Category: Arizona

Cash Out Your 401K Plans While You Still Can: The scam of Stakeholder Capitalism

I think it’s the biggest scam in the history of the world, even a bigger scam than Covid was, which was a virus made in a Wuhan lab and released by China. Stakeholder Capitalism has been buzzing around for a few years now, and it’s a creation from the Desecrators of Davos, the World Economic Forum guys. We haven’t cared much about it because it was always kind of a foreign thing from “over there” in dirty old aristocratic Europe. But after the election take-over of 2020, where many conspired to get President Trump out of office, the imposition of Stakeholder Capitalism is very much a part of the Biden agenda. It’s a progressive trick meant to do a lot of things. Not only is it just a new way to change the name of Marxism in our culture to something that people might be more willing to accept because it has the looted word “capitalism” in it, but it has a much more sinister intention. One that will impact each and every one of us with a 401K plan. I’ve been watching this bubble building for a long time, and what I’m about to say will be painful. But at the very least, I would recommend you pull your money out of all 401K plans currently managed by Vanguard, BlackRock, Blackstone, or State Street, because they are all arms of the Desecrators of Davos Klaus Schwab gang. After their meeting this year, they are planning to go full-court press with this Stakeholder Capitalism concept and to replace the way we measure money around the world with this scam they have come up with to hide their vast crimes against humanity.  

If you are a CEO, one of the scariest parts of your job is to stand before shareholders and explain what you have done to increase a company’s profits and raise its stock portfolio. Of course, socialists and communists around the world hate this method; they hate the idea of measurements of value. That’s why they are trying to prepare us to have a no-value culture where we don’t judge anything. They see applying value as bad because their desire in life is to be lowlife slugs hiding always in the shadows. And they don’t want to be judged as lowlifes, but as equal to everyone else. So they have consistently attacked the basic premise of Adam Smith capitalism, which built the United States’ great economy. From the time they came to America from Europe, they have been trying to get us to accept their European socialism from Marx as a new way of measuring economic activity. This Stakeholder Capitalism idea is just the latest means of doing that. It proposes that we replace measuring value with what it is now as a monetary measure to replace it with social value. An ESG system, where value is placed on environmental concerns, social responsibility as defined by political progressives, and how an organization and individuals govern everything based on those ideas. This is how so many CEOs have become trapped into accepting woke thoughts into their companies. Many companies are in a kind of shareholder bubble where their stock price is inflated based on growth, which has become stagnant. This is especially true after Covid, where the social order of everything has been disrupted. CEOs have been quick to adopt woke politics even if they disagree with them politically because ESG scores get them off the hook if society starts changing what they consider value to be. If they no longer have to worry about profits and instead can worry about putting purple-haired losers on their board of directors, then maybe they can survive as a CEO. 

But it’s actually worse than all that, and Klaus Schwab, Larry Fink, and many others know what they have done. Just ask Jerome Powell at the Fed about the pinch he’s in, where there is over $8.5 trillion on the Fed’s balance sheet, made that way by quantitative easing. A Federal Reserve that Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke essentially applied Keynesian economics to since the crash of 2008 and allowed Fink and others to buy up fake assets created by the Fed policy of printing endless amounts of money, then selling those assets to all of us, so they could use that power to buy up stock in most major companies, to impose ESG scores on them to make this whole stakeholder capitalism idea stick before its too late. And by too late, that’s where that +30,000 the stock market is currently at busts because it’s all based on inflated value directly from the Federal Reserve and exploited by the Desecrators of Davos, for which Larry Fink sits on the Board of Trustees, since 2019. The game is to change the way we measure value in the world before people find out about it so that when that bubble does burst, shareholders won’t be upset because they’ll be stakeholders by that time. Their value will be changed to this new way of looking at the world. 

This is precisely why I wrote my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. I saw this trend negatively through the Lean Manufacturing movement, where everything was about nature as the East considers it. “Be like nature, and you’ll have more efficient manufacturing plants.” I have had major CEOs ask me about this stuff as they are perplexed about what to do about it. “Are we trying to make money, or are we supposed to be at one with nature. Nature doesn’t care about money.” That’s why I wrote my book, to help people like that understand what’s going on and how these Desecrators of Davos types are just the latest snake oil salesmen. They have looted our cash, spent it into oblivion with Keynesian economic theories, now they have these liberal Modern Monetary Theory ideas of endless money supply that has no value in itself attached to some gold standard. Because society’s values won’t be possessive, they’ll be social, how accepting we are of gay rights or cultural diversity. Or how many solar panels we have on the roof of our factories. And they need us to accept this snake oil before we figure out that we’ve been ripped off, that our 401K plans are actually worthless. The entire reason the stock market jumped in value so much over the last five years or so was not because of Trump. I want to say it was, but obviously, more is going on. It was all inflated money allowing money managers to buy up so much corporate stock, to get control of fossil fuel companies, entertainment companies, everything. And to get that control, the goal was to change how all companies measure value. To replace classic capitalism and to replace it with this Marxist idea of stakeholder capitalism.  In the end, it will fail, but everyone needs to understand what the problem is. The Desecrators of Davos want a one-world currency that they control. They want a one-world government which they will manage. They want to control all human behavior with ESG scores, and they have been planning it for decades. However, as I say in my book, the value of something is determined by the people playing the games of life. I like to use poker metaphors.   A poker chip is just a piece of plastic if you carry it around in your pocket. But while playing the poker game, it represents actual money and decides who wins and loses the game. Ultimately, that will always be the case; this stakeholder capitalism concept is from lazy Marxist types who don’t want to compete in the world and wish things were different for them. So they would rather destroy the game rather than play it. But fortunately for all of us,

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

A Trip to the Zoo: The crimes the Fed committed with BlackRock

I have nothing against Larry Fink. I also don’t have anything against snakes, wolves, and other predatory creatures. And it was at a recent trip to the zoo with my wife, two daughters and all my grandchildren on an unusually pleasant day in the winter of 2022 where I was thinking about these things, and specifically Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock. I was thinking about the progressive attack by them and their ESG scores which is undermining the entire political system of America. Some of the exhibits at the zoo were in low light for the benefit of the animals, and some of the best-camouflaged ones were hard to see. For instance, some of the snakes were right in front of our faces but blended into their environment so well they were hard to see even just a few feet away. I had a nice time seeing some of the dangerous animals with the kids and who could be the first to spot them. We had a nice day at the zoo. Still, it was more than beneficial for me to understand a great menace to American culture and understand the author of much of the desecration that has been happening to us through woke culture. And ultimately, what food fed those beasts. When people ask where the problems of our world start, it’s hard for them to see, but what I’m going to report here is something that should make it easier to understand. 

