back. Until then I’ll be here writing and complaining while the best we have elected produces a tepid pushback against blood libel.

For God’s sake make sure you vote for Sherrod Brown.

The Belldumber is my passion project for writing stories about Ohio. You can support me simply by subscribing, for free, and giving it a read. With no set schedule and no cost what do you have to lose!

Subscribe now

Much more common are things like, “Out-of-state officers shot and killed a man wielding two knives blocks away from the RNC, police say.”

To the surprise of no one here, that was the Columbus Police Department, whose bloodlust seems to know no bounds in or out of Columbus.

On the streets of another city, without understanding the neighborhood or people, 5 CPD officers opened fire on a homeless man with a knife.

That isn’t to say that a man fighting another, with a knife is good, or ok, but if the local PD had been handling it, in their own city, they could have de-escalated or done anything to help the situation that wasn’t immediately using deadly force.

David Porter, who said he knew Samuel Sharpe and is also homeless, was angry that officers from outside of Milwaukee were in his neighborhood.

“If MPD would have been there, that man would still be alive right now,” Porter said, referring to Milwaukee police.

If the CPD won’t keep their own citizens safe, why would they ever stop and consider the humanity of someone outside of Columbus?

The CPD have been rotten for a long long time, with no end in sight, and operate without regard in a city fully content on letting them fester. Take some recent examples:

• The Murder of Donna Castleberry

• The Cover-Up and Murder of Naimo Mahdi Abdirahaman

• The Millions of Dollars of Police Brutality Payouts

• Their Assaults and Sexual Misconduct

• Running a literal drug cartel

I could keep going on but you get the point.

I had some hope in 2021 when Elaine Bryant was hired as Chief, from outside the Department, that things would marginally improve. This did not happen. The department is rotten so deep to their core that the chief does not matter. This has been shown time and time again the last three years.

A question I’ve seen a lot though is if this is really a unique Columbus problem. If all police departments are bad, than are the Columbus Police really just a symptom of the greater disease?

They are not. They are uniquely bad, and absolutely nothing is changing.

This is from a 2024 study of police violence, with Columbus coming in as the third deadliest department in the country. The top 4 here are also significantly worse than any behind them with a wide gulf.

We aren’t imagining it, or biased with our locality, they truly are one of the very worst in the country.

What’s even more upsetting is that this gets them rewarded.

They received, less than three months ago, a new contract with a 15% raise over 3 years. We are paying them more money to continue to murder residents.

“Fifteen percent across the board over three years is a lot of money, but it's not just that. It's getting the best and the brightest to come here to Columbus, but also retaining the best and the brightest,” said Columbus Police Assistant Chief LaShanna Potts.

It goes without saying that the best and the brightest are not being retained, they were never here to begin with. They do not make up a department that is so absurdly deadly.

It’s exceedingly hard to not be angry about this. They embarrassed Columbus this week on a national stage. They murder and cover-up the murders of our own residents. Enough is enough, and if the city council had any spine they would have stopped this a long time ago.

The city does not need to continuously work with the police union, who is fabulously racist and corrupt. After the last President of the Police Union stepped down because he called for literal lynchings his ideological equal took over.

These are who they are, and they once again showed us this with their actions and violence.

Instead of accountability, the only one of the two biggest players in Columbus commented on the events in Milwaukee. City Council President Shannon Hardin has said nothing. Mayor Ginther released a boilerplate statement deferring to the police for following their training.

It’s just business as usual for the city government who has shown no interest in substantive change and lets this go on. Clearly I’m sick of it, and hopefully one day we can get elected officials who are. Until then this will continue, the CPD will continue to deface themselves in front of the world, and more innocent people in Columbus will die.

Business as usual.

But, there’s nothing I can do about that. So instead, I figure I can do what I do best. Dramatically write about how one asshole is ever so slightly responsible for this while he loves to pretend he isn’t.

Neal Katyal was once the Solicitor General for President Obama, arguing countless Supreme Court cases. He has parlayed that into a huge following, and cult-hero status amongst those in the “Resistance” left.

As Politico put it, “In 49 of the 50 states, Neal Katyal is known as a stalwart defender of democracy. And then there’s New Jersey.”

That was part of a piece on Katyal’s involvement in restoring New Jersey’s “party-line” voting system which is an intensely un-Democratic process designed to protect party endorsed candidates at all costs.

Where Politico went wrong wasn’t in criticizing Katyal’s involvement in New Jersey, it was that he has done nothing to defend anything in the other 49 states.

A lot of these, “better than everyone else,” types have a personality that insists that they have never, and can never, be wrong. It doesn’t matter what they once said, or who they once represented, they are right because they are smart and fancy lawyers who went to Yale.

This calculus shows through in clips like this, on national TV defending our democracy!

https://x.com/amanpour/status/1807836206484295944

The problem though is that the world doesn’t work like that, our actions and choices aren’t absolved only because of our current positions.

Supreme Court rulings aren’t born out-of-thin air either, they’re primarily made from those who actually, you know, sit on the court.

Take for instance then, six years ago, this blistering op-ed from Katyal that has aged like a fine boxed wine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/opinion/why-liberals-should-back-neil-gorsuch.html

Right about now, the public could use some reassurance that no matter how chaotic our politics become, the members of the Supreme Court will uphold the oath they must take: to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” I am confident Neil Gorsuch will live up to that promise.

Wow. Strong words. I wonder if that same justice just a few years later contributed to the majority ruling that made the Presidency into a King after eliminated Roe.

You can’t go on CNN and decry the death of democracy from a Supreme Court that you advocated for! The cognitive dissonance that entails is astounding.

Garnering almost a million followers while going on cable news regularly as an expert should imbue you with a sense of responsibility that your words can and will be influential. For as much as the NYT Op/Ed page should never, ever, be listened to it does exert real influence.

There is a direct line from that Op/Ed, no matter what its real influence was, to Dobbs and to Presidential immunity. That is on his hands.

Alas, no hero of democracy lawyer would be complete without having extra additional blood on their hands. Katyal is a partner at Hogan Lovells, one of the largest and most influential law firms in the world. He undoubtably makes millions for his presence there, and we know that he bills out at over $2,000 an hour.

However, I’m not one to pocket watch, if someone is willing to pay that fine. I am willing to client watch though. I don’t care if it’s your job, arguing cases for bad, and in some cases literally life ending, corporations is an unambiguous moral failing.

Make no mistake, that is worlds different from defending a person criminally accused, who absolutely deserves proper and fair representation. Our constitution in fact (at least for now) demands it! Defending corporations from wrong-doing, and being seen as the fixer to save them, is far different.

For instance, in the case of Johnson and Johnson’s bankruptcy when he was parachuted in to help them starve off going broke because their baby powder contained asbestos and caused cancer. From Slate-

Plaintiffs appealed to the 3^rd Circuit, and J&J did what a lot of shady companies do when they want an appellate court to adopt a cockamamie legal theory that lets them avoid ever facing a jury trial: hire Neal Katyal. (Plaintiffs hired David Frederick. If you’re so inclined, the two-and-a-half-hour oral argument is available here.) And on Monday, the court sided firmly with the plaintiffs.

I find it difficult to reconcile putting on the aura of a democracy defender while simultaneously representing companies trying to avoid paying massive penalties for giving thousands ovarian cancer a result of their products.

I am firmly convinced that you can still be a lawyer while being a good and ethical person. I do not believe that being parachuted in to help evil companies win cases on horseshit follows that narrative.

Another example, more personal to me. Worker’s rights. Something that should be foundational in any working Democracy.

Katyal, was brought into both Janus v. AFSCME and Epic v. Lewis (on behalf of the corporations obviously) to argue key briefs that, of course, ultimately proved successful at the Supreme Court level.

Just look at the firms self-congratulatory press release about their win!

