We have a little under a year left until the November 2020 election and I’m already worried about my notoriously fragile mental health. Somehow Joe Biden is no longer my most hated candidate. I’m close to getting drunk and writing 50 sternly worded tweets if somebody doesn’t stuff this nerd Pete Buttigieg back into a locker.
This is an example of why I’ll never be a successful politician. You got me fucked up if you think I’m going to walk into room full of racists and grovel before them about “understanding concerns” of a racist movement.
Buttigieg is a guy who will say anything to anyone to get elected and his résumé reads like a guy who decided he want to be President at age six and went about doing things he thought other people expected future presidents to do.
The good news is his campaign is dead in the water without black voters and as a white man I can’t speak for a minority community but I don’t think a bunch of dancing Boomers are going to be the thing that turns the tide for him:
Our political system is deeply diseased. But at least now I can dream of one day colonizing Jupiter’s moon:
Starting today I’m trying this thing where I don’t tweet nuerotically have never wanted anything more than to be the first man to tweet from Jupiter’s moon Europa.
PAY TAXES IN COLUMBUS? CONGRATS YOU JUST LOST 89 CENTS DUE TO CLOWN COP ANTICS
A group of Columbus Police officers made a brain genius move earlier this year when they emailed each other on their work emails about their plan (and subsequent execution) to arrest one of their god-king’s political opponents while she worked at a local strip club.
That’s obviously illegal as hell and the harebrained scheme fell apart. But it speaks to the immunity the cops felt they had that they could even get away with it in the first place. And it’s hard to see why they wouldn’t as the city routinely doles out money due to their illicit actions.
From Bill Bush of dispatch.com:
The Columbus City Council doled out almost $800,000 Monday to settle three lawsuits against the Police Division that the city attorney’s office said had the possibility of costing hundreds of thousands of dollars more if they went to trial.
The approved funds are the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Ohio’s largest city paying about 89 cents to settle lawsuits against the division.
The bulk of the money, $450,000, went to settle the case brought by adult-film star Stormy Daniels, legally known as Stephanie Clifford, alleging wrongful arrest by the now-disbanded vice unit at Sirens Gentlemen’s Club on the Northeast Side in July 2018.
Considering I live in The Bottoms I could think of about 800,000 better things the city could have spent that $800,000 on. I promise I’m not mad. It’s actually funny to me that nobody ever reads articles like this and says “BuT HoW wIlL wE pAy FoR iT?” We just create the money out of nowhere and go on with our lives.
FRANK JACKSON CALL YOUR OFFICE
I read Frank Jackson the Mayor of Cleveland will give his annual State of the City Address that will cost taxpayers $38,000. That seemed like an outrageous number and ripe for grifting until I read the article and learned the event is catered and open to the public.
Instead I’m going to use this mention of Frank Jackson to segue into this story I missed two weeks ago. And yes I know that’s a terrible look for a guy who ostensibly runs an Ohio political newsletter but whatever not my probl—okay fuck it is my problem in this case.
From Sam Allard of clevescene.com:
The mother of a 30-year-old man gunned down in August on Cleveland's West Side has sued Mayor Frank Jackson and Police Chief Calvin Williams for wrongful death and obstruction of justice.
Andrea Parra, mother of Antonio Parra, has alleged in a fiery legal complaint filed Thursday morning that Jackson's repeated interference in the prosecution of his grandson and great-grandson, including both explicit and implicit directives to the police department he oversees, caused the Mayor's grandsons and their affiliates to believe that they were "above the law."
“Andrea Parra has every reason to believe that her son would be alive today if it weren’t for the Mayor’s efforts to cover up for his grandsons’ crimes,” said Peter Pattakos, lead attorney on the case,* in a statement provided to the media.…
Primary matters of concern were the fact that investigators did not question or arrest Frank Q. Jackson and perform a gun residue test to determine if he had recently fired a gun; and allegations, made by anonymous sources in a Channel 19 news report, that Mayor Frank Jackson asked police to turn off their body cameras while at his house. The complaint notes that in at least two previous incidents involving the Mayor's grandsons' interactions with police, no body camera footage was available.
Ethical disclosure: I have drank between 1 and 400 beers with Peter Pattakos in the Muni Lot. I consider him a friend and if I am ever wrongfully accused of crimes he would be my first call unless I’m up for the death penalty in which case I have another friend who specializes in death row defense. (The lesson is you can never be friends with too many lawyers.)
To say Jackson has a storm on his hands is the understatement of the century. Pattakos is a junkyard dawg in every sense of the phrase and you can bet your blood it’s true if he says the mayor of Cleveland was allowing his grandson to operate a criminal gang out of his house.
I can’t wait to see how this plays out because Jackson seems like your garden-variety corrupt politician and the City of Cleveland could do a lot better.
HEMP NOT AS EASY AS MANY OHIO FARMERS THOUGHT
President Business Deals’ good and easy-to-win trade war and erratic weather caused by climate change have put Ohio farmers in a world of hurt as suicides and bankruptcies climb.
The one bright spot they did have was our state government finally legalizing hemp. But it turns out that while hemp is a weed it’s still tough to grow and you should know how labor intensive it is before you risk it all.
