Nuclear Meltdown
Yes, that was just to get your attention
Hello and good morning to everyone except Howard Schultz. Go to hell Howard.
Sorry for the delayed newsletter, I spent the long weekend on a trip to beautiful Madison, Wisconsin. It’s mostly beautiful because rat-man Scott Walker is gone, and him leaving will cheer up any place.
Also, I’m moving there on July 1st, but I’ve decided this newsletter will remain Ohio focused. You’re welcome.
Conservative Power
Growing up I always heard that democrats want to spend my hard-earned tax money, while republicans want to give it back to me. I’ve quite shockingly never seen this in action, and my $8 McDonald’s paycheck in high school didn’t either, nor has any paycheck since.
That whole premise is completely wrong, of course. Republicans love spending your tax money all-day long. It’s even easier for them when it’s bailing out their friend’s companies and using more, “clean,” coal.
*Reminder, despite the Clean Coal catchphrase it’s just an advertising campaign and coal is not clean, it is bad for the environment, and should not be incentivized.
The best part is that their new, “plan,” to do all that is called the Clean Air Act, as if throwing money at failing businesses to prop up power plants will clean the air.
It’s more formally known as Ohio House Bill 6, which passed the House with the help of 10 Democrats. This monster of a bill now goes to the senate to examine, and hopefully the senate has some common sense, but we all know that isn’t normally true.
Here’s some of the details:
Effectively, everyone who pays an electric bill in Ohio gets the honor of paying an extra $12 a year, which goes to creating the aptly-named, “clean-air fund”. Sounds great, except for the fact that the fund just goes to bail-out two nuclear power plants near Cleveland and has almost nothing to do with clean air.
Despite the fact that I live nowhere near Cleveland and have no responsibility for their private business failings, I get to pay, and so do all of you. Cleveland’s First Energy may go bankrupt, oh no, but probably not given that they’re definitely cheating the system.
Remarkably that’s not the worst of it, it turns out that the nuclear power plants we’re paying to bailout are literally making a profit. So we’re bailing out profitable plants, which makes total fiscally responsible sense. Thanks, Republican Party.
On top of all that, in the Ohio Valley everyone who is in their electricity co-op gets to have their electric bill raised up to $2.50. That fee just goes to paying to keep open two coal fired power plants.
What great news, we get to use more coal because of the Clean Air Act. At this point, everyone with a brain should know coal isn’t the future, and nor is bailing out a business that pays millions to lobby, and is buddies with mister president. If you pay 1.5 million a year to lobbyists while going through bankruptcy you shouldn't be getting a bailout, that’s how failing works folks.
People on twitter.com are painfully stupid
I get not understanding the criminal justice system and the complexities surrounding the recent college admissions cheating scandal. The criminal justice system is notoriously complicated, and shockingly most people on twitter.com don't have a 3-year law degree. But, nor do I and I at least know enough to not be incredibly stupid. So, I guess I don’t get it after all.
A rash of people on that godforsaken website are misleading people into thinking Lori Loughlin, who was some actress or something, is going to serve 40 years in prison for paying for her daughter to get into USC. News flash: you don't get 40 years in prison for that.
There’s literally hundreds more of these stupid tweets, each with thousands of likes, but I’ll mercifully spare you the pain of having to read them. Yes, the maximum possible amount of time for the crimes she’s been charged with is 40 years. No, she will not be serving it.
She’ll get maybe a few years in a federal resort for a pretty serious crime. More importantly, stop comparing this to Brock Turner when it is literally in no way comparable.
I hate stupid people, and I hate stupid people that go around telling their thousands of twitter followers blatantly misleading/incorrect information.
If they all just read my damn newsletter this wouldn’t have happened.
S-P-E-L-I-N-G
They really had an 8-way tie in the spelling bee. I just know that people will start criticizing participation trophy culture and I think that’s hilarious. Please tell me how spelling every word right for 4 days in-a-row does not warrant a prize, and the smart spelling people literally couldn’t beat these kids.
If Clyde in Portsmouth, Ohio can spell as many words right, by all means complain. Until then, shut up and stop complaining about things that don’t affect you.
Really though, these kids are insane and it’s pretty cool they each get $50,000. It’s less cool that they now almost all have private spelling coaches, and can pay to get a redemption entrance into the bee.
Both of those combined only make the bee more exclusive to students who can afford it, and this is increasing inequality in one of ESPN’s and America’s favorite pastimes. Because of this I’m starting a boycott of not watching any spelling bee outside of the big Scripp’s one, just watch me.
Also, I’m still bitter about being the alternate on my middle school’s 8th grade spelling bee team, after getting cut from my middle school’s math team. It’s a good thing I avenged myself in high school by being an absoltuely brilliant trivia competitor.
Other things and more trivia
I was going to post a special-section last weekend with an epic takedown of the worst-of-the-worst Nate Beeler cartoons. I eventually balked on that just because I hate Gatehouse Media and I was busy traveling, just know he had some terrible takes.
There’s a special weekend edition of this newsletter coming from our nation’s capital this weekend, of course free-of-charge. Enjoy.
Last night, the trivia team took home an incredible overall first-place prize at the District PourHouse on campus. Beating 36 definitely amazing teams was quite possibly the greatest achievement in all of sports. We also won a set of fedora’s (along with $20, a salt and pepper shaker, sunglasses and koozies) so clearly there were big stakes.
Special thanks to Andy Mulach and Tyler Jawnguy PhD for getting the final question right. They came up with tennis and golf as two of three one-word sports games that were released with the NES. I also came up correctly with Albertville and Barcelona as the sites of the two 1992 olympic games in the first final question.
As always, have a good week.