Larry Fink is not my kind of guy; he voted for Hillary Clinton. He’s a Democrat. He’s an old flower child from southern California and a political science major in college. He always wanted a career in politics, even as a young man. He ended up working on Wall Street, and he had some big hits on the upstream. It took several years, but eventually, he founded BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, and has amassed a tremendous amount of power because of it. Larry and I are political opposites. While he votes for Democrats, I vote for conservative Republicans. I have no reason to be angry at Larry for those things. But I do knowing what I do about his relationship with the Federal Reserve and what he has done with the money. Of course, other money management firms have also benefited from this relationship with the Fed. But Larry is undoubtedly the cutting edge. When the housing collapse occurred in 2008 after Larry had just recently lost $100 million for investors, the Fed, led at the time by Ben Bernanke, called him up to clean things up, which BlackRock did. It bought up all the bad debt and turned it into assets that saved much of the industry, and Larry was becoming known as the man with the Midas touch. That federal relationship would then continue for the next decade, making BlackRock climb in power and wealth to now over 10 trillion dollars in managed assets. 

It’s not hard to figure out what happened. After the 2008 financial meltdown, the Fed had a balance sheet of $900 billion. During ZIRP (zero interest rate policy), that number went to 4.5 trillion through quantitative easing, which took place from 2010 to around 2019. Then, after Covid in 2020, the balance sheet went up to 8 trillion, creating a massive asset bubble, which directly built up BlackRock’s wealth. You can almost chart the growth rate of BlackRock directly to the quantitative easing that the Fed was pumping into the economy over that period. BlackRock had direct government contracts attached to the Fed, which has now given them that direct wealth Larry Fink uses to impose woke policies on American CEOs through ESG scores as he was put on the Board of Trustees at the World Economic Forum, the Party of Davos in 2019. The problem with all this is that Larry Fink is not some genius who could make money happen out of thin air. BlackRock was built with a public/private partnership with the Federal Reserve through experimental financing, and that inflated asset bubble wealth that Larry Fink has used to lure in many stock buys of major American corporations, and to manage many private 401K accounts tying most of us in some indirect way to a massive evil that leads straight to the doorstep of the Party of Davos, is being used to bypass our political system altogether to impose on America climate change and other progressive platform positions that are totally unacceptable.

Like the snakes at the zoo, it was hard to see what Larry Fink was up to. But like some unsuspecting varment, many have been eaten by the snakes of Davos, for which Larry Fink is just one. This isn’t a conspiracy theory of the mysterious Illuminati or some other cabal of secret societies. No, this is just out in the open, hidden in plain sight. Many people don’t like to think about finances or politics, so understanding this incestuous relationship that the Fed has with Wall Street and progressive politics has been just another way to camouflage the snakes right in front of our faces, and they think they are so well hidden that we won’t ever see them. But we do see them; some of us do. And now that we know the game they are playing, we have a lot of reasons not to like Larry Fink. If it’s my vote against his, we could consider fair elections in a healthy republic. But when Larry uses the government to get artificial power and then uses that power to bypass our election system, to impose on society woke politics and climate change which we may or may not agree with, a line of disaster and much anger has been crossed. This is corruption that is beyond reasonable. And our own government has helped camouflage this behavior using our money and value to do it. Only to have that money and value used against us as a weapon. And that’s not OK. That goes quite a bit beyond reasonable political theater, but to a hydra of corruption, that is everything that President Jackson initially warned America about during his administration. 

I was thinking about all this that day and many other days since the start of 2010. I have read more than 30 books about these issues, some from the good guys, some from the bad guys, since November of 2021. After watching all the Davos coverage from 2022 in late January, it all came together for me. A few weeks later, I found myself at the zoo with my family thinking about snakes and other predatory animals and the Party of Davos. Snakes just the same, only with different kinds of skin and manner. But they all feed off the overly trusting and unsuspecting, using their camouflage to strike. The real crime here isn’t so much in Larry Fink. He’s just a snake doing what snakes do; they eat and feed off the lives of others. No, the real crime here is the Federal Reserve itself. If good people were in charge of the Fed, much of this massive corruption could have been managed. But, the truth is, we can’t always know that the 12 members of the Fed have their minds about them in the right way. Suppose they get into trouble covering for socialist presidents like Barack Obama, who regulate too much. Why wouldn’t they reach out to Larry Fink, who has other political plans that are very progressive? The answer is that they do and will every time they are given an opportunity. And now we have foreign influence from well beyond the shores of America running our money and our government. Not through the political process, but through money management, through firms like BlackRock, Blackstone, Vanguard, and State Street—companies we all deal with. Now they are imposing on us progressive politics and using our money as a weapon, so who should we be angry with, the snake that just wants to eat, or our inability to see it, before it is too late?

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Real War is at the Doorstep of Davos: Ukraine is just the latest distraction and justification to raise gas prices

I’d rather not, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the story that is in the news right now, and because it is, I should say something about it. But my thoughts on it are not what the news is espousing. For me, it’s just another attempt by the world, and specifically, Democrats, to use Russia as a punching bag to cover all their vast incompetence. Biden has to give a State of the Union speech. He has nothing but bad news and an economy with inflation creeping in, pushed there by a giant asset bubble created by the Fed through over a decade of quantitative easing. Call it Modern Monetary Theory, call it Keynesian economics, call it whatever socialist theory of modern academia you want. Too much money chasing after too few goods and personal productivity will be a disaster, and it is for Biden presently.

Additionally, Biden has been a disaster in foreign policy, specifically regarding Afghanistan. Covid has been traced back to a Chinese lab in Wuhan, and his own science guys that he picked to be on his staff were part of the deal with the Department of Defense. There is a lot of embarrassment to go around on Covid, and now people are sick of the rules and are pulling off the masks whether or not the government likes it. The Biden vaccine mandates were a loss in the Supreme Court. The President’s bosses at the World Economic Forum didn’t seem to understand when they came up with the plan to begin with that the American Constitution would win on that, leaving the Davos crowd perplexed.

Yet that isn’t even the start of the story. As I have been saying more lately, we aren’t talking about conspiracy theories concerning the Party of Davos. It’s not the Bilderbergers, the Rothschilds, or the typical Illuminati tin foil hat talk; we have actual names like Klaus Schwab and Larry Fink who have made the conspiracies real. The World Economic Forum board has announced themselves with ESG grades to change the world’s economy from fossil fuels to 100% emission-free standards, which are directly connected to each and every one of our 401K plans. We’re not talking about theory here; it’s a fact, and it’s in our faces every day. The testbed for this behavior was Covid. The Party of Davos watched how various countries reacted to the lockdowns and how the economy behaved. They have made adjustments to their plans based on what they saw—watching their summit from Davos this year, which included Janet Yellon and Dr. Fauci, it’s clear they are perplexed about how to deal with their intentions for a Great Reset. The populism that is going on around the world is a problem for them, so they very much want a distraction. Putin tends to like playing the bully in the room. The whole thing comes out like a night of WWF big-time wrestling with Vince McMahon to those who see the big picture. The Russian invasion is a scripted wrestling match with Putin playing the bad cop, and the Davos guys are trying to help Biden out by looking like the good cop. But behind the curtain, they are all shaking hands and patting each other on the back.