Washington, D.C., 21 May 2018 – Hogan Lovells, in conjunction with several other law firms, secured a major Supreme Court victory today in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, a landmark case preserving the right of employers to enter into individualized arbitration agreements with their employees. Ruling in favor of Hogan Lovells’ clients, the Court decisively rejected the assertion that class action waivers are forbidden by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

The victory was particularly important because the National Labor Relations Board had taken the opposite position, holding that class action waivers in individual employment contracts unlawfully impede an employee’s right to engage in “concerted activities” under Section 7 of the NLRA. The Supreme Court rejected that view. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Gorsuch disagreed with the Board’s interpretation of Section 7, and reiterated that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) contains an “emphatic” command to honor arbitration agreements. The Court explained that nothing in the NLRA permits courts to ignore that clear command with respect to class action waivers.

It goes on.

Partner and Appellate practice co-head Neal Katyal has been involved in this case since the certiorari stage, when he and his appellate team were brought in by Epic Systems to seek certiorari review of an unfavorable Seventh Circuit ruling. Later, two other petitions were filed, and the respondents in one (Murphy Oil) also hired Hogan Lovells.

Katyal was joined on the merits briefing on behalf of Epic Systems and Murphy Oil by Senior Associates Colleen Sinzdak and Thomas Schmidt.

Now I’ll be damned, the same Neal Katyal who was in the Gray Lady advocating for Gorsuch to be nominated won a narrow supreme court case eroding worker right’s written by Gorsuch. What a coincidence.

Bragging about being on the other side of the National Labor Relations Board is not something that I typically would advise. It paints a certain look as to who you are as a person, and what kind of law firm you work for.

If you want to represent bad people to make a buck, fine, we all make choices. But you cannot do that while also portraying yourself as a democracy defending super-hero.

In these dark days we can’t do much, but calling shitty lawyers names in a newsletter sure is a lot of fun.

This post was made possible by the generous readers who read my work. While it is free you can subscribe to see it even faster and directly in your inbox. How fun.

Subscribe now

My boss, a state rep, had previously been a school board member and on my first day gave me some sage advice, he told me that if I ever wanted to one day run for office whatever I do don’t run for school board.

The school board environment is not for the faint of heart, it’s tough and complicated by the fact that you are effectively responsible for people’s children for 8 hours a day. This responsibility isn’t for the faint of heart. Parents, educators, and other school board members all want what’s best for the children, and those priorities often overlap. It’s a thankless job with a whole lot on the line.

Enter 21 year-old Brandon Simmons.

Simmons ran for Columbus City School Board, was endorsed by the county Democratic party, and ultimately ran unopposed.

As so often is the case in Franklin County, the endorsed candidate wins. The Franklin County Democratic Party is a machine, with an unbeatable record, and their endorsement is as good as gold.

Simmons captured that gold, and he has a great story to go along with it to boot. He went to Columbus Public Schools, was an advocate for conditions at his school, and is a political science major in college.

That’s the kicker though, as great of a story as it is he would’ve been much better served continuing to advocate for the needs of the students from outside the board.

To the detriment of him, the board, and the students he has done a horrible job. And part of it is, most likely, because he is just too young.

Imposing age restrictions on offices is bad, and not something I’m in favor of, but they do exist for a reason. Politics is cutthroat, school boards are cutthroat, and being on the board of education of the largest school district in the state is not a good first job.

This isn’t age discrimination, it’s the simple reality that the complexities of the board make it a insurmountable challenge for someone who has never held a “real” job to undertake. We all went through it, the rigors and sharp learning curves of our first jobs, hell I still feel like I’m going through it 5 years later.

The difference is the learning curve for my first job (ever so slightly) impacted my companies ability to make money, the learning curve for this job is the wellbeing of 46,000 students.

It’s a disservice to the students, parents, and teachers that the district is headed, in-part, by a 21-year old who doesn’t understand or grasp the seriousness of his job and the complications that come with it.

For those unaware, Simmons prepared a document proposing a response plan to union backlash over school closings. This plan was blatantly anti-union, contained bizarre racial overtones, and resulted in his censure by the rest of the board.

To this day we don’t actually know if it was prepared with other members, as Simmons claims, or alone as the rest of the board claims. Additionally, according to a recent law-firm oversight report it appears that he deleted and failed to disclose public records.

This is not, by any means, acceptable.

What we do know is that Simmons has refused to resign, and continues to interact poorly with the media. During a board meeting to review the recent law-firm report he repeatedly went over to the media table mid-meeting and asked if the media had received his statement. They had, when it was sent.

This isn’t to say that if he had 5 or 10 years of work experience he’d suddenly be great at his job, or things would have gone differently, but that experience and time in the workforce couldn’t possibly hurt anymore.

This school board is too important to waste weeks of work with meetings over one members behavior. This affects everyone, and once again only hurts the students. If you can’t handle the pressure that being a school board member has the best option is to never run in the first place, the second best option is to resign before you have 3 more years of scrutiny and important work that you’ve proven you can’t do.

It’s past time for Simmons to resign, he has a long career ahead of him and maybe he can even run for school board again. But that time isn’t now, it’s time for people to step up for the students, to shut down the mass school closing plan, and to focus on what is best for the students.

I hope this turns into a good-lesson for over optimistic youth. You, and your voice, matter. You should use your voice and actions to the fullest extent, in fact the country needs you to. That doesn’t at the same time mean you need to actually run for office. It’s ok to gain experience and wait. It’s ok to work for, and advise others, who have climbed that mountain and are ready. Public office shouldn’t be a rush, it should be a service, and we should be looking for and endorsing the absolute best candidates for it.

Well there you have it, the glorious return of this newsletter. For those out-of-the-loop I’ve recently moved to southern California from Chicago. As part of that move, I have a lot more free time, and plan to write this more. If you enjoy please subscribe and send it to your friends. It’s free, a passion project, and I always appreciate knowing that I have loyal readers who care enough to open emails with my opinions.

Subscribe now

I open Uber and there’s a promo to bet- during my ride!- right from an easy app.

I go to the bar and a waitress comes up to me with an iPad and asks me to sign up for a sportsbook and they’ll comp my first drink.

I turn on the TV for 5 minutes and get 3+ ads with assorted sports icons all vying for my sign-up bonus.

And you know what, for me it worked.

The way that sports betting companies have dominated the sports industry and become an all-enveloping entity in the sports universe has been written about extensively. It’s hard not to notice it. What started as winks and nods as to a line has turned into full-fledged sports gambling TV shows and ESPN bet.

Again, that’s not what I want to talk about because it’s not original, rather why we’re on this path and why hasn’t anyone really stopped it.

Sports gambling has exploded overnight since its legalization, to the point you can’t have a sports discussion without it, and no one is doing anything about it.

This came to a head for me yesterday with how the media covered Kayshon Boutte’s arrest. He gambled, as it turns out, a lot. One bet per hour on average for years, and as laid out in his indictment lost a lot too. Roughly $80,000 down the drain. Sure, you can excuse that as a millionaire losing pennies but as a late-round NFL draft pick on a rookie deal that’s still a very sizable chunk of change.

I found all of that pretty easily, right in the plain text of his indictment.

Yet, we get tweets like this with 20,000 likes.

https://x.com/BostonConnr/status/1750616750994133315?s=20

Notice, even in stories like this from local media it makes it unclear the scope of what he lost.

https://x.com/RJ_Young/status/1750611047629586515?s=20

It doesn’t spell out like in the indictment the very explicit difference between the amount wagered, and the amount won.

Perhaps it’s an oversight, but the sports media at large has a huge incentive not to publicize the amount he lost and rather just the amount he wagered.

It’s just hard to give the benefit of the doubt to a sports media world that has all of their hands in the cookie jar.

Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find a sports team, sports league, or sports media site without a gambling sponsor.

The inundation of the American media and sports landscape with gambling affiliations isn’t some unique evil, they all have alcohol and once had tobacco sponsors too. It’s just another sign of the profit-over-everything keystone of our economy.

Sports tv, regular tv, billboards, what have you all being held be a vice by the sports betting landscape is doing a vast amount of harm.

I’m not one to predict the future, and I don’t exactly know where this leads but 58% of 20’somethings actively participating in a known vice is bad. It’s even worse when the ‘adults’ in the room, universities and the media, prop it up even more.

Any university that has a ‘dry campus’ but partners with a sports betting company is shooting itself in the foot while covering its face.

