Category: Book Review

IRS is Planning for Failure: The CDC has turned laziness into a virtue by calling it “safety”

The IRS Has Turned Laziness into a Virtue

You might have heard already that the IRS is not planning to get our tax returns back to us promptly. Ahead of all the tax filings that are coming, they warned that they were understaffed due to Covid and that we should expect to wait a long time to get back the money they have been keeping from us interest-free for most of the year. Now think about what an absurd proposal this is; they have the power to confiscate our wealth at will and for as long as they decide. And they feel no connection to the public to do good service while they have our money. Instead, like all government unions, they have the attitude that they have all the time in the world and that the productivity of their jobs can move at a pace they decide it will take, whatever their comfort level is. And the world will just have to like it. It is just the latest insult that we have seen from some government division that takes too long to do things, and when they do get around to it, what they do is usually bad and falls well short of expectations. So this would be a good reason for those who wonder why people don’t want more government and would like to see the government we do have scaled back. It doesn’t matter if it’s the IRS or the BMV; all government activity is run by our society’s laziest and least productive by its very nature. And Covid has exposed some of the subtle elements of unionized workplaces that seldom were ever admitted to before. And for that, we should be somewhat thankful.

From the beginning, my view of Covid was that it came from a government agency, the CDC, filled with lazy employees looking for an excuse to stay home and order toilet paper from Amazon. Most government employees, including teachers, police, and firefighters, are essentially lazy and would like to be divorced from any expectation of productivity. So, of course, the CDC would come up with dumb rules to deal with Covid, a government-made virus, to alter society’s work expectations for productivity. This was never more evident in proof than the Chicago Teacher’s Union, which voted to teach from home because of health concerns they had over Covid. Now that we’ve opened that door in our society, all the lazy people now have the CDC to quote when it comes to working from home, staying in their pajamas all day, and still getting a government check for essentially doing nothing. Covid has given the lazy an excuse to be themselves without being looked down on for it. Instead of calling these losers lazy as we might have in the past, we now refer to them as “being safe.” Do you see how that little magic trick worked? Lazy people through the government losers at the CDC managed to redefine themselves with some virtue because of the definitions of Covid protocols. Bad behavior was now considered safe while productive, “can do” attitudes toward work were now considered “unsafe.” The CDC and their government communist labor unions, all labor unions were born from communism, by the way, are now using Covid as an excuse to be lazy, and now they can call it virtue. 

One thing that makes me madder than anything in life is planning for failure. Whenever someone does it around me, I get very angry, Incredible Hulk mad. Nothing makes me more furious than a loser attitude, someone who says they can’t do something because they don’t want to live up to the expectation of being successful at trying. That is what the IRS said in January, that they would not get back our tax returns promptly during this 2022 tax season because they were going to be understaffed. Well, they are their own managers, if they have not chosen to staff correctly, or they do not have employees who are willing to work 12 hours per day or 16 hours per day, they are making a decision to put their comfort over my need to get what they are doing for me, and for me, those are fighting words. It’s a decision to be a loser, and they’ve stuck themselves in the way of something I need to do, like using my money for things I want. They chose not to staff correctly or use Covid to excuse poor work attendance. They made a choice not to hire go-getters who would work 10, 12, or 16 hours per day if that’s what it would take to complete a task. Government workers tend to be the types of people who work only 8 hours per day. They start thinking about where they are going for lunch as soon as they clock in during the morning, and at 5 PM, when it’s time to leave, it’s a race to get to the door. It’s the fastest time they move all day when work is done, and they want to get to their cars so they can race home and essentially do nothing but complain about all the hard work they did that day. They are some of the most miserable people on earth, lazy, government workers. Now the government created Covid, the government agency of the CDC, has turned laziness into a virtue; they have changed the definitions from something negative into something that is positive, “being safe.”

The whole Covid thing has been such a scam, it’s given the lazy a chance to appear virtuous, and the IRS has heard the dog whistle. They turn to Covid to hide their terrible management of their bloated government agency, where they are overpaid to sit home on their asses essentially. It’s not far-fetched to conceive that with this CDC culture that the government has created, soon people will be able to call off work and stay home and get paid just for a squirrel crossing over their driveways. We know squirrels and their nuts can carry viruses, so it will be the next ridiculous excuse to stay home, get paid, and to do nothing as an employee productively because all government unions, all unions in general, are communist organizations meant to disconnect workers from the needs of productivity. They make the lazy appear hard-working and play with names such as “safety” to mean “virtuous.” But truly, the CDC has only given the IRS an excuse to be themselves without the judgment of a public that wants back the money that the government stole from them and has been holding without compensation for a time the lazy determines is appropriate. Instead of staying until 7 PM at night to process filings, the IRS agents will be hitting the door at 4 PM. The work will still be there the next day, the next day, and for as long as it takes. The CDC has given them the excuse to go home and to be safe. Because safety is more important than productivity, right? Karl Marx would say so, and that’s who runs the IRS and all government unions. Planning for failure for them is the same as safety; it’s a virtue. To the incompetent, it’s better to get it late if lives can be saved in the process. It’s better to work less if people can go home to their families and friends intact, without going to the hospital. But what they don’t talk about are solutions that would allow people to work more, like hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin. Or dare we say it, a Five Hour Energy supplement, to get the work done on time and back to the customer correctly, instead of having to wait months and months for a top-heavy, unionized group of slugs to get around to the work that needs to be completed.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Put a Dagger in Our Democracy: Our enemies, foreign and domestic, want us to forget we are a wonderful republic

Put a Dagger in our Democracy, Let it Go to Hell

Just about everyone makes the mistake of calling our way of government a Democracy. Even people like Steve Bannon and President Trump referred to “our democracy” when discussing American politics. But that isn’t because we are a democracy. Over time, the enemies of America have convinced us to call ourselves that out of the strategic need they have to overthrow our way of government and replace it with something more authoritarian and reach that strategy through popular opinion. Such as unleashing a virus to scare everyone into giving up their Constitutional freedoms in favor of more safety and security. Not that something like that would ever happen. (tongue in cheek implied)  A democracy is a government of the people, not for the people. Instead, we have a republic that was extensively debated in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers at the formation of the Constitution, which worked. It has worked better than any form of government yet to be constructed on Earth throughout many human lifetimes. It was formed from the lessons learned from history, and it has been far superior to all other forms of government, which has created significant jealousies. So much so that the strategy that those enemies have uttered to destroy our republic has been to change in our minds what we think it is. And they have slow-brewed this concept of a democracy rather than a republic over a long period until the present, where most everyone gets it wrong—even people who mostly get it right.

