Month: February 2020

Mark Welch is the Only Real Candidate for the 52nd House of Representatives in Ohio: It takes a lot more than just voting

Another exciting opportunity for this upcoming primary and eventual election in November is that Mark Welch is offering himself as a candidate for the 52nd State Representative seat in Ohio. With George Lang moving over to the senate his friend Mark is willing to cover that House seat and to keep a good thing going which the two of them have been doing for a long time in West Chester, only extending that same effort out into Ohio in a larger way. The tremendous success that Mark Welch has experienced as a trustee of the very successful West Chester township makes him the best pick in the primary to make the most out of that state seat and continue that good work on a larger stage. Like George, Mark has the highest grade possible from the Buckeye Firearms Association and has been endorsed by 80% of the precinct representatives in the 52nd District area, which is 80 total–19 in Fairfield Township, 25 in Liberty Township and 46 in West Chester. That’s an important thing to know because Welch’s primary opponent in this election is Jennifer Gross the retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Air Force and current nurse. She’s a well-intentioned person but has not yet developed any political clout to play at that level. When it comes to experience and a ready built network to get things done with that Representative seat, Mark Welch is the clear choice.

Experience isn’t everything, Donald Trump did step out of his role as a real estate tycoon to run for office and win. But those were extraordinary circumstances and to be honest, these House of Representative seats are pretty tough to run and hold without losing yourself along the way. They are the ultimate middle management jobs where you get squeezed from both ends and you have to be pretty savvy to stay true to the voters, yourself, and the constitutional principles that got you involved in the first place. Mark has been a very successful trustee now for several cycles and West Chester has seen great success which he has been a major part of. It will not be difficult for him to take that experience to Columbus and work the House and network in the Senate in the same fashion. He has great passion for the job and I can say that I knew Mark in the beginning when he was just a bright eyed hopeful like Jennifer Gross is now looking to contribute something to the world around them. Before being a trustee Mark was a successful businessperson, and still is. The Republican Party is always in need of fresh new faces to fill some of these seats, but to be honest, the optimal way to get them is to get into the pool and get your feet wet, then start swimming in deeper and deeper water. The 52nd District House of Representatives seat is about a lot more than just voting yes or no, there is a lot of work that must go on that nobody sees and we want a person who can handle all that with a smile on their face and ambition for the job every morning.

For about 10 years, especially in Butler County, Ohio we have been going through a strong team building phase. We have had enormously strong Tea Party efforts at the height of that movement and many of those people are now office holders who are helping to shape the direction of the Republican Party and are natural extensions of the Trump administration coming directly out of the White House. Perhaps 10 years ago before any good groundwork was being done to reform good, honest politics in Butler County Jennifer’s jump into the deep end of the pool would be applauded. We would have wanted anybody to penetrate the castle wall and hope to unlock the door from the other side. They may have been slain in the process, but we would have thrown our support behind her in hopes that she might be a change agent for the better. But at some point, you do win the castle and now you have to switch from victim to aggressor and you have to hold the castle—because you’ve taken it. And at the same time, you must create a path for others to follow so that you can grow as an effort.

Its not enough to say that a candidate wants to change the political system for the little people, or like that Democrat woman in Butler County who wants to run against George Lang for the Senate seat of the 4th, “People over Politics,” those are clichés from the past. Going from a nurse to a powerful 52nd House Seat would be a tough step for Jennifer Gross because she hasn’t had time to do the proper networking that is involved in being successful in a seat like that. Sure, she might make it up as she goes, but the odds are, she will only be a fraction effective as she hopes to be where Mark Welch will be able to hit the ground running because he has done the work along the way. What a lot of people don’t know about these political seats is that you have to be able to raise money, do the ribbon cutting, deal with all the people who suck up to you, but you can’t lose yourself along the way, which has been a major problem for a lot of people in the past. We’ve done well with the 52nd Seat in Butler County for a long time with good solid people sitting in it, which is why Mark is the best choice in this election for it. While its true that Jennifer Gross has financial resources that make her somewhat independent, the raising money isn’t just for winning elections, its how people in Columbus measure the most valuable voice that matters in bill proposals and other voting matters, the leverage you bring to the table as a member of the House.

Raising money is the quiet capital that is valued the most in the world of politics and its how things get done. Not how the money is used, but in how much money a politician can get their hands on because it says that the people of your district trust you enough to write a check for thousands of dollars. If they’ll do that, then the weight of a vote in Columbus where everyone has their own district concerns means more than just someone who happens to win an election because they had their mortgage paid off and showed up to cast a vote. There is a big difference in such political capital and anybody who hopes to be effective in a state seat anywhere in the country has to solve that basic riddle just as someone must learn to swim if they are going to be in the part of the pool where they can’t touch the ground with their feet. A school board seat or a trustee position is the first logical step in building that network. By the time a candidate gets to a state seat, they need to have the ability to have fundraisers and to capture a significant amount because that is how Columbus measures the potency of a fellow member.

And for people who don’t know Mark Welch the way I do, as a tireless worker who is always upbeat in every setting, and is willing to do the reading and understanding that it takes to cast proper votes that are truly Republican and not some fence sitter waiting to see if conservative values are fashionable enough to cast a vote, the most valuable number to keep in mind is that Mark has 80% of the precinct vote which are the people who really count in all elections. And they are endorsing him because they have had time over the last several elections to get to know him. Jennifer hasn’t, it will take a while, but the truth is, she is untested. While she may be a good person and a nice nurse with a military record, she has to prove that she can handle the fundraisers, the ribbon cutting and all the temptations that come with a powerful office without losing herself in the process. And Mark Welch in this case is the only candidate who has proven he can handle it, and then some. And Welch is the only candidate in this election who could fill that 52nd House seat the way we have come to expect and do the good work there that we all require. I’d like to see more from Jennifer in the future, but she has some work to do before she starts swimming in a seat like this.