We are doing real, irreperable harm, to young adults who don’t know any better. Sports betting is fun, I enjoy it, it’s fun with friends, and it’s really harmful. Addiction rates for sports betting have risen tenfold in 3 years and none of our institutions are doing anything to stop it.

I don’t proclaim to have a fix here, or even want to ban it, as I’ve mentioned I do it and enjoy it! But if we aren’t at least thinking about this critically without the money in front of our eyes the anvil is going to continue to slowly drop on addicted young adults.

I think this really is comparable to the rise of e-cigarettes. They’d existed for a while, the same as sports gambling, and suddenly appeared everywhere. Institutions propped them up, more tacitly than gambling, but who didn’t see their ads everywhere in the mid 2010’s. Martha Coakley the Attorney General of Massachusetts became Juul’s head lobbyist and they made an exorbitant amount of money.

Lately the FDA finally intervened and we're left with an enormous young adult population addicted to tobacco, and an ever-growing underground market of e-cigarettes that we have no idea the effects of.

It sucks to sound like a killjoy and suck the fun out of something. But I feel a personal responsibility to at least write my feelings about it. I became an avid sports bettor, I used the referral bonuses and sign-up codes to hook my friends in, which is exactly what they want. They preyed off me perfectly. I needed money, I got an influx of cash seemingly free, at the expense of my brain chemistry and trying to get my friends hooked.

It seems to me that the days of sports gambling being a taboo that you had to seek out to find was like many things, way better for everyone. No one wins when a generation gets addicted to wagering money on their phones, except the betting companies who aren’t even making money yet.

May 14th, 2018 was a seminal date for thousands of Americans. They probably didn’t know it yet, they were too young to, but the legalization of sports gambling was carefully constructed to target them and pick their pockets. It’s just a shame it was ever allowed to get this bad.

If you enjoyed this, please subscribe (for free) to this newsletter. I can’t promise regular writing, but I can promise I’ll write whenever I’m really inspired and/or bored.

Subscribe now

You can rest assured knowing that they will, if elected (and I have a low endorsement winning percentage), probably maybe do a good job. And if they don’t it will surely cost them this coveted endorsement in the future.

If you don’t live in Ohio, and more specifically Columbus/Worthington you can just click off the page now. Vote for your local dem and call it a day.

If by the grace of God you live in the sacred Columbus/Worthington area look below for my picks.

As a reminder, the number one criteria for an endorsement here is following me on twitter. All others are based on having progressive values, being anti-NIMBY, or in rare cases being against a politician so heinous that they truly could do no worse.

Let’s begin:

Ohio Issue 1:
Yes. Yes. Vote yes, please let this state have this one thing.

Ohio Issue 2:
Yes. Let’s get some more tax revenue.

Columbus Mayor:
Joe Motil. Look we don’t agree on everything, but Joe is a lifetime activist, very passionate about this city, a Twitter follower of mine, and not Andy Ginther. He’s one of the few people that have been trying to hold city council accountable for years, and Ginther’s attacks against his (backed by empirical evidence) criticism of the Columbus gun buyback program were gross. Vote Joe.

Columbus City Council:
Nancy Day-Achauer. Twitter follower of mine, overall good person and progressive.
Adrienne Hood. Running to be an independent voice on city council is a tough uphill battle, also incredibly necessary. We need voices like hers.

I cannot begin to understand the fake ward system they’re now using. The ones I can tell you I expressly support are above, all others just follow your own discretion.

Columbus City School Board:
Sarah Ingles. A journalist, a very good person, and a needed voice on the fabulously corrupt school board.

Worthington City Council:
Amy Lloyd
Tom Burns
Rachael Dorothy

The three are progressives who are all running to upset the current NIMBYsphere of Worthington. They’re right, we need to build and we need to get things done (as I’ve previously written here). Let’s get some change.

A special shoutout to Tom, already endorsed by The Rooster, for being a true visionary in the we need more building space.

Worthington School Board:
Amber Epling
Stephanie Harless

An absolute no-brainer, vote for the non-Moms for Liberty.

That concludes our show, make sure to vote for these fine folks tomorrow and lets make some progress!

This latest one is a doozy, a student athlete spray painting homophobic slurs on the sidewalk of a Jewish center on campus, accompanied by a smiling accomplice who coincidentally is also a student athlete.

It also is just incredibly odd, all-around, and should cause us to naturally ask questions. Nobody, despite being very obviously caught on camera, was charged in the incident. Despite the incident occurring in August it took till late September for anyone to be publicly identified. As of Sept. 17th there was no university correspondence indicating a punishment for either student athlete perpetrator.

It’s weird, right? It took till October 3rd for The Michigan Daily, the student newspaper, to confirm the names of the student athletes. Other outlets haven’t notably, The Detroit Free Press only named one athlete in their report.

Reading more it seems clear why the Director of the “Jewish Resource Center,” the building vandalized, declined to press charges. The Michigan Daily goes much further into this in their reporting:

The JRC declined to press charges against the two student-athletes. Rabbi Mendy Klahr of the JRC shared that the JRC was informed, through lawyers for the students, that the pair wanted to meet with the JRC. According to Klahr, by the time the students met with the JRC, Michigan had already been made aware of the incident.

“We believe in second chances,” Klahr said. “We don’t just cancel people.”

Klahr went on to explain that Judaism places emphasis on forgiveness. Especially with the Jewish High Holidays and Yom Kippur — the Jewish Day of Atonement — approaching as the aftermath of the graffiti was unfolding, Klahr said he felt it was important for the JRC to provide the students with a chance to apologize.

“I think the way to fix it, specifically in this specific case, is not to say, ‘Oh, let’s go after them, destroy their life or something like that.’ ” Klahr told The Daily. “It’s, ‘Let’s show them why it’s a mistake. And let’s let them grow from it. Let’s let them be better people.’ ”

I’m quoting the student paper here because my attempts to reach the Rabbi have seemingly fallen on deaf ears. And that’s not really a surprise, he doesn’t seem to want anything more to come of the situation.

He also weaves in Jewish thought here, that the days of atonement are all about forgiveness. Which, well, they are.

But that’s the fundamental problem, there’s a difference between forgiveness and punishment. You can forgive someone, allow them to be better people, and still allow them to be punished for their actions.

By shying away from punishment, allowing them instead to, as reported by The Daily Michigan, apologize to hundreds of students at a Shabbat dinner you send a different kind of message. One of two.

The first, that blatant acts of homophobia are ok as long as you apologize publicly.

And the second, more heinous, one, that if you’re a student athlete you get special privileges and second chances that wouldn’t be afforded to any other student.

That’s way worse to me, I see the potential value in a public apology. Although I think the message it sends is disappointing. However, the rabbis point emphasizing not ruining these two lives reeks to me of affording them greater privileges because of their status in the student athlete ecosystem.

This isn’t a new phenomena, there's been scores of examples of student athletes receiving lax punishments in comparison to others because of their status in the university.

ESPN put it nicely in their linked report above on athlete crime,

Gainesville's Officer Tobias said "everyone" is at fault for athletes having such leverage.

"It's the fault of the athletes, it's the fault of the victims, it's the fault of society, it's the fault of the media, because everyone paints this picture and holds athletes up on a pedestal sometimes and we all are making them invincible," he said. "The fans are making them invincible, and the victims themselves, they look up to them at the same time. So to think that they can be victimized by this person is sometimes a reach for them.”

Being in the business of cutting athletes' second chances, without any sort of punishment, does a disservice to everyone.

In this case, there was punishment but it’s murky. The hockey player was dismissed from the team, but only after over a month and only when it seemingly was about to become public. There’s no record of the lacrosse player receiving any punishment, and the university has not commented on the matter.

To go back to the rabbi's comments again, the other one that sticks out is the, “We don’t just cancel people.” Harkening back to our societal reckoning with cancel culture.

That’s a problem though, punishment for a crime is not canceling someone. There’s a difference between a perceived cancellation and having people own up to, accept responsibility, and ultimately if decided be punished for their actions. Sure they were drunk, and sure they’re young, but that’s absolutely no excuse for not facing real consequences for their actions.