Then we have the China situation; Russia is in partnership with them. The Davos gang uses China to prop up as their stabilizing authoritarian model, which will help maintain global banking. They have invited Xi to be the keynote speaker at their World Economic Forum that they had in January. They are invested in China, but now that all these books are being written about all the American politicians and celebrities who China pays off, some damage control must be done. China’s hostile intentions toward America have been uncovered, and the bad guys need a distraction. Russia invading Ukraine is the perfect thing to do; it diverts everyone’s attention away from the real problems, which are massive.

To make matters worse, and this traces right back to the doorstep of the Party of Davos, they have a real need to push people away from gas cars and to convince people to buy their electric cars, which through ESG, Ford, GM, and most of the other car companies have joined in the effort to manufacture purely electric vehicles instead of those driven by oil. To pull that off, they need an excuse to push gas prices up over a reasonable limit to change behavior in the West in the kind of cars they are buying. When people wonder why election fraud happened, now they can see why the Party of Davos could not afford another term of Trump. They had all these plans, and they had to have a president that would follow the party line. Not that party line from the Democrat Party, but to make the Democratic Party follow the Party of Davos. This is simply part two of the ESG scores that started this process years ago, of monitoring the environment, then social behavior behind a new kind of governance created by the Party of Davos, an authentic thing. Just follow the money from the Federal Reserve to BlackRock and Larry Fink, then back to his Board of Trustee position at the World Economic Forum. You will have your answer. He’s just one of these desecrators of American life. The Party of Davos has many of them.

Now knowing all that is very inconvenient. When people say, even people who should know better, “why isn’t Biden turning on the American oil reserves to bring down gas prices?” That is because Biden was put in place to tear down the West’s machine, prop up China in the East, and be the new global economic model for the world run by the Party of Davos, who is essentially the United Nations. Biden is doing what they put him in power to do. The American people didn’t elect him. He was put in place by the people who wanted to control the entire world. And people are catching on to it, so they called up Putin to cause some trouble in the world and get everyone to look at it. They did it to stop the rise of populism in America and other places, which is their most significant threat to all these long-established plans. And to keep those plans something of a secret, even as the conspiracies are blowing up everywhere, they need this Ukraine war as a diversion in a political year in America in hopes to continue their desecration and a total takedown of Western Civilization, finally. So if I’m not all that excited about the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, well, it’s because I know it’s just Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. This time it’s not Hillary Clinton making up garbage on President Trump and our legal system ignoring the incursions. Now it’s Biden, a compromised globalist himself and one who was put in place to destroy our country, not help it. And he needed this diversion, and the Party of Davos gave it to him. Putin is just playing a part in the fake wrestling match.   Besides being a diversion, the primary objective is to increase gas prices from 4 dollars per gallon to $6 or $7. It’s a repeat of the Obama era war against fossil fuels, and that real war is at the doorstep of the Party of Davos. Not in the Ukraine where they want you to look.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

I Have Been Warning about Hillary Clinton Since the 90s: When people say, “you’d do it too,” they haven’t met my wife

Well, I’ve been saying it since the 90s. Then like now, I read every book that came out talking about the Clintons on their climbs up power, the land deals, the body bags, the stories of horror in the White House, and I warned about Hillary Clinton most of my adult life. Of course, people would say that it was too inconvenient to know the truth, that Bill and Hillary Clinton were no big deal. After all, it’s just sex, and it’s between them. If Bill Clinton wants to sleep around and Hillary wants to put up with it. Who are we to judge? If I had a dime for every time someone has told me that, I’d have all the money in the world. Well, now, finally, people are getting an idea of what I was always talking about. We have finally learned with specific confirmation coming out of the Durham Report that Hillary Clinton planted evidence on Trump both before and during his presidency, which of course, is against the law in many ways. Everything I have said here, and many others too, about Hillary Clinton, has been true, and it has taken this long for it all to catch up to her. And even that, the release of the information indeed came from the Biden administration, who see her as a threat now that she’s been poking her head up out of the ground recently, as she smells blood in the water for the Biden administration. She has been out there talking, feeling the temperature of things, and the Biden administration provided this little leak from the DOJ to get her off Biden’s heels. This report should have come out years ago, but like everything else, it’s political. Everyone knows about it, but nobody will admit to it in the light of day until there is some political motivation to get the information out. The same will be true, as I have said from the beginning, about the election fraud of 2020. The truth will come out when it’s politically to the advantage of those most guilty. Until then, there will be a cover-up literally until the day they die.

I had worked on the Ross Perot campaign back in the 90s, and I supported Bob Dole in an active way when he was running for president, even though I was in my 20s at the time. I’ve been warning about this stuff and fighting this kind of thing that Hillary is guilty of my entire adult life. And I said back then, as I continue to say, a lot of the reason we have such a messed up political system now is that we did not crack down on these bad people back when we first knew they were dirty. My wife and I have lived our lives in such a way that we’ve had lots and lots of opportunities to join some of these characters in a life of corruption. We’ve met lots of celebrities and had opportunities for many millions of dollars in our bank account just to get in the mud and not be a threat to those who craved power so they could become rich off it. A few weeks ago, I had just such an opportunity, which was a higher offer than average. Still, it was essentially a seven-figure deal to effectively go away, to stop writing the blog, to just disappear into the background, and to stop talking. I can think of dozens and dozens of similar offers over my thirty years, and for people who think I’m a ridiculously shiny penny, they haven’t met my wife. She is far, far, worse than I am. This story about Hillary and her husband Bill and many others who have enriched themselves in politics ultimately points out a contrast that I have heard all this time, “well, who could blame them? You’d do it too.” Well, “NO,” we all wouldn’t. Some people don’t and won’t, and my wife and I are certainly a couple who haven’t. It’s not that there weren’t opportunities. But when we see and hear stories about people like the Clintons, we get outraged because we see them as scum bag criminals who sold out and lived their entire lives as sellouts. And we feel the same way about anybody who sells themselves short of using politics to enrich themselves at the expense of law and order. 

Recently my wife and I were at a VIP thing, and Newt Gingrich was there. It was a private setting, and there weren’t many people around. Usually, all the participants are slick at these things; they know how to play chess and have many layers of personality where their true feelings can be hard to understand. My wife is not one of those people; she is one way, all the time. She is as pure and ideological as Snow White, and it’s not fake. She’s like that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for many, many decades now. She is the least corruptible person I have ever met, and she’s too far into it to change now. At one point, it was just Newt and I talking a bit, and I asked my wife to step over and to introduce her to the former Speaker of the House. Newt is one of those celebrity politicians known worldwide, so most people would be a bit in awe upon meeting such a person in such a personal setting, shake their hand, and have private time with them. Well, she refused to come over. Here she was just two or three feet from Gingrich, but she wouldn’t acknowledge him. He reached out his hand to shake hers, but she wouldn’t budge, which left me in an awkward position. She looked at me, not him, and said, he sold us out by not prosecuting the Clintons when he had a chance, and look what they’ve done to this country. And she walked off. That left me there to explain to Newt Gingrich that she was a purest in every form of the word, and she has not gotten over the events of the 90s. He was good about it and simply said that history is always 20/20. In many ways, she was right, Newt did have a chance with Bob Dole to crack down on the Clinton crime family, and the failure to do it then made it far worse in the future. And of course, we see that impact now, and even now, only when it’s politically convenient.

