Month: April 2011

Atlas Shrugged Movie Review: Early Slam by the Hollywood Reporter to keep you from wanting to see the film

 

As sure as the sun came up today I knew that the Hollywood establishment would seek to discourage people from wanting to see Atlas Shrugged.  As I’ve pointed out, Hollywood considers strong characters that rely on their individuality as being one-dimensional, or two-dimensional characters.  Hollywood likes flawed characters and communism, so it is without question that the Hollywood establishment is bracing themselves for a strong financial showing of Atlas Shrugged.

Do not expect good reviews of this film.  Most of the press will hate the premise that Atlas Shrugged is built upon, and those same media outlets hate the Tea Party.  So it goes without saying that on a Tuesday before the film’s opening on Friday that the Hollywood Reporter rushed a review of the film out to hopefully set the pace for the USA Today reviews and all other city newspapers all across the country. 

The best way to combat this type of undercutting from the media is to prove them wrong.  Go see the movie and support it with the purchase of a ticket. 

Now, study how the left will attempt to frame the opinions of the masses in the review from Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter.  Notice that many of the comments are similar to the way the government reports they can’t cut spending, or a school levy attempts passage.  It’s spin toward a “collective” society. 

 

Atlas Shrugged: Film Review

4:02 PM 4/7/2011 by Todd McCarthy

 

The Bottom Line

Flubbed, under-produced representation of the first third of Ayn Rand’s still controversial novel bodes ill for parts two and three.

Opens

April 15

Cast

Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Edi Gathegi, Grahame Beckel, Jsu Garcia, Jon Polito, Michael Lerner, Rebecca Wisocky, Neill Barry

Director

Paul Johansson

The independently financed-and-distributed rendition of the book’s first third is unlikely to generate sufficient box office to inspire production of the final two installments.

“There were a few rare men of talent around her, but they were becoming rarer every year,” it is lamented about the circle surrounding Ayn Rand‘s ultra-capable heroine Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged, and the complaint certainly applies in the case of this botched partial screen adaptation of the mammoth novel that has materialized 54 years after the book’s publication. Although the recent surge in annual sales of the revered and despised author’s fictional manifesto arguably testifies to its continuing relevance, the central battle between fearsomely independent corporate mavericks and hostile big government has been updated in a half-baked, unconvincing way that’s exacerbated by button-pushing TV-style direction, threadbare production values and blah performances except for that of Taylor Schilling in the central role. Set to bow in roughly 200 theaters on April 15, this independently financed-and-distributed rendition of the book’s first third is unlikely to generate sufficient box office to inspire production of the final two installments (the 1,000-plus-page novel is divided into three sections of 10 chapters apiece), although the producers could conceivably forge ahead anyway if their pockets are deep enough. A TV miniseries with a high-powered cast–several were planned at various points over the past four decades–would have been a preferable way to go with this didactic, sometimes risible but still powerful material.

Published in 1957, Rand’s summation novel continues to compel and repel; designed as a paean and exhortation to fulfillment of personal excellence and unrestrained industrial productivity, it is also seen as an abject endorsement of wanton selfishness and the right of the capable few to lord it over the parasitical many. Especially as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had been an ardent Randian, it’s recently become easier than ever to blame contemporary economic ills on the fallout from her unregulated philosophy, even if the fiscal blundering of many governments provides equally persuasive arguments on the other side.

 

These philosophical debates can and will go on forever, but screenwriters Brian Patrick O’Toole and John Aglialoro (also a producer) have themselves bungled in their attempt to remain faithful to the letter of the sacred text while moving the action to the near-future (specifically, 2016). Many scenes are devoted to dull conversations among business fatcats about the economics of railways and steel, central industries that helped drive the nation 60 years ago but seem like afterthoughts today (Amtrak, anyone?). Updating the story would provide a provocative test to any writer but could certainly be done; however, to do so without acknowledging the present-day realities of high-tech industries, outsourcing, shifting transportation modes and advanced information technology (the characters here actually read newspapers) places the action in an unrecognizable twilight zone. So does the fact that the central manufacturing triumph here is the construction of a high-speed train (managed from scratch within a few months, no less). Not only is it unremarked that Asia and Europe are decades ahead on this front, but conservatives who might be perceived as the core audience for this film are the very ones currently fighting against fast-train funding and construction in the U.S. 

 

For these reasons alone, a serious cultural/historical disjunction derails the enterprise from the outset. Television news clips portray a nation in recognizable disarray and decay, as well as a Middle East that has imploded, triggering unimaginable oil prices, but these seem like overwhelming issues unlikely to be turned around by the efforts of the laser-focused Dagny to take over decision-making at rail giant Taggart Transcontinental from her ineffectual brother James (Matthew Marsden).

 

Poised, beautifully groomed and impeccably coiffed, Dagny strides through the corridors of male hesitation, indecision and ineffectuality with a fierce confidence shaken only by the inexplicable “retirement” of certain skilled executives and the baffling question she increasingly hears at unexpected moments, “Who is John Galt?” This is a query that may or may not ever be answered onscreen, depending upon whether the next two parts are made, but suffice it to say that in Part I he is a shadowy figure resembling the Humphrey Bogart character in Woody Allen‘s “Play It Again, Sam.”

 

Galt is impersonated here by Paul Johansson, a young actor who stepped in to direct Atlas Shrugged when the original director left shortly before shooting began. The best that can be said for his work is that it’s perfunctory, a word that also describes all the performances except that of Schilling, a blond beauty whose open face, direct gaze and plain speaking do more than anything else to make watching the film tolerable. One has little doubt that, in a more substantial version of this story, one populated by strong actors in the other principal roles, she would have held her own and moreso, justifying the casting of a relative unknown in the most important part.

 

Although ostensibly set in New York City, the film features various buildings and cityscapes recognizable from Los Angeles and Chicago. 

Opens: April 15 (Strike Prods. Release)
Production: Harmon Kaslow, John Aglialoro Prods.
Cast: Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Edi Gathegi, Grahame Beckel, Jsu Garcia, Jon Polito, Michael Lerner, Rebecca Wisocky, Neill Barry
Director: Paul Johansson
Screenwriters: Brian Patrick O’Toole, John Aglialoro

 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Cannibals of the United States: Sacrifice the RICH!!!! Save the needy!!

On my way home today I was riding my motorcycle in the pouring rain and listening to the soundtrack to the film Apocalypto on my Ipod. It was a surreal kind of experience that I enjoy a great deal, and the simplicity of a complicated problem made itself known to me through that cryptic music as the rain tried desperately to penetrate the confines of my helmet.

If you’ve studied other cultures, their rise and fall, there are common themes. Visit any ruin of an ancient civilization and you will see that all those societies bankrupted themselves. They either ran out of water, food, or their currency. Visit Ankor Watt, Chitzen Itza, or any city in Egypt and you’ll see it. Study the past to see your future.

In Mel Gibson’s brilliant film, Apocalypto Gibson showed wonderfully the height of the Mayan Empire and displayed the problems they were having. The Mayans built huge cities, depleted their food supply and built a corrupt hierarchy of politics that sought human sacrifice to appease the mob, and to keep the masses believing that the ruling class held some sort of power with the “gods,” so that society could continue for just a bit longer hoping by some miracle that if they cut off just one more head, or paint their faces just a few more colors so the gods would take mercy on their lives and save them all. In this case the god is Kukulcan. For those of you that don’t know much about history, the main street in Cancun that all the nightclubs are on, is named after that god.

