Day: June 14, 2011

No Lakota Levy Group Offers Support to a Levy in 2012: Nooooooooooooooooo Waaaaaaaaaayyyy!

As reported in the West Chester Buzz at the Cincinnati Enquire website, the No Lakota Group offers to support the Lakota School Levy in 2012.  Clarification must be presented since my site has been flooded by curious readers. 

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2011/06/14/nolakota-offers-to-support-school-levy-in-2012/

For those who don’t know who Mark Sennet is, he’s NOT in any of these clips. As it has been for years, I will still be advocating against higher taxes. Mark’s decision to make some sort of deal with the Lakota School Board is strangely out-of-place. As anyone can see from this video clip, Mark and many others could leave the No Lakota Levy movement, and I could still continue without any problem.

The reality is this…….Mark Sennet, who is a member of the No Lakota Levy Group did speak at the board meeting on June 13th, 2011, and did make such a statement as to offer support of the levy in 2012.  However, Mark was speaking individually, or at a maximum the developers that are in our group who may wish to join him, but for the rest of us, we will still be standing against any proposed levy in the school district of Lakota.

As a businessman, I am surprised by Mark’s comments.  My goals have been to bring down the cost of education, and further tax money toward a school district is simply not in the equation.  However, not everyone is working for the same objective, and obviously, there is some politics involved in this decision by Mark. 

So for those of you who don’t want to see your taxes increase, rest assured.  The No Lakota Levy Group will still function.  Even if all the developers withdrawal their support, there are still many hundreds of people who have volunteered their time and money to help with a campaign.  There will be more than enough resistance to defeat any future  school  levies. 

Some of the stories that are taking place around the Lakota district, such as parents organizing sports in their neighborhood cul-de-sacs and car pooling kids to museums are wonderful stories.  Parents should have been doing that kind of thing all along, and cutting the budget to these activities have brought out the best in our community.  Throwing money at a child’s education is almost the same as throwing money into a fire.  It takes parents that want to be involved in a child’s life.  If a community just tosses money into a bottomless pit of union expectation, which is public education, they can expect that money to be wasted.  That is why Mark’s comments surprise me. 

But many of our members that are from the developing community are sitting on properties that they can’t sell or lease, so their judgment toward levies is that they don’t want to pay an unfair amount of money in taxes for property that isn’t doing what they invested in.  In a good economy they are the first to support a levy, because they built the homes which added to the school population.  So for many of them, the taxes aren’t an issue as long as they can move their property. 
For people like me however, I plan to live in the district for a long time, and the taxes are too high right now, let alone in the future.  The expectation of cost needs to come down, so I will continue to fight that issue as I always have. 

So don’t worry.  We have plenty of supporters against a levy right now.  If Mark and his friends want to cross over to the other side, that’s perfectly fine.  It won’t have an impact on the end result.

Rich Hoffman

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

Tail of the Dragon Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You: Action, philosophy, romance, and a celebration of America’s roots

It is now official; American Publishing will be bringing my new book Tail of the Dragon to bookstores in 2012 and are committed to giving life to this stunning story. It will now proceed into a phase where their editor and I will work on the final manuscript in the coming months. This process could take up to a year which is why the book is scheduled for a 2012 delivery. It is more fitting for a release during that year because of the presidential election that is coming up.

In the book tentatively called, Tail of the Dragon, the governor in Tennessee is making a presidential run for the White House and he’s putting a lot of police on the street to help his campaign with public perception and the F.O.P union. However, to pay for those police officers, the various districts all over the state have increased their citation rates as a way to generate revenue, to cover the costs the governor has imposed upon the tax payers of Tennessee.

I’ve made it well-known on these pages how I feel about taxes and abuse by authority, so the issues of this story is something I feel very passionate about, more passionate than I do over education issues. I have a long history with law enforcement, much of it not good, and a long history with politicians. Law enforcement imposes the law that politicians create. If you believe as I do, that a majority of the politicians are simply corrupt at heart, lured into office because they lack the confidence to perform private sector work, and attempt to justify their positions by creating more laws, then the process is inherently broken, and it’s wrong to ask a tax payer to pay the salary of an unneeded police officer just so a politician wants to pander to the public’s desire for safety, then use those officers to write citations against those same tax payers as another way to generate money for the state, which turns out to be a disguised tax.