From Hannah Hageman of wosu.org:
Over the past year, licensed hemp acreage increased more than 445%, according to the advocacy and research group Vote Hemp. More than 510,000 acres of hemp were licensed in 2019, versus about 112,000 acres in 2018.
At the same time, products made with cannabidiol — a chemical compound found in hemp — are being sold everywhere from gas stations to CVS. CBD is promoted as a cure-all for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, even though the science isn't there yet.
Farmers see an opportunity to get in on the "green rush." But now, some are worried that their first harvest could leave them empty-handed.
…
Jane Kolodinsky, an applied economics professor at the University of Vermont, puts it more bluntly: "[Hemp farmers'] markets have bottomed out, and they don't have buyers for their products."
Many farmers who jumped into the industry after the farm bill passed are inexperienced, she says.
"It's the farmers who just came in and decided, 'Oh, there's a CBD market — I'll plant hemp,' who really didn't have a business plan," Kolodinsky says. "They're probably going to be hurt the most."
Well at least our state drug its feet on legalization and accidentally legalized marijuana on account it takes a fancy lab test to differentiate between hemp and weed.
Now even if our hemp farmers are successful they’ll be entering a saturated market.
NARCAN WORTH THE MONEY, OHIOANS AGREE
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones infamously won’t let his deputies carry Narcon because all lives matter except for people suffering from crippling drug addictions.
Thankfully his opinion is not shared by a majority of Ohioans who are actually good people with a sense of empathy.
From Trey DeMio of cincinnati.com:
In Ohio, 46% of adults said they'd be very or somewhat likely to carry Narcan. That percentage soared to 63% among those 18 to 29 years old. The poll also shows that 59% of Ohioans and half of Kentuckians are more likely to say the overdose reversal drug gives people a chance to seek treatment. That compares with 29% in Ohio and 38% in Kentucky who viewed it as a chance to use opioids again.
As for hearing of the medication that stops opioid overdose, about 7 in 10 adults in both Kentucky and Ohio said they're familiar with Narcan, the poll shows.
Interact also has partnered with the University of Cincinnati to keep tabs on the distribution of Narcan in the region.
About 30,000 kits of Narcan (60,000 doses) were given out over the last two years, 2018 and 2019, through the Narcan Distribution Collaborative, which was designed to inundate the region with the medication to prevent overdose deaths. Most doses were donated to the effort by the manufacturer. That effort is expected to last through 2020.
I have Narcan in my house not because I’m addicted to heroin although the thought gets more tempting by the day. I have it because all it takes is one stroll down Sullivant Avenue to see the ravages of the opioid epidemic and I don’t know maybe one day I walk outside and there is a stranger overdosed on drugs in the middle of the street.
Meanwhile the mayor lives in a $525,000 house in the suburbs and says he “wouldn’t want his kids growing up” in Franklinton.
COPS INVESTIGATING OTHER COP WHO RAN OVER A RABID RACOON
I mentioned the Shelby Cop running over a rabid raccoon last week. But don’t worry the cop’s colleagues are investigating him and surely this will result in disciplinary action!
From nbc4i.com:
SHELBY, Ohio (WCMH) — An investigation into possible wrong-doing has been opened at an Ohio police department after social media video shows an officer running over a raccoon in a police cruiser.
The Shelby Police Department said the incident is under investigation and vehicles will not be used to euthanize animals, effective immediately.
Video of the encounter is reportedly going around social media.
“Video of the encounter is reportedly going around social media” is the kind of local news prose I live for. They don’t even link to who is doing the reporting on the videos “going around” social media. They just drop the word reportedly in there like it’s nothing lmao.
LOOKS LIKE HILLIARD POLICE PINCHED SOME MASTERMINDS
Today’s dispatch has an anti-cop jaunt and I swear I never plan it that way but sometimes the news just leaves me thinking what the fucking is going on why do so many awful people have the power to put other, usually darker and poorer, people in cages?
Anyway the Hilliard police caught two young dipshits with 25 grams of a powder but that doesn’t scare people unless we attach an apocalyptic death count to the powder.
From Eric Halperin of nbc4i.com:
HILLIARD (WCMH) — A Columbus couple is facing additional drug charges following an investigation by the Hilliard Division of Police that ended in the discovery of carfentanil — a synthetic opiate more dangerous than fentanyl.
Alexis Hennen, 20, of Columbus, and Anthony Taylor, 22, of Columbus, have been charged with drug trafficking, a first-degree felony, and drug possession, a first-degree felony.
…
The tests revealed the substance seized last week was not fentanyl, as suspected, but 24.99 grams of carfentanil.
The DEA says carfentanil, which is used as a tranquilizing agent for elephants and other large mammals, is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl.
The amount of carfentanil seized in this case could kill between 850,000 to 1.2 million people.
This number will be used by prosecutors to level a draconian drug sentence against two street-level schmucks and then we’ll have to pay to feed, house and clothe them for the next two decades while the barbarism of prison life turns them into even worse people than they were before they got cut selling elephant tranquilizers to people addicted to drugs past the point of being scared by phrases like “elephant tranquilizers.”
Great system we got here.
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