Put another way; a democracy is a flea-bitten form of mob rule. It is part of the everlasting Vico Cycle where naturally, every time we end up with a majority rule thumb up, thumb down government, we descend into the next phase of that cycle, anarchy. It happened in every significant civilization over the history of the world, most notably Rome. But the cycle of theology, aristocracy, democracy, then anarchy can be traced through history and are common to all attempts by human beings to have a functioning society. Still, they always get it a bit wrong. Our republic in America was formed as a divorce from that nonsense. It was the first time a republic of that size had been tried, and obviously, it worked great right out of the gate. America went on to be the greatest country in the history of the world under any measure. It is undoubtedly the most successful and has given the most people the most opportunity of any government anywhere. So when slugs like the Biden people say dumb things like “we have to save our democracy,” they are instead trying to get people to think of themselves as a popular form of government where mobs rule, not representatives of the people who are more logically positioned to do the work. When Biden said at this Georgia speech that if we didn’t vote for some ridiculous voting reform laws that we’d be “putting a dagger into our democracy,” he was actually saying the quiet part out loud. That’s precisely what we want to do, to put a dagger through the heart of any form of democracy, because that is what our enemies want us to do, is to think of ourselves as a democracy that we have to protect from some invisible dagger. If they can then capture popular sentiment through multiple avenues of pressure, whether through the media or through family or neighborhood by neighborhood, then they might have a chance to take us all over and change us into something we don’t want to be, another casualty of the Vico Cycle. 

I tried to explain it to everyone at the time, but the reason we couldn’t invoke the “insurrection act” and call the military in to protect Trump from having to leave the White House is that we had to beat the attackers of our country at their own game. We had to use the rules of our republic and our form of constitutional government to turn the tables on these attackers. We couldn’t throw it all away and descend into anarchy, hoping that only such an action would save our country. That is precisely what the attackers wanted, to push us all into a widespread sentiment that would then shove us into the Vico Cycle and ultimately our own destruction. By trying to save our republic, we’d kill it by abandoning it in favor of immediate, popular sentiment and action. Trump needed to leave the White House, we needed to catch these villains one by one, and we needed to fight them in court, such as we are doing presently with the vaccine mandates, abortion laws, and fiscal policy. But suppose we had tried to hang on to the high ground of the White House? In that case, we could have only done it by descending away from the rule of law of a republic and ultimately do precisely what our attackers wanted us to do, fall into a democracy of popular rule, which would then open us up for the anarchy of Antifa, of FBI activism such as we saw on January 6th, and to play the game the way they wanted to play it, where they controlled the levers of power—the media, the military, and the banking industry. 

The best thing we could do for ourselves is to put a dagger in our democracy. Democracies are disasters and always descend into the chaos that the next theocracy would then take over and start the cycle over again. For those who understand the Great Reset of global intention, that next religion of theocracy is literally their goal; they’ve said it out loud. It’s the green movement, the Earth first nonsense, where they turn environmental concerns into a new religion of worship. From there, the next aristocracy of a ruling class would evolve and allow the few to rule the many. It’s a trick, and they have been doing it for thousands of years. We are supposed to be learning these kinds of things in our education system, but of course, the attackers of our government control what we know. So to beat them, we had to turn to our republic, such as we are doing in 2022.

Representatives of our republic have let us down; they allowed election fraud to happen in 2020 and must pay. They allowed Covid to be used literally as a bioweapon in our society to shove people into a majority rule through popular opinion to fear for our lives on a global mass scale and run to the people who actually made the virus for protection. And to pave the way for such intentions, they have convinced us that we are a democracy, not a republic. They have deliberately tried to separate us from logic and to plunge us all into chaos and revolt with mobs of losers uneducated and scared voting up or down the events of our day. Instead, they devise to divert us away from the rule of laws created in the forges of pressure, debate, and logic to hold the days of sentiment for the final judgment that advances an entire culture. Every time we say “democracy,” we are cheapening ourselves. And we shouldn’t do it anymore. We are a republic, and we have to fight to make it continue to stand. We need to let it do its work because it is working. And so long as we do, the attackers of our country and our very lives have no chance and will hang by their own noose. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Old Yeller: The fight between Thomas Hall and Sheriff Jones

Why Is Sheriff Jones Going After Thomas Hall

Sheriff Jones decided to go on 700 WLW and speak disparagingly about Thomas Hall, the current House Representative of the 53rd District. I like Sheriff Jones, I hope he runs and wins a few more terms, but nobody in their right mind could support the way he attacked Thomas Hall on those radio waves to hundreds of thousands of people. Long-time readers here know that I used to be a frequent contributor on WLW, like Jones. Over time, many of my people who used to work there moved away, were fired, or otherwise changed their point of view. We separated like some kind of divorce, and I have not had much of an idea of reconciliation. I have more freedom in media with this site, so I have not returned in several years. But Jones does go on WLW quite a lot, so because I don’t pay much attention to what goes on there these days, I did not hear the original airing where Sheriff Jones disparaged Thomas Hall in many negative ways calling him a 12-year old “goof,” not just once, but many times. Still, I have often heard from many Republicans who want to defend Hall but are scared of retaliation from Jones, and I think that’s a shame. Hall certainly isn’t 12-years old. I said in the video that he was in his early thirties, but actually, he’s in his mid-twenties and is the youngest member of the current Ohio House. However, the young man is an overachiever by all measures, and his age certainly isn’t a hindrance. He has had two terms as a Madison Trustee, and now he’s in his first term as a congressman seeking a second term. 

Sheriff Jones Goes After Thomas Hall over H.B. 99

Another thing I said about Thomas is a couple of times in the video, I referred to him as Thomas More, because for a lot of reasons, I think of the writer of Utopia whenever I think of Thomas Hall. It’s been that way for a while just because of my own reading habits. There are a lot of Thomas’ in English literature; another is the character of Thomas Becket from The Canterbury Tales, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by his friend Henry the II. It’s one of my favorite books, and this story keeps coming to my mind when I think of Thomas Hall and his friend and mentor, Sheriff Jones. Jones had endorsed Thomas and was mentoring him until a few things happened. Apparently, Jones didn’t like Hall’s voting record. The Sheriff had a confirmed case of heartburn over H.B. 99, Hall’s bill in congress, which set definitions for minimal teacher training to carry firearms in public schools. Jones uncharacteristically turned on Thomas Hall and made quite an exhibition about it on WLW right before Thanksgiving in 2021. I hadn’t heard it until I did an endorsement video for Thomas Hall, and he mentioned it. I had heard from several very prominent Republicans, some very close to the Sheriff, that something had gone on really bad. As I said in the video, one of them was not Senator Lang. I never put people in positions where they get caught in crossfires with each other and given the mean streak that many fear in crossing Jones, many don’t want to be a part of it. Yet many more than ten contacted me to let me know what was going on between Hall and Jones, and they weren’t happy about it.