Rich Hoffman

The Day After: Getting along in politics was never the goal–only winning any way possible

I think for me the battle began during the 2008 election season where John McCain ripped into the WLW radio personality Bill Cunningham for disparaging his presidential rival’s name, Barack Hussain Obama. It was in fact the guy’s name, yet McCain seemed to be playing a game none of us were aware of, including Cunningham who covered politics nearly to the extent that Rush Limbaugh had for many years. It was a kind of WTF moment for me in wondering why Republicans were so weak when it came to defending themselves against potential domestic enemies, defined by those who cannot agree at least that the American flag is a symbol of freedom and prosperity to the world. Anybody who says otherwise in my view is a domestic enemy that needs defending against as we all promise to uphold by the United States Constitution. Then there was the campaign of John Kasich which again involved Bill Cunningham from WLW. They campaigned together at Voice of America Park in West Chester, Kasich sounding like a Tea Party patriot. Only two years later, both men would turn wildly to the left and become something much more progressive. Then around that same time Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama just as McCain did because he shared with the former some “nice guy” view of politics that the other side wasn’t playing equally. So that gave us four more years of the socialist Barack Obama and I personally had enough. When Donald Trump threw his hat in the ring, I was one of the first that signed up and the two speeches Trump gave on Thursday of February 6, 2020 was precisely the reason.

I have had enough of niceties in politics, I want people who represent me and my interests. I don’t think its healthy for everyone to play nice in the sandbox, I want to see friction and debate, because that is how we determine the strength of a thought, through competition and testing in a democratic fashion. The goal was never to get along. It was to win, as a nation, things that were good for the nation. And the Democrats showed clearly in these last three years or so since a true representative had been elected what they were always about. They have from the beginning been domestic enemies, going back to Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Kennedy if you look at the evidence of his murder was killed for many of the same reasons that politicians have been trying to get rid of Trump, to control the public narrative and keep the bar within reach of the most lazy Washington bureaucrat. For anybody who would care to challenge that assertion, the Trump administration a few years ago declassified the Kennedy assassination role that our own government played in it and to nobody’s surprise, it reads like the texts between Lisa Page and her loverboy Peter Strzok. It was quite appropriate for Trump to take a victory lap by reading those texts again for everyone to remember, just for the record.

Yes, we have been dealing with bad, evil people and the responsibility to do something about it falls on all of us. I am just thankful that the Trump family has been willing to do the job, because what has happened to President Trump since his election has been nothing short of an actual assassination. If we were living in less public times, like it was when television was new in 1962, an actual killing would have been the preferred method of eradicating a political rival. In fact Kennedy was a Democrat believe it or not, but he was the kind I might even support. The way he stood up to communism in Cuba and Russia was important, even if it did get communist supporters working in our own government to the blueprint table to plan his assassination as a byproduct. Then of course there was that ridiculous notion of going to space when the government of America wanted young people wallowing in the mud at Woodstock naked and afraid—and drugged into voting for a more socialist kind of Democrat—ones like Bernie Sanders who would continue to function in the House and Senate for decades before finally pulling their masks off in 2016. They did kill Kennedy by setting up the circumstances that would produce his brutal murder in front of a crowd and terrify onlookers into cleaving for government into the known future. A hostile act that would otherwise be viewed as a declaration of war, only who would we fight? The enemy was unseen in the publishing houses of New York, in the chambers of congress itself, and in the many academic institutions across our country committed to brainwashing young people into the spread of communism as it was viewed globally during the 30s, 40s, 50s then climaxing in the 60s.

The obvious anger Trump expressed on the day after his acquittal was more than justified. I had been thinking much the same thing and it was very nice to hear him articulate those emotions properly. I keep hearing from people that the nation is divided, and that politics has become so divisive as if there were some rule against aggression. That good ideas should be shelved if they hurt the feelings of other people, and that just isn’t the way things work or should ever work. Conflict leads to honesty and understanding. It is good to be respectful, but when we hear that someone wants to play nice, watch out, they are up to no good. There is always a trick to the method, an attempt to lower our defenses so that some enemy of ideas can sneak in and destroy their target unmolested, just as Obama did with John McCain in 2008. McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin, a woman that the left should have embraced was attacked in every way conceivable, viciously just because she was attached to a Republican ticket. That should have told everyone what kind of game was going on in a day when people weren’t so divisive because the expectation back then was that the political right would just take it while the political left had their way with everything.

So, the speeches yesterday by Trump were a long time and coming. I’ve waited a long time to hear them and was actually relieved that our system of government, as a republic, had lasted a serious attack by domestic enemies who obviously dislike what America was and intends to be. It is better to fight them legally than in the streets and door to door, but make no mistake about it, that continues to be on the table. Getting rid of Trump will not allow them to roll across America and take it over with some socialist view of the world. The niceties are over, the gullible John McCain types with John Kasich and Mitt Romney, those days are over and have been for around a decade now. Trump is the future and fighting back whether its them, or some of us who might have to step up but playing nice is not in the card deck. Winning is. The goal in politics is not to get along, its to represent the people who voted for you. And if that means punching people in the face metaphorically, or otherwise, then so be it.

Rich Hoffman

Why Democrats Hate Trump and Republicans in General: The choice between being a winner or a loser

It took a few days for it all to settle in, the debacle for the Democrats in Iowa, the terrible reaction to the State of the Union address President Trump gave this week, and the acquittal in the senate of the failed impeachment attempt of that same president, but the essence of the failures of the Democrat Party are deep and reflect an America most people despise, that of the loser. Its one thing to have compassion for people who are born losers, its quite another to allow ourselves to be controlled by them. We don’t want losers telling us what to do, and we certainly don’t want our lives limited by them. And what we saw this week by Democrats under great pressure, because the Republican Party under President Trump’s leadership is working very well, are members of the other party that just can’t compete, and they are fully aware of it. All their attempts to “equalize” the situation failed leaving them essentially to be a heaving mess of below the line thinking that nobody finds attractive. It reminded me why I simply don’t like Democrats, its not due to their race, their sex, or even their essential philosophy they say is steeped in compassion for other people, the planet, or even the less talented, its because their view of the world is rooted in negative victimization and nothing else, and that was never what becoming an American or staying an American was ever supposed to be about.

Plenty has been said by lots of smart people regarding the events of this past week, but nothing says incompetency like the Iowa caucuses. When people asked me about it, and these other events my reply was to compare it to a football game. Any quarterback from even a high school team can hit a running receiver in stride 30 yards down the field if they know where they will be at precisely the correct time that the ball is released from their hand, so long as they have 5 seconds or more to make the decision to throw. However, when a quarterback must play against a good defense and the line of the opposition is pressing down on that quarterback in 2.5 seconds or less, then even good quarterbacks will look like bumbling fools on the field of play. The Democrats are used to having all the time in the world to throw the ball, Republicans in the past have not pressed them out of some gentlemanly agreement to be equally deficient in performance. That is until President Trump came along from the private sector and started applying expectations to government—which is the source of their hatred of him. Suddenly there were expectations on Democrats that they just were not ready to deal with, and instead of trying to get better over the last three years, they have bet everything on getting rid of the expectation, symbolized in President Trump.