The civilization of Cahokia, just outside of St. Louis, did much the same thing. They had sacrifices which were buried in Mound 72. It is highly likely that this culture along the Mississippi River was trading with the Mayans across the Gulf of Mexico and they had cultural influences on one another. The cultures were remarkably similar resembling the type of societies found in Mesopotamia during the pre-Christian era.
During excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monk’s Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s who was probably an important Cahokian ruler. The man was buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon,[16] with the bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. The falcon warrior or “birdman” is a common motif in Mississippian culture. This burial clearly had powerful iconographic significance. In addition, a cache of sophisticated, finely worked arrowheads in a variety of different styles and materials was found near the grave of this important man. Separated into four types, each from a different geographical region, the arrowheads demonstrated Cahokia’s extensive trade links in North America.
Archeologists recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62 percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution, method of burial, and other factors. The skeletons include:
• Four young males, missing their hands and skulls.
• A mass grave of more than 50 women around 21 years old, with the bodies arranged in two layers separated by matting.

• A mass burial containing 40 men and women who appear to have been violently killed. The suggestion has been made that some of these were buried alive: “From the vertical position of some of the fingers, which appear to have been digging in the sand, it is apparent that not all of the victims were dead when they were interred – that some had been trying to pull themselves out of the mass of bodies.”
The relationship of these burials to the central burial is unclear. It is unlikely that they were all deposited at the same time. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to between 950 and 1000 CE. Check out more about this from this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

Many people don’t even know that Cahokia is even there in the middle of the United States. It’s the giant hill alongside the highway on the way into St. Louis. You can see the arch of St. Louis easily from the ruins of Cahokia, yet people don’t know much about the ancient city. In fact, Cahokia wasn’t even discovered until developers tried to build a neighborhood over it. I wrote a screenplay about the place for some financial people a few years ago and we had an actress and a director, but the whole thing fell apart in pre-production. But here was the conception teaser for it. The history that I speak about is real. The modern aspect of it is fiction.

So why am I talking about cultures declining and human sacrifice? Well, listen to Porter Stansberry talk to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. We’re doing the same thing now as those collapsing civilizations did then. We are in a state of decline. The mob you saw in the Apocalypto clip is the poor, the welfare recipients, the union workers in the modern-day. The chants are the same. If you go back and watch the clip from Apocalypto you’ll see their union ancestors chanting at the bottom of the pyramid where the high priest is basically saying the same thing that President Obama is saying now. And who is being sacrificed…..who are getting their heads cut off. The people who produce.

In a culture like the United States it is the producers that are being sacrificed through regulation, taxes, Federal red tape. New inventions are being restricted out of fairness. New medical technology is being held back so government can pursue Obama Care.

Education reform is being held back by the corrupt unions that are only trying to protect the jobs of the teachers, forget about the effectiveness on the children. It is new ideas and the producers who create them that are lined up on the great pyramid steps waiting to have their heads cut off to appease a mob of fools.

We are told that the dollar is fine, because Obama and his gang of union thugs are running Washington. Who believes that? Our government can’t even agree on what to cut out of our federal budget, because we as a civilization are paying for everything, Planned Parenthood, which should be for profit, NPR, which should have always been for profit, Social Security which should work more like a 401K and be privatized, Medicare that has more corruption than most countries can endure just on that issue alone, and needs a major overhaul.

All cultures that failed went through these steps. In fact, at Cahokia they had a thing called Woodhenge, which was a bunch of logs stuck in the ground in a circle just to the west of Monks Mound, on the East St. Louis side of the ruin. The only function of that artifact was to convince the mob that the high priests could predict the sun rise, the spring and winter equinox, and other astrological observations. The intent was to prove that they “the ruling class” had mastery over the “heavens.” All they really did was make observations, and that’s all our current ruling class of fools is doing, making observations that they sell to us as mastery over economics.

On the other hand there are people like Porter Standsberry out there that are “really” looking at the real problems coming to our culture, and people like Porter are the kind of people our government wants to cut their head off in human sacrifice, figuratively speaking of course.

All cultures that believe in sacrifice, and most agriculturally based societies do to some extent or another is limited in their vision, and leaders of those cultures should be removed immediately. Because in the world of productivity, there is no limit, only in the capacity of machinery, or manpower, but demand can be infinite. Sacrifice to the “gods” whether literal or to economic gods is foolish and short-sighted.

I saw a sign over the weekend from a woman protesting the government cuts saying “don’t cut down the economic recovery.” It is amazing that people like that are out there, that they believe there is enough money, that the recovery we are having is somehow created by government and not business owners that have decided that now that there are Republicans running a branch of government, they are investing back in business again. The woman holding that sign is no different from that mob of Mayans chanting for more blood at the foot of a giant pyramid. And the high priest will be all too happy to appease the mob so long as there are sacrificial bodies. The same type of signs are being held by people protesting S.B.5. “Keep collective bargaining.” There’s that word……collective. That is one of the most evil words in the English language, disguised as an angel, but doing the work of the devil.

For society to thrive, the rich should be encouraged and not penalized. Those less fortunate should be pushed to work not just given a check.

A few years ago I walked the streets of Washington D.C. and was about to head into a McDonalds to get a bite to eat. A beggar asked me for some change. He was sitting outside of McDonalds right next to a “Help Wanted” sign. I asked him if he had applied for a job. He ignored me and asked a woman who walked by, which she gave freely with a polite smile. The man had lost his pride and allowed himself to be a beggar. There was a job opportunity right behind him, but he’d rather plead to the high priest for the blood of another, which the priest will always be willing to oblige. There’s no shortage of those types of people, power-hungry and craving to stand on the top of a pyramid and cut off the head of sacrificial victims.

Taxes are a form of sacrifice, property taken from those that have, and given to those that have not. It’s not the head of the sacrificial victim, but it is still their property. Estate Taxes are along the same lines, when a person dies, their property, “part of their living essence and history on earth” is taken by government and handed out to the vicious mob.

Sacrifice is the kind of behavior that will only take us in one direction. And it won’t be the way of success. Clinging to old, sacrificial activity, like high taxation, cumbersome education methods, and a stifling environment that fears competition from new technology will destroy our civilization and leave us all as just one more ruin in the history of the world. That is, unless we can take our civilization back from the looters, the high priests, and other derelicts that act as a cancer upon it.

What a bunch of idiots………..

Oh, and while some may say that Mel Gibson is crazy, hey, Mel has done crazy things with women for years. He cheated on his wife, drank heavily, and was generally a wreck of a person for many years, and the media covered it up just like they do George Clooney and Robert Downey Jr. But, Mel’s a great artist and a great director. It was after he made The Passion of Christ, then Apocalypto that Hollywood turned against him. If he hadn’t made The Passion, Hollywood and the press that feeds it would still be making excuses for his behavior. That’s the world we’re living in people. The high priests with all their fancy headdresses want the mob to believe they are gods! God forbid someone like Gibson comes along and shows the truth of something. Is that acceptable to you?

It’s not to me.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Obama is an Illegal President: He’s spent over 10 million hiding his birth certificate

We have an illegal president in the White House. That is the only conclusion one can reason when it is considered that Obama has established a defense fund that has spent more than 10 million dollars keeping his “birth certificate” from public disclosure. Why? The only conclusion one could equate from such action is that there’s something wrong with his birth certificate, otherwise such a document would be readily provided.

Part of the money spent by that defense fund was in public relation campaigns to invent the whole “birther” disclaimer which paints anyone that questions this issue as some wacko conspiracy theorist. It has taken someone like Donald Trump to put this issue back on the table, because Trump understands how the game is played and knows there is something fishy about the whole situation.

Of course the ladies on The View are like the rest of America, they don’t want to admit that they elected a guy that has a questionable citizenship standing who has appointed judges, signed bills into law and ran around the world acting as a President of the United States, when the fact is, America was in such a hurry to prove that we aren’t a racist nation that we openly overlooked any perils that were in the way. Below, Bill Cunningham of 700 WLW who is sometimes a conservative leaning radio personality, and sometimes a liberal leaning personality but is a practicing attorney addressed the whole “birther” issue in great detail. If you want a clear understanding of the Obama controversy listen to this broadcast which is extremely good.