Thomas Hall Responds to Sheriff Jones

I listened to the Jones interview with Willie, included here; then I listened to the response from Thomas Hall the next day. I played them for my wife, who loves Sheriff Jones. We talked about the interviews and thought Thomas Hall did a fantastic job. He certainly won the argument. But Jones came across as petty and even childish. My wife offered that maybe he was hurting about something else, totally unrelated. Perhaps that’s true. Whatever it is, I would suggest a few thoughts regarding the excellent Sheriff. I’ve been sideways with him a few times over things, particularly school things and union business. I still blame him for the Lakota levy passing in 2013. He has a liberal streak in him that I can’t stand, but we have buried the hatchet since then. What he did for Butler County during the Trump years has been great. A person’s body of work can’t be defined by just a few years here and there or by the grumpy old dog that starts biting people who step on a porch to sell Girl Scout cookies. I hope that Jones runs and wins more terms for as long as possible. But perhaps my wife was right about him, that something else is bothering him. 

In my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I deal with this very issue of an older generation coping with the young people biting their heels. The chapter is called “The Skill of Developed Intuition” on pg. 181. You spend your whole life getting somewhere, making yourself into the person people put on T.V. Getting invited to the White House. Where you can’t go into public without people wanting to get a picture taken with you. And suddenly, here is some 25-year-old whiz kid who suddenly does more in one year than most state reps do in a lifetime. And he’s confident and won’t kiss the ring. Deep down inside, nobody would want to see such a young person broken, but consciously, the older person wants respect because he gave it when he was younger. The aging process isn’t fair. When you can start to see the end of the tunnel, and you know it’s going to be over soon, it is painful to see intelligent young people with their whole lives in front of them getting the attention it took you a lifetime to build. Sometimes, you might be tempted to crush the young competition, show them all they don’t know yet and teach them obedience. But I would caution you not to do that. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is encourage the young people, not tear them down, but build them up. 

Old Yeller

Listening to Thomas talk about the WLW incident, I was amazed he wasn’t more upset. I would be. I carry grudges for a long time, for decades. I would not have been able to say all the nice things that Thomas said about Sheriff Jones when I did my endorsement video with him. I would have been plotting revenge and embarrassment. But obviously, Thomas Hall has had a lot of good mentors in his life, his father being one. But several other politicians for another, including Sheriff Jones. So, there are a lot of lessons here that should be observed. I would hope that Sheriff Jones wouldn’t spend all the years of his excellent branding on petty nonsense that will overshadow all the good things he has done. There are people concerned about just that very thing by many of the calls I received. But Thomas isn’t that way; he understands that politics is a blood sport, and he plays to win without getting hung up on stupid stuff. And in his mind, he already defended himself on WLW the next day. But people were confused as to why the Sheriff went after Thomas, and I would suggest that it shouldn’t ruin the reputation of the Sheriff. I don’t think we are dealing with an Old Yeller situation here. Maybe just an old dog that would love to run around like the youth do but can’t anymore. There is still good to do, and from the point of view of Thomas, he’s willing to do good wherever possible.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

How To Make a Two-Party System Work: We are a Republic, not a flea-bitten “democracy”

We are a Republic

Every time I hear some political ignoramus say that we need to “save our democracy,” it is like someone scratching a chalkboard. All this “dagger into democracy” talk is as stupid as stupid gets. We are not a “democracy” in America; we are a “republic.” We are a government “of” the people, not “by” the people. But we are taught in every way of life imaginable that everything is a popularity contest, especially in our public schools. That majority rule, and if you are not in the majority, then you will never rule. Well, when we talk about the majority, we are talking about every drug addict, every sex-starved lunatic, every illiterate fool, ever degenerate imaginable. If we only consider popular elections by a majority, then always the dumbest will rule the smartest, and our society will indeed be equal, equally deficient. So it is no wonder that people get frustrated with politics when they see the system not working. They show up once every four years and vote for some people, and ultimately, those people let them down, then they get discouraged with the two-party system. At the same time, the media drives home the point they learned in their public educations, that democracy is all about the popular rule and that the only way to achieve fairness is to punt everything to a much more centralized government to sort out. This is especially true now where people can see that the party system isn’t working for them, Democrats are off doing the work of outright communism, and Republicans seem to be fighting Trump, a natural outgrowth of the Tea Party movement. People who don’t pay much attention to politics are obviously frustrated because, for some reason or another, they thought they could show up and vote every so often, and that would be the end of it. The world would just carry on and work.

But what I say to all those who want to disparage the two-party system, or who get upset when parts of their chosen party look bad and don’t represent a majority of the people associated with that party, is that the time to work out those elements is always in the off-year elections. For instance, right now, in the early months of a New Year, 2022 is the time for the philosophy of the Republican Party to be worked out in the trenches. The primary season is upon us, and that is when candidates battle each other for the general philosophy of the party. I would say that the system works great as a two-party system so long as people participate. You may not get everything you want in the candidates. I’m hardly ever happy with where things are, but if you don’t participate, then your point of view will never get a seat at the table.   After all, this is what’s going on in the Republican Party right now and what Democrats have continued to fail to match. The news analysts think that Trump is an extreme version of the Republican Party when he is a natural outgrowth of the Tea Party movement that has become more involved in party politics starting at the central committee levels, voting in primaries, and other off-year activities. The establishment types aren’t happy about it, but that representation grew over time from the Tea Party into MAGA and the American First Policy Institute. Democrats have incorrectly assumed that Trump was just an extreme right-winged version of the establishment, so they have tried to counter with their own version, where the Biden administration is now, representing the radical progressives, giving them a voice they have never had before. The progressives took this admission as a mandate, and as a result, they have over-extended themselves.    

To a political outsider not participating in these processes, and looking at presidential elections as the only ones that matter, they will see disfunction because the system is not working the way they were taught, through popular vote, only every so often. But in a republic, we are a nation of laws, not the mob. And those laws are created during off-year elections, not presidential elections every four years. Right now is the prime time to work out the general philosophy of a political party, and if you are not engaged in that debate, you should never be surprised when you are not represented in the final product. But even if you do participate, there are other people involved, and their minds have their inputs, so what you end up with will ultimately not be 100% you.   But at that point, you can’t just pick up all your game pieces and cry like a baby and leave. You have to continue to fight it out, to push for your ideas, and let come what may. That is what a republic looks like. Politics is not supposed to be nice. It is supposed to be contentious so that only the best ideas survive into law and policy. The whims of mankind are meant to be tempered with time and a lack of tenacity. If you want a friend, get a dog. If you’re going to be the master of your own universe, stay at home and never go outside. But if you want your republic to function, participate. When people disagree with you, strengthen your argument to win them over or have your ideas crushed under the weight of analysis. But don’t think for a second that your vote is a one-and-done kind of relationship at the ballot box. There is a lot more to it, and our republic requires people to participate all the time. Not just when it comes time to vote. 