It must have been awkward for them to stand-up at a Shabbat dinner and apologize, but it’s also the absolute bare minimum. It also was their idea, from once again The Michigan Daily,

According to Klahr, Druskinis and Minturn asked to attend a Shabbat dinner at the JRC on Sept. 8, where they apologized for their actions in front of a large crowd of students attending the dinner.

Perhaps I’m wrong and deeply cynical, but that just doesn’t seem like something they thought of out-of-the-blue. I wonder if instead it was their lawyers, or coaches, or administrators strong suggestions that let them to valiantly stand up and apologize. Also of note that it was weeks before they were publicly identified, or publicly faced any discipline.

A punishment, filing of charges, or going public is not cancellation or against the Jewish ethos of forgiveness, it’s a very basic standard that we all should abide by. In a very real sense if you commit a hate crime, which spray painting slurs on a Jewish center is, you should face consequences for your actions.

If it comes out that the University of Michigan intentionally tried to bury this, which the month-long delay and seeming lack of punishment suggests, they should also have to face the music.

(I have FOIA-requested all documents related to the case from the University of Michigan, but University compliance offices move very slowly when they want to.)

Hate crimes aren’t mistakes. Drunkenness isn’t some magic carte blanche excuse. The people at the Jewish center, the LGBTQ+ community, and Michigan students deserve better than this. It’s disappointing that the Rabbi and the Administration have been so tight-lipped and overlooking this, and it doesn’t serve anyone except two people who need to be responsible for their mistakes. 

Thanks for reading, subscribe now to morally support my work and make me keep writing.

Subscribe now

It’s hard to have an idyllic New England village inside of a fast-growing metropolitan area. It’s even harder when that area has built an outerbelt highway that the town is inside of. In that spirit, Worthington has grown and has effectively maxed out at 15,000 residents. There’s not many growth opportunities, the city is surrounded on all sides by Columbus and Dublin. A proposed annexation of neighboring village (really a neighborhood) Riverlea was soundly rejected by voters there.

With all that, it’s no wonder that developers want to squeeze in all the housing they can. The schools are good, it’s convenient to the city's highways, and the local amenities are great. All elements of an area that should be booming. Local residents though see it a bit differently.

Here’s also where I come in. I was born and raised in Worthington, attended the local schools from 1st-12th grade (my stint in a private Jewish Kindergarten was very short lived), and my parents are still residents.

The one thing that stuck out the most to me growing up there was the resistance to change. Change meant big city life, big city people, and losing the *charm* that made Worthington what it is.

In other words, it’s a white-flight suburb devoid of diversity and desperately trying to hang on to that.

This sets up for what has become the premier battle in Worthington, whether a developer can redevelop a pristine plot of land in the middle of the city.

In the summer of 2010 there was increasingly a problem in the city, the large Methodist children’s home. It was a home for troubled youth to stay, but due to the slight issue of being a non-state-sponsored home the teenagers were technically allowed to leave whenever they so desired. This was suboptimal.

After several teens ran amok through the connecting neighborhood, violently assaulting and breaking the arm of a beloved neighbor, the outcry was enough to have the home shut down. Thirteen years later and they’re still fighting over plans on what to do with that land.

Over 22 acres of pristine and very valuable land, off of High St. the commercial hub of Columbus, are fully vacant albeit a few old remnants of the home awaiting demolition. Resident outcry over the site has been so robust over the years that developers trying to purchase the site have been continuously cycling through.

The first plan was centered around a big box grocery store, which was summarily shot down in explosive public meetings, and it’s only become more intense since.

The latest, Lifestyle Communities, proposed a robust development that was shot down by Worthington City Council 4-3 and is still in the court system.

That proposal drew the ire of residents due to its details. Namely, 540 apartments in the development. It also called for 190 townhomes and single family homes, and 85,000 total sq. ft. of combined commercial space. It’s safe to say though that the 540 apartments are the catalyst of local hatred.

Residents, in the wake of the original proposal, formed WARD (Worthington Alliance for Responsible Development). From the name you can kind of read between the lines. The now-premier NIMBY group of Worthington really doesn’t want anything happening to the land, and their latest post spells it out even further:

“Worthington won’t be Worthington anymore.”

Why won’t it? Can an influx of residents in an apartment building be that scary? Or is it something more sinister, like the prospect of additional outsiders coming into the city that may not be white and upper middle class.

The “authentic” downtown is the one that is painstakingly zoned to be reminiscent of colonial architecture and ensure that nothing not matching the type will be permitted. There’s also the other aspect of colonial authenticity that the NIMBY’s here will never say but will always think.

They don’t want Worthington to turn into Columbus. The reason, the same as many NIMBYs, is tied into the racism and faux-security concerns that drive their day-to-day lives.

The addition of housing, especially high-density housing, won’t take away their Worthington. It’ll just increasingly make it a new one that they may not recognize, and for them that will never be acceptable.

It’s sad that it has come to this, that the city and developers couldn’t come to some amicable solution, but it’s because there’s nothing amicable about this. People that are so resistant to change that they make-up straw men and boogeymen to protect their suburb won’t concede to anything. It’s an existentialist threat to them for no other reason than they won’t be honest with themselves about why they’re so afraid.

Density and increased housing are good. Apartments are good. Low-income apartments are good. And if that scares you it’s time for you to decamp to one of Ohio’s many homogenous exurban communities that can help you sleep at night. It’s time to build.

This is the first in what I hope will be a new series of infrequent rants that I write when I have extra time. As usual don’t expect them, but perhaps be somewhat interested when they arrive. Thanks for reading.

My sporadic writing continues with a diatribe that truly shouldn’t catch any of you by surprise. And I fully understand that I’m speaking to a very agreeable wall! No one reading this is voting yes on issue 1, nor should they, and this won’t change any minds but it sure is fun to write.

Issue 1 is not just evil, it’s doomed to fail because Ohio Republicans and their gremlin, Aaron Baer from the “Center for Christian Virtues” and Michael Gondiakis from Ohio Right to Life, two men who have firmly cemented their eternal destination of the inner circle of hell, do not understand this state.

Ohioans are notoriously easily duped. We have learned this over and over again, voters approved a casino oligopoly, rejected soundly medical and recreational weed, and were somehow overwhelmingly convinced that we should have a bipartisan redistricting committee. Obviously we all know how that went, but whatever we got got. The greater point is that they might be a huge swath of hog voters, but those hog voters like the illusion of choice. Issue 1 isn’t the illusion of choice, it’s a deliberate attempt to end that, and in a state that is only mildly a republican utopia it’s not a given. 

That leads into something to be said about Republican echo chambers. Anyone who thinks they don’t exist hasn’t seen a vast majority of twitter blue users. These are highly curated spaces because they can’t stand dissent. And that ultimately is what is going to lead them to fail in a few short weeks. The vast majority of Ohioans like dissent, from one side or the other and at the core of Issue 1 is the ability not to dissent, against any future majority now or later. The online right is increasingly and bafflingly online, the Ron DeSantis republicans exist in a space where they feel like the thought leaders of their time. The actuality is they’re cranks who don’t realize that Trumps win weren’t because of some esoteric morals campaign but rather because rural voters found in him something mesmerizing.

Liberal fears about this are valid, and the possibility of this passing is mortifying, but slim and getting slimmer. The USA Today Poll did the excellent job of confirming just about all of my priors. This isn’t even going to be close.  

The mentality that a majority of voting Ohioans are going to show up to a early august election to take away their rights fundamentally ignores who shows up to early August elections. These are for engaged voters! The vast majority of Republican and Trump voters aren’t these! What we’ve learned since 2016 overwhelmingly is that Republicans can have a turnout problem in elections that don’t have someone named Trump on the ballot. The caveat on this is that turnout is up across the board, both sides, but the Republican turnout problem is more so there’s just fundamentally less of them. If the wine moms are showing up enmasse it’s game over for them routinely. This isn’t to say that Ohio isn’t a red state, 2018 and 2022 both showed us it is, but those still had Trump endorsements and a Trumply aura. No such thing exists here, and blood red Ohio isn’t in a feeding frenzy over this. The consultant class and the chamber of commerce is, a group that distinctly couldn’t find the pulse of Ohio if the state had a blood pressure cuff around it, are flat out delusional.