As stated in the interview, there is a preponderance of evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii. What that means is that there are some newspaper reports, and some other documents that lean in the direction of birth in Hawaii, but it appears that Obama claimed otherwise to get financial aid. So on one side of the story or another, Obama has lied in his past. He’s either claimed to be a foreign student for admission into Occidental College or he was really born in Kenya and his grandparents placed the notification in the newspaper in Hawaii. I think many Americans would forgive him for the first offense. Because the second offense is much more serious, which is why over 10 million dollars and much public relation debate has been created to combat even bring up the question.

People like George Soros, and he’s not the only one, with his Open Society Institute, do not think citizenship is important, because the goal is to bring down the borders of the United States anyway, so a president with citizenship problems is not an issue to people of this nature. With the amount of organizations that Soros is involved in by way of financial contributions, it is completely conceivable to understand how using the term “birther” as a way to attack the credibility of anyone that brings up the Obama citizenship issue keeps Obama from going through the process of serious investigations by congress, and is used to shape public opinion.

For a list of all the organizations Soros is involved in check out this link.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2625790/posts

Look…….this isn’t some right winged conspiracy. This isn’t an attack on a black man in the White House. Nobody in the United States cares about that kind of thing anymore. I know a lot of level-headed people and Obama being black never even comes up.

This is an issue of whether or not the president of the United States is illegally in place, because if he is, he needs to go as a matter of law.

What I see is that nobody in congress, the senate, federal judges; anybody of any government merit has the backbone to admit such a monumental failure. Nobody wants to suffer through the embarrassment. It is obvious that the press doesn’t want mud on its face either, so there is a uniform lack of will to enforce the will of law.

We all remember the controversy when Bill Clinton didn’t release his medical records, most likely to cover up his syphilis problem and other issues, but he avoided the controversy with the same reluctance as Obama has with his birth certificate. The question we have to ask ourselves is why we’re electing people like this into the White House? What is it about our nature that even puts idiots like this in office with all this baggage to hide? Can’t we do any better than this? Are these types of people the best we have to offer from American civilization?

The answer is of course not. Most Americans think these people are jokes. In many ways the best of us have declined to be a part of the political process. We tend to our lives and let the fools go to office. We see those fools in our school boards, township trustees, city councils, state and federal governments because the best of us have better things to do and generally leave politics to the fools of our society. The problem is, those fools think we are the fools and they are marching our country into a direction most of us don’t want to go.

I’m all for globalism as long as the globe wants to adapt American ideas. I certainly don’t want anything to do with what the rest of the world is doing so keep your global progress. When countries like Brazil, France, and China start controlling the sex trade industry in their counties, they can tell us to control our pollution issues. Otherwise, their opinion isn’t wanted. And I don’t want a president that can’t even produce a birth certificate that spends millions of dollars keeping it from the public and travels the world bowing to the leader of every country, taking us in that direction. Obama is a joke. I’m sure he’s fine to play basketball with, but as president………come on. Get real.

If we are stuck with this joke for a few more years because everyone is too weak to actually demand that our public officials live by the actual rules of our law, then I say the law goes our way too. Ignore that speed limit sign, those demands to buckle up, forget the DUI laws. And for taxes, forget about April 15th, just send in your taxes whenever you feel like it. Heck, it’s just rules and laws. Who cares……..right?

And don’t even ask the question of whether the President is an American citizen because he has issues with his birth certificate, because all those “globalists” (that are attempting to break down our borders and scrap our Constitution) might call you a name……which might hurt your feelings. That’s more important than having an illegal president in the White House.After all……..it’s just a law, and according to our politicians, laws are meant to be broken.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Mark North is Non-Essential: What does he do to earn his money if he can’t even do public relations?

What I learned today was that Mark North, superintendent of the Lebanon School System is a non-essential employee.

I write a lot about education. Within the education reform movement, I receive a lot of information from very passionate people who are doing their best to address some of the issues involving education, and today I heard from a couple of them that find themselves defending the community of Lebanon from another tax increase.

Cyd Zimmerman was on the Darryl Parks show on Saturday April 9, 2011 because the scheduled debate between Mark North and Rick McPherson was forfeited by Mark North after proclaiming that “nobody listens to 700 WLW.” In short, he didn’t have the guts to go on the air and defend his actions in the district which prompted Cyd to step in and discuss North’s absence from the debate.

After that interview I received notes from Cyd and Sandy Trugrul about Lebanon and education issues in general, that they both spent a lot of time putting together. I thought those notes deserved to be listed in their entirety below.

A Note From Cyd Zimmerman: The woman on the Darryl Parks interview below.

It’s important to preface this conversation by laying the framework as to how I got here and why I’m so angry and frustrated.
So many that are staring down the barrel of another school levy have the same feeling coursing through their veins and are confused or unorganized in how to go about change. After all, Spring now means levy season. Not good.

Radio is a tough gig and it’s easy to lose your way. So much to say, and so little time, and that happened to me.
I had caught wind of yet another school levy mid January of this year. This was on the heels of a 5.41 mill emergency levy that was passed in November of 2010. It generates 4.2 million per year. I could not believe it. I had no clue who to talk to or where to begin so I attended my first ever board meeting that following Monday. It was just an announcement that they were deciding one of three amounts to choose from in my early understanding. Nevertheless, I was alone in a sea of empty chairs. There were a couple of others and I now know one of those people was Rick McPherson filming. I left as they were just finishing up and thought to myself…I’m screwed. Where are all the people? Where are the taxpayers? I was aware of the Lakota levy last November and the great deal of press it had gotten, having moved to Lebanon from West Chester. I Googled them and was pleased to see the site still up. I contacted them through the email and asked for help. The response was immediate. I had found Rich Hoffman’s site via the NolakotaLevy.com and the journey began. I found someone commenting on the site, speaking of the levy, and contacted her. I then met Rick McPherson who was looking for others and they gave him my email.

That’s all takes, but you can’t be thin-skinned or shy. That’s not a problem if you’re mad enough to demand some answers.
On to the bigger picture and where does the money go? I went to the Lebanon School site and it was pretty well layed out. Here’s the problem. 77.6% going just for wages and benefits. I would never begrudge the salary of a great teacher. They are pillars of the community. But where is the line in the sand?? Here is where SB5 would have made a huge difference. Don’t call it a pay freeze and continue step increases not to mention the other perks still in play. This has happened and you had no say. Contracts signed before the bill. We all know it. This is all about fiscal responsibility and accountability. I have to do it in my home and I expect the same from this entity.

Broken

Someone school me on why we pay for this supers $650.00 a month car allowance, family YMCA membership which on their site is $73.00 per month, cell phone (50 bucks a month), when he makes more than the Governor of Ohio?? More than the Lieutenant Governor, more than the Secretary of State, more than the Attorney General, on and on. It’s all on the web site.
http://www.lebanonschoolfacts.com

I’m sorry, but that is borderline criminal in my book. And it’s NOT ok. And shouldn’t be with you either.

Broken

3.2% goes for supplies and materials. Hold on…3.4% is for other. What other? If it’s all about the children why is the “other” number higher? I still don’t have that answer…Do You?

I hear the phone calls have started for support of more sweaty cash. I’d like to get one of those calls. Hopefully it would not be a shallow conversation as was the one that ensued yesterday with Mr. North. He totally missed my side. Fine. He’s doing his job. Straddling the line between the unions and community must be brutal. Don’t say to me you have no intentions of having at the very least, an open Q&A or a town hall and then ask for millions. NO. Why? Because they can’t answer the tough questions on the spot. Oh sure, I can fill out the card and send it in. He said he has hundreds of cards. How much would the postage and cost be to them if I took them up on that offer? Small in the massive scope but this is the mindset I do not understand.

School bus drivers making over 16 bucks an hour? Really? Shrink wrapping the books at Little Miami because you have to be a certified librarian to hand them out? This is all just so bizarre.