The point is, not everyone sells out to the money and the fame. Many of the characters I’ll be talking about this year as we pave the way for the next Trump run for the presidency deserve what they have coming. I have been holding back as I gather up my thoughts, but I’ll just say this. I’m not going to sit at the breakfast table with that woman and listen to her go on and on for hours about corruption that could have been fixed twenty or thirty years from now, that went on during the government removal of Trump from the White House. Those most guilty in what they did need to pay, just as the Clintons should have paid with jail time in the 90s for what they did. Because we let them stick around all this time without justice, we get what we have now, a terribly corrupt political system that is in significant need of a massive overhaul.   Personally, I do look down my nose at people who will do anything for fame and do so at any price. I haven’t lived my life that way, so when Hillary, Bill, or the Bidens make decisions that sell out our country, our Constitution just for some easy cash and hide their crimes along the way for the cover-up, I have no sympathy. Zero. But it is nice to point to something and say, “see,” you should have listened. I’m not surprised by what the Durham Report is saying with factual evidence about Hillary Clinton now. People are shocked, but I’m not. However, I am more interested in everything they haven’t told us about yet. Because in my experience, there is a lot, more than people are ready to deal with. But despite all the efforts of these political criminals, that information is getting out anyway, and it is better to act sooner rather than later.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Mitch McConnell and His “Conceal the Steal”: Caught ‘Red Handed’ selling out to communist China

With both Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell recently coming out as a way of justifying the focus of making January 6th into a big deal, when in fact, the real causes of the problem were ignored entirely, one of them is much worse than the other. With Pence, it’s quite evident that he is naïve and wants to believe in the political system, and to him, a challenge to that system is disruptive. His support of the “conceal of the steal” of the 2020 election is similar to how he might react to people questioning scenes from the Bible. He certainly doesn’t have the mind to think critically about matters of faith, and he wants to have confidence in our government. It’s beyond comprehension for him to consider just how broken our government is. But McConnell, on the other hand, started his time in the senate with a new marriage to Elaine Chao, working with her father James in a shipbuilding business that the Chinese State Shipbuilding Corporation contributed directly to the family shipping business, where its fleet expanded incredibly over the next several decades. Elaine’s father had been classmates with the president of China at the time, Jiang Zemin. We are talking about a marriage of connections here, where the purpose of the union was power and control. James wanted to secure his shipping business. His daughter married an American senator, and China’s leadership wanted very much to get a foot in the door of American politics at the highest levels for their own strategic needs. The old crow, McConnell, knows how the game works and how all this Chinese business evolved over time, with him at the center of it. When Trump lost the election due specifically to political corruption allowing the steal to occur, which is now well documented, Mitch knows he’s lying when he says the “election was legally certified and fair.” No, instead, Mitch played his part in crippling America to protect the family business, which was at the center of his marriage to Elaine. They wanted to get rid of Trump as much as everyone else in Washington D.C. wanted, for all the same reasons because they had sold out their country and empowered China to take over America by selling us all out for easy cash.

Peter Schweizer’s new book is easy to get, called Red Handed. I bought my copy off a big stack at Costco, so it’s not like it’s a massive book from a fringe right-winged conspiracy.   Peter is president of the Government Accountability Institute in Washington D.C. and has a staff of researchers looking into everything he reported in that fantastic book. I’ve read all of Peter’s books over the years, many times. And I’ve already read this new one many times over now, and let me just say; it’s got the goods. Schweizer does what the First Amendment was meant to do and allows freedom of speech to keep pressure on the political class to check power at the door. The result is books like Red Handed, which goes into vast details on the level of corruption that people like Mitch McConnell, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbucks, Labron James, and the Biden crime family have conducted in direct relationship with China, our known enemy. When Mitch McConnell started his relationship with China, it was widely viewed that the communist country might become more like America. But over time, they have stated quite bluntly that they intend to destroy the West and resurrect their status in the world as the dominating global power. And they intend to bring down America by cutting off the head of what they think our leadership is and destroying the country from within. All that is documented with evidence in Peter’s book. All that and much more. There simply is no excuse for people not to know this information as easily as Schweizer has made it for people to see. It’s not like people have to go to a library somewhere to do all this research on their own. It’s available next to the eggs and milk at one of the most popular shopping destinations in the country. Read it, and yes, it will shock you. Buy one and give it to all your family and friends. Buy several copies. You might just save their lives. 

But McConnell knows everything that’s happening in Washington. He doesn’t have to read Peter’s book; he could have written the book himself. When McConnell participated in the election fraud of 2020 by trying to rush the process through, he was simply protecting what he had built over many decades of corrupt politics. He didn’t go out and marry a nice girl from Kentucky. Without question, there was plenty to choose from. No, he married Elaine, whose father just so happened to be friends with the president of China at the time and knew they wanted to use him for the family business. He was a willing participant in that corruption, and he is more than guilty of suppressing the intentions of the Chinese government at the expense of his own country. Like many in Washington and within the media have done, they have made their deals with the communists who gave away wealth easily for the partnership. Mitch married his second wife, knowing how things work in Washington; it’s about connecting people who have gained power through looted wealth. Elaine was in banking, and moving finance meant power in the Swamp, so he got into the family business fully awake, which has undoubtedly impacted the way he governs. Understandably, when Trump was in the White House, he put Mitch’s wife in his cabinet as Transportation Secretary to align the power couple to his administration. But behind the scenes, the two would plot against Trump at every turn that would make Shakespeare blush. 