Those who show up in August are engaged and proactive, they’re usually 8% of the voting population but they’re loud! They care! And by-god they don’t want that care to be unable to do something in the future.

The Republicans would’ve been wise to delay this, but as we know they can’t. The prospect of abortion access in Ohio being codified is too grave, too directly harmful to their divine mandate to govern with their Christian supremacy at all costs, to tempt that fate.

That’s why Issue 1 is going down. Ohioans are seeped in reality, even if elections are increasingly proving otherwise.

The worst thing you can have in a state like this is hope, because it is absolutely crushing to see it diminished election after election with no end in sight. I don’t even want to picture what 2024 will bring to Ohio and specifically Sherrod Brown, but as naïve as it is I hope Issue 1 going down in flames can bring us some. This state and the state Democratic party are in desperate need of anything, a jolt, some momentum, some money coming in to stop the bleeding. The biggest win since 2018 (courtesy of one of the worst Senate candidates ever) was 2 house flips in 2022. That’s not enough. We need this and this state needs this, which is why I’m not cataclysmic and why I’m looking forward to that beautiful moment August 8^th that results come in.

And if I’m wrong I will mourn Ohio all the same like I’ve done for countless prior elections.

This is going to be a big day for Ohio, and hopefully the beginning of something. I just hope I don’t eat my words.

Vote no on August 8^th or I will curse your immortal soul. I’m waiting for my absentee ballot to arrive so I can fill in the no bubble and get a tiny shot of Dopamine to convince myself that this state is salvageable

Since I’m here, I figured I’d update you all with what I’m doing, what I’m working on, when I may (or may not) ever post again, and all that stuff.

Most of you probably know this but currently I’m working on Year 1 of my master’s degree at Johns Hopkins. Specifically, I’m pursuing a Master’s of Health Administration, or in other words trying my best to add to the administrative gloat that plagues our healthcare system.

I’m also doing some cool stuff! I’m a Graduate Research Assistant at the JHU Center for Digital Health and AI. I also on the side sling pre-batched cocktails at a Total Wine in Laurel, Maryland every Friday night if you want to stop by.

Next year I’ll be spending a year as an administrative resident at a hospital to be named later, and then I’ll back into the blissfully horrible realities of the working world.

I still write too, sometimes.

With school and work the commissions have slowed, but in 2022 I was honored to be published in Tablet Magazine, The Columbus Jewish News, and The Rooster. If those are the peak of my meager journalism career it’ll have been more than I ever expected.

There is some stuff in the works too. A narrative of how I fooled a US Senate candidate (you can guess which one) into thinking I was a crazy right-wing preacher from rural Ohio and ended up drunk on Facetime with him while he was at Mar-a-Lago is a personal favorite.

I also recently sold a new magazine article on Columbus Jewish community, with a deadline of next month that should be out sometime around the late-March timeframe.

Outside of that I don’t have a whole lot in the tank. I pitched half the sports websites in this country on this grandiose vision of an American Handball longform and had no takers. Shocking.

Oh hey I guess I should talk about politics.

I still hate Mayor Ginther, elected Republicans, the Columbus City Council, any and all scabs, and a variety of other evil entities. They’re tough to write about though because of the repetitive nature. There’s only so many times you can call they Mayor a fascist pig before it starts to get old.

As far as this platform I think I’ll write a few newsletters coming up, mostly expanding on some tweets of mine and some takes I have.

Feel free to let me know via email or comment if there’s any specific topic you’d like me to spew hot air about on here, I’m always on the lookout for a good story.

Thank you all for the continued support, it doesn’t go unnoticed!

It’s a valid question if you’re a braindead ghoul who thinks that politicians need to be humanized and have their, “good qualities,” transposed over their malicious wrongdoings and flagrant violations of state law.

This is the essence of the Columbus Dispatch profile of Ohio State Senate President Matt Huffman. It’s also the product of shoddy access journalism with nearly no pushback or acknowledgment of his various wrongdoings.

They basically stole the concept of The Rooster’s Meet This Legislative Dipshit series except they decided to showcase that the dipshit actually was cool and good. 

To really understand how terrible this article is I’ve decided to dig deep and break down just how bad it really is. 

The Lima Republican, who most people couldn't pick out of a lineup, decides whether bills on abortion, marijuana, education and gun control ever get a vote in the state Senate. 

And with enough GOP votes to override the governor, he can move election days, limit the powers of state officials and draw districts for 147 state and federal lawmakers. 

This isn’t good, you guys realize this isn’t good right. 

Huffman "deputizes" Republican senators as experts on issues like sports betting or legalizing the use of fireworks. They write the bills, handle the amendments and defend their decisions at private meetings. It's the way former House Speaker Bill Batchelder did things when Huffman was his No. 2. 

Perhaps this is one of the myriad of reasons our state is ran like a shitty third rate Arby’s. 

Huffman is a guy who knows what he believes. So don't mistake the Senate president's delegation strategy as moderation. He lets the people on his team take the lead, but the folks on the other side of the aisle don't have much say.

This is where the truly decrepit shit really starts. Huffman knowing what he believes doesn’t mean that he should be excused for just being able to run what’s effectively a uniparty dictatorship. The “folks on the other side,” have no say but why, Columbus Dispatch? Oh because they were gerrymandered out of existence by the Republicans, saying this in a cheery, “this is just how it happens,” way is a huge part of the problem. 

There are eight Democratic and 25 Republican state senators. That's a supermajority, and the same dynamic exists in the Ohio House where the divide is 64 to 35. 

"We can kind of do what we want," Huffman said.  

It’s great that there’s no introspection here as to why this is the case, The Dispatch presents it as just a simple fact of life. It’s because of gerrymandering and nothing else.

His mother helped found one of Ohio's first crisis pregnancy centers after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973. His father litigated a case against a local theater showing "obscene" movies all the way to the Supreme Court.  

"Part of the pro-life culture is the belief that these are people and not just unborn fetuses," Huffman said. 

No explanation as to what a crisis pregnancy center is (how many readers are aware of how they trick and deceive desperate soon-to-be mothers who aren’t aware of their options). Also his dad taking a local business to the supreme court isn’t some good local normal man thing to do. Not to mention the fact that fetuses by definition are not people. 

He won't move legislation to increase abortion access in Ohio, and recreational marijuana will never get a vote while he's in charge.

“I don’t want anybody to misunderstand my position: I’m not going to bring it to the Senate floor,” Huffman told reporters in February. “If these people want to put it on the ballot, have at it.”

Both he and his predecessor made it clear that the gun control reforms Gov. Mike DeWine wanted in the wake of the Dayton mass shooting were nonstarters. 

"I think that’s real leadership when you come out of the gate and say that," former Senate President Larry Obhof said. 

I also think real leadership is seeing a mass shooter murder 9 innocent people and coming out of the gate saying you’ll do nothing. Thank you Dispatch! 

Being outspoken on controversial issues gives senators in swing suburban districts cover. It protects them in elections. It helps Senate presidents maintain and even grow their caucus. 

Yes it does, but why is this being presented once again as a good thing? Let the big man take “controversial” positions which are actually the mainstream to protect members of his party who fully agree with him isn’t some bold leadership.

But then Huffman assumed control of the Senate in January 2021 and made Senate Bill 22 his top priority. DeWine vetoed it, and the lawmakers overrode him. The bill became law less than seven months after Huffman became president. 

"If it wasn’t for Matt Huffman, that bill wouldn’t be law today," U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, said. "They wouldn’t have been able to do it without his leadership." 

If there’s one guy I really wanted to hear from here it’s Jim Jordan. Such courageous leadership to pass a bill in your supermajority controlled legislature to take power away from the sitting governor. Hurrah!

"I remember there was one night where I called him and said, 'Look, Matt, you don't have to stick with me. All these leaders in our state, they’re all for the other guy. I would understand if you didn’t want to stay with me,' " Jordan said. "And he said, 'I believe the same things you do. I'm with you till the end.' It was the kind of message I needed to hear." 