The media has gone along with the game allowing the Democrats to feel empowered as a political class to some level of competency so long as there was never any real measure. But Trump brought measures with him to Washington D.C., the same kind of measures that all private industry is judged by and the essence of it is that Democrats just weren’t ready. And when it was showtime in Iowa, it was an embarrassing mess. And when the State of the Union speech was given by President Trump, the Democrats could only sit there and listen as they spent all their time and energy being the opposition to Trump’s measures that they couldn’t share any joy in the long list of accomplishments that the President spoke about for over an hour straight. All they could do is sit there like the victims they have chosen to be, or to protest all together by not showing up, wearing white outfits to reflect the women’s suffrage movement from the turn of the last century, or do as Nancy Pelosi did at the end of the speech, rip it up because they had found themselves behind on all of it.

Then of course the next day, Republicans in the senate, except for the chameleon Mitt Romney, voted to acquit the President of the attempted coup by Democrats by quelling impeachment dashing any hopes of removing Trump from office before the election in November. That is what having a winning attitude will do for a person or a party, people tend to unite behind it and bask in its joy. But when your entire platform is about being a victim, that’s not at all an attractive prospect. People may see themselves as losers, but few people are happy staying that way and that’s all the Democrats are offering, which is why as a party, they are failing so epically. I hate to say it again, but I predicted all this many years ago and sure enough, its happing right on schedule. It’s not that Trump himself did it all, he was but the vehicle. It really comes down to personal beliefs, if they are above or below the line. You can’t build a great anything if the participants have a loser attitude. Trump was elected by an excited base because they recognize in Trump someone who wants to win. They do too, and so the Trump base was born. Its not hard to figure out, its something that evolved out of a natural trajectory of thought.

What you will find dear reader when talking to the “other side” whether its in an elevator at an apartment complex in Hyde Park which is full of anti-Trump socialites who know more about wine than they do politics, or the angry mother at Kroger shopping for weekend snacks for her family while running all three of her kids from one sporting event to another and doesn’t have time to know what’s going on in the outside world aside from what she sees on Yahoo’s front page of news, is that people who dislike Trump or Republicans in general are angry at their own lack of understanding about the world and their laziness to do the work in learning more so they could be more informed. They want to remain below the line people, people obsessed with what they can’t do, or what they can’t be. They want to relish in their victimhood because they just don’t have the ambition to take a positive position in their own lives on anything, and the Republicans of Trump make them feel the pressure to be more, and they hate it.

When people say they hate Trump what they are really saying is that they are too lazy to keep up and that they want to go back to the days where they didn’t feel so much pressure. Where they could give a little statement to the press about something and the media would run with it, but nobody really expected anybody to do anything about it. Democrats had likely the worst week they have had in years not because anything changed for them, but now there are measures to compare to, and that pressure is something they are not used to dealing with. It should be expected that people wanting to remain victims in life would be unhappy with the sudden growth of the country under the Trump presidency which expects good results about everything. Ripping up the SOTU speech the way Nancy Pelosi did was no different than all the attempts to impeach Trump, or to convict him just because he had expectations, they were too lazy to live with. Instead they kept their eyes on victimization when the Trump administration was bringing empowerment and before they could blink, the Democrats had lost their base almost completely. And now its too late for them to do anything about it.

Rich Hoffman

The Buckeye Firearms Association Endorses George Lang: Getting HB 178 passed

The best hope for a continuation of House Bill 178 getting passed in the Senate is to have George Lang there to help convince Mike DeWine to sign the bill, which modifies weapons law, permitting concealed carry without a license, and many other positive reforms. While many are still in debate about to what extent the Second Amendment can or should be regulated, the crazy leftist who shot up a night spot in Dayton has many conservatives weak-kneed and in need of some hand holding in the aftermath. Of the people running for the 4th District Senate Seat in the upcoming primary between George Lang, Candice Keller and Ding Dong Lee Wong, only George Lang has the clout and ability to help Mike DeWine get off the fence and back to the table to sign such a bill as HB 178. As we get closer to the primary in March, its important that voters understand the strategy and best options for the issues they are most passionate about, and in Ohio the gun rights concerns are a big topic, so a bit of context is worth our time and consideration.

Candice Keller has been asked by the GOP to step down for her comments made in August in reaction to mass shootings in general. I think many people who are logical understood that much of what she said is true, about fatherless homes, and drug users being the cause of many mass shootings, but what hurt her is that she brought up Nazi language and tousled into the gay rights debate in a way that was completely unnecessary, and it hurt the GOP brand, and her stance on Second Amendment rights, which she has been a strong supporter. But she also walked right into the poo poo by giving opponents of bills like HB 178 a face to throw darts at, and therefor a great excuse for Mike DeWine to move away from signing it. So long as Candice was a face of Second Amendment rights in Columbus then she is hurting all the politicians who support the bill but had the political skill to stay out of trouble when pressed by the media for reaction to such catastrophes like the shooting in Dayton last year. This is another reason that the media has given Candice so much prominent coverage—most of it negative, because it has forced this issue underground again and made her look like a front runner in the 4th Seat Senate race. But there is a better option, a much better one in George Lang who is every bit as much of a Second Amendment supporter, I think more so, however, he has the political skill to unite people around the bill in the Senate to the Governor that Candice just doesn’t have. And even if she did, it will take her years to rebuild her political clout within the GOP to be effective in those types of discussions.

The media would like to make the race for that senate seat look much tighter ahead of the primary with its secret hopes that enough people might vote for Candice so that she can be elected to that seat only to waste it on more political scandal, which would then effectively kill HB 178 for many years. However, running for a big office seat like those in the senate takes politicians who can raise money, advertise, and then not step in it when pushed by the media for comments, who can stay on target literally with their message under great stress. And to that point only George Lang has any remote possibility of being an effective senator in the 4th District. In the financial reports for the candidates that were due on Friday of last week, George Lang had cash reserves of well over $200,000 where Candice only had $12,000. So that leaves her only strategy to hope to stay relevant is to be a rock chucker and hope that she can get some headlines and free coverage to get her message out. But the problem is, the GOP wants her to resign, so any coverage she gets is always going to be negative.