One of the best places in the country where this conflict can be seen is in Tennessee, on the western frontier of the Smoky Mountains in a place known the world over as one of the greatest roads ever built, it’s called, The Tail of the Dragon, it’s 318 curves in an 11 mile stretch of RT 129 that lures every car enthusiast, race car driver, motorcyclist, automotive engineer, and photographer in the country to test their abilities on it.

With speed, tourists, and radical bikers all concentrated in a known area where the law is openly being broken, the temptation of the Tennessee Highway Patrol to gather their citation quotas are too lucrative. Citation abuse is rampant as seen in the following videos.

I set the story of my book in this particular region because I’ve run the Dragon with my wife, daughter and son-in-law and saw the conflict there as a larger metaphor for what is going on in the rest of the country. The south is still refreshingly anti-progressive, so their resistance to progressive legislation is openly hostile. Tennessee is interesting because it is the state of Al Gore, yet they still embrace confederate battle flags at their tourism sites, so a kind of battle is being waged among progressive politicians and the kind of fans that love NASCAR.

The large resort town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee is very close to the Tail of the Dragon, so I set out to tell a romantic story of a couple that goes to that mountain town in order to rekindle their marriage and run the Dragon on their new motorcycle.

Many of the people who run the Dragon view getting pulled over by the cops there as a rite of passage. They figure the fines are worth it, for the chance to run the Dragon. After all, so many people run the Dragon on a Saturday afternoon that the police can’t pull over everyone. So part of the thrill is getting away with speeding on the Dragon and running the gauntlet of police without a fine. In this next video there are a couple of motorcycle riders that were pulled over even though they were driving pretty slow.

The premise behind my new book is this; what would happen if our couple going to the Smoky Mountains to put a spark into their marriage and have a little fun on their motorcycle were pulled over by the aggressive Tennessee Highway Patrol and refused to recognize the authority of the officers and the obvious money scam that is going on. What follows is a remarkable story about the meaning of life; the role of government, the desire for freedom, and the spirit of individuality as the entire reach of law enforcement both local and federal descend upon the couple to force compliance to the law.
Deep in the culture of America, and the south in particular is a love of thumbing their noses at the law, which in my opinion is a healthy system of checks and balances. It is good to dislike too much authority and southern culture still embraces such rebellion.

It is sort of a sad state of our country and its heritage that The Dukes of Hazard, a TV show from the 70’s and early 80’s are still so beloved by millions of Americans, and in the south, the General Lee (car) could run for president and be elected. It’s sad because in the coastal cultures of America, (New York and Los Angeles) the need for this rebellious heritage has been ignored in favor of progressive agendas, so new material has not been produced to fulfill the obvious hunger for this type of entertainment, leaving a large part of America still yearning for such an old TV show.

It is in such shows that the hearts and minds of the young live out their inner desire to be truly free of authority and to live their lives of their own accord, without the government trying to stick their noses into their business. This tendency is still strong in the south because many of the people from that region are the descendents of moonshiners from the prohibition age, where progressives removed alcohol from American culture in the 1920’s. It was the moonshiners that started NASCAR and in Gatlinburg to this very day moonshine is still an important part of the cultural heritage, a heritage that dislikes too much authority.

This is why the typical past time among many young men and hot-blooded women on a Saturday afternoon is a NASCAR race, or a trip to the local drag strip to race the cars they’ve spent all week working on.

This is why riders on the Tail of the Dragon are so willing to risk themselves, and financial penalties on a quest for thrills and freedom, sometimes to tragic results.

Even big named celebrities make frequent runs to the Dragon. Here is a charity run organized by Kyle Petty. Such sites are common at the Dragon. Thousands of motorcycles and cars run that stretch of road every day.

One of the reasons places like Gatlinburg are so popular and relaxing is similar to Key West, Florida. There is an open distaste for the law and people can get away from the politics of their jobs, their communities, their states, and their nation, and relish in a place where honesty is embraced and common sense rules.

I look forward to delivering to America a book that will embrace everything shown here and more, in a book that needed to be written because nobody else has done it. It is a book that is uniquely about American culture and its true desires.

So start looking forward to a unique literary experience that will take you on a journey that only a madman would seek. On that journey essential truths will be revealed about the nature and character of the American spirit, and it all starts by simply refusing to submit to authority and the chain reaction of events that are destined to follow.

2012 is not that far away………………………..I promise. Soon you will be able to read, Tail of the Dragon at a book store near you.

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