China keeps talking about how efficient they are, and of course, big bureaucrats in Washington D.C. culture want to have the same kind of control that communism gives to those countries. They want to rule by administrative state, so they throw gas on the fires all the time about the follies of our current political process.   Of course, when the government can just tell people what to do, it’s a lot less messy for them. China’s present argument is that “American Democracy” is too messy, too slow, and does not serve the “people’s” needs. They would love to see an end to the two-party system. They love to say things like, “we’re putting daggers into our democracy.” They want to plant that seed and watch it grow into a change state from a capitalist nation into a communist one. If they can convince voters that the system doesn’t work, they may be willing to throw it all away for something that does. But it’s not our republic that is failing; it’s the people participating. Because of their lack of effort, the strength of the two-party system doesn’t get fulfilled the way it should, and the people who end up in charge are the worst because they were the only ones who showed up.   That is clearly the problem with Democrats. Republicans had the Tea Party, and the establishment is very unhappy about their continued presence, but Republicans have a much better party as a result. But punting to default and saying that none of it works is just a falsehood. The only thing not working are people who have been taught wrong from the beginning what their proper role in government always was. And how much influence they really have for the future of our “republic.”

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

You Can Get it All with Thomas Hall: What good government looks like

Vote For Thomas Hall

Now that we’re in the primary season, it’s time for endorsements. This one for Thomas Hall is so obvious that I might not even think he needs one. But primaries can be tricky since there aren’t usually many voters who participate, so just for good measure, I wanted to say how excited I am to endorse Thomas Hall for the 53rd House District in Ohio. Some redistricting is going on, which might expand Hall’s district from Middletown into Liberty Township, which is presently going through the Supreme Court process. But whatever the case, Thomas Hall is one of the finest examples of what politics should look like. He certainly deserves another term to continue doing the excellent work that he has been doing. He’s a Trump Republican who worked for the campaign in 2016 when it wasn’t so popular to do so out of Madison Township, where he had been a two-term trustee. As he appears in the video above, Thomas seems to be too young to have so much political experience at this point in his life and running for a second term in the Ohio House, but let me tell you, this guy is a whiz kid. He’s been involved in a lot of undoubtedly conservative legislature. He has stood up to some severe bullying by influential political figures and not allowed them to sway him away from the voting public. He is one of the rare examples of a person who comes into politics with all the ideology of goodness and has lived it out in real life, which is exceptionally unique. He’s everything voters could want and more in a representative, and I look forward to more from him in the years to come.

I always refer to politics as a blood sport. One of the things I admire most about Thomas is that he’s been able to weather a lot of political current without losing himself to the tides of erosion. He is the same good person going into his second year as the first. He has a confidence that is unusual in people young or old, which has served him well as a political heavyweight in a brief period. Of course, that kind of competency would get attention and make political enemies. Having political enemies is a great thing; it means you are doing a good job and ultimately doing the people’s work. Many people get into politics for the wrong reasons, making it a weary point of conversation for most people. They’d rather not deal with politics because their experience with politicians is often very negative for that reason. But Thomas is the exception. He is like the classic representative from some far-flung Wild West town that greets all his voters with enthusiasm, shakes hands with everyone, including all the babies, and is sincere in doing it. And people love him. Going into January of 2022, I would think that Thomas Hall would be a slam dunk for re-election. But you can’t take anything for granted these days. Some people may not know Thomas yet, especially with the prospects of redistricting, so endorsements are an excellent way to learn more about him.

Thomas and I met to film the endorsement video in West Chester, Ohio, to the south of where he lives and works, just north of Middletown. The 53rd district consists of Middletown, Monroe, Trenton, Seven-Mile, Madison, and Oxford, so West Chester is in another political universe. When we were parking Thomas was like a rock star. People recognized him immediately and wanted to come up and shake his hand. Thomas Hall has, after all, been a part of most of the significant gun legislation that has been moving through Columbus, including arming teachers to promote school safety and constitutional carry. He certainly has the most conservative position on abortion in politics. To the political left, these may seem like extreme positions, but Thomas is far from any kind of extremist. His views are consistent with most people’s, and you can see when he speaks with those who greet him, that is the case. Hall comes across as a friendly young man who cares because he actually does. And it is that attitude that has made him so successful as a first-term member of the House. He’s doing the kind of work in politics that people have wanted to see done for a long time, but often politicians don’t dare to do it. But Thomas is fearless and friendly enough to have compassion for his political rivals. He doesn’t have to be mean or a sell-out. He’s smart enough to win without crawling through the mud, and people can see that. That much is evident when people approached him while we were going to film the video. People naturally like Thomas Hall because they can see that he’s not a phony. 

I’ve known Thomas for a while now; I have seen him at events all over town for years. I know how hard it is for me to attend political events because time is often short, and it’s hard to schedule in my busy life. Thomas is always at all those events, and he goes to a lot more of them than I do. And when he is there, he is always very polite, very respectful, interested in talking to the people around him. He’s always learning new things and applying them to his vast experience as a young man. For me, his first term flew by too quickly. Every time I have met with him, it was reassuring to know that a great person like him was in one of our House seats in Ohio. He is what government should look like, and I’d hate to see that condition change with an election. So for my part, it’s a slam dunk on Thomas Hall, re-elect him, and send him back to Columbus not just with the primary election but the general coming up in November.

The primary is in May. It may seem a bit far out, but we can’t take anything for granted. These things move fast. A good government takes more work than most people usually give to it. But it’s worth it when you get it, which is undoubtedly the case with Thomas Hall. When I think of his name, I think of good government. I think of someone who will stand up to corruption emphatically. He has the ideology of someone new to politics who wants to fight the bad guys out there. But he has the smarts to know how to do it without losing his soul. I would go beyond calling him, my friend. I think he’s excellent for Ohio, great for the nation, and really good for the Trump Republican America that is hatching as we speak. This movement only started to sprout during the first Trump presidency. Those who don’t like Thomas Hall in politics are the same kind of people who didn’t like Trump because both wanted to solve problems rather than use crises to gain more power. No voter could go wrong with Thomas Hall, and when it comes time to vote for him in the primary, I am very much looking forward to voting for him and making the world a better place with a second term.