Meanwhile the Buckeye Firearms Association has endorsed George Lang for Ohio’s 4th Senate district and by mid-February the NRA is going to give its support as well. George’s record and ability has the recognized strength to advance gun rights as a senator and that momentum should not be wasted by anybody who wants to see bills like HB 178 become law without becoming so watered down by passage that it would be virtually worthless. I would encourage Candice whom I think genuinely cares about gun rights to get behind George as the best option to represent the 4th District in this great debate. But more than that, George has the ability to put that needed arm around Governor DeWine’s neck to get the signature needed to make HB 178 a reality. Those are the kinds of political skills that go well beyond a simple vote in the chamber and how things really happen in any political body.

Candice due to her lack of political skill, not necessarily her fault—time will fix a lot of that—but she’s had to take some of these extreme positions on her Facebook page to try to cover her lack of connections to secure funding for a campaign. It’s a page out of the Trump playbook, but he was rich and didn’t need to raise money for advertising in the traditional way. New media can take a creative politician far, but not that far, and her lack of ability to gather a crowd that will give her thousands of dollars in donations is something that can’t be overcome with political theater alone. There needs to be other layers to the reach of a senator in any district and that range and donation ability is the kind of leverage that gets you a lunch date with the governor to even pitch the ideas outside of chamber protocol. Everything is about political clout and that is how after this 2020 election cycle HB 178 has the best chance to get back out into the voting cycle.

The NRA knows George is the best chance and so does the Buckeye Firearms Association, and others who are sure to follow. If the true goal is to get pro firearm legislation solidified in Ohio then George is the best option. If the goal is simply to get elected into the senate by any means possible and Candice has to be forced to show all these extreme cards to get the free publicity, then she can’t truly say that she wants HB 178 to pass, because she has no ability to help advance it as a senator or as a member of the House. The GOP is distancing themselves from her and I would say to Candice that her political future isn’t over, it needs repaired. Helping to get HP 178 to a senator who can help on the other side and secure sentiment with the governor would go a long way to repairing that relationship. And that would take more guts for all the right reasons than destroying everything from the inside out just to get a political win for the short run.

Rich Hoffman

George Lang Attracts Larger Crowd in West Chester than Democrat Presidential Candidates: The activism of media coverage and what they don’t tell you

Over the weekend I was able to catch up on some of the Democrat coverage of the presidential candidates while campaigning in Iowa head of their primary and it became very obvious that the Trump rally we had in West Chester last week where George Lang, Warren Davidson, Sheriff Jones and Steve Buckingham from the Trump campaign drew larger crowds. You can see those crowds in the following Twitter coverage from that event. I didn’t think about it much at the time because I was just enjoying the festivities. Everyone had a great time and it seemed to bring out the best in people Between the Butler County GOP and the Trump team they brought in Chick fil-a to feed everyone and the event was a top notch rally in so many respects. But the people coming didn’t know that and they showed up just to hear people just talking about Trump and in large numbers. Before the rally many of us talked to the press, Channel 5 came out and covered it, and so did WLW radio, but not many others. The response we received was that “you guys love Trump in Butler County, where’s the story?” After the rally once the pictures started going up from people who where there, it became obvious what the story was, the media didn’t want to cover more people coming to hear these guys talk than who are going to see the leading presidential candidate for the Democrats. For the proof of that I would like to point you dear reader to the following article by the Cincinnati Enquirer talking about an upcoming senate race between Kathy Wyenandt and Candice Keller for the 4th District of Ohio. Its very, very interesting.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/08/09/kathy-wyenandt-meet-democrat-who-wants-challenge-candice-keller-senate-race/1954587001/

I don’t like to point at media bias as some below the line reason for something, but to the average person who doesn’t know much about politics, the Cincinnati Enquirer attempted to paint the scandal ridden Republican whom the party is asking to step down from her office over several very misplaced comments to Kathy Wyenandt, the Democrat that they are trying to flip a seat to blue in the very conservative Butler County—a long held objective among the liberal news room directors and newspaper heads. Its not the news they care about, it’s the political objective which they quite openly these days advocate. The truth of that article was that there are two other candidates running for that Republican seat, George Lang and Ding Dong Wong. But the Enquirer left them out of the article and tried to paint the whole race for senate between the two women—one of which is as good as toast even within her own party.

That article was written back in August of 2019 while the news of Candace Keller’s latest scandal was hot on the press—so the intent was clear to the Enquirer’s readership, promote the Republican that is in trouble so people remember her name while promoting the Democrat woman who normally wouldn’t have a snow balls chance in Hell of making it to the freezer for preservation. Both must be artificially propped up to look like front runners in that upcoming election and the Cincinnati Enquirer was happy to play that role. So fast forward a few months to this rally for Trump in West Chester held on a night when he couldn’t even come, because he was in Iowa doing another rally ahead of the Democrats and their primary there drawing huge crowds as usual, and people showed up to see George Lang and Warren Davidson speak and the enthusiasm for those two was incredible. That was the news story that none of the outlets wanted to cover because it goes against their desires for the upcoming election for which they are desperate to shape the story.

The rally was held in very large space that none of us thought we’d come close to filling, yet the pit in front of the stage was at least double any event that Joe Biden was able to attract over the week leading up to the primary. If the news wanted to truly report the news, they’d be interested in that little fact. Instead however of reporting how many people in Butler County and specifically West Chester were interested in attending a rally where these local politicians were speaking, one of them being the frontrunner in that 4th Senate Seat race, they would have at least covered it from that perspective. “West Chester rally for local GOP candidates outdraw Democrats for presidential candidates in Iowa.” Because that was the truth of the matter. I mentioned that observation to a few people while at that rally but it wasn’t until later and listing to the speech by Sheriff Jones where he had the crowd chanting “USA, USA, USA” that it became apparent just how many people were there.