When Mitch could have stood for election integrity, or even the origins of Covid, he has punted every time in obvious protection of China and its relationship with Beltway politics. Not only does he know about all the scams he’s been involved in, but he knows about all the others as well. He is fully aware of just how deep the Chinese communist party is entangled with his fellow senators, lobbyists, and media members, and he has done nothing about it. That’s because he can’t because if he did, all those ships that were built for his father-in-law would suddenly be called into question. They weren’t free; they came with a price tag. And that price tag was to put his daughter in the bed of a powerful senator, give him a little of the cheese, and shut him up for the rest of his life, which has been the case. And when McConnell had a chance to stick a knife in Trump’s back, he did so, not for political ideology, but for the protection of the system that made him rich and more powerful. In a world where that kind of power is valued, Mitch McConnell put himself at the top by selling out to China. And even if he wanted to be critical of China now, he couldn’t because he has gone too far with them and seen too much. When we want to know what corruption politics is, Mitch McConnell is the face of it. And when he said that the 2020 election was “legally certified,” what he really means is that he was in on the “steal to conceal” because what they had to protect was all this vast corruption that they had involved themselves in to sell us all out, to the enemy. China.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Indictment of Roger Reynolds: Is it the pursuit of justice, or a political hit

I brag all the time about how great the Republican Party is in Butler County, and with the corruption indictment of Roger Reynolds that is the hot story this week, I still feel that way. Yet, I’ve known Roger for more than a decade, and I know him to be an excellent auditor for the people who elected him. As I said before, I view the land story that Channel 19 covered back in September of 2021 as a hit piece by Jennifer Edwards, who looks to target Republicans often in stories pitting people against each other to make news, not just reporting it. Her hit piece against Roger and other members of the Liberty Township trustees was obviously political, to attack the Republican brand ahead of the November election. Essentially as I see it, the Roger Reynolds story is one where old family entanglements can get mushy with the duties of an elected office. I find much of it hard to believe, and I think the story is mainly about emotions than logic. But for me, it doesn’t erase all the good work Roger has done over the years. And as I always say, the law is the same at 9 AM as it is at 9 PM or any other day of the week or year. If Roger broke the law, then the law should apply. However, watching Sheriff Jones’ face glow with glee during the indictment announcement made me think of some hypotheticals. Jones was too happy about the indictment, and some of the ways he said words in his presentation triggered questions that are worth consideration since what we are all talking about here are the ethics of an elected office and whether or not Roger Reynolds actually broke any laws, or that the case is a legal dispute between two parties over land. Did Roger abuse his office? Well, if we conclude that he did, doesn’t it open up a whole lot of questions about Sheriff Jones?

I’ve often thought of Sheriff Jones as a great asset to Butler County. But, since Trump left office and Joe Biden has been in the presidency, Jones has turned more into a Democrat than the guy who plays a Republican on TV and at public speeches. The way that Jones went after Congressman Thomas Hall over a voting record, with name-calling and sheer intimidation in public, comes to mind as an abuse of power of an elected office. Voters picked Thomas, yet the Sheriff made quite a public spectacle out of destroying his credibility on WLW radio to many thousands of people. I thought Thomas defended himself well, but the question remains about Sheriff Jones, what was he thinking in doing so? Was he trying to intimidate an officeholder, to exert power over the Republican Party of Butler County in ways that didn’t represent the voters? Surely not. But based on the kinds of things that Jones said in his press conference about the indictment of Roger Reynolds, doubt was indeed cast on the situation. Why would Sheriff Jones be so happy to bring about an indictment of a fellow Republican? His glee sounded as if he were a Democrat about to put a Republican in jail over some bogus charge, an allegation anybody could make against anybody. Given how the Sheriff treated Thomas Hall, might it not be logical to conclude that the Sheriff took a particular interest in the Reynolds case for some strategic move? For a local land dispute to make it to the Attorney General of Ohio directly, some political investment would have to be involved, raising eyebrows. 

Then there was the strange action on Sheriff Jones’ mask politics, where he had been leading the country against mandates. Suddenly, a few weeks ago, as the new school board at Lakota was getting set to vote to remove mask mandates, and the teacher’s union was all upset about it, Sheriff Jones flipped his position. It was an extraordinary move for him. What was going on? Well, I know more than I’m letting on here. But for the sake of the hypotheticals of this evolving case, questions are good to ask, especially in public figures who are declaring injustice among long-time Republicans in the team-building of party politics. I remember years ago when I published the pay rates of the local police departments, and I was shocked by how many family members Sheriff Jones had in many townships. It brought a question to my mind about Sheriff Jones himself and his relationship with members of Congress, senators, and area trustees. What was he really saying when he bragged about beating down some politician like Thomas Hall on city-wide radio? “Don’t get on my bad side. Or the same thing will happen to you.”  Whether or not that was the intention, I can say that I know many politicians who feel that way. Was that feeling created on purpose by the Sheriff? Is that part of his brand within the party? And is he really a Democrat trying to infiltrate the Republican Party with liberalism disguised as good ol’ fashion police work? 

Watching Jones stumble over the word “start” in his press conference, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was getting stuck trying to justify to himself how the investigation into Reynolds even started. By the way, I watched his body language. He acted like a guy who knew he was doing something wrong yet was trying to hide it behind justice. Thinking of all these things, I couldn’t help but wonder if some family member of Jones had worked in the office of Roger Reynolds and maybe had a falling out like many employees do with their bosses. With so much family on the government payroll, it would certainly be a conflict of interest if Jones was out in the county intimidating public officials into behaving the way he wanted them to, to protect his family members employed by some of those politicians. And if that were the case, which it may or may not be, how would it be different from what Jones was accusing Reynolds of doing, based on a Channel 19 report, meant to smear area Republicans and refer the investigation up the food chain to the Attorney General’s office, and smear the headlines all over the national news? It comes out looking like a lot of “unlawful use of authority” to me and many spoonfuls of “conflict of interest.”

If the law was broken, everyone should pay for their incursions. If Roger is guilty, then he is guilty. I would be surprised if he were, but I’ve seen plenty of railroad cases before, and this whole issue has the smell of a political hit. It looks like some kind of revenge scheme that is being hidden behind some token law and order façade. I hope that’s not the case. But if Roger is guilty, then where do we draw the line between public life and protecting family concerns? Roger might have made mistakes with his case because of family entanglements, things that he wouldn’t usually find himself involved in. But couldn’t the same be said when an officeholder, such as a sheriff, intimidates officeholders who employ family members? And what happens if there is some termination of employment? Would the Sheriff get personally involved? Would he retaliate? Well, he has shown the signs of that behavior. I’m sure we’ll find out. For now, I feel I need to defend my political party in my hometown from this embarrassment that the Sheriff has communicated to the world. Should we be mad at Roger? Or should we be angry at the Sheriff? Well, I want to see all wrongdoers get punished for their crimes. But are we talking about crime here, or are we talking about revenge? Time will tell, but politics is a blood sport, and to my way of thinking, I think these kinds of debates are necessary to make the best party possible under the most divisive circumstances that may emerge. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Justin Trudeau Runs and Hides: Socialists are easy to beat, all you have to do is confront them

I don’t know that it was a big secret, but if there was any doubt about how to defeat socialists in general, what has been going on in Canada is the recipe that will work everywhere. Truckers protesting the vaccine mandates of Justin Trudeau, the socialist prime minister there, gathered outside his home. It scared him so bad that he suddenly came down with Covid and fled to an undisclosed location to avoid the mob. At times, it had the feel of the French Revolution, even though it never descended into actual violence or even the January 6th incident in Washington D.C. One true thing about all socialists is that they became that way out of their timid natures. As liberals, they seek the protection of what they think of, like a big, parental government. And from behind the leg of that parent, they lash out at their siblings as if suddenly empowered with strength. But when they realize that the parental government can’t protect them, it is the scariest thing in the world to them. That is how American politicians reacted when they realized that President Trump was not the leader of the MAGA movement, he was the result of it, and that the people who protested their corrupt government on January 6th, 2021, were not shackled to the rules of society when angered, it was terrifying to them. That is the same kind of fear that Justin Trudeau was reacting to when a mob of protestors took their action to his front door. The Prime Minister got into politics as a form of protection from the real world, and this was not how the script was supposed to read. So he retreated and lashed out in predictable ways, which showed the world, just how little power these little tyrants really have when things start getting tough. Only through deceit can socialists have power; once people are on to them, the house of cards falls apart rather quickly.