Rich Hoffman

We’re Not Anti-Government, We’re Anti-Stupid: Government needs to be the refs, not the players in the game

We’re not Anti-Government, Just Anti-Stupid

I’ve heard what Steve Bannon has said about Elon Musk on the War Room podcast, and I understand it to a point. Yes, Elon Musk has made deals with China, and knowing what we do now, in hindsight, it was a terrible idea. It’s the same situation with other billionaires like Ray Dalio. He has invested heavily in the prospect of an expanding middle class in China, where corporations think all the new money in the world will come from. I would not say Steve is wrong. But he’s only partly correct. People evolve their beliefs over time depending on good and bad ideas that transpire through the course of events, and they do change their minds; and I see in Elon Musk a mind that is evolving in the correct direction. Our job as change agents is to allow changing minds into our tent for tactical reasons, but without losing ourselves in the process. For instance, during the ESPN2 Manning podcast of the Monday Night Football game, Aaron Rogers abruptly started talking about Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. Here we have a sports jock speaking in popular culture about Ayn Rand, one of the most controversial writers in American history and world history. Many of the ideas discussed on the War Room and here on the Gunfighter’s Guide are percolating into popular culture, which is a great thing. But with new interest from people who may not have been thinking about such things in the past come all their past mistakes. So, I think it’s a good idea to bring them into the camp, allow them to get warm by the fire, and keep our eye on them as to misdeeds. But in the case of Elon Musk, he said something recently that is irrelevant to his patriotic status and is entirely accurate and worth talking about as a critical strategic need within the freedom movement.

I heard it in a couple of different interviews; one was with Musk and the satire website The Babylon Bee. I can understand the skepticism of Bannon in what Musk’s intentions are since he has been so profitable in relations with communist China. But I see other things going on with Elon Musk. He is a problem solver, and he’s looking at the potential for a Mars colony and thinking about what kind of government will allow it to thrive, based on what we all know now from history and what is working up-close here in the present. He has been told no on several permits to fly Starship into space on test flights due to environmental concerns, so he is seeing the negatives of a communist type of government up close and personal. He may have profited from those relationships, but he has also learned some valuable lessons that are worth listening to. These days Musk is saying that governments should be more like referees in society than players in the game. That, in essence, has been the goal of the Tea Party movement for years, and it is undoubtedly the intention of the MAGA movement. Musk said it nicely in a way that many have struggled to put words to for a long time when talking about limited government.   What is it, and why does it work better? 

People have always associated me with an anti-government movement. That is how they often see the freedom movement in general, whether we are talking about the Tea Party, MAGA, or the current America First Policy Institute. The people who make up the name-calling are usually significant government types who love Karl Marx so that less government would be detrimental from their point of view. And by default, whether it’s a sports jock like Aaron Rogers, a political strategist like Steve Bannon, or an eclectic engineer with vast financial resources to make what he wants, the name-calling by the left usually defines the political reality because all the names mentioned are too busy being productive to work together on a counter-punch. But Musk and his need to solve the problems of interplanetary sustainability must figure out the puzzle of good government, and it has taken him more toward the freedom movement than toward communism. For that, many should be grateful. Because once thought like that enters popular culture, to the point where Aaron Rogers is talking about Atlas Shrugged on a football broadcast, there are significant cultural shifts on the horizon that few are really prepared for. Arbitrary definitions of people are not as crucial as proper utilization of the sentiments.

I would never have called myself “anti-government.” Instead, I have always been “anti-stupid.” There are many stupid people in the world, and the bigger the government is, the more of a chance that stupid people will end up in government, causing all of us a headache. So, it’s quite natural not to want stupid people to be in charge of our lives, so in that way, we want the small government to weaken the impact that stupid people will have on our lives. But what Elon Musk said was more on target. Government is there to make sure that the rules of the games we play in managing our society occur to bring about the best outcomes.   As I say in the video above, we can look at an empty field and consider it without value until we decide to play a soccer game or football game on it with all the rules that have been created to allow the drama of such an event to transpire. Government should referee those games; they should not be the players themselves. Because many of them are stupid and valueless types of people, our current government wants to use the protection of the referee position to rig the games for wins instead of letting the games play out and evoking a winner and loser based on skill and persistence. 

And that is the real goal; we aren’t trying to get rid of the government; we need the government to make sure that things work right in society. But we must distinguish that government is not a player on the field but are just there to make sure the game is fair. In essence, the heart of all our problems is that too many in government presently want to be the players, not the referees, and they got into politics for all the wrong reasons. From Elon Musk’s point of view or Aaron Rogers, they have previously functioned quite well in the world with the political rules bent slightly toward corruption. Still, nobody cared as long as they got what they wanted out of the deal. But upon success, and continued frustration in dealing with the government, whether it’s over a permit to fly into space or Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates, the bug of awful play-calling has affected just about everyone these days, and they are looking for solutions. Our task within that movement is to find them a place around the campfire and expand the reach of our shared objectives, which is to see that our games in life are fair so that we can then concentrate on being the best we can be within those rules. And in any healthy society, whether on earth or Mars, that needs to be what we spend our time on, and not trying to fend off referees who want to be the players of the game, without the risk of being exposed as unskilled and stupid.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Ray Epps is all that Matters: January 6th was a government entrapment plot, based on the behavior of Richard Trask

Who is Ray Epps

As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything to talk about regarding the so-called January 6th Insurrection if the name of Ray Epps isn’t involved. The guy was everywhere in D.C. the day of the Trump rally and the night before trying to instigate people into a froth of anger and enter the Capitol building in protest of the election fraud that had so many people already disappointed. You can tell by the federal government’s behavior that there is something really wrong with this case. They have arrested people who had far less to do with inciting violence and vandalism than what Ray Epps was caught on camera doing. Yet, Ray is driving around his ranch in Arizona without a care in the world while many people rot in jail, stuck without due process by a government that has turned against them completely. If that weren’t enough, while we sift through the smoke a year later of what happened on January 6th, and establishment types try to use it to hide all the other destructive behavior that has been going on in the SWAMP, the kidnapping plot story of Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan has taken on a life of its own, thanks to a wife swapping, tattooed freak of an FBI agent, Richard Trask and the night he tried to beat his wife’s head in after a swingers party that unveiled to the world a level of entrapment that the FBI had directly been involved in. 

At this point, do I have to remind people of all the times over the last decade that the FBI has been caught tampering with crime to provoke an outcome? Because that could go on for days, I’m thinking presently of the evidence coverup from the San Bernardino Christmas terrorists; remember that one? I haven’t forgotten, that’s for sure. The Trump years in the White House have clearly shown that the culture of the FBI is in political outcomes, not a blind pursuit of justice. Also, from me, a bit of a disclaimer, I have several former employees who have left me for these kinds of aims in life, so I know quite a lot about the subculture of police work at all levels. There is currently a young man I am quite proud of who is working in the White House as a Secret Service Agent. He was there when Trump was, and he is doing just the same good job for Biden currently. Good kid. But…….I have many people I know who are just like Richard Trask, even down to the swinger’s lifestyle, who have populated local law enforcement, the FBI, and other roles. So I can say with a lot of confidence that Richard Trask as the lead FBI agent who entrapped militia groups in Michigan into plotting the kidnapping of the governor during the Covid lockdowns in retaliation for her brutal behavior, is common. Richard Trask is not unusual, even though many are shocked by the revelations of his character. 