Jordan never forgot it, and their two families became friends. He even encouraged Huffman to run for the Statehouse in 2006. 

"He's a natural leader, and he cares about his community ...," Jordan said. "He’s the kind of guy you’re glad is in public life, public service because he’s in it for the right reasons." 

This is a really heartwarming story. I wonder what Jim Jordan has been up to since then? He’s in public service for the right reasons, like ending women’s rights and allowing mass shootings to happen. 

Democrats like Pepper don't see it that way.

They call Huffman a bully.

Huffman forced the resignation of two State Board of Education members, not because they lacked the qualifications to serve, but because they refused to repeal an anti-racist resolution. 

Let’s look at the framing here. “Democrats” don’t see it that way, “they,” call Huffman a bully. Reading this is like looking at a both sides brain tumor, it’s only democrats who would possibly feel that way, forcing someone to resign because they won’t repeal an anti-racist resolution is only bothersome to democrats and not just bad in general. 

Huffman doesn't think he's gerrymandered anything. The independent mapmakers weren't finished by the court's deadline, so he used another map.

He also has a theory that proportional representation could mean Republicans deserve 81% of the Statehouse seats because that's the percentage of statewide elections they've won in the last decade. 

There’s absolutely no pushback here to what he claims. Yes, the mapmakers weren’t technically finished by the deadline, this is because according to one of the mapmakers himself in ABC 6, “Johnson was quoted as saying, they "were not going to finish a map before the Court’s midnight deadline without more direct guidance from the Commission members’ staff.” 

There’s also no pushback here to this absolutely blatantly unconstitutional “theory” that has been repeatedly thrown out by the courts and is absolutely insane. No, the amount of statewide seats you win is not proportional. How hard is it for the DIspatch to push back on this. It is common fucking sense. 

A panel of three federal judges ordered the state to use an unconstitutional set of Statehouse maps for 2022 if they can't reach a deal by the end of May. The Republican chief justice who keeps siding 4-3 with the Democrats on Ohio's highest court will retire at the end of this year. 

It's entirely possible, Pepper said, that Huffman will get the maps he wants in 2023. "If you don’t take the keys away from this guy, we’re going to keep doing this.

Literally just bragging in his own puff piece about the blatant lawbreaking he’s doing knowing that it’ll change soon. There are 0 references in this entire article to how Huffman should be held in contempt of court by the Supreme Court of Ohio after his repeated questioning by him as to why he shouldn’t be held in contempt.

Huffman has a little more than two years left in the Ohio Senate before term limits push him out, and he hopes to be remembered for his work on school choice. 

He's called the "school voucher guy" around Columbus and has spent most of his political career lobbying to expand both the performance and income-based EdChoice scholarships. 

Hmm this is interesting, is there a story lately about how school choice has done in Ohio? No mention here, but ECOT didn’t have um the best track record. Oh what’s that, Huffman took tens of thousands of dollars from ECOT’s founder! Surely the fact that he’s taken at least $50,000 from school choice lobbyists and CEO’s has nothing to do with him being known as the “school voucher guy.” 

It's a world view Senate Minority Leader Kenny Yuko, D-Richmond Heights, can respect.

"Do we agree on politics? No," Yuko said. "But he's a man of strong convictions." 

Not every Catholic agrees on every issue, but "he’s a family man. He loves his wife, loves his kids. For me, that’s important," Yuko said.  

Not a criticism of The Dispatch here, but a criticism of feckless Kenny Yuko. I do not care how “strong” a man’s convictions are if his convictions are dogshit. I do not give a shit about how much he loves his wife and kids, that isn’t some grandiose concept. You’re supposed to love your wife and kids! Grow some fucking balls Kenny. 

Huffman can also take a joke. 

The Cleveland Democrat once pretended to end negotiations over a meatball sub.

"I said, 'I'm out of here. I can’t sit at the table with Matt Huffman,'" Yuko said. "Matt’s looking at me. His people are looking at me. I said, 'He clearly did not come here to negotiate in good faith.'"  

Any true Lima native who was serious about cutting a deal, Yuko continued, would have brought meatball subs from one particular Italian restaurant. 

Huffman looked a little perplexed and told him, "Kenny, they've been out of business for 20 years." 

Yuko laughed and thought that would be the end of it, but a delivery guy knocked on his door with a styrofoam cooler a week or so later. Huffman tracked down the grandson of the deceased restaurant owner and paid him to cook a batch.  

"He played along," Yuko said. "And then really played the ace up his sleeve."

This story is incredibly fucking stupid and gets even worse in a minute, just wait. 

He impersonates former governors and once introduced Gov. John Kasich by imitating his voice. But Huffman's sense of humor has landed him in hot water. 

During a goodbye party for a GOP staffer, Huffman reportedly cracked a joke with a veiled reference to a four-letter word for a female body part. 

Yuko called it vulgar and inappropriate. Democratic women told reporters it made them feel like "zero tolerance" didn't mean anything because Huffman and others never faced consequences beyond having to apologize. 

The juxtaposition here between how good and cool it was that he bought a sub for Yuko but how he had 0 consequences for making democratic women Senators grossly uncomfortable is astounding. Slipping that in at the very end of the article is dogshit journalism at his finest. 

I could write more and more about how terrible this puff piece is but I’ll save you the trouble of reading. The paper of record, since 1871 in Columbus, spent 1,600 words singing the praises of the Senate President who clearly has grossly violated the law. It really can’t be showcased anymore how far The Dispatch has fallen more than that. What a damn disgrace.

This is one in what will not be a regular series of newsletters. I am lazy, employed, and don’t particularly enjoy writing for free. With that being said I am continuously grateful to all of my subscribers and encourage you to read my work in the Columbus Jewish News and my upcoming feature essay in The Forward.

.

However, when my friend D.J. from The Rooster comes calling and throws rubbles at my feet asking me to write, I write.

For him today I wrote this, which you can access by clicking the very large button below.

READ THIS CLICK HERE

This is a story about my least favorite State Senator Niraj Antani, a dubious Koch Industries lobbyist, and the game of Soccer.

For a bit more behind the scenes info of how this story came about, I’ll write for free. I was sitting at the Blue Jackets game Tuesday with my freshman roommate (Adam Bailey, great guy) when I got a text from a friend of a Niraj Antani tweet of him and a girl together at a soccer stadium.

I immediately got suspicious because of the copious hover-hand in the photo and my extensive Niraj knowledge. Claiming a friend flew out for this was just too far out of the realm of possibilities.

Putting on my sleuthing hat while watching a 0-0 hockey game I found on Instagram that she didn’t even follow him back. Honestly this was enough to write a story on, and that alone got me approval to write it. As I started my quick research before the game ended I made the bigger discovery that she is a Koch Industries lobbyist.

Bam. Game, Set, Match.

I went home after the game (the Blue Jackets won in a shootout following the game ending 0-0) and started typing. My brain stays undefeated.

Anyways she blocked me on Twitter, liked my Instagram request for comment but didn’t reply, and now hopefully someone with actual sway can look into this.

Thanks for being subscribed to my humble little newsletter, please give my stuff a read in The Rooster!

If you subscribe to the Rooster (link below in another big button) let me know and I’ll figure out some reward! I am a gracious free newsletter writer.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE ROOSTER

Thanks for reading everyone, and stay tuned in case I ever have anything worth writing for free again.

For today’s Rooster I wrote about another crazy local politician and his new campaign for city council. This one has a twist, and it’s a wild story, so I hope you all give it a read.

Click the button below to check it out!

READ THE STORY

Also be sure to subscribe to The Rooster, it’s a great start to my day and DJ is also generous enough to pay me to write for him. It makes a great Christmas/Hanukkah gift for racist relatives who will undoubtedly be so pissed after they read the first one that they won’t speak to you till next Christmas. Win-win.

Click the button below to purchase a gift subscription! Or subscribe yourself.