Broken

This is the tip of the iceberg but some of the key points from emails I get. I understand. They ask the simplest questions. I know exactly where they come from. They are busy. It gets so deep, it will blow your mind. But I too have a life and if I had time to say on the radio what was on my mind, this touches the surface.

To those out there in our shoes…We hear you. Darryl spoke of the numerous emails last week asking him to pick your district. We never would be here without the help of those from neighboring districts, particularly Dan Varney and Rich Hoffman. These guys get it.

So reach out to us. We’re busy but you can email the lebanonschoolfacts site and we’ll respond. Keep the hate mail at bay. It won’t be tolerated and end up in spam. Our vision is clear and we won’t be bogged down with the naysayers. You had your time.

Cyd

__________________________________________________________

Note from Sandy:

I’ve been working to educate people on school funding and the effects of the “mandatory” school curriculum for over thirty years. The one and only reason I have stuck to this is because I believe that the demise of our country is at stake.

The schools, their funding, their administrators, their unions are the lowest level of government that “we the people” have any hope of effecting change. If we can’t make an impact at that level the Federal level is certainly hopeless. I have not wanted to give up on my country.

In my opinion, last night’s fiasco regarding the federal budget was a diversionary tactic for covering up other more serious issues taking place in the world. I feel sure of that. The media loved covering the situation. Another 7.++ earthquake in Japan hardly got noticed. I guess the four nuclear towers are “all better.” That’s off topic now too.

The school unions and leaders use the same tactics when going after the property owners for more money. Anyone that is against raising taxes “hates the children” and doesn’t support education. In their propaganda their job is the most important job in the country. No salary level is too high. I have heard teachers say that they should be paid at the level of doctors. Their mantra is that the future of our country depends on the great education that the children receive from the union teachers. Of course “the more it costs the better the outcomes.” Nothing could be further from the truth in that statement unless you consider the outcomes that they want to occur. These may be much different from what the average person believes should be happening.

We all notice that the cuts that the boards propose are always ones affect the children the most harshly. You have mentioned all of them quite precisely.

Many people are afraid to speak out regarding their opposition to a levy. They are afraid of retaliation to their children or to themselves. One parent told me that her child came home crying because she didn’t love him. She said, “where did you ever hear such a thing.” His answer, “My teacher said that if you weren’t voting for the levy you don’t love me.” He had heard his parent discussing that they couldn’t afford to vote for the levy. In other words, the teachers are polling the children. The teachers are working in the classroom against the parents; this for their own monetary gain. How repugnant is this?

When I checked on “who funds levies” through the years, it is always the same people with the same vested interests. In Lebanon it is highly touted and supported by LCNB. (Chip Bonny, a board member, now works for LCNB. He formerly worked for Huntington Bank. The district obtained over $1M from Huntington Bank last year to buy back the buses that they formerly turned over to Laidlaw.) (I was told by my banker that transaction was a totally irregular transaction and would not be tolerated by his bank. He also said that Bonny, no doubt, received a nice bonus for that business. It would have been the case at his bank.)
The postcard sent out by the Pro-Levy group lists Eric Meilstrup as the treasurer. He is an officer with LCNB. Steve Wilson, CEO of LCNB has served on the district finance committee and heads up the full page of endorsements listed in the local paper.

LCNB also owned (until this month) Dakin Insurance. Lebanon buys it’s insurance from Dakin.

Other special interest groups funding levies are developers, construction companies, architectural firms, lawyers and other business leaders. Small amounts are given by the teachers, who can look forward to nice raises every time a levy passes.

Over 85% of the budgets pays for salaries and benefits. Other salaries can be hidden in many areas of the financial states and could make that percentage go up.

Any cuts suggested are called “draconian” and “extreme.”
No cuts are acceptable to the schools, county, city, township, state or federal levels of government.

The costs listed to give the per pupil amount are only from the General Fund that is for the operation of the schools. They never list the huge debt owed for the costs pertaining to the buildings And other loans they get (buses, copy equipment, phones, etc.) Those projections go on for years and years into the future. Our great-grandchildren will still be paying off those debts. ironically the buildings and equipment will be considered obsolete or even trashed. By the time the final payments are made.

When they speak to the people they try to use terminology that most people don’t understand. (I call it educationese.) This way they speak “down” to you, as though you are a child. They are the “professional” and you are insignificant in the scheme of things. They are taught how to “handle” the public a part of their college curriculum. It is part of the “Training for Change Agents” text. They study how to change your beliefs and those of your children. How to change your values from Christian to Secular Humanism.
The fact is that last year the board hired at least two new administrators.

Krista Foley (from Piqua – Student Services and Mason, Kindergarten Supervisor.) She is listed as administrator of various student programs
at a salary of $95,626.

Bill Lautar, former student services director in Kettering (where he retired)
Director of Human Resources at $98,343. (double-dipper)

July 15, 2010, Western Star: Lautar said he is in the process of filling
other certified and classified positions before the next school year, including
a secretary for the transportation office, coaching and extracurricular positions and teaching positions in special education, language arts and science.”

Schools are divided in this totally ridiculous configuration.

Louisa Wright – Early Childhood, Principal, secretary, 17 teachers
Bowman – First and Second Grades, two principals, two secretaries,
53 teachers.
Donovan – Third and Fourth Grades, two principals, two secretaries,
53 teachers.
Berry – Fifth and Sixth Grades, two principals, 2 secretaries

Jr. H. S. – (Former H.S.) Seventh and Eighth Grades, two principals,
two counselors,

High School – Three principals, 1466 total students 9-12

The total enrollment is around 5,000. I see plenty of room for cuts.

There are several people listed in the salaries listed on the blog as receiving “Retirement Incentive” payments.

Many “Teacher Assistants” listed for our overworked teachers. Many substitutes listed. I am told they have a higher absentee rate than the students.

We pay the entire retirement costs for the administrators (pickup on the pickup), we pay the entire health benefits for North and other admin. I admit that I haven’t read all of the contracts. Mark North is given unlimited time off to attend meetings and to consult. (I can’t imagine him consulting at anything.) There are numerous meeting held all over the country and world. I am going to request who traveled where in the past five years. It won’t help this time around, but good to have on hand for the future. I assure you that the Lakota people travel all the time. There is a NSBA conference in San Francisco this weekend. Most of them go with their “significant other.” After all, the room is paid for.

____________________________________________________________

All the issues discussed above are out of sheer frustration. It is obvious to anyone that cares to look, that there are many things wrong with how tax money is collected and spent. The people who grab this money from taxpayers are called by society as “trusted officials” or even “leaders.” But to those who look into things as they actually are, those trusted officials are just simple looters. These looters give the appearance that they are doing something beneficial for the community, but it’s all a smoke screen. What’s really going on is a lot of nothing and the tax payer is paying for things they don’t need to pay for.

Prior to Cyd’s interview on the radio Darryl spoke about the “non-essential” personnel in government. With that said, everyone in government that got a letter from the government on Friday April 8, 2011 stating that they are non-essential personnel shouldn’t be working in those positions, because they are wasting taxpayer money. It would also appear Mark North, superintendent of Lebanon is one of those “non essential” personnel. He didn’t have the guts to go on the radio today and debate the levy. He doesn’t know how to work with the community and answer questions. And he caves under the union pressure at the beginning of negotiations. So what good is he? He’s non-essential personnel and he could save the tax payers a lot of money if he wasn’t employed.

How many non-essential personnel is Lebanon employing if the superintendent isn’t doing anything? That’s the kind of question you have to ask before any levy should ever be put on a ballot. And the fact that the question wasn’t ask should insult every person in Lebanon that pays taxes.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

GO SEE ATLAS SHRUGGED: Watch the movie, learn how the scam works, and vote this November against “collective bargaining”

I am proud to announce that I just spoke to the booking agent of Atlas Shrugged and he assured me that a print of the film will be sent to Newport on the Levee and it appears now to also be showing in two other locations within Cincinnati. This is good news for a film that was originally slated for only New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Now, because a lot of you participated in the action requested on this site, the producers of Atlas Shrugged are showing the movie in Cincinnati. So pat yourselves on the back.