Trask was an anti-Trumper to an extreme, leaving behind many social media posts forecasting his behavior. Ultimately, he used his power as an FBI agent to steer angry people into a direction the government wanted them to go so they could make a story about it. Left to their own devices, those militia people would have sat in their cabins complaining about the government while they cleaned their guns. But Trask and his fellow FBI agents wanted to shove them into a story by pretending to be one of them, complete with the crazy wild beard and tattooed bodies. The FBI stoked the plot to kidnap Whitmer, then once the followers in the militia started making plans, Trask turned it into a public relations incident that the media then took the handoff and broke the story in a way that made everything sound like a vast, right-winged conspiracy, especially coming from Disney owned ABC News. 

Well, while a lot of this was going on, Trask’s personal life was a strange brew of characters. He was trying to get his wife to buy into some experimental sexual escapades when they found themselves at a swinger’s party at a hotel in Michigan near Kalamazoo. Apparently, Trask drank too much or was drugged while there. Whatever the case, the couple left the party feeling like many couples do at things like that, guilt in what they were doing, exposed sexually in uncomfortable ways, and not really knowing what to do with their emotions after. Once they returned home, they got into a big fight in their bedroom where Richard Trask proceeded to beat his wife’s head against the bed while he choked her in a way that looked to intend a terminal outcome. She called the police; they picked him up. Because of the unusual behavior of a federal officer, the story got out. Over the months that followed, we learned that this was the same FBI agent who planted the story of the Whitmer kidnapping. So, there you have it all within the Trask case, a motive that it’s a cultural problem at the FBI, not just a single individual. Trask didn’t do all these things by himself, he had a lot of help, and even after he nearly killed his wife, it took the FBI a few months to officially fire him, which they had to do publicly. But just think of how many Richard Trasks are out there working as FBI agents right now who are just like him? In my experience, it’s most of them. It comes from the way they recruit, the kind of agents they hire. As I said, I know the type very well. 

Knowing all that, let’s move to January 6th. The FBI knew there would be hundreds of thousands of people coming to the Trump rally angry at election fraud. The FBI needed to do something about it because that’s what they are expected to do. Of course, just as they did with Richard Trask, they would attempt to infiltrate some of those groups to influence them into behaving in a way that the government could use as public relations against the angry Trump voters. They felt they had to put such a large group of people on their heels while the government tried to cover what they did with Covid and the election results. Such as, who told five states to stop counting ballots on election night 2020 just shortly after Vegas bet makers had called the race for Trump? What form of Ray Epps is there in that story? People had a right to be upset, and the FBI wanted to change the story. So, there was Ray Epps, doing essentially what Richard Trask did, and the only reason Ray is still out there is that he didn’t do anything stupid like go to a swinger’s party and try to swap his wife for the night for some strange sex with drug-laced losers and low life intellects. Instead, Ray did what all federal plants try to do; he is staying low keyed on his property, hoping the story will cool down at some point so he can re-emerge back into the public. But a year later, independent reporters are starting to get it. They have been going to see Ray at his home to find out why the FBI has never picked up Ray, even though many people are still in jail awaiting some sort of bogus charges for the “insurrection” at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Sadly, the evidence points back to a guilty government where many politicians are playing their part in the coverup, particularly Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi. The hundreds of thousands of people who came to hear Trump talk that day scared them to death. And they needed some way to take the light off them, just as Trask tried to do for his favorite political governor, Gretchen Whitmer. She was in trouble with the people for the draconian lockdowns, and Trask took it upon himself to bail her out with this entrapment plot of militia groups. Now, does anybody really think that the FBI didn’t take the same sort of extreme action against Trump supporters on January 6th? The fact that Ray Epps has not been arrested tells you everything you need to know.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

A Monopoly on Violence: Elon Musk sees it, and soon will the rest of the world

The Government’s Monopoly on Violance

Elon Musk has said it in a couple of interviews toward the end of the year since Time Magazine has made him “Man of the Year,” that government has a lot of problems. He thinks that government should be a referee on the field but not a player in the game. And he has continued to say that one of the biggest problems with the government is that they have a “monopoly on violence.” I first heard these comments from him during a Wall Street Journal interview at a yearly think tank kind of thing they do in Washington D.C.  Then again, shortly after that, at a surprise sit down with the Babylon Bee, the online satire website. Many of us have been saying things like that for a long time. Elon Musk is obviously having an evolution as he runs his two major companies, Tesla and SpaceX, with the challenges of government regulation and global commerce that is trying desperately to move toward Chinese communism. The difference is that Musk cannot be canceled for saying what he does because he is at the front of the train on virtually everything. Actually, at a recent Joe Biden EV Summitt, Musk wasn’t invited, even though Tesla is undoubtedly the most important player when it comes to the electric car market. But instead of it looking bad on Musk, it blew up in the face of Biden, like everything does these days. So for Musk to say things about the government that are consistent with Tea Party positions over the last decade is quite a thing and certainly an indicator of things to come. When people like Musk are critiquing government correctly, many mainstreamers want the overflow of his money who will by default see things his way.

And isn’t that the heart of the problem with the government, that government has a monopoly on violence? That is precisely why they naturally are inefficient in everything they do because they never have to worry about someone calling them out as the big bullies. Or at least, that’s what they have assumed for a long time. That is why they feel they can start riots all over the country during 2020, trying to use racism to blame the Trump supporters for the unrest they created, but their real intent was to remove President Trump from office. But then when people went to Washington, a quarter-million people, to hear Trump give one of his final speeches and the frustrations spilled over into a mob at the Capitol building, the government felt it could arrest the participants and hold them in jail for some undetermined time ignoring completely any due process along the way. They also thought they could shoot Ashley Babbitt for no real reason and that there would be no recourse for their reckless actions. They felt they could arrest the participants of the January 6th, 2021 demonstration without any real just cause because of their monopoly on violence. In that case, they could have arrested people in all the mobs previously that were incited by the government, including on Inauguration Day in 2017 when President Trump was sworn in. The damage to Washington D.C. and other places was much more severe on that day, but as we have seen over the last several years, the government picks what it wants to enforce and abandons all laws when it’s not convenient to them. 