I think based on what I saw that George Lang could draw a bigger crowd within his district than any of the presidential candidates who are leading in the polls could anywhere in the country. There is more enthusiasm for George from the base of Republicans who support him than there are for any Democrat. I might have thought that before that West Chester rally, but after, there is no question. Knowing that Trump wasn’t going to be at that rally, people showed up to hear what they considered the next best thing, George Lang and Warren Davidson speak to an excited audience. And the Cincinnati Enquirer skipped out on the opportunity to cover it because they didn’t like the story. It went against their activism of trying to paint the disgraced Candace Keller as the leader who would go against the Democrat in Butler County. What they were really up to was attempting to convince the un-informed masses to clear the deck chairs for a conversion of a deep red district into a blue one by removing the biggest red piece in the puzzle from the board all together. And if they had covered the West Chester rally, it would undo the way they have poised the story to continue into the primary in March.

The Journal in Hamilton isn’t any different. The activism on their part is rampant as well, it’s the reason that all these newspapers have made themselves irrelevant. The news happens faster than they can report it, they have a bias that does not reflect the views of their readership, and they are uninteresting. I used to contribute many articles to the Western Star when I lived in Warren County for a number of years. Back then, it was the news of record locally. But now its out of business because when people want to read a news story about these things, they just open up their phone and are free to get whatever information they want. The Enquirer and The Journal never have properly adapted. If it wasn’t for the people over 60 years of age, they’d be out of business right now. All newspapers are headed over the cliff and this is the reason. But blogs like this one report these events and its much easier for a consumer of information to click here and retrieve the information months from now than it is to get a little 400 word article that is all about political activism on their part, into the mind of a busy consumer. So there you have it, since they didn’t report what a great event the West Chester rally was, now you can see it for yourself and also know that Candace Keller is not the face of the primary election, she’s the one that Republicans are trying to get out of the way due to her radicalized comments. And that is the truth of the matter that the Enquirer tried to promote in favor of their handpicked stooge, Kathy Wyenandt.

Rich Hoffman

Ding Dong Lee Wong: Prostitutes, collusion, and Chinese loyalty–you can go “wrong with Wong”

I’ve seen it a few times myself while dining at the very good Sushi Monk in West Chester, the liberal trustee Lee Wong posing as a Republican will knock at the back door if he finds the door is locked and come in to the restaurant making sure everyone knows that he’s friends with the owners and has special privileges. I’ve often wondered about the revelation that Lee has spent time in Hamilton’s East Avenue “talking” to prostitutes and why he would even do such a thing. But when pressed, Lee will always cite his military service then try to use it to get the upper hand on whomever he is speaking with as if that puts the entire issue to rest. But you can always tell a lot about a person in how they behave in public and his need to bum free meals off restaurant owners working hard to make a living, and coming to the back door to let everyone know that he’s special—or wants people to think he is—says everything you need to know about Ding Dong Lee Wong.

Lee is a natural moocher off the world around him. He looms in the background on everything that happens never taking the lead on anything. He votes as a trustee and has enjoyed riding on the coat tails of the great management that occurred in West Chester with trustees Mark Welch and George Lang formally, and currently Ann Becker. But he has done little himself to do anything to contribute instead looms in the background and mooches off every situation more as a complainer about fairness and advocating constantly for the rights of the Chinese that he baffles people who supposedly know him best. He’s friendly, because he has to be. He has nothing else to offer, certainly not leadership. And he is known as an advocate for policies that are very much related to Democrats rather than for Republicans. He is running as a Republican, but that is only because he knows there is no other path to an elected seat in Butler County than to put on the mask. But legislatively, he votes to the left, and sometimes to the far left. And if you happen to be in Sushi Monk on a night where he walks down from his house which is right behind the restaurant in Beckett Ridge, his manner of social content is obvious even to a political novice.

I am a big fan of Sushi Monk, its ran by nice people who are very good at what they do. What are they supposed to do when a trustee tries to befriend them in the hopes of getting a free meal? They aren’t dumb, they have been locking that back door so Lee has been walking around to the front where everyone else has to come in. But you can feel the arrogance from Lee wherever he is, a sense of entitlement that comes from people who are natural looters off the world around them. And without question that is Lee’s interest in the Ohio Senate seat for the 4th District. Lee will walk around the neighborhoods and shake hands, but what he wants is an easy seat in Columbus that makes him look like a big man, and give him more opportunities for more free meals as a big shot living off the efforts of others.

To validate what I’m saying just watch the countless videos published on the West Chester trustee meetings, he has stood in opposition to just about everything logical that either George or Mark has proposed and has stood in direct opposition with them behaving exactly as a Democrat would. The idea of someone like him even voting in the senate is a terrifying concept. If people think Mitt Romney is bad at the federal level, Lee isn’t even trying to hide it. Not that I think he will come anywhere close to being elected, but there are always some voters who don’t know the candidates who see Lee’s name on a ballot and might think “what the heck, what is there to lose?” Well, let me tell you, Ding Dong Wong is a long way from the right choice. You can go wrong, with Wong.

Knowing a Lee enough I think the only reason he wants the Senate job is for the opportunity at free meals and access to social spots he might not have otherwise. Before it was even Christmas he started putting out the signs for the March primary in his little eco car that no real conservative would be caught dead in, and hoped to get his name out to enough people to surprise the election results. Knowing him and how much he despises George Lang, I’m sure he has fantasies of upsetting him in the primary with a split vote. He dislikes Lang because he’s a pro-business capitalist and Lee is a Chinese anti-Trump sympathizer. He came to a recent Trump rally held in West Chester because he had to, but he has made lots of anti-Trump comments in his years as a trustee that are recorded on those videos to reveal how he really feels. And that is what’s really scary about someone like Ding Dong Wong, they are not what they say they are, but are something other

.

Every time I see Lee in different places I wonder about why he was on East Avenue asking known prostitutes if they were working. I have lived in the area for most of my life and I’m not even sure where East Avenue is. Why would Lee even be there asking such questions? The prostitute who reported him was Robin McDaniel who told Ding Dong Wong “no” because she thought it might be a sting. Lee has denied the allegation, but McDaniel didn’t have any reason to lie about it. Out of all the people in the world, she mentioned Ding Dong, and nobody else. When I think of it the situation sounds just like how Wong came in the back door at Sushi Monk, always a little sneaky, always a little empowered, hiding some dark personality of communist sentiment behind a mask of military service. A spiteful bootlicker as a trustee who takes some grand pleasure at pretending to be a Republican so he can hold office and ruin the plans of real Republicans like George Lang and Mark Welch. It is people like Ding Dong Wong who have always given politics a bad name, and like most Democrats do, they point at everyone else as the villains when it is they patrolling East Avenue looking for “working girls” and sneaking in the back doors of restaurants so that everyone can see that they are privileged because they have power.