A few years ago I was speaking to an agent about my script, The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia that won awards in the horror and action adventure category at the Indie Gathering Film Festival, and the people that read it there liked it a lot. But a film festival in middle-America is different than the culture of Wilshire Blvd and Santa Monica. And this agent I was talking to about pitching that script to the studios of Hollywood were the type of people that lived that “cultured” life in LA, which is nice, but far removed from what is really going on in America.

Their criticism of my story and a subsequent script that also won a few awards called “The Overman” was “your characters are too strong. They don’t appear to have any weaknesses. People identify with characters that have faults. You need to alter your leads to have something in their lives that they fear, and must overcome by the end of the movie. Also, you’re film is too bloody. And I find it hard to believe that any of these characters could survive the dangerous situations you’ve created for them. It appears to be unrealistic.”

I could only shake my head. Some of the most powerful characters in film history exhibited such traits so the agent was wrong. I thought of Indiana Jones, James Bond, Lara Croft, The Man with No Name, the list in my mind went on as to popular characters that are the kind of personalities that people love. And one of those characters that will soon come to film but has only lived in literature is John Galt.

John Galt is one of those characters that people will love once they meet him in the movie Atlas Shrugged which comes out on April 15th 2011. I think it is important for films like Atlas Shrugged to have success for all my personal reasons, because I have learned over the years that Hollywood certainly has an agenda and that agenda speaks loudly on television and film. The agenda is that people should not strive to be too good. People should not pay too close attention to the world around them. And people should focus on the “collective.” They routinely shy away from stories with strong characters, even though the box office shows a great hunger for such characters. And it is very rare that a major film makes it through the jungle of opposition and ends up on the screen with an anti-progressive message.

And that’s what Atlas Shrugged is; anti-progressive.

In the film you will learn:

• How government regulation chokes off business.
• How people who invent new, and better products are bribed by the government to not reveal those products to the market place for fear of putting older companies out of business.
• You will learn the secret behind farm subsidies.
• You will see how corruption migrates from the smallest character on the street all the way up the political ladder.
• You will see how unions shape public policy through corrupt politics.
• You will see what the true nature of American pride is.
• You will understand the definition of merit.

Those are just a few of the topics from the film and this is just the first movie of a three movie series.

There will be a lot of people that will misread the messages of the film. I’m already reading that liberals think the film endorses high speed rail. The trains in the film are there because trains were important in 1957 when Ayn Rand wrote the book. So to stay true to the book, they built the story around “trains.” The gist of the story is how government destroys innovation. It openly explores the greatness possible in the human race and shows the reason for the decadence of the many that fall short of greatness. But the theme is one of greatness, something progressives avoid like the plague.

So now that the film is coming to Cincinnati, GO SEE IT! If you want to spend your hard earned money on something useful, see that movie on April 15th. Sell it out! Spread this message around to your friends and make sure they see it too. Because in my mind, filmmakers that have went against the grain as much as the producers of Atlas Shrugged have “deserve” our support, because if they get it, Hollywood will be inclined to make more films like Atlas Shrugged. So your participation in the opening is sort of a vote. Your ticket to that film is the same as voting in a voting booth on election night. The Hollywood Reporter will be ready to declare Atlas Shrugged a failure because nobody in Hollywood wants to see this film become successful, because of the anti-progressive message.

By seeing this movie you will do more than enjoy a good movie. You will send a powerful message to a progressive establishment. This film hopefully is the first of a wave of films and stories that will emerge in our society that grabs hold of what Americanism truly is. In American art, it is time to explore the American identity so that future generations can embrace that spirit. That’s a spirit not created in war, such as World War II. It’s not an identity created in the Revolution, or the Civil War. The American spirit was created in its inventions, and its industry. In its skyscrapers and its film culture. It’s in the farms all across the country on a Sunday afternoon with an AM radio blaring a baseball game from a garage.

I have seen the American culture intimately in Wild West Arts shows that I’ve been a part of. It’s watching the guys from the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) dressed like cowboys and dueling each other in quick drawl competitions. I’ve seen the face of the American in the white man, the black man, the woman, the Indian, the handicapped. The American is in the small town and works from sun up till sun down. They come up with a better way to do jobs because they want to spend more of their time doing something else, which only a rich culture can incentivize one to do. All those facets are explored in Atlas Shrugged for the first time in film history. And you will now have a chance to see it. So go…….see the movie and get on the train that will deliver you to truth and understanding of the world we live in and understand why things are the way they are.

And consider also that if this movie does well, and has a good running at the theater, the film should hit the DVD market around September, just in time for the very important election that we will see in Ohio over S.B.5. It will be a great thing for those of us defending Ohio from collective bargaining if voters can begin to understand what the genius behind Kasich’s plan truly is, and how collective bargaining only helps those in the unions, leaving the rest of us bankrupt. All those themes are explored in this film, so go get in line now, and see this film again and again and again and again………………………!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then go read the book, and see the movie again!!!!!!!

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The War Already Started: Unions took the first shot!

The OEA (Ohio Education Association) is pushing to have portions of their members checks deducted so they can raise money to fight Senate Bill 5! One of the reasons the unions wish to make sure their members are so well compensated, at our expense, is so those members won’t blink when it comes time for payroll deductions to fight political battles against taxpayers.

It was not people like me that drew the line in the sand and started this war of larger government versus smaller government. Public worker against private worker. Freedom lover against the progressive. People like me were just living our lives, working hard, and acquiring property which is the staple of American life. There is no shame in that. Owning something is commitment to it. And without commitment, it is only human to witness neglect, because without ownership, neglect is the result. It is not people like me that decided that violence, coercion and political manipulation were acceptable practices. It was them.

Yet this is what unions have brought to our nation. I know firsthand the fights that happened in parking lots and bathrooms of manufacturing facilities. I have been guilty of spilling blood from attackers in labor only to have the police turn their backs to the violence because they secretly endorsed it. The cause of that violence, because I wanted to work at 100% efficiency when the union wanted to keep the rate at 50% unless more pay or overtime were given. I have seen firsthand the violence given to “scabs” that cross a picket line, only to be beaten beyond recognition and hospitalized for weeks. I have seen anti-union people in management attacked at their homes or employees friendly to management terrorized in ways that if the same happened to the black population, racism would be screamed collectively from the entire nation. The battle lines of organized labor have been one of violence with the intent of forcing more money to their pockets. It is simple extortion.

I know of stories from the early days of Warner Brothers, where members of the filmmaking community established the parameters still felt to this day, where cars were overturned outside of the Warner Brothers gate by cameramen, set designers and other production support personnel all in the quest for obtaining “property,” in the form of money. They seek to take it from someone else with the threat of violence, which is no different from a bully taking lunch money from some poor kid on a school playground. The intent is the same.

And things have not changed. A 26-year-old woman named Katherine R. Windels was charged with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making email threats against Wisconsin lawmakers during the height of the battle over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill.

She thought it was perfectly acceptable to send a letter to GOP lawmakers threatening to kill them and their families. For every person like her that does such an unspeakable thing, there are thousands, if not millions that are thinking about it. It’s part of the union culture. They are a threatening species intent on taking property from some and giving it to themselves.