SUBSCRIBE

As for my own writing, I have an upcoming essay on the HBO show How To With John Wilson that I’m trying to sell. If it doesn’t sell then you’re in luck, it’ll be right here in your inbox.

Have the best of Holiday Seasons from your friend Max at The Belldumber.

While I’ve been busy fighting corruption in the Great State of Ohio I’ve neglected to write absolutely anything on here. I have no shame, I have a busy life and this newsletter is my very last priority.

With that being said, check out my (no longer recent) work! I wrote for my friend DJ’s newsletter, The Rooster, here about State Rep. Bernadine Kennedy Kent.

This was a really fun story which elicited a 3-page email from her office attacking it. Something something you know you did a good job if you pissed someone off that much.

I also donated my pay from writing that to the campaign of Mark Fogel. I’ve written about his race here before, we need to boost this hard-working guy and also kick sworn enemy of the newsletter Niraj Antani to the curb.

Donate by clicking the button below to be like me and help put Niraj’s campaign in a pinewood box:

Pinewood Box for Niraj

Also, if you read the above story on Bernadine Kennedy Kent there’s a cool update that since my interview with her she’s become a full-on Trump endorsee and supporter. I mean it’s not really a cool update but at least it clarifies her position or whatever.

If you’ve made it this far it’s time for the real fun, my official 2020 sample ballot.

This is only for the citizens of Franklin County, Ohio because I really do not care where anyone else lives. Franklin County is the best county in the best state and I will not hear anything on the contrary.

Going to give a brief rundown here of the races I care about, if you live somewhere else just vote D bro.

President:
lmao idk this was a tough one

Joe Biden (D)

US House OH-12:
Vote for the Trump-enabling used car salesman who doesn’t care about Franklin County voters or the liberal mom. Easy choice.

Alaina Shearer (D)

US House OH-15:
Steve Stivers sucks. Also, when I went to go early vote Joel Newby complimented me on my sweatshirt (Seattle Dragons XFL sweatshirt) and we talked for a bit. Great dude.

Joel Newby (D)

Ohio House of Representatives 21st District:
I spent 3 years serving the citizens of the 21st District as the Constituent Aide for former Rep. Mike Duffey. I know this district and its people well, and I know how great Dr. Liston has been and will continue to be for them. Her “competitor” Mehek Cooke is a loon who blocked me on Twitter and is filing false police reports against Dr. Liston’s husband to score political points. She also has this absurdly funny fake tweet that I want to share.

Yes that totally 100% happened, thank you Mehek!!!

Dr. Beth Liston (D)

Ohio State Senate 16th District:
Once upon a time I knew Stephanie Kunze well and I respected her. That changed when she has continued to be a member of the Republican party and stand idly by while our country is being destroyed. Time for a change.

Crystal Lett (D)

Franklin County Prosecutor:
Why is a Republican representing our great county in any county-wide position? Especially when he’s a terrible prosecutor who won’t do anything to help people in our community. Yeah lets fix that real quick.

Gary Tyack (D)

Ohio Supreme Court
One of the only ways we can stop this state from getting gerrymandered again is if we flip the state supreme court, and we have a real shot at it. We need both these seats badly and the race is non-partisan, we pulled off a shock upset in 2018 here so lets do it again.

John P. O’Donnell
Jennifer Brunner

Issue 1:
Yeah I’ve read a few articles on this and can’t for the life of me understand it, but the main opposition to it is coal companies which is enough for me to support it.

Vote Yes

Issue 2:
Hellllll yes we need a civilian police review board. I doubt it will do much but it’s at least a step in the right direction.

Vote Yes

Everything else:
Vote blue.

This isn’t true in absolutely every race everywhere (see Nebraska Senate), but for every race at least here we are voting blue this year, too much is at stake or whatever that cheesy saying is.

Obviously figure out how to vote and do it, it’s pretty important and also not that difficult. My ass stood outside on a Tuesday morning to early vote in person and boy did it feel good. The news even interviewed me for some reason, check it out here.

Doesn’t this right here look like a guy who’s mid-saving American democracy (also please note the Seattle Dragons XFL sweatshirt). Could also be a guy who is really hungry for some Papa Johns.

If you’re voting on election day in the great city of Columbus, and your assigned precinct happens to be the Greek Orthodox Cathedral downtown please, please, bring the poll-workers: coffee, bagels, donuts, and assorted baked goods if voting in the morning. If voting in the afternoon please bring pizza (cheese only), pasta (vegetarian only), sushi (salmon or tuna preferred), or an assortment of baked goods.

I’m not sure if that’s even legal but of course I’m a proud poll-worker and my ass will be there from 6:30am-7:30pm helping you folks vote.

Follow the easy directions in here of who you should support, lets win this, then lets get back to fighting for real progressive change in this country come January. I don’t know about you all but I’m not letting up till every person in this country has free healthcare. No, not affordable healthcare, but free healthcare.

Lets do this.

Hahahaha sike, FUCK YOU LARRY. ENJOY PRISON, BITCH.

Fun times in Cap Square

For those of you who don’t know I spent 3 years working for the Ohio House of Representatives. I don’t like to talk about it much, given the absolute horrific policy that the House is responsible for, but sometimes it’s good to have an insider perspective.

The insider perspective is holy shit it finally happened. Larry Householder has gotten away with being a rotten-to-the-core piece of shit his entire career and he is finally getting his due.

For those that haven’t heard, Little Ole’ Larry took 60 million dollars from First Energy in exchange for passing House Bill 6. I wrote about that right here back in the day, with some astute insight about how messed up it was.

Being rich is literally allowing First Energy to bribe their way out of democracy. It’s incredible to see a group this corrupt do this so out in the open. 

First Energy and their stooges in the legislature, led by a noted friend of the newsletter Larry Householder, don’t feel the need to hide because with full Republican control of the state they’re invincible. 

You can’t be investigated if you control all the investigators.

As it turns out, you can be investigated by the FBI, which Larry apparently didn’t realize. It’s notable that he didn’t realize this, given he was forced out of the Speakership in 2004 under a cloud of, wait for it, FBI investigation.

For all of you asking if I’m clairvoyant, just read this quote from yet another one of my past musings here. This is in reference to Larry trying to fly back legislators on the state plane to vote for HB6.

The legislators unfortunately made it back in regular ways and still voted in one of the most despicable and corrupt laws of this decade. At least the taxpayers weren't burdened with another additional ridiculous charge from it. 

This is Ohio under Larry. 

That’s the thing, I’m not clairvoyant the corruption was just so? blatantly obvious. Let’s run this back.

Back in the old days, after House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger stepped down (under FBI investigation) in 2018 there emerged two distinct camps in the statehouse. There was “Team Householder,” led by the resurgent Larry, and “Team Smith,” led by Ryan Smith who was elected speaker after Rosenberger.

This kicked off a immense power struggle for House leadership, with Larry working on electing his own guys to vote for him. This is where First Energy comes in. Their bribe money supplied the resources for his candidates campaigns, who all seemed to have boatloads of cash for non-establishment backed challengers.

That’s because well they did have boatloads, in fact tens of millions worth. This money ended up electing 23 representatives for Larry, which out of 99 is a ton. Every single one of these reps should resign and/or go to jail. They were elected with bribery money and 22 of them voted for Larry for Speaker and HB6.

Check out the breakdown here, to see if your rep took dirty money and voted for Larry.

Here’s where some of my experience comes in. While I was in the House my boss was on “Team Smith” and it was absolutely brutal there. The Larry stooges wouldn’t speak to non-Larry stooges, they operated a website (3rdrailpolitics.com), funded by First Energy money, whose sole goal was to write lies about his opponents.

The open harassment, hostility, and back stabbing isn’t new to politics but it derailed the House and caused effectively an open civil war.

Larry’s people would stop at nothing to smear their opponents and take power. Maybe that’s why it’s no surprise to anyone to see they were rotten to the core. How about these? If you’re wondering, both Larry guys.

This isn’t to say the Team Smith was fundamentally better, all were Republicans, but many of them were moderates and none of them came near the 60 million dollar bribery operation that Larry ran. There aren’t any good guys there, but Larry’s friends are the worst of the worst.