I warned everyone about Justin Trudeau back in 2015 when he was first elected as Prime Minister of Canada. I told everyone here and everywhere that I spoke that the kid was a socialist and was part of this global script to remake the world into a socialist one, as indicated by Socialist International at the time. Over the years, of course, that group of globalists who have that script written in the Carroll Quiggly book Tragedy and Hope so blatantly has changed their names many times. These days that whole effort has migrated over into the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos each year to plot the destruction of the world by controlling governments like Wild West train robbers from beyond a country of their own, all to bring them down into the control of the United Nations, which they manipulate through banking. At the time, Barack Obama was their guy in America, and Justin Trudeau was the outright member of the socialist party in Canada who was put there to do their deeds. I pointed it out; many thought it was a vast conspiracy unrooted in reality. But of course, it turned out to be all true.

Additionally, most of the similar leadership positions in all of Europe were like the socialist Justin Trudeau. Justin’s hook was that he was a nice-looking young man who made women feel safe supporting him. Men had to go along if they didn’t want to alienate their women, and in that way, Canada adopted socialism ever so subtly. I immediately noticed the turn toward authoritarian government behind the smiling face at the border at Niagra Falls, which I like to visit every so often. Suddenly the border went from a popular tourist spot to a pretty cold check of authoritarian control, a preview of what was to come when the United Nations and the Great Reset crowd unleashed Covid to the world for the purpose of a complete socialist takeover of the world behind the shared threat of a virus outbreak, hatched by Dr. Fauci through the Department of Defense in direct partnership with the Chinese government. 

Yet, you won’t hear me talking about how scary any of these losers are. Socialists become socialists because they are weak. They are timid people, which is why they were so quick to adopt mask mandates from out-of-control governments. As liberals, they are conflict-averse and always look for that big parental leg to shield them from their actions in the world. And it’s straightforward to defeat them. Just confront them and watch them wither away like the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz. The real secret to stopping socialism and communism in the world is to confront the bullies hiding behind those parental legs of government. Once socialists like Justin Trudeau realize that government can’t protect them from bad decisions and people angry at authority, they can do nothing. There will come the point where the Chinese people figure this out about their communist government, the overly parental figures there where the few rule the many quite tyrannically. It is not like the Chinese to think for themselves. Still, once unemployment can’t overcome the nanny state problems of an economy built entirely on looted wealth, people will be mad, just as they were in Canada, Washington D.C. and many other places in the world erupting in anger over an authoritarian government more interested in telling people what to do than actually solving problems. When people realize this, the socialists and communists always fall. Because that delicate balance between fear and lack of opportunity quickly takes over reason, social collapse is always imminent. 

What is happening in Canada can and will happen everywhere. I wish people would have listened to me six or seven years ago about Trudeau. It was about that time that I put my support behind Trump because I could see how things were stacking up. Many people like me saw what the socialists and communists in the world were doing, and we wanted to make our own declaration in defense of capitalism; what better way to do it than to elect a guy who fully embraced capitalism and lived in a golden tower that he built in New York City with a beautiful supermodel wife. That was who we wanted to run our government; we didn’t want these Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau socialists that the world wanted to give us. Looking back on it now, isn’t it obvious why they had to get rid of President Trump? He wasn’t part of their script. The world didn’t recognize the American concept of self-government. They had it in their mind that they’d give us someone, and we would like it, just as they did in Canada. But when things don’t go well, and people want recourse for the injustice done to them, like the vaccine mandates in Canada, then when people do rise up, and Trudeau doesn’t have a script that tells him how to solve that problem, the great fear emerges for everyone involved. Socialists and communists do not know what to do. And it is there that they always fail, time and time again, and always will. People always have leverage over the administrative masses, and when the socialists realize that there is no parental leg to hide behind, it is the worst thing in the world. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Matt Dolan is a Great Guy: Sadly, we don’t have a political system that can appreciate him

I had a chance to have a personal meeting with Matt Dolan, who is running for Senate in Ohio, Rob Portman’s seat. He is one of many running for that seat; it’s a very tight field. He’s from Northern Ohio; his family is owners of the Cleveland Indians, who have just changed their name to the Guardians under a lot of pressure from the woke politics that are entangled in our sports these days, so going into the meeting with him, I wasn’t too excited. He wasn’t a particularly Trump type of candidate either, so to my mind, there wasn’t much to get excited about. The meeting was with a small group, Warren Davidson was part of it, so I went into it with the most open mind possible. Ultimately, I’m glad I did because it turned out that Matt Dolan was a really ethical guy. After meeting him, my impression was that it was a shame that we didn’t have a political system that could appreciate him. A vote for Matt Dolan was undoubtedly a good one, an honest one. After talking with him for a while, I came away thinking that he was one of the most honest and least corrupt people I had ever met in politics. He is currently working well with George Lang, whom I respect greatly as a Senator in Ohio, and has a proven track record of doing good, hard things in legislative practice. He’s a guy who will get down to work and pound out what is needed with always an eye to the constitutions of Ohio and the Federal Government in all the ways people hope politicians would. He is putting over 10 million dollars of his own money into the race and doesn’t need to do the job for power and finance. He already has access to both. Yet he wants to be a senator for all the right reasons, which left me liking him quite a lot. I wish we had a republic filled with people like Matt Dolan.

However, that wish is a wish for a reason because we don’t have that kind of political system. At least, not at this point of history. I am encouraged that we may have at some point in the future. But currently, the values of honest work alone are not conducive to our political environment, which is a shame. It would be great indeed if there were more places for people like Matt Dolan to work in politics, people who have done well for themselves and want to move into the public sector to give something back in making the world better. Too often, political people get into the business for all the wrong reasons, yet here was Matt Dolan, who wanted to be involved for all the right ones. But those right reasons are not sexy enough for the political world we are in these days. As a senator, one of the essential requirements would be to go on Fox News and other entertainment outlets and talk up legislation and convince people that what he was doing was good and beneficial. As a federal senator, there are only 100 of them, so every seat counts, and in Ohio, Rob Portman has wasted his seat for quite a while now. Portman had turned much more liberal over the years valuing team building more than getting things done, which many politicians fall into. And with the environment we are in now, where Democrats actually have shown they want to sell out our country and destroy our sovereignty to the United Nations under a Great Reset, we just aren’t in the kind of world where good legislation is valued. We are essentially at war, an undeclared war, but it’s war nevertheless. If we don’t meet that ruthlessness in congress, in the senate, on television, radio, and in the streets, then we can’t hope to have a chance to win that war, and that is unfortunate.