I may not think these things about Ding Dong Wong if he didn’t get caught trying to funnel West Chester money into a sidewalk deal of Eagleridge Drive and Eaglet. In that deal Lee colluded with a neighbor of his, a Mr. Cho, to have a crosswalk built at taxpayer expense and he had a second vote for the motion in the long-time liberal Cathy Stoker. It was a simple matter of $4,690.00 dollars to put in the crosswalk, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that Lee has a history of using his office to make his friends happy, and he uses that happiness to gain benefits for himself. He is more in love with the power of an office than in the sacrifice of doing the work. And when questioned he always hides behind a military record that a lot of people have, yet he thinks of it as an immunity card. I think of Ding Dong Lee Wong as one of the most corrupt politicians running for any office in Ohio. And if voters aren’t careful, they’ll wake up one night to a ding dong at their back door, and what they’ll find there is Lee Wong singing a song of benefits for office access, and they’ll find themselves in a very uncomfortable position.

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Rich Hoffman

The Problem with Candice Keller: It takes more than throwing rocks to be a good senator

In a bizarre way, everything about Candice Keller comes across as presented by Ganga Tarot in the below video—victimized, always on the outside looking in, and that conspiracy is the only answer to the future. It’s not that what Keller says about things is the problem. Everyone understands how freedom of speech these days is used to control thought and belief, so I’d be the last to say she shouldn’t have said this, or she shouldn’t have said that, and perhaps about many things she is right. But there is a difference between being a one trick pony and someone like Trump who can say similar things and escape the scrutiny of judgment untouched by scandal, and that difference follows Candice around like a ball and chain. She hopes that in the end she can use her woman status to separate herself from her rivals for the Senate in Ohio’s 4th seat, but at a time just ahead of the primary vote in March, her party has rebuked her at every level. And her response has been to resort to something more akin to the #metoo movement where her only way forward is to present herself as an undercard with a victimized status of womanhood.

The Republican Party has gathered behind the trusted leadership of George Lang for that very important seat. Looking at the Trump election for reference, the fighting among the party was vicious right up to the convention so its not uncommon for people who should be working together within the party to still be fighting this close to an important election as this primary in March. But Candice should see how the stars are lining up and be thinking of the day after instead of just trying to get a few votes by appealing to voter’s own sense of victimization. There is nothing more pathetic than such a one trick pony throwing rocks with nothing else to contribute who fails to understand that the nature of the game is to get the Party behind you, not asking you to resign. Trump’s campaign which Candice is trying to appeal to, understood that he had to unite the party by the convention, and in relation to her campaign that deadline has already passed. As a senator Candice would be completely ineffective when all she’s known for is a rock thrower screaming victimization. That makes her good points in standing for Second Amendment rights, and on abortion worthless because she has shown that she has no other means to bring people behind her legislation than to retreat behind victimization status.

I’ll be the last to say that punching back and hitting hard is beneath the needs of Party politics. However, there need to be other weapons in the holster, such as charm, team building experience, and the ability to rally people behind your cause. You have to understand the name of the game, and in politics, the reason there is a two party system, like it or not, is to force representatives to work with people of many different beliefs and get them to back an idea you propose. It doesn’t mean you have to compromise on everything, but you do have to have the skill to bend people to your will through many other methods besides just insulting them. There is a time and a place for fighting, but you have to know better when and where those times are, and just a few weeks ahead of the primary with Republicans refusing to get behind her in an established way, she is doing more damage to herself and the future she could be a part of by digging a deeper hole. My friendly advice to her would be to not resign, but to step aside quietly in this senate race and get behind George. Then live to fight another day because I see a lot of use for her contributions. But not right now after some of the devastating public relations she has had. If she continues to attack the GOP as unfair, how can she ever rally them behind her in the future, or on some new bill she proposes in the House? She must think of the long game, not the immediate need she has to save some face amidst controversy.

I make no mistake about it, that I’m for George Lang, and I am for many, many reasons. Mostly that I know him very well and for a long time, and I know he has all the skills I just mentioned. He has the needed political range and he can do well in the world by keeping things mostly above the line, and positive, which is a key for the position of senate. But more than that, even under intense pressure he has never found himself in a situation that Candace has. He’s been a frontrunner for most of his political career so its not a matter of playing it safe and not saying the wrong things at the wrong times, its just political skill. You must be savvy enough to raise money, be true to your base, and find ways to get people to work with you and not lose your soul along the way. George has done all that and more and he has had Party support. My worry is that Candice has things to offer the Republican Party and I don’t want to see her ruined after this primary election. I’d like to see her live another day and to develop her abilities beyond the one trick pony status.

It’s not enough to be a Trump supporter in Ohio and to appeal to the base. There are few politicians in Ohio, especially someone like George Lang who is considered to be a mainstream politician who is more for Trump. I remember when the entire Republican Party was supporting John Kasich and thought of Trump as a joke. George was with Trump from the very early moments. When Trump came to the Savannah Center in West Chester in the spring of 2016, well ahead of the Republican Convention in Cleveland, it was not yet popular to support Trump but George Lang was sitting right next to me in the VIP section and next to him was Margaret Conditt of the then 52nd district House seat. Sheriff Jones was there too, but not many others. Many of the VIP seats were empty and we let some lucky people come up out of the line to get a prime seat in that tight venue. I didn’t see Candice there, maybe she was in line somewhere, but the point is George has been with Trump from the beginning, and to have such a supporter in the Senate would be a great thing for Trump in Ohio and his supporters which Lang is an unquestionable advocate of the White House’s policies.

Personally, I’d like to see Candice get back into the good graces of the Republican Party as a contributor that people aren’t running from. The party could use her help, and she could use some advice in developing more tricks than just attaching herself to the Trump agenda. She needs to do more than throw rocks. She needs to do all that and a whole lot more. She needs to build bridges and get endorsements because that is attached directly to fundraising, and nobody wants a senator in the Ohio statehouse that is just a radical nobody will line up to hear speak. We had an event in West Chester and people did line up to see George Lang, a lot of people, and again, Candice wasn’t there, and she should have been. Even the liberal Lee Wong was there, although I think he thought it was the back door to Sushi Monk and was hoping for a free meal. Candice can’t hope to win an important seat in Ohio without having the Party with her, especially this close to the election. It’s the day after the primary that I’m worried about for Candice. Her place in the Republican Party needs to be much healthier not just for the benefit of all Republicans in Ohio, but for the people who need her to make good votes, put forth good bills that the governor can sign because Party unity is behind the effort, and people are willing to donate to the expensive act of campaign management. I want a future for Candice Keller, not a bottomless pit. But ultimately, its up to her to listen.

