From the Desk of…
I guess I’ll not have fudge. No way of knowing by the time I get this scheduled. Have the veins on my hand always done that? Should I see a doctor? Oh well. I’m better now, at least. Mostly. House is a mess though. How are you? How are things? Oh right, the things! Let’s see what’s come across the desk this week.
Recreational marijuana is now, and seems to be on track to remain, legal in the state of Ohio. The Senate Republicans are doing their damndest to spike the ball, but several key House Republicans aren’t letting them. That said, it does seem like the increased revenue from the taxing will almost certainly go to cops and jails instead of anything with social utility like education and infrastructure. Of course, even if they said it would go to something good, they’d probably just play the shell game and decrease that funding from general revenue and give it to cops and corporations. You know, like the lottery.
Curiously, just after his re-election, it seems like Mayor Andy Ginther has been implicated in “improper” communications with a judge about the Greyhound station by the casino. Now, I’m not saying it’s a good spot for the depot, but I did pay enough attention to Schoolhouse Rock to know that the judiciary isn’t supposed to get privately lobbied by members of the executive branch. It’s just so funny, you know, that the communications happened in October, and yet it took until now for them to come to light. I don’t think it would’ve mattered in the end, but isn’t it odd? Doesn’t it just make you think? Ah, the Columbus Way.
BOLO for updates relating to SB 83 - a ghoulish higher education bill designed to gut tenure, weaken collective bargaining rights, and a number of other “antiwoke” measures. While it seemed dead, the Senate looks to be reviving it. More to come there.
All right. I think I know how I want to tackle this one. Sam Randazzo. If you’re a big dork like me, you already this, so just jump to the The Brain Dump unless you want a refresher. Now, imagine I’m putting on some tiny glasses and opening a briefcase. Yeah, you like that, don’t you?
In 1971, economist George Stigler published The Economic Theory of Regulation in the Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science. Now, I have a lot to say about the Chicago school of economics that I’ll spare you here, but Stigler was cooking with this one. In brief, regulatory capture describes an idea with which many of us are probably familiar, even if we haven’t bumped into this term for it before. In brief, it is in the interests of capital and the capitalist class to commandeer anybody or anything that could control it and preclude it from its goal of unfettered growth. Per the learned scholars at Investopedia, “the result is that an agency, charged with acting in the public interest, instead acts in ways that benefit incumbent firms in the industry it is supposed to be regulating.”
Alright. Having established that, those of you who haven’t skipped to the next section are probably wondering why that was important. Well, Sam Randazzo was until recently the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO hereafter). Here’s their mission statement or… a series of words from their About Us, at least: “PUCO regulates providers of all kinds of utility services, including electric and natural gas companies, local and long distance telephone companies, water and wastewater companies, rail and trucking companies.” Hopefully, you have clicked enough together to know where this is going.
Now, I’m not going to recount the entirety of the House Bill 6 debacle. There’s an excellent piece here that you can read if you need a refresher or a primer on that bit of corruption. You’ve probably seen some of the big stuff in this timeline before, a lot of the stuff about Larry Householder and his current prison sentence for, and I can’t overstate this, incredibly large amounts of corruption. Sprinkled into this here though, on January 2nd of 2019, “FirstEnergy [an electric utility company] wired $4.3 million to Sustainability Funding Alliance of Ohio, a firm owned by Sam Randazzo. The total paid to Randazzo from 2010 to 2019 was $22 million.” Isn’t that nice of them? Back in May, we found out how he spent that 4.3 billy: taxes, mortgages, and helping his daughter run a restaurant. Cute!
In July 2021, FirstEnergy admitted that that money was a bribe in their deferred prosecution settlement with the federal government.