As I said, Warren Davidson was there too, and there were some excellent discussions within the small group about ethics in politics and actually getting things done. Warren Davidson, I would say, is a highly ethical and intelligent member of the House. He is by far one of the good guys in congress. But as he will report, even when Republicans had the House and Senate for some time when Trump was in the White House, conservatives were still weak on border security. There were still many Lindsey Graham types who were war hawks worldwide and wanted to stir up trouble wherever they could, much as the Bush administrations had been. There wasn’t a lot of interest in doing the right things in government, even if Warren Davidson wanted to do them. Not getting more people to join him was a constant problem. And the way to build those alliances was through the theatrics of television, where boring topics could be made sexy and build support from people who might not otherwise pay attention. But with all the victimization that is going on now, where Democrats have stolen the House, the Senate, and the White House through Covid rules on elections, with only a bit of a whimper from Republicans on the matter, at the level of Mitch McConnell, Republicans had shown that they couldn’t do much better when they had the power to do so. That leaves good people like Matt Dolan and Warren Davidson trying to do good in a cesspit of scandal where good values are turned on their heads and distorted every which way that can be imagined. 

When Trump was running, and throughout his term, I often said that the most qualifying aspect of the celebrity billionaire was not his experience on television with the popular show, The Apprentice. He was in the Hall of Fame for the Worldwide Wrestling Federation. Trump understood the theatrics of television, and he knew how to sell usually boring ideas to a public with the attention span of a nat. And it was that skill that allowed him to do so much in such a short time. It is also why people in the business hated him so much because he simply made the money machines that center in politics worthless. Because try as they might, nobody could out brand Trump on anything. Trump’s ability to build a brand was simply better than anybody else in politics, and people could see that and vote for him. And when they needed to go to war for him, as they are doing now, they do and will. Theatrics in politics is absolutely necessary; it’s not optional. And unfortunately, Matt Dolan presents himself as a person who hates that system. Probably as much or more than the rest of us. But it is the system we have in a culture that progressive politics have shaped for over a century. We might deep down inside want other options and a more stable republic. But we are not socially there now, nor will we be in the immediate future. Theatrics and sexy selling legislation are very much necessary for any politician who wants to do good in the world. Being a good person just isn’t enough. With all that said, I couldn’t blame anybody who wants a good person to vote for Matt Dolan in the upcoming primary. He’s undoubtedly a good person, and I do wish we had a whole lot more like him. But the reality remains, we don’t.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

China’s Attack of America Through the Tyranny of Safety: Most of Cincinnati called off work over a little snow

I always hate to see mass call-offs of work when there is a significant storm or some other weather emergency. To me, it’s a distinctly American thing to work hard, work more than eight silly little hours a day, and work weekends. I have worked well over 24 hours per day when it’s called for, and I’ve spent many years working seven days a week. Of course, I have slept when needed, but I have never understood people who don’t get going when the going gets tough. There is something very un-American about calling off work and sitting around in your pajamas when productive things need to be done. When I was a kid, I was the one who had perfect attendance in school. And as an adult, I am always the one who never calls off. I have worked through severe injuries, including three times when I had bones sticking out of my hands. I always finished my shift and got stitched up later. I superglued my skin together to get through the rest of the work period to stop the bleeding. When I’ve had major surgeries that I was told would keep me in bed for months, I returned on the next available workday after and pushed myself to recover within a few weeks completely. When it has snowed too much to drive a car, I have ridden motorcycles and bicycles to work, whatever worked. And if I got to work and felt it better to stay until the weather cleared, I always have done so, as long as it takes, so the work that needed to get done always got done. So, on February 3rd, 2022, a snowstorm hit the Cincinnati area. Most of the city decided to call off work based purely on what the weather people said on television; it made me sick and reminded me of the real meaning of the war we are in with China. 

One of my favorite chapters in my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is the chapter titled “The Tyranny of Safety.” When I wrote that book, I felt some things needed to be addressed in American business that was being ignored. Yet, every company everywhere wanted to know the secret sauce to success and how to unlock it within their work cultures. I am a practitioner of all the trade’s modern Lean tools and process improvement tricks. But due to my long experience and work history, even plowing through injuries to get a competitive advantage over a rival, whether they be domestic or some foreign power, nobody wants to deal with the elephant in the room that China set out years ago to destroy the West. They mean to do it by attacking us through every little measure of safety protocol that can be imagined. They don’t follow their own safety initiatives, which have flowed down through WHO, the UN, and into the CDC. Just as they don’t follow climate initiatives, they push us to follow them to commit economic suicide in their favor. The Chinese have intended to get us in the West to play by different rules than they do, and they have done so by getting us to fall for Wokeness, Climate Change, and Workplace Safety. They have spent a lot of money buying up politicians that would sell these attitudes to the public, in media that would strike fear in all who watch and listen to their programming over every little snowstorm.   Their goal has been to get us to work less so that China could catch up to American GDP and eventually overtake it within this decade. That is the emphatic goal of China and the world in general. Whenever I see massive call-offs over snowstorms and other weather-related issues, it makes it very apparent that China is attacking us in a worse way than with the use of any military. 

When I say that all labor unions are communist organizations, I mean it—every single one of them. Labor unions trace back to the start of Karl Marx and all his followers through the early 20th century, and we can’t help but talk about Chinese communism as we see the impact of their strategy of work stoppages. Communists everywhere want to see less work to leverage the money generated. The current supply chain problems in the United States are caused by China restricting its supply and the labor unions at the shipping ports refusing to work harder and longer to unload what’s coming in. Why, well, Covid is the new global snowstorm that communists have used to get people to call off work and stay home. And remember, China made the virus, and they did so for this very reason, to slow the world down to catch up economically. It wasn’t so much to kill people but to kill economic activity. I was at Kroger right before the snowstorm came through Cincinnati, and the shelves were mostly wiped out. Add to that the problem of supply chain issues on imports, and what we have are communist unions and communist countries who are trying to slow down the engine of our country for their own benefit. 