Rich Hoffman

Why EdChoice is so Beneficial: Removing Parkinson’s Law from the public education debate in Ohio

I’ve been watching and listening to the whole debate about EdChoice in Ohio with great interest. Of course, the Ohio Senate had to vote to delay the implementation of Ed Choice which was scheduled to take effect the day of this writing, until April 1st 2020. The public schools in particular have responded terribly to it, including the school in my own district which I’ve written a lot about, Lakota. It has been nothing short of embarrassing to listen to Lakota’s superintendent complain about the funding model that is coming whether they like it or not and move the entire district into a victimized status so quickly on the issue. The report back from some financial news from Lakota has not been good and they are floating the idea for another levy which would be a terrible, anti-growth tax increase just to supplement their mismanaged spending habits, so the news was bad enough. This EdChoice debate has only made things worse. Dealing with professional educators to me is the worst experience that there is in professional politics because they are so entitled and unrealistic about what they think their financial requirements should be, so we’ll deal with some of that here, and in the coming months. Listening to politicians attempt to put their minds around what to do about EdChoice, which is simply a grading system that inspires the financial contributions of the state to follow the student of that failing school to the school of their choice. This of course leaves variability in public school budgets for money they have been used to getting now going to an unpredictable number of students who may decide to go somewhere else with that precious state money.

I listened to Bill Cunningham and Representative Bill Seitz talk about this EdChoice problem on WLW and every word made me cringe. Here were two people who call themselves rock ribbed Republicans missing the whole point of the public education debate. Now, my history with these two is that they are on the wrong side of many issues. They mean well like a lot of people do, but their perspective has been tainted by years of acceptance of a system initiated by people like John Dewey during an experimentation of many things during the progressive era at the turn of the last century and like many have accepted that that’s just the way things are and the way they will always be. Money goes to the school from the state to teach children living in that district not just skills for a future job, but to turn them into democratic citizens with an emphasis on social change. In hindsight this has been a complete disaster, look at the products of the schools, which many of us are. People aren’t very smart, and they don’t set their sights very high in life. Dewey’s mistake was in attempting to steer society away from republic representation and more toward democratic majority rule, which we all know now is a disaster at the epistemological level.

For the two Bills talking on WLW about EdChoice, they are both people in their 60s and 70s now, to them public school is about sports programs, learning to follow orders so that kids learn to live in a civil society, and in establishing much needed social connections with peers. Way back, many decades ago when my wife and I pulled our kids out of public schools for a year to teach them at home because the results were just so disappointing we had family members literally melt under the news because they were afraid my kids would turn into complete social outcasts, because they believed after so many years of this Dewey philosophy that the goal of public schools was to establish these mental applications. Of course, those sentiments were completely fear based, just as about everything in public education is. We have learned to just accept the failure that is evident because that’s always the way we have done things. People like the “Bills” on WLW enjoy the idea that their public school is the holder of real-estate value, and that Friday Night Lights football in the fall months of every year make for great conversation. But it was flawed from the beginning and never was poised to do what Dewey wanted because his fundamental problem was in thinking that the state as a central authority should be in charge. It was a progressive experiment, but not a very “Republican” thing to do.

Schools like Lakota and many others who are complaining about the insecurity in their funding model should be looking at the situation like any business would instead of some free-loader sitting in a bird nest of a rich district and opening their mouths for tax money to flow in. They should be working to be the best school with the best options in a free market society. No matter what the report card states in giving families the choice of a school they’d like to go to, Lakota should feel confident that kids would want to go to their school for all the reasons that anybody would, to get a good education, be near a good sports program, or just to be around other students who aren’t problems coming from broken families. Students should have a choice and if Lakota wants those students, they should have to work to attract them.

The most tragic thing I have noticed, looking at the situation professionally, is that all public schools have become addicted to the natural state of Parkinson’s Law that has contaminated their budgeting structures. Everyone who has been involved professionally in process improvements understands that Parkinson’s Law is an adage that states “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” meaning that a work schedule blankly stated will allow a worker to fill that time allotment from beginning to end by the nature of human interaction. If you give someone an hour to do a 5-minute job, they’ll take the whole hour. Process improvement demands to understand how long it actually takes to do a job, and to work out the tendencies of Parkinson’s Law to misstate labor needs. Well, that same tendency is at the center of the public education debate all across the country, and is why the EdChoice trend is so badly needed. Budgets have been filled to their maximum to accommodate whatever the state provides and to what extent local school district tax payers will put up with in increased levies driven by labor unions looking to use Parkinson’s Law to attach need to student performance by using the chaos of money going to the schools, not the student, to keep the process centrally controlled and with a false understanding of what education per student should cost, leaving the real state funding model perpetually broken, which is just how the labor unions and lazy superintendents like it.

Clearly what we have had hasn’t worked. Education needs reformed and the centralized aspects of it need to be removed. Free market solutions are the only way to improve schools and the students that come from them. People should have the option to vote with their feet putting schools into the same competitive situation that every restaurant, shopping complex and entertainment destination must do, compete for the dollars available. Education is not so sacred to not be attached to competitive market conditions, end of story. A quick look at our students declares that trying something new wouldn’t hurt, because we couldn’t do worse. And ultimately that is the direction of education anyway, just as the trends of the world are declaring. People want more choices in life, not less, and it’s a matter of time anyway where money for education shouldn’t even come from the state. But while it does, it should go to the students so they can vote with their feet. Not to hold them to a school that doesn’t feel it has to earn their business. If Lakota is such a great school, or any government school for that matter, don’t tell us how good you are. Make yourself one of those schools that people want to go to. Make it so that you are so crowded that you must turn people away, which only increases the value of the product. Sure, it makes the current way that schools do business chaotic, it forces them to understand how much Parkinson’s Law is in their processes. It forces the teacher unions to think differently for sure. But that is their problem, not ours. And the state will never know how much it should spend on students so long as Parkinson’s Law is contaminating their assumptions. That is the key to this whole discussion and we’re going to have it now or in a few years, but the way things have been are not the way things are going to be. The old Dewey model was poised from the outset to fail. But these days, life happens too fast and there is just too much to learn to attempt to squeeze everything into the traditional classroom setting that we have been attempting to do. The times and this new economy are forcing us to change, so let’s get at it and solve this problem once and for all by looking at the entire concept differently.