Then we have the FBI, which I have been talking about for a while now as one of the most corrupt law enforcement branches we have these days. They are obviously radical from top to bottom. They are not only corrupt at the top floor of the FBI in Washington. The revelations in the Whitmer case in Michigan prove that several FBI agents were involved in a set up of the Wolverine Watchmen, where several agents had penetrated the group and were trying to inspire them into criminal activity. Like it looks, they did on January 6th. The ideas for violence weren’t coming from the militia groups themselves, but from the FBI trying to plant ideas for violence to cause an action that they could then arrest people for entrapment. The corruption in the FBI is at the top level, the middle level, and certainly in every field office.

I know people who are in the FBI. I also know people in the Secret Service. Over the years, many people have worked for me who move off into these fields, and good for them. We always need people to do these jobs; like Elon Musk says, we do need referees to help keep the game honest. But we don’t need the government playing the game.   And when it comes to law enforcement, a badge doesn’t make a good person. Many people who have left me for some federal job I wouldn’t trust with a box of rocks, it’s not that they aren’t good people or were good employees. Yes, without good leadership around them, they go corrupt quickly, almost every time. I would never permit them to arrest people on fake FISA warrants in the middle of the night. What I have heard from the FBI, especially regarding their actions against President Trump, does not surprise me. And for what they have been caught in at the highest levels, you have to logically conclude that they are doing much worse where they never thought they’d get caught. 

Corruption in federal law enforcement, even localized law enforcement, comes from one common source when the government thinks that they have a right to inflict violence on you. Still, you are never allowed to give it back to them, so we have created a corrupt legal system. When power is given to anybody without some measure of regulation, that power will undoubtedly go to their heads. One of those employees I spoke about who used to work for me became a local cop. He was always good for me; he was a model employee. But without me, he spun out of control quickly, and soon he was pulling over carloads of young girls and scaring them with threats of jail and traffic tickets that they didn’t want their parents to find out about. So he and his fellow officers would force the girls to perform oral sex on them to get out of trouble. And it worked most of the time until someone finally came forward and reported what had been happening. By nature, no matter who it is, authority over others will corrupt everyone. The best measure against it is to remove any monopoly of violence. In our brilliant constitutional republic, we do have a measure of addressing that very issue, the Second Amendment. The only reason we have any sense of justice in America is because of gun rights. The government would have gone wrong beyond repair years ago without those gun rights. What’s terrible about these last few years is that the government has gone further in corruption than ever before because of the Trump election of 2016. They were so insulted that people would vote for someone like Trump that they have turned toward their monopoly on violence to commit some significant constitutional crimes, including what they have done with Covid. We will be sorting out that mess for many years to come, but the crimes were, and continue to be, reprehensible. But good things are happening, and when people like Elon Musk are where many of us have been for a long time, positive changes are on the horizon. And in this case, talking about the problem is the first step in fixing it. We no longer have the assumption that we can trust these government authorities. Left alone, they are prone to corruption at every level, and it is from there, we must take action to correct it in the future.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Mythic Realm: Understanding Elon Musk, Bob Iger shortcomings at Disney, the Build Back Better disaster, and why communism always fails

The Mythic Realm

I could actually write a book just about this topic of the Mythic Realm. Still, recently, an opportunity came up professionally where I had to talk to many political people and business people in the same Christmas setting.  I was near a whiteboard so I could tell the story of what I put on the video here contained.  The subject was a bunch of things that flow together to my eyes.  But to the groups of people, they understood some of it, but not all of it, because of the bubble concept that I explained in the video.  Most people all their lives never leave their bubbles of understanding, and I don’t look down on them for it.  I see it as a natural condition of the human race.  But when the topic of Elon Musk came up and all that he was up to, and understanding why Build Back Better is such a bad idea, or the vaccine mandates for Covid are so destructive, the answers to all those questions are often outside of the bubbles that people live in.  So I put together this little video to explain it to people who want to begin understanding some of these kinds of things, such as where economic power comes from.  It’s not the Political Realm or even the Business Realm.  All economic activity comes from the Mythic Realm, and it is there that we should always focus on creating more!

I also put in this article the WSJ interview with Elon Musk in its entirety where he said that the Build Back Better concept should be “deleated.” As I explained, Elon Musk is more shaman than industrialist, even living in a state of depravity to stay authentic to himself.  To my mind, our American society should be producing hundreds of Elon Musk types instead of a few here and there.  When I think of Elon Musk, aside from his tamperings with the political and business realm, I think of people like Thomas Edison, Tesla, the actual man, and Albert Einstein.  What people call genius, they say such things because, from their point of view in one of their social bubbles, the ideas from the realm of myth seem so extraordinary.  But really, it’s all point of view.  What always matters is the Mythic Realm because it is there where all ideas that generate all economic activity are created, which then cascades into all the organized elements of society.

I provided in the video an example about the aviation industry.  Where Prometheus came from stories about building fire or Indian legends about Thunderbirds who could fly, the idea for flight came from the human imagination in thinking what could be.  Then along came the Wright Brothers, who converted their bicycle profession into the first functioning plane.  From there, the political realm instantly saw the benefits, decided to utilize the airplane during World War I, and created rules and regulations for constructing airports, parts suppliers, and general aviation functions.  Then, of course, the Business Realm figures out what companies need to form to meet the world’s growing political need for airplanes.  And from there comes the Cultural Bubbles of all the individual companies that started making airplane parts and the workers who inhabit those cultures.  The exact trajectory of thought could be said to emerge from the auto industry, smartphones, everything that we consider economic value.  When I talk about intellectual currency, this is what I’m talking about.  Financial currency is needed to flow in the political, business, and cultural realms.  But intellectual currency is required to feed the Mythic Realm, and without that position, nothing new in economic energy is produced.  Therefore, the goal of our society or any society should always be to make more Elon Musk types, or even George Lucas, who created Star Wars.

I always talk about Star Wars because, as a kids product, it does a great job of creating ideas in the Mythic Realm among people in our society.  There was an excellent interview with Bob Iger from Disney, who is stepping down now as CEO.  I think he did a pretty good job stabilizing Disney as a company, but his problem was that he spent his entire time as CEO in the border between the Political Realm and the Business Realm, where most CEOs and CFOs think all the real value is.  But when it came time to make more Star Wars movies, he was lost, and what he made was a bunch of corporate woke garbage.  The fans became angry at Disney because the new films and books were made by a guy who was obsessed with the titles he held.  He made a mistake almost all corporate people make, putting their imprint on something that flows out of the Mythic Realm, but that they never understand the ideas. They end up smashing them into the bubbles of business culture, assuming that everything will just work out.  But it never does.  That is why Elon Musk tends to disparage titles in these companies and offices.  In the Mythic Realm, he likes to have all the executives close to where the action is.  As a modern company, Disney does OK if it sells the fantastic work created by people like Walt Disney.  But because they live in their corporate bubble, people like Bob Iger are paralyzed to do anything new, much like the Chinese suffer from their centralized communism. 