After two years of Covid, people have become used to calling off work over everything, making this 2022 snowstorm different from past snowstorms. This time, the media culture that had been scaring everyone to death over Covid had their ear when they cried about ice and snow hitting the Midwest, and people were calling off work before they even got up and gave it a try to get to their employers. They just gave up without much of a whimper, and that is the work of the powers against productivity that are well at war with America’s can-do spirit and have been for centuries now. The way to beat America is to convince it to stay home and not be productive while the rest of the world works and churns out their widgets at a maddening pace. China is making a show of playing lockdown with Covid, but you can bet they won’t sacrifice a dollar of GDP to it. But America has found itself crippled by the value of safety over productivity as a new measure. Productivity is now viewed as reckless, while staying home, staying safe, and staying unproductive is now promoted by our governments as a virtue. The terrible governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, was quick to announce on the news that people should stay off the roads, let the government workers do their jobs, make it easy for them to keep the roads clear, to hell with the production needs of our society. Whether it’s snow or Covid, the message from the government is, all the same, it’s an act of God, and we don’t control God. So yield to the more powerful powers than us, including the almighty centralized government.

Nobody is saying that we should have an unsafe society. That is the point in my book.   But safety is not about staying home and hiding; it’s about being skilled and competent. And if people don’t have those skills, they need to work hard to get them. That is the American way. But this “safe” way preached in our industrial compliance culture these days does not come from our need for safety. Still, foreign desires to slow down America and ultimately control our output with many communist tentacles that ultimately extend back to China in almost every way imaginable, where money flows in the bloodstream of an unseen monster, is a real threat to all that is good. Yes, China’s war machine is “safety,” and it flows down to us through our bought and paid for governments for the strategy of stopping American productivity. Every time people stay home from work over conditions of concerned safety, that is what is happening. We see the actions of war and our inability to meet the foe where they live and strike back. Because too many people are hiding from the snow, the rain, and every cut finger because they believe the experts without knowing who really controls those experts. It’s war from China for sure, just not the kind of war people expect to see. The way to beat western capitalism from the view of the orient is to convince them to stay home, not to work, and get used to a big government check, while the communist Chinese surpass America in every way imaginable.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Good Government of Lakota Schools: Yes, elections do have consequences

Lakota is Off to a Great Start

Sometimes we get to talk about good things, which this article is one of them. The first Lakota school board meeting of 2022 was an excellent example of a good government. Over the years, I’ve watched thousands of hours of school board meetings, not just at Lakota, but from all over the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, and I will have to say that this particular meeting which is included below, is perhaps the best one that I have seen. It was good, of course, to see that Lynda O’Conner was again President of the Board. But what made the meeting so good, aside from how smoothly Lynda transitioned from topic to topic, was the additions of the newly elected Republican endorsed members, Isaac Adi, who was designated already as the Vice-President, and the freedom representative Darbi Boddy. I was very impressed with those two new additions and the kind of questions. As they learn the job, if they can keep up with that level of engagement, Lakota will be very successful in the years to come. That is precisely how government should work. Not everyone will get along. But I will say that the attention to everyone in the room was outstanding, constructive, and conducive to conversation that leads to problem-solving, and that is fantastic. In all these government schools, chaos has been ruling for a long time, and those elements of chaos are indeed circling the campfire of that Lakota board meeting, waiting for everyone to go to sleep so they can feast. But I have a feeling, especially knowing the personalities of these new school board members, that the chaos will wear out before they do. Good to see!

Of course, most of these meetings are never very sexy. For instance, a school board member like Darbi, that ran on a platform of national concern and parent transparency, will find that she might only get to spend 5% of her time on the topics she cares most about. Most of the meetings will be votes on boring issues, like application fees for substitute teachers or the latest call-offs of the bus drivers. These may seem like small, inconsequential things, but there is good work to be done on all of them, and that is usually where school board candidates get bored and start to tune out. But in watching Darbi and Isaac, it is clear that they are going into the job with the right frame of mind. They are keeping their important campaign promises in focus while they also indulge themselves in the job’s nuances and extract value out of the tiniest little bits. It’s not always the big sexy things that determine the success or failure of a school district; it’s the thousands of little things that lead up to the big things, and if those get dealt with, with the enthusiasm that Isaac and Darbi showed on this first meeting, the 20th meeting will be much, much better and so will Lakota and all the participants in the district. 

For instance, as an example of tiny details that are of paramount importance, Superintendent Matt Miller gave an update to the Covid situation, the bussing call-offs, and the general below-the-line problems of managing hundreds of employees, where generally 5% of any work culture will use any excuse to call off work, excused. Covid has created a situation where those types of people are empowered to call off perpetually, without any recourse. Of course, the teacher’s union loves this problem because it benefits them, and Matt gave his summary in a manner where he felt like a victim of circumstance. The district’s management had been taken out of the Board’s hands and placed at the alter of the  Butler County Department of Health, and the union had a free pass to call off work as much as they could. Obviously, the way to break up this labor impasse would be to have plenty of substitute teachers ready to call at a moment’s notice to keep classes moving. But as we learned, there is a government fee within the county of more than $125 just to apply to be a substitute teacher. This was revealed in the meeting by a bright personality named Alicia Davis, who wants to be part of a solution to the staffing shortages but needs help getting through the bureaucracy of government to get to where the need is. There are likely thousands of young women just like Alicia who are willing and able to cover that 5% call-off ratio. However, obviously, the fee is a problem, a discouraging one. If anybody wanted to solve the problem, it would be wise for Lakota to find a way to cover the fee, get the applicant, and ultimately the resource. That may seem like a little thing, but little things lead to big things. 

For instance, the next time a labor contract comes up for a vote. Teachers want to be collectively paid more money and are threatening to walk; if Lakota has a bunch of sharp-witted volunteers waiting to be called into class to teach to keep the schools open, then that network would already be established. When I talked about chaos ruling these schools, this is one of the ways it happens. A superintendent like Matt is trying to navigate all the rules and regulations and finds himself reacting to everything over time. The Board needs to give him proactive solutions to these problems that also pave the way for possible labor strikes from the teacher’s union at the slightest provocation. If they decide to leave work and management has the task of keeping the school open, what else could be done. The chaos is caused by the high cost and bureaucracy of becoming a substitute teacher; the $125 usually scares off most applicants because they couldn’t afford to pay it for a part-time job they may not get much return on the investment from. So, the vacancies go unfulfilled, and solutions are never presented to the labor problem leaving the school a victim to the labor force that can be very politically active at times.   I would say that Lakota is a great place to live because of people like Alicia, not because of any measure of labor that might be employed at any given time. Good parents make good kids, and good kids make a good school. The purpose of government, in this case, is to remove those barriers, not to throw $125 roadblocks up to feed chaos. But to remove chaos from the management process because in chaos is where many lost dollars disappear.

But there will be time for more of that kind of talk for later. For now, I’m just happy to see an actual, functioning school board that has the look and feel of real management. I’m sure there will be trouble, but the measure of good management is how well that trouble is handled, and by the looks of Lynda, Darbi, and Isaac, everything is off to a great start, and it is very encouraging to start the year off. This school board meeting was the kind of school board I have been hoping for, for over 30 years. And although it’s only one, the obvious signs of future success are there for all to see. There is an excellent reason to be excited, and I am. Perhaps things will get better, and that all starts with elections because they have consequences.   

Rich Hoffman

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