Rich Hoffman

George Lang: The Magnificent future Senator of Ohio

While the President of the United States was in Iowa getting in front of the Democrat primaries there, there was a rally in West Chester that had more people at it than the averages of all the Democrat presidential candidates have at any of their rallies. Joe Biden would have considered himself lucky to have so many people gather anywhere he is at, let alone people coming to gather in his honor even though he wasn’t even there. Yet that was what happened with Trump, the supporters of Butler County were willing to wait in line and give respect to the President even when he’s 500 miles away in a completely different state. And that includes politicians like George Lang who is currently a member of the Ohio House of Representatives running for the senate. George Lang has supported Donald Trump well before the Republican primaries of 2016 even had their first vote, so he certainly wasn’t going to miss a rally for the President taking place in his home district even while the House was locked in a procedural stalemate. Lang persuaded leadership to let him leave the chamber and drive from Columbus to West Chester in time to give this very energized speech. After the event was over, George headed back to Columbus to conclude his work with the House and it is people like this who have emerged in such a positive way in American politics with Trump leading the way in the White House.

George Lang has always been magnificent and full of abundant energy. However, he has never had the opportunity to be so effective as he has since Donald Trump has been elected. In the speech he gave at the Trump rally he was able to distinguish a bit why he was elected to the House and is such a front runner in the Senate, he used to be a trustee in West Chester which thrived under his leadership. West Chester under Lang’s pro-business policies has thrived into a wonderland of business, entertainment, and a residential paradise, one of the truly best places to live in all of America, and therefor the world. Given the energy he has for whatever job he plunges himself into, George Lang excels and everyone he touches benefits. In that way he is truly magnificent. He understands that its not government that gives people opportunity, but that it’s the job of the politician to get government out of the way of progress as much as possible so that the individual can think, create, and bring forth the wonders of their imaginations.

During Lang’s speech he spoke about the timeline of progress stating that society might have had many new inventions much sooner in life than with government always standing in the way. Of course he’s speaking about the very important journey from Aristotle to the Founding Fathers and how human intelligence had evolved away from kingship to the wonders of a Thomas Edison inventing new things every couple of days at the end of the 19th century. Not everyone is so inclined to be such a contributor, but any productive society wants to set up the conditions for uniqueness to spring forward and to thrive under the protection of a stable society. If government has a job it is to create that stability, but certainly not to micromanage people into bureaucratic compliance to out of touch politicians. George Lang has always understood what the true role of government should be and West Chester has thrived under his leadership and divine energy.

That same energy was on full display at the Trump rally with the events of his very busy day, starting out early with House business and an important vote to end at the Trump rally, only to finish off back in Columbus to resume business without complaint or any measure of apathy. George Lang is a tireless warrior for the innovative, the creative, and the diligent business leaders not just wanting to make money for their companies and employees, but to extend their personal risk into operations of a chance that wouldn’t be possible under any other form of government but the supporter who seeks to remove regulation and barriers giving more time and investment to new business creation. With that kind of approach West Chester has created a climate where new business investment has been willing to give new birth to strip malls like the ones that Kroger moves out of to make new, magnificent Marketplace stores only to leave behind shells of smaller buildings now vacant, like a crab leaving behind a smaller shell only to take on the form of a larger creature. In West Chester most of the time new business concepts move into those smaller shells to take advantage of the very friendly business climate, such as The Web near Lakota East, and The Antique Mall that moved into the old Biggs location. Other communities struggle to keep their real estate fresh and exciting, but due to Lang’s very friendly pro-business environment and his ability to help build the next generation of trustees in West Chester, this land of economic paradise continues to grow in positive ways, under the invisible hand of innovation and sheer creativity free of too much government intervention.

Many of us aren’t trained to think in such a way, that better results come from less government. Our education institutions teach us the opposite, but history has shown that the true path is the one that George Lang understands, less is more and unbridled energy is contagious. That is what separates Lang from the pack of ankle biters who constantly are trying to peck at him into slowing down long enough for them to catch up. But Lang is a tireless warrior of intellect and passion. The candidates running against him for the upcoming primary are either rock throwers who have no other pages in their playbook or they are social butterflies who think they can shake hands with enough people to get a free lunch. They are not at the caliber of George Lang and they are well aware of it. You didn’t see them speaking at a Trump rally, and you certainly don’t see them with backstage pictures with President Trump, essentially because like minds gravitate toward each other and George Lang and Donald Trump are essentially likeminded personalities who occasionally find each other in the chaos of government driven conformity as change agents seeking to reverse that trend. Trump has now been doing on a national scale what George Lang has been doing for decades in West Chester, promoting a pro-business climate, going against the bureaucrat class who simply want to tie everyone’s hands with more unthoughtful regulation, and inspiring individuals to take leadership positions in their own lives instead of waiting for someone who never comes to provide it for them. Empowerment is the theme of this new age of politics and like Donald Trump, George Lang is one of the original creators.

So for more reasons than just to give a speech, George Lang rushed to West Chester to be with fellow Trump supporters to rally for tomorrow’s new opportunities and to cast a wide net of optimism on the future itself. With all the hope for what’s best about people, George Lang enjoys empowering people to do what’s best for them, which then becomes what’s best for their community decided by market need, not some stuffy regulator afraid of their own shadows and in essence, that is a remarkable opportunity we all have, to have people like George Lang as options on a voter card, and Donald Trump who with such boyish optimism can put the world on their backs and carry them over mountains of red tape to a land of opportunity that was always there, only we could not see it for the mess presented to us. That is why George is so magnificent, its because he has never learned to fail, never accepted less than his dreams, and is in spite of many barriers given to him in his own life never yielded to them. And the result is this fantastic man who is willing to give to everyone who can vote for him the opportunities for unlimited fulfilment if only they would dare enough to say yes to it.

Rich Hoffman