This is essentially why socialism and communism never work because they insist on an old aristocratic European view of the world that never figured out these things.  I feel I can talk about it because, really, for the first time in mass culture, we have a time where we can look at all these elements as an entire whole.  I read so much and from so many different sources that it is evident to me.  I don’t know that such an understanding of social constructs would have been possible 100 years ago.  But with the benefit of hindsight and great modern examples of success in the Mythic Realm, we can see these things clearly now.  When I shared these insights with that large group, they all seemed to have an “oh my gosh” moment, so it seemed like a practical thing to discuss.  When we want to understand the world around us, whether it’s Build Back Better, Star Wars success under Disney, Elon Musk and his quest for Mars colonization, or the intricacies of why capitalism works better than communism at managing society, understanding the Mythic Realm is the key. I’ve said for years that despite all my interests, I appreciate nothing more than mythology because what humans do better than any other known form of life is generate imagination, and therefore a change in circumstances directly derived from the mind.  No matter what someone thinks about God, it cannot be questioned that the purpose of human existence is to use the imagination to continue expanding what goes on in the universe.  We are not so insignificant as a species to assume that nature rules over the minds of humankind.  But that humankind is part of nature and the ever-evolving process of creation which the universe craves.  And once you understand that, everything else makes a lot more sense.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Best Thing I Received for Christmas: Todd Minniear in Liberty Township

I Got Todd Minniear for Christmas

Another question that comes up always after Christmas, mainly out of obligations of small talk, is what did you get for Christmas?  Was it all worth it?  Did you have a good Holiday?  Well, for me, this year, I did have a great Holiday.  But it wasn’t just family gift exchanges that I enjoyed.  Just a few days before Christmas, at the Liberty Township Building just down the road from my house, Todd Minniear was sworn in as my next trustee, one of three.  He is the product of a series of off-year elections where constitutional conservatives were targeted for election to either replace liberals or offer a more conservative candidate aside from the ones traditionally provided.  For me, it was quite a nice Christmas present to have Todd give me a call and invite me to his swearing-in, which I went to and was greeted there with a kind of class reunion from the various campaigns of 2021, and it was nice to see all that hard work come to some positive culmination.  I say it all the time, if you want a good government, then put good people in it. Don’t just sit on the couch and hope things work out alright.  Either run yourself for an office locally or support someone who wants to.  After the Trump presidency, that was certainly my story where obvious political shenanigans to remove him from office took place.   The audacious behavior of the national establishment is something I’ve seen plenty of times locally, over thirty years.  And the election of Todd Minniear, a constitutional and freedom-minded purist, was a significant achievement in my community and was a sign of things to come nationally. 

Another thing I say all the time to just about everyone I speak with is, “don’t be a victim.” Never allow yourself to be a victim in the story of your own life.  Those people we put into elected positions in our republic are never supposed to be our “betters” or some useless member of an aristocracy.  They are there to represent us.  But that’s not the way the political class views that relationship.  Often, they get into public office for the attention of it and the power that follows by having their hands on the levers of rules and regulations that govern our lives.  In the case of a local trustee, the question is often, “can I build a new pole barn on my property to hold my classic car.” The politicians usually will reply, “but think about the lowered property values of the community.  They don’t need to be penalized because you want to protect some gas-guzzling old car that should be on the junk heap, according to the United Nations.” They don’t say that they often work to protect the interests of those who give them campaign donations to keep them in power instead of representing all the community’s people all the time. I’ve been involved in politics in some way or another all of my adult life, and I have seen all the kinds of corruption that can come out of it, all the ugly stuff.  And I understand entirely how that corruption comes about and how to fix it.  The solution is to follow the Constitution of the nation and our state.  If everyone did that, things would work pretty well.  When politicians get away from the constitutions and bring their personal desires or biases to an issue, that’s where corruption starts.  

I don’t think any politician gets into a public office with the idea of becoming corrupt.  They get that way because they lose their way while solving problems.  Corruption starts to eat away from them once they get off the constitutional script.  For instance, I have several very close personal friends who are politicians.  People like George Lang. I’ve known George for a long time since he was a trustee in West Chester, well over a decade ago.  We bonded over Tea Party ideas of small government and the novel by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.  George has a habit of giving that novel out as a Christmas present at Christmas time.  He believes in the ideas in every aspect of his life.  Even though now he is an establishment figure, he is still the same person.

Because he is a big-time senator within the state, many people assume that politics has made him corrupt.  But I know personally, it hasn’t changed him at all. He’s still the same Atlas Shrugged-giving guy.  We might remember when Paul Ryan was also an Atlas Shrugged fan, but when Mitt Romney wanted him to be his VP, all that Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand stuff was tossed away so that they could become the next power player in congress, eventually becoming Speaker of the House.  Some people can handle the pressure of public scrutiny, and some can’t.  George can; Paul Ryan couldn’t.  Power has a way of altering people into the most profound things in their hearts.  George, for instance, at this Todd Minniear event, was pressed about several projects that involved tax money distribution.  His answer was a classic George Lang line, and he didn’t just say it because I was there.  It’s what he says all the time to everyone, “don’t give the government or me any more tax money. We’ll just spend it.  Keep your money. Our job is to take the barriers out of your way to living a good life.” 

I’ve watched several good politicians like George Lang get elected into more and more positions over the years.  And at that Todd Minniear swearing-in, several of our Lakota school board members newly elected were there as well, more parts of a future solution.  Locally, I’ve always looked to West Chester to ensure more small-government ideas found their way to the trustees.  My friend Mark Welch and others there have done a great job of keeping the government’s small and business engagement very high.  It is the model of what should be happening all over Ohio.  And if we can primary Mike DeWine as governor of Ohio and replace him with Jim Renacci, we’ll be able to do great things in Ohio.  But Liberty Township is where I live, and the trustees there have always been Republican, but more of the Paul Ryan type, and not so much that of George Lang.  At the start of the election in 2021, I didn’t think a freedom candidate like Todd Minniear could find his way on a Republican Party that was still much more like the Republican Party nationally of 2012 and not so much like the Trump Republican Party of 2020.  But Todd won with a solid majority, and he had a tremendous amount of people show up to support him, which is unusual at these kinds of events.  And as I stood there watching Jennifer Gross, our member of the Ohio House, swear in Todd, I could see where our country was headed.  And it made me very happy to see.  All the hard work that goes into these kinds of things was certainly worth it.  For those wondering about it, I would say that doing such things is some of the best Christmas presents you could give yourself.  Often there isn’t much personal satisfaction in politics but putting the right people in the correct positions at the right time through a vote is one of the most rewarding things anybody can do in a healthy republic.  And in Liberty Township for Christmas of 2021, I can say that seeing Todd Minniear sworn in for public office was the highlight of my Holiday season. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business