To be bipartisan for a second, Larry also never would have been promoted to speaker without the votes of 10 statehouse democrats. Each of those needs to be investigated, and if they took bribery money they too should resign/go to jail.

It’s worth thinking about how the deal on the face of it was they vote for Larry for Speaker in exchange for an HR officer for the House. While the HR officer was sorely needed, there’s no way they took the drastic step of supporting Larry for just that. I would be shocked if there wasn’t bribery money moving under the table, such is politics.

I have story after story of Larry trying to ratfuck the House from up high, so pardon my gloating it just feels so good. He deserves prison, his goons deserve prison, if you take 60 million dollars in bribes it is the place for you.

Hopefully we can learn from this in November and actually vote out Larry’s goons and the corruption in the House. That won’t fully happen, but the taking down of Larry’s campaign funding cabal could realistically net the Democrats 2 or 3 seats. If just one of those is Mark Fogel (running against Niraj Antani for State Senate) near Dayton I’ll be immensely grateful to Larry Householder for being dumb enough to get caught.

That’s the best part of this story, how preventable it was and how literally everyone knew. People knew Larry and crew were dirty, evidently people ratted on Larry, and the rooster has come home to roost.

I couldn’t have been happier if I tried, on Tuesday when Larry was arrested people I hadn’t talked to in years came out of the woodwork. Most asking, “who else is going down?” Good question.

Will it be Jay Edwards the serial-harasser and Householder goon from Athens? Niraj Antani the Householder goon and world-renowned shithead? Great questions and I don’t know, but I do hope the FBI thoroughly dismantles the corruption in downtown Columbus and go where they need to.

All I know for sure is that Tuesday night I enjoyed a beautiful “RIP Larry,” inscribed cake and that night popped some champagne to celebrate the possibility of seeing Larry in the pen.

If there’s one thing that can unify both sides of the spectrum (yeah I hate that term lmao why should we unify but whatever) it’s this guy being taken all the way down. His friends, who I haven’t mentioned here because quite frankly I don’t care, going down too doesn’t hurt.

Neil Clark, the lobbyist for ECOT (the massive scam of a private online school), got taken down which is fantastic. Matt Borges, fraudster, taken down. All of it is just a glorious combination for those who don’t love corruption.

Good politicians don’t take bribes, bad politicians should go to jail. Sorry this had to happen to you Lar. Anyways, watch this shit and sit happily on your couch knowing that you aren’t about to be federally indicted and that Larry can’t legally even have his guns anymore.

Here’s me dunking on Larry once more just for posterity.

I hope you all have a great week, free of prison. I know I am.

It’s even easier today since it’s not like I need to go into a big background on something obscure in government going on, we all know at least some of what is happening.

Instead of focusing on the immense injustice, this largely will be just some of my own thoughts and what I’m frustrated with in my community.

I get that I’m a rich, white, suburban kid who can’t accurately comment on how bad the systemic racism is in our society. I’ll let POC speak to that and their experiences absolutely.

With that being said, I think criticizing the Columbus Police and this corrupt city is fair game for all. Here’s a bit on why they don’t deserve our mutual respect, and the reason there’s a * in the title here.

* I was sitting in bed browsing Twitter tonight, the big nightly event during a globally destructive pandemic, and saw this cool tweet with embedded video.

Pretty innocent video right, we want calm in our community and we can work together with the police force willing to change!!! to accomplish our progressive agenda.

It’d be cool if it was at all accurate, but of course it isn’t, and of course working with the police peacefully has been tried and doesn’t work.

Let’s start looking at this by looking at the chief himself. Last December Quinlan, a 30-year Columbus police department veteran, was promoted by Mayor Ginther (more on him later) to Chief of Police. This was after a month-long search to find a replacement for retiring Chief Kim Jacobs.

Mayor Ginther had a really great opportunity to finally make meaningful change in this city with this appointment and people were understandably hopeful. (For the sake of my argument here I’m not including building 700 identical overpriced shitty apartments with full real estate tax subsidies as meaningful change).

The mayor talked a big game and appointed a commission of community leaders to help find the replacement.

The Chief choice was down to 2 people, Quinlan, the interim chief, and Perry Tarrant the former Seattle Assistant Chief of Police.

During the process, while Quinlan was interim chief, a damning report last year showed that even though black residents of Columbus make up only 28% of the population police use of force incidents against blacks make up 50% of all use of force incidents.

This is not ok in any possible just world.

Let’s look at how eloquently Quinlan handled the department’s response to this report as interim chief,

Interim Columbus Police Chief Thomas Quinlan didn’t respond to a request to discuss the findings.

To even get to the point of this decision, there was a lengthy fight to let the department look to outsiders to fill the role. The city and the Fraternal Order of Police (less of a union and more of an organized gang) had to go to arbitration to simply allow that.

What kind of union contract forbids outsiders from even interviewing for a top role?

Mayor Ginther decided on the insider rather than Tarrant, who was heavily supported by community and faith leaders as someone who would finally bring change and an outside perspective. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, leave it to Mayor Ginther to make the easy choice.

Here’s a local reverend on the appointment,

The Rev. Jefferey Kee, who was a member of Ginther’s search committee for a new chief, said he was “gravely disappointed” with Quinlan’s selection.

“There was a chance for us to have a visionary and an agent of change and we walked away from this great opportunity,” Kee said. “It says to me we’re OK with settling for mediocrity instead of aspiring to be a great city.”

The Reverend said it better than I ever could. Mayor Ginther is ok with settling for mediocrity.

The Columbus Police have been much much worse than mediocre, think back to just 2018 when they brutally murdered Donna Castleberry. Mediocre police departments don’t get their Vice departments disbanded by FBI investigations, only especially bad ones do.

If the Columbus police wonder why they don’t get mutual respect in Columbus, it’s because they disproportionally use violence and deadly force against people of color, had a Vice unit shut down by the FBI after a murder, and do much more harm to people of color in Columbus.

All of this just goes to show the backdrop of protests last night that are also taking place right now while I’m writing this. The Columbus police have had years of inaction and silence, while repressing POC, and the people are clearly sick of it.

That trend continued last night when the Columbus police escalated a peaceful protest by gassing protestors. Once again, it’s hard to wonder why there isn’t mutual respect in the community.

I wonder which side started it? The people loudly protesting about how they’ve been indiscriminately targeted, or the side empowered with a badge and gun who clearly pepper spray and attack the protesters.

Which side needs to practice mutual respect first?

Yelling, “fuck the police,” and, “black lives matter,” isn’t justification to launch pepper spray onto protestors.

The Columbus Mayor made a choice to keep the department the same in their racist roots, and the Columbus Chief of Police made the choice to escalate what was a peaceful protest calling for justice.

That’s of course par for the course for the Columbus police. I could go on with pages about how police unions cover for them, and encourage police to use violence. I could also go on and on with more examples of all the other injustices they’ve done.

Regardless, the evidence is clear. The Columbus Police don’t care about the citizens here and aren’t going to change. The protests are emblematic of that, people want change and the only way to do so is to make them listen.

For now I wanted to finish with something I tweeted about earlier today, a light reminder of who we’re dealing with at the top.

Columbus’ own Mayor Andrew Ginther, who had the pleasure of running unopposed for re-election in 2019, is a crook and an absolutely terrible mayor.

He shouldn’t even be mayor. There’s clear evidence that he took a $20,000 bribe from red-light camera company Redflex and their lobbyist John Raphael (who went to prison for it).

Call me an idiot or something, but I don’t believe that the guy giving the corrupt politician money should be the only one going to jail.

Mayor Ginther should be in jail, Quinlan and his mutual respect bullshit shouldn’t be mayor, and the Columbus police never should have escalated things last night.

That’s all without mentioning that George Floyd and so so many other POC who have been murdered by the police should be alive right now.

This whole writing really wasn’t meant to accomplish much, just to show how beyond repair one police department in one county in one state is.

If you’ve made it this far please chip into the Columbus Freedom Fund and help bail out some people who will be unfairly arrested tonight. I chipped in $20 and hope you can match me.

Godspeed to everyone out there protesting.