In 2008 the LEA, the Lakota Education Association threatened to walk out on the kids they taught on a chilly October evening, for one reason, to obtain higher wages. The school board gave them what they wanted to keep the school open. Two years later in March of 2010, the LEA again initiated the threat of a strike, which forced the school board to quietly attempt to sign a contract over health insurance benefits while passing an operating levy to deal with the step increases forced from the last strike attempt. In August, the union announced they were taking a pay freeze to work with the district while attempting to pass another school levy. But the whole thing was smoke and mirrors. From 2010 to 2011 the top wage earners at Lakota, those making over 65K per year increased payroll to those employees by 15 million dollars all the while pretending to be on the “pay freeze.” Last year there were 434 employees making over 65K per year. This year there’s 625. That’s an increase of 191 employees that broke that barrier. Why, the threat of a strike. The union leadership would argue with the school board over every little thing so to frighten them from even considering arguing about a large issue, like wages. The intent is to take property and give to the union membership and to prevent anyone from questioning the motive.  (Notice in the chart below, the bottom line is what everyone else felt by way of CPI.  The top number is the amount that the LEA increased their own wages.  Notice the level off period in 2005.  That was during the levy attempt that year that took four times to pass.  Once it finally passed, look how the wages took off)

In Lebanon Schools we’ve seen the superintendent there make deals with the union openly violating Ohio’s sunshine law which states that interest of such a magnitude should be discussed in the open with the taxpayers that fund the whole business. Instead he along with the entire school board went into executive session to pass the union contracts. Why, because they fear the union more than the taxpayer, because it’s not the tax payer that threatens their comfort level. It’s not the tax payer that is turning over cars, vandalizing homes, and cars, or threatening physical violence to people who stand in their way. It’s not the tax payer that is threatening to strike and leave the entire school a lifeless entity full of kids but no teachers. It’s not the taxpayers that are sending death threats to law makers, so the tax payer gets screwed while the unions take all the money.

That’s what we’re dealing with here, violent thugs that have driven up their wages through pure extortion. And now they want to repeal S.B.5 so they can continue this game against the tax payer. Of course they are upset. They make good money that was earned with blood and violence, most of it they shed from others, and some of it they shed themselves. They like that government fears them. They like that the public avoids them so that the sham can continue. They want things to continue as they have. They have so far dictated everything and conceded nothing and it shows in their wages. It’s not inflammatory to say such a thing. It is a fact, the records are public, all one has to do is look at them. Well, look at them!   The chart below is an example of Lakota’s LEA and how they pushed up their salaries as opposed to the actual growth and consumer price index.  Notice they are way above the CPI. 

My purpose with these articles is to share with others what I have done all my life, so that they can take from it what they will and possibly adapt their own methods for dealing with the parasites that feed off all of us. I have no desire to avoid labels of “radical” or “brutal” in reference to my personality. I don’t care if I’m liked, or if I’m popular. I have no desire for public office. I have no desire for social acceptance. I care not to be a leader of the Tea Party. The leader of the Lakota School Levy. I care not who is leading the fight against the Lebanon Levy, the Mason Levy, S.B.5. I lend my help to all those groups because I lead myself and am firm in my own convictions and at the end of the day I have my books and I only care what they think of me. So I will not give unions and other government thugs what they ask for, and that’s the silent endorsement of complacency which gives them to power to rob us in the light of day. I will not make excuses for the conditions that allow the unions to think they have a right to exist, because I don’t support their right to any legal justification. They can have a club meeting in their back yard just like masons, or the Boy Scouts of America, because their value is just as important to me. They are just a bunch of silly people locked arm and arm advocating a “collective” society.

Now, I know what you’re thinking union thug. You’re thinking, “this guy needs his ass kicked, that’ll teach him.” Well, to you I say, join the long list of those that have tried. See there is a mathematical formula that dictates that a guy like me will always beat thousands of you and there is nothing in the laws of physics that falls in your favor. You only have power in a collective group shouting and screaming, and you have that power because you lack personal courage.

As I mentioned I used to be vice-president of a motorcycle club in Ohio. I know many hard-core bikers and gang leaders. I understand their thinking, and I like many of them, up to a point. That point ends when they call me “brother.” “I’m not your brother,” I’ll tell them. “I’ll wave to you as we pass each other on the open road, but I am not your brother. Just because we share a love of motorcycles, that doesn’t make us bothers.” I always get an odd look, but I don’t care. The reason is that saying the word brother affirms some sort of fraternity, which I find disgusting. It’s a collective identification, and that collective identification leads to a weakness of the heart.

One year I spent several months filming a documentary for an independent film company about motorcycle riders when I came to the realization that many of the bikers I liked so much belonged to a union of some kind and that collective mentality merged with the independence of riding motorcycles. They had this desire to ride in packs, and this drove me crazy, because it seems to me anti-American. So I dropped the project, because I could not truly show that motorcycle riders were the embodiment of a true American spirit, which I wanted to believe. Too many of them subjected themselves to collectivism. The group rides and motorcycle gangs were simply too similar to the kind of behavior seen in unions, which is not a pillar for which the United States is built. The country is not built by such fools. It is used by them. It is built by the individual and the individual’s ability to employ those people to some sense of direction.

Collectivism is weakness, and that is why the man, or woman who can stand on their own principles, are kings of their own internal kingdoms, and look in the mirror each day and like what looks back. Those types of people will beat those in collective societies one hundred percent of the time. The reason for the defeat of those in the collective as opposed to the individual is the individual that is secure in themselves find they are free of guilt. Guilt is what the collective uses to gain footing in people’s lives. And when you consider the strategy of unions they start with guilt. “Don’t you want the kids to succeed?” “Don’t you want your community to be safe?” “Don’t you want to pay the firefighter, because they run into danger when you run away?” They use the guilt that they calculate is sure to be there because we are all trained to feel guilt, and guilt is the pathway to the collective mind.

If guilt doesn’t work, then it’s violence, and the intention behind the violence is to make someone internally feel guilt for not standing up to the thugs, to hide from the disgrace and push it from their minds. That is why the public has thrown money for years at these people, to hide the guilt of their cowardly acts from themselves.

So it was not the tax payer that started this battle. It is a battle for all the reasons listed. The violence was started by the unions a century ago, and they’ve done to the tax payer what the progressive proclaims the United States did to the Native American, they encroached and broke treaty after treaty and pushed the Indian off their land inch by inch because they could. Because the Indian naively believed in honor and respect and they found themselves defeated repeatedly. Just as the tax payer does. The unions do not care for honor. They do not care for respect. They use collective might as their weapon of force to strike fear in the hearts of the human population seeking to expose the guilt they are sure to reside deep in our consciousness. And to cover that guilt with more money.

So remember that the violence inflicted is not just an attack on our personal sovereignty, but an attack on our very beings, because the attempt to is to inflict upon us guilt that if not felt in our compassion for children, or the safety of mankind, it will be the guilt of our own fear to act against the violence committed upon us. And that is the battle that they initiated and it is our task to defeat it in the greater war.

The first battle of that war was fought long ago, and many of us didn’t even know it was going on. We went to dinner with our families, to the movies with our significant others and followed the latest sports scores while these thieves robbed us under the cover of legality. Now that we know it’s a war that requires our attention, the first battle we’ve won was the S.B.5 Bill, and we must work hard to keep that ground, because there is much more of that ground that must be taken in order to return our nation to the healthy state that is required for the times we live in on planet earth.

So what do you think the unions will spend that money deducted from union member paychecks on? Manipulating the voting public and convincing people to tax themselves so the unions can protect the stranglehold they have on our political system. That is a fight that must be taken back to those that initiated it, and defeat must be in their horizon and retribution for years of looting against us all must be rectified.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

SALARIES ARE TOO DAMN HIGH: The public sector is out of control; the legacy of collective bargaining

A crime has been committed among all tax payers. We have been told by unions that we must support our firefighters and police without question as to the actual costs, because of safety, and a sense of righteous duty. We must support our teachers because we want to save our children’s future without actually looking at why the budgets are so expensive, and what they are actually learning. We have been played by our own guilt into a scam of epic proportions, a shell game that is the direct result of “collective bargaining.”

