A Food Stamp Mayor And His Media Apologist

What in the heck is going on in Bellefontaine, Ohio, home of the nation’s first concrete street?

The mayor is the epitome of what is wrong with America because he has an entitlement attitude and is collecting welfare while buying a new kitchen, patio furniture and appliances.

Meanwhile, a joke of a reporter fires off an email to a blog calling conservatives bigots for having the audacity to point out the mayor’s antics.

Democratic Mayor Adam Brannon, 27, has been bragging on Facebook about his food stamps. And his new kitchen.

Nick Mascari, the main blogger with Third Base Politics, the state’s leading conservative blog, wrote about Brannon’s ridiculous antics.

The mayor voluntarily quit his real job before collecting food stamps. Both he and his wife, Christie, have college degrees. Brannon graduated in 2007 from theUniversity of Findlay with a political science degree. Neither works beyond Brannon’s part-time gig as mayor. They have chosen to live on his $27,000 salary. They have not run into hard times. They made a personal choice.

Brannon told Ohio Watchdog that his work as mayor makes it impossible to have a job. But he knew this when he ran for re-election last year. If that’s what he wants to do, fine, but he can’t expect the taxpayers to subsidize his poor life choices.

They have student loans, a car loan (can’t let poverty keep you from borrowing money to buy a car, now can we?) credit card debt, etc. Although they can’t feed their child (with another on they way), they still bought a new house (how do you buy a house while on food stamps) and remodeled their kitchen, complete with a new dishwasher.

I would love to remodel my kitchen, and my dishwasher has not worked in seven years. But I can’t afford it, so I do without.

However, if you are the Democratic mayor of Bellefontaine, you just let the government feed your children and support you so you can buy nice things. As I reported here, there is often very few limitations on how you can spend your food stamp dollars.

But the story gets even better.

After Third Base Politics posted the story on Wednesday, Mascari sent an email to the Bellefontaine Examiner with a link to his post, thinking, as he said, the newspaper might be interested. He did not expect a response.

Cleary, “reporter” Nate Smith did not find it interesting.

He fired off the following email to the blog:

Of course the post generated a lot of traffic and emotion, you threw a bunch of red meat at a group of judgmental, conservative bigots.

Any opportunity to make a Democratic mayor in a small town look bad…

Tell me, can you confirm the Brannon’s old dishwasher wasn’t defective? I mean, “it looked fine.”

You third-party political blog would better service its readership with some analysis concerning abuses of government assistance at the very top. Million dollar subsidies to oil companies, tax loopholes that allow millionaires to be taxed less than you or me, etc…

Your work is small-minded and simplistic; hate on average Americans, a public servant no less, for utilizing a decades-old federal nutrition program for children, but ignore the kinds of top-down abuses that have contributed to cratering the economy and keeping middle class wages flat.

What a joke.

Nate Smith
Examiner Staff Writer
[email protected]
(937) 592-3060 Ext. *118

Wow. What a joke, indeed, a joke of a reporter, that is.

Journalists are supposed to be unbiased. Smith’s unsolicited email shows he is part of the liberal media, for sure, but it also shows he lacks professionalism and has no respect for the canons of journalism. His email violated several articles of the Code of Ethics created by the Society of Professional Journalists. If you are a reporter and I know your political persuasion, you are doing something wrong.

General manager T.J. Hubbard disavowed the email and told Ohio Watchdog for an article posted Monday that “the Examiner apologizes for the unprofessional and offensive personal remarks made by Mr. Smith. Disciplinary action against Mr. Smith, up to an including employment termination, is being considered at this time.”

I’m not sure which angers me more: That the food stamp mayor is proud of his entitlement attitude and his leaching off society or the reporter’s total disregard for basic journalistic standards.

The food stamp mayor should resign and get his life in order. After all, if he can’t properly manage his household, how will he manage the city? And Smith should be promptly fired if the newspaper wants to maintain its credibility because Smith has none.

Either way, Bellefontaine voters need to remember this come the election of November 2015 and readers of the Bellefontaine Examiner need to keep this in mind whenever they see Smith’s byline.