Now, back in November 2020, when the feds tossed Randazzo’s house and he had to resign from the PUCO, AP ran an article detailing his “whirlwind rise” and how it came to pass that he was planning to retire but suddenly abandoned those plans in order to chair the PUCO in—drumroll please—January 2019. Now, isn’t that just so interesting? I’ll reprint in full what I find to be a very interesting part of the text:
Randazzo, 71, testified during a confirmation hearing before a state Senate committee that he was asked before DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted took office on Jan. 14, 2019, to forgo plans to retire to Naples, Florida, where he owns an expensive waterfront home, and to return to government at the utility commission, where he began his career in the 1970s as a technical staffer. Randazzo subsequently served as an assistant Ohio attorney general assigned to that office’s PUCO section.
He specified during the confirmation hearing that Husted and Laurel Dawson, DeWine’s chief of staff, were among those who helped recruit him.
So in under two weeks of FirstEnergy giving him the money… he was suddenly recruited by the lieutenant governor… to run the commission… that regulates that very company! Isn’t that funny?
Husted, who you may recall is being deposed about all this now in a civil suit related to the situation, is claiming not to remember it. Randazzo, for his part, pleaded not guilty to the charges of receiving the money we know he spent and that FirstEnergy said they gave him. Keep on fighting, tiger!
So, what does all this add up to? Well, it remains to be seen. Do I think that Governor DeWine is corrupt? Undeniably. Should Husted be prevented from running for governor once DeWine is termed out? Probably! I don’t know if the remnants of my sanity could stand to watch the Ohio Democratic Party lose the gubernatorial election to a scandal-riddled goober again. Do I think the feds can prove DeWine and Husted are corrupt in a court of law? God, I hope so. Sam, if you’re reading this, here’s a message from me to you through Bender: do a flip!
And lastly, congrats to our own Columbus Crew, your 2023 MLS champs!
The Brain Dump
if god didn't want me to hit that tree at 57mph while reaching into the burger king bag to grab some chicken fries, then he in his infinite wisdom would not have put it on the road in front of me
mike deRINO putting government regulations on what you can and can't do in your house or at public parks
pantera bread
God there are... so many Christmas movies
got the DoorDash too quickly and appeared in the delivery photo like a blurry cryptid
Two trinkets down. How many more will complete this year’s Christmas Challenge? …Few, I hope. Oh yeah, The Game Awards happened. Play Baldur’s Gate III, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Alan Wake II. There, that’s done.
At the Movies
Alright, we gotta cut this down. Also I’ve been busy.
A New York Christmas Wedding (2020), dir. Otoja Abit ⭐
This needed to be like 30% worse. It was bad, but it was never so bad as to be fun. Narrative had me like this though.
I wish Mr. Big were my friend and produced my movies as a favor.
Hanukkah on Rye (2022), dir. Peter DeLuise ⭐⭐⭐⭐
eh, you know what? maybe it was bouncing off something worse but this kinda hit for me this year. cute! who doesn't love a good bubbe story
Jingle All the Way (1996), dir. Brian Levant ⭐⭐⭐
You know, I wonder if anyone in production was ever like "we should just cut all the slapstick sequences and effects stuff and lean into the inherent comedy of Arnold Schwarzenegger doing an understated domestic drama"
there's just something so funny about this giant Austrian man being like "I'm your normal American father, Anakin Skywalker"
A Karate Christmas Miracle (2019), dir. Julie Kimmel ⭐ ❤️
i believe in karate christmas magic now. this is not a good movie but it is a great one.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure (2003), dir. Nick Marck ⭐
dreck
One Picture
real
In closing,
Here’s a video you maybe haven’t seen unless you’ve been unlucky enough to have me make you watch it. It’s a real holiday favorite of mine, Tim Dunn’s Yule Log with Christmas Music and Loud Family Fighting. I regularly quote some of these lines, and I crack up every time I watch it. Maybe you’ll like it! Maybe it’ll hit too close to home. For my money, “did Billy Wilder die for your sins?” is comedy gold.
Until next time, make some plans with someone you haven’t seen in a while. After all, Christmas is the time to be with the people you love.
Do you have a connection to the Chicago comedy scene I don't know about, or did Tim's video just make the rounds? I heart Tim! I used to edit his video game podcast. One of the funniest dudes I ever got to hang with.