Doc Thompson discusses this vile evil on 700 WLW. It’s an evil topic because the perpetrators having knowingly committed the crime, no different from selling someone a car knowing the transmission would go out on the buyer 1 mile down the road. Is that a crime, to knowingly commit deceptive practices against someone else? Yes, because the taking of taxes is a theft no different from a robber that held you at gunpoint and said, “give me your money or I’ll shoot.” “Pass this levy to protect our kids.” Pass this levy police levy for ‘protection.’” The ethical standard is the same, because my question is, “or else what?” Why does the implication that more money means better service even come into play? My experience is that money does not always get you the best employees, so why do people think that more money gives us anything of value? The reason is that public employees have knowingly lied to the tax payers, manipulated them using emotion, in order to secure outrageous salaries for themselves without any care for the sustainability of the tax revenue system. It is greed at its absolute worst.

I’ll use the Lakota School District as an example because it’s my school district that I pay direct taxes to, but it is beyond reason that Lakota has over 625 employees that make over 65K per year.  No private business could be so irresponsible with their payroll and expect to survive, yet government workers just expect taxes to increase to pay for their unrealistic expectations. I pay a reasonable sum of taxes to them, and like everything I spend my money on, I expect performance. When I spend more than $50 on anything I inquire about the value of the task. When I spend thousands, the same kind of money I might spend on a new car, a new television, a high-end computer, or a trip to Europe, I will look closely at the situation, and when people waste my money I get angry. When they lie to me I become furious, and even vindictive. Because lying to me is not acceptable. Manipulating me is not acceptable. Attempting to ruin my community is not acceptable.

It’s not inflammatory to say such things. It’s calling the situation for what it is. What has to happen is America has to shrink its government, and you start that shrinking government in our local communities. The list that Doc is talking about needs to be reduced by about 2/3rds of what it is. Management control must be given back to “management.” It is abysmal that Bill Cunningham, Bill Seitz, and Sheriff Jones and these types of people even endorse collective bargaining. The Sheriff I understand because he’s a “cop.” But other conservatives that support such things are out of their mind, and have largely contributed to the debacle we are looking at. It’s corrupt…….it’s corrupt because we’re paying people too much for a government that is too big and inefficient. We’ve made our management systems in government to be inbred, inefficient and completely useless, especially with the presence of public sector unions. And it won’t get any better just leaving things as they have been.

We can expect a major fight this fall over repealing S.B.5. Every one of the government people making these extraordinary salaries will show up to vote. The rest of us won’t be so motivated, unless they understand what’s at stake. If we keep S.B.5 we’ll be on the march to drive these terrible government costs down, and we’ll be able to get control of the situation. If the unions and public workers get the bill repealed, then we’ll go bankrupt within a few years. That is a certainty. The people running things are not smart enough to regulate themselves. So it will take people with real management control to step into local government on a “volunteer” basis and actually lead. But the power-hungry people who want a big desk and a name plate need to go. Those people who have achieved nothing in their lives but an elected office by using fancy, manipulative words and must be removed, because those employees are ineffective and way too expensive.

This is a fight. Don’t kid yourself that it’s not. We are in a different kind of war, not one with guns, that is counted in casualties. But one of laws, one of money, and one counted in submission to new controls. One of those controls is high taxes and high taxes will kill American society, and there are MANY that want that. Some of those insurgents lead these unions. Many that serve in office and fund those campaigns, are at war with us. Call it that! I no longer have the patience for the enormous smallness of these self-inflated ego driven fools such as senator Schumer at the federal level, and big time progressives like what we had in Governor Strickland at the state level. They have created the system we are seeing clearly for the first time, that big government costs big money, and leads to incremental losses of freedom with every new law passed to give that big government some reason to exist.

The incredibly high wages in the public sector are a power grab which lures complacent soldiers with comfortable wages who gladly look the other way while the taxpayers are spent into oblivion. It has nothing to do with fairness, or actual rights. It is all about money, and using that money to purchase the souls of the complacent public worker to the demise of everything we trust.

The salaries of public workers are TOO DAMN HIGH. And it’s time we put an end to it before it’s too late.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Pay Rate for the top 625 Teachers at Lakota Schools: Yes, the number grew!

Below is the 2011 Lakota Salary list, an update from the famous list exposed on 700 WLW just 6 months ago where everyone that heard the information was disgusted, upset, and compelled to take their anger to the voting booth. If you want to look at that list again and compare it with the one below click here. And remember, Lakota has not hired another superintendent as of this writing. So there is no superintendent on the new list.

What you will see will anger you much more than that. In fact, I have been paying close attention to this issue for over a year now and when I realized the severity of the issue I became furious.

A brief synopsis of the information is this. Last year I listed the top income recipients who made over 65K per year, which came out to 434 employees, which I thought was a lot. This year, even taking off the superintendent, who resigned one week after the original list came out, the amount of employees escalated 625 employees! That means that in just one year, when supposedly teachers took a pay freeze in August of 2010, 191 more employees broke past the 65K per year barrier and became a top wage earner just because of the step increases demanded by the union contract. Last year 120 million of Lakota’s operating budget of 160 million went to just salaries and wages. Of that 120 million $31,900,416.00 went to these wonderful employees making over 65K per year. I thought that was a lot. This year, that number exploded to $47,548,105.00! An increase in salary wages of $15,647,689.00. That does not include all increases in wages, just the wages for employees making more than 65K per year! The total amount of money saved in the emergency budget reductions for 2011 which is causing layoffs, busing cuts, elective elimination, pay for play sports, etc is $13 million. Lakota spent more money on the step increases on just the employees making over 65K per year than it will save cutting all the services mentioned to save a measly $13 million. If Lakota could have stopped the step increases they could have kept all the services, teachers would have still been paid well, and nobody would have lost their jobs. But that’s not what happened is it?

When a school district complains that it does not have enough money to operate the answer is not a tax increase to close the gap. In most cases, it is not the revenue that is declining, because the community is not taking its money away from a school system, unless they move out of the district and take their tax dollars with them. When the state, or federal government takes away their contributions, as they should, it should not be expected that a local district increase their taxes to cover the cost.

The expectation that such a thought is even a possibility is a serious flaw in the thinking of school districts that have turned education into their own “cash cow” business.

Any businessman looking at the budget of Lakota Schools would look at the operating budget of 155 million to 160 million dollars, see that the expenses are projecting higher than supplied revenue and would make the needed cuts to bring costs in line. And the very first thing that would be looked at is wages, because most often that is the greatest expense in a budget, especially in a service oriented business like education.

As I look at that list there are a few teachers that I think are worth 70K to 80k per year. But only a few. I would argue that a school district should be able to pay a few of their very best and most prestigious teachers a wage of this kind. But to pay EVERYONE with tenure that amount is ridiculously prohibitive, ignorant, reckless, selfish, and misguided.

Before any district asks for a levy from the community, they should reduce their wage costs. This does not allow those districts to perform at a lower level. A district must reflect the community it’s in, and in the land of Lakota, it is expected to be as excellent as the community that the school resides in. Unfortunately for the union personnel that have managed to extort these outrageous wage levels for their members, the community of Lakota, many of them run their own businesses, or manage businesses, and must make decisions as the school board is required to make.

The top wage earners shown here are what should be looked at before there is a levy of any kind. These positions should be consolidated eliminating personnel wherever possible. If it is decided that those personnel are absolutely essential to education operations, then these are the people who should take a 30% wage cut, because they are well above the average wage of residence of the affluent Lakota School District, and these amounts are just plain malicious.

Now, is there any question as to why we need Senate Bill 5? And is it not obvious what the unions are protecting?

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Betrayal of Rock Ribbed Republicans: The faces behind the mask.

If Rock Ribbed Republicans such as what has been said about Senators like Bill Seitz are truly conservatives, then it is no wonder that our budgets are so out of control in government. If Seitz represents the best and most responsible of our state representatives then we’re in a lot of trouble.

I listened in disbelief to Bill Seitz on the Bill Cunningham show while the two of them spoke about how unfair S.B.5 is to the public worker. Cunningham has declared himself a supporter of the Tea Party and takes pride in the fact that he has spoken at rallies for the Tea Party. Yet his views, and policies are bewilderingly in support of big government, this coming from a man who has declared for over 20 years that Clinton is a fool, made a lot of fame calling John McCain and Bob Taft too liberal, big government politicians and is one of the first to call President Obama by his full name, Barrack Hussein Obama, so to remind Americans of Obama’s Muslim pride. Between these two men I heard two firm, establishment Republicans that love the old way of politics and can’t see the hard things that must be done to bring our government under control.

I was suspicious of Willie when he came out in support of the Lakota School Levy. Part of me understood that he was making a sound business decision, because it was well-known that Lakota administrators and teachers were threatening to boycott any business that didn’t support a school levy. Willie owning a sports bar in West Chester wouldn’t want bad things to happen to his business, and I understand. But I was disappointed when he came out openly on the air in favor of the levy right before the election. It seems that people like him are so in love with public education sports and all the ornaments of education that he is willing to overlook all the obvious problems surrounding education funding. At 10K per child who in their right mind wouldn’t understand that if you spend that much money on education, yet don’t see the results in the children, that something must be done and tax increases are not acceptable. Anyone that owns a business, and Willie does, knows that he could not afford to pay dishwashers, waitresses, cooks and hostesses $20 dollars an hour, because it would destroy his labor costs. He’d have to increase the price of his meals to pay for the wages. Yet from him, it seems acceptable to allow teachers, police and firefighters to make infinite amounts of money, because all you have to do to pay for it is to raise taxes. I can understand that people like Willie are in need of lots of police services and firefighters. I mean Willie is a guy that got stuck on his roof a few years ago, and could not get down on his own. So people like that represent a certain helplessness among people who will always vote for more and more safety personnel to save them from themselves, so their views are corrupted with their weaknesses.

But worst of all is Bill Seitz. Here is a guy that I watched stand on the steps of the capital building and demand Governor Strickland show leadership. He has over a decade in the state house and is considered a hard-core Republican. Yet, he believes that management should not be in charge of their costs. What is the purpose of management if not to regulate costs? The unions and management in the public sector are not equal, as he insists it should be!

This is troubling because people like me don’t even recognize the right of the unions to exist. If public money is involved, no union should be in place. If a private company wants one, and can afford one, they can have them. I can vote by buying a product from those businesses or not. But with pubic sector unions, I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice but to support a teachers union, which asks for too much. I don’t have a choice but to support a FOP organization, which will lobby to put more cops on the street than we need, and they’ll seek to justify themselves by setting up DUI checkpoints and speed traps. It’s a corrupt, bad system and I don’t want ANY of my money to go to a public union! PERIOD!!! End of the story! If those employees don’t want to work under those conditions, don’t take a public job. Now, people like the Senator and many media outlets that just accept blindly this whole idea that unions and management should coexist in some way, will call my views radical, or extreme right-winged. Those people are naive fools and have helped perpetuate this whole system of costly formalities that only serve to drive up costs to communities.

I listened to Seitz and Willie, both men seem intelligent, work in law, yet can’t grasp the basic principle that unions are a creation of people who occurred well after the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of Ohio. Those Constitutions were also the creation of people which we have all sworn to live by. Unions were not agreed by all. They just grew like weeds in a garden that nobody picked which rob the fruit of our labor from proper nourishment. They are an accident that should have never happened and were born of bribes and complacency, by people like Seitz that gave them credibility and lawyers like Willie that defended their right to exist. Such crimes as these are obviously difficult for them to admit in these late years of their life, because such an admission is simply too introspective. An admission would mean that everything they had built their lives around for over 50 years would be rooted in some small little corruption where deals were made at the expense of the public, and they played their part to a deep inner shame.

It must be terrible to view the world with such warped glasses so as to distort the true vision that is before us all. I can only speak for myself, I am glad that I am not corrupted with such distortions. It may be considered extreme by those that wish to see the warped fantasy of their lives and believe they have behaved ethically, but I am happy to have seen such weeds of thought for what they are, a corruption created from ineptitude and justified by the weak which chose to disguise their cowardly behavior with a shroud of conservatism when at their core they are no better than the collectivist oriented liberal.

That is why they don’t understand the intent behind S.B.5 and wherever they look they see “unfairness” because they are the types that find themselves stuck on the roofs of their homes needing help to climb down. It’s easy to talk tough and proclaim that one is a lover of freedom and propionate of self-reliance. It is easy to stand in front of a crowd and say we need a smaller government. But it is hard when you take money yourself or find yourself defending something that is inheritably wrong, because you have a past that benefited from that wrong, and chose to hide those evils behind patriotism. Those are the worst kind of people because they are never what they seem. Out one side of their mouth comes one thing, but out the other comes the despicable.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Obama 2012 for President? The Sad Selection of People Who Think They’re Leaders

Obama announced that he is running again for the presidency of the United States. Gas prices are climbing out of control. We are in three different wars. The education system is collapsing under greedy union requirements while our children grow softer, and more progressive, and are losing the ability to think outside the box which is an American trait. The government is on the verge of a shut down while Democrats show that they are clueless in their ability to make the needed cuts to programs that feed their political base. Is it any surprise that Obama announced that his is running for office again? What other fool would want such a job that only the small-minded, unthinking, social engineer would even want?

On the below video clip Doc Thompson of 700 WLW discusses President Obama, and the union mentality that the President is committed to representing. He also discusses how the President has “punted” on the budget deficit, and how such a stand is an admission to failure. Doc covers a lot of ground in this radio spot, but the theme is that there are people who believe theft is their moral right. Obama is certainly one of those types. But surprisingly, so is Jessie Ventura, which surprised me. For a long time I thought Jessie was a freedom fighter, but it turns out that he’s one of those “justified theft” people. Listen to Doc and Jessie fight over the word…..”Compassionate.”

The Democrats don’t have a better candidate than Obama, which I consider to be a dismal reflection on the values of these mindless drones. The Republicans aren’t much better off. There aren’t too many people on that side of the aisle that could challenge Obama and his bloc voting securities, such as the immigration vote, the black vote, the women vote, the youth vote, the progressive vote, in short anybody that works for government or gets a check from government. Obama because of his skin color and the fact that he speaks, “hip talk” will get approximately 40% of the vote, because it is among those 40% that are the most weak and helpless in our society. In that 40% are the most intellectually lost, the type of individual that a guy like me might call “veal.”

I cringe each time I hear a report say that any of these people are our “leaders.” People like Obama are not leaders. They are representatives. Newt Gingrich is not a leader. Glenn Beck is not a leader. In fact, approximately half the nation doesn’t need a leader to make them safe, tell them how to think, or to wait for a check from the government. But people who want to be viewed as leaders want to give out checks so that people will become dependent on them, and that’s a terrible thing.

It really doesn’t matter to me who runs for the Presidency, because whoever sits in that chair is going to be required to get out-of-the-way. I have about had it with the mindless intrusion from such small minds who wish to impose some pathetic European rule, such as what we see in President Obama and the money of people like George Soros and his “open society.” No thanks George. Set up your new civilization in Antarctica. The penguins might enjoy your type of society. America doesn’t need people like that to hold back its ambitions. So my thoughts about Obama’s candidacy are that if he wants the job, if he wants to take the beating of that position, have at it. Because the royalty of that position is going out of style fast, and by 2016 the nation will have moved much further to the right and government will shrink by a lot, and if Obama wants that to be a part of his legacy, that a big government president scared the nation to reject progressive ideas, then I welcome his announcement with open arms.

But I’d rather vote for this guy.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com