Category: Buccaneer Football

The Attack on Ohio’s Energy Grid: The Lawfare that put Householder in jail was an assult, not justice

To remind everyone, Larry Householder, the former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, is serving a jail term of 20 years.  And knowing now what I said then, the case was purely about politics and nothing about justice.  The same courts that have been trying to put Trump in jail are what’s at work here.  When you are in the Speaker position and you have to raise money for your party, what are you supposed to do when a company that supplies power to the energy grid in the form of two nuclear power plants in northern Ohio are being pushed out of business by that same government, the case from top to bottom was as dirty as it gets.  And it wasn’t Householder who was the dirty dealer.  The entire FirstEnergy case is about Democrats who were jealous of the power Republicans have in Columbus, and they used lawfare to attempt to break up that control and wrestle power back in their favor.  And they targeted Householder because he was trying to save an energy company that was targeted by the Obama administration for destruction as a progressive war against energy, which we saw during the Biden administration was purposeful and malicious.  Democrats and progressives wanted to reduce the power grid away from its known levels and shove everyone into solar and wind without having any real means to supply the demand that consumers needed.  Instead, the plan was to reduce the supply and force people to cut back on their needs.  The federal government targeted FirstEnergy to go out of business so that the Ohio power grid could not sustain the needs of consumers, and that was always the real story.  I wouldn’t call what Householder was doing to try to save the company bribery, a kind of pay-to-play scheme, politics.  The real problem was the attack on Ohio’s energy grid, which was the real menace in the story.

That’s not to say that Larry Householder and others in the Republican Party were squeaky clean.  There is a way to handle a situation like that correctly, and they did not handle the pressure or the temptations well.  Calling Householder a mob boss as if he were Al Capone or some other mobster is disingenuous, and only reflects that Democrats don’t have similar personality types in their party that can take control in Columbus.  However, when it comes to Republicans, taking Householder off the map only allowed other characters to fill the void, and that’s not a bad thing.  When we elect these people, we expect to get things done, and we expect the party we elect into power to keep that power, and sometimes the game can get messy.  But we want our people to win the game by whatever means necessary.  Where the line gets crossed is when you start accepting gifts and vacations, even if well-intentioned.  For people like Householder, the power can go to their heads, and they can get lost in the process.  But the forced lapse in judgment wasn’t caused by some power-hungry maniac as much as it came from a desperate power company under attack by the government itself, seeking help from the Republican Party to stay viable.  It wasn’t mismanagement that was causing FirstEnergy to go out of business and need a bailout, it was the purposeful government rules and regulations that were intent to destroy them so that all people would be forced to turn away from their power needs and manage a shortfall, just like what California has seen with its brownouts and the push to force them to run their air conditioners less in the summer, and make concessions to their power consumption.  The attack on the American energy grid is the real story and is what is hiding behind the optics of throwing the Speaker in Ohio in jail over pure politics.

This is a war by radical communists disguising themselves as “progressives” attempting to torpedo the American economy with regulatory policy meant to destroy our energy infrastructure, and it’s no different than if planes from China had attacked our homes with a bombing campaign.  If you trace the money in the way that the federal case against Householder was conducted, you would see George Soros’s money funneling into the Ohio Democrat Party by all kinds of back-door means, and many hostile agents against America like him.  Many of the Democrats who were crying foul in the Householder case, hoping to gain political power in the vacuum of leadership during the trial, are doing the business of countries hostile to America and seeking its destruction.  When you are against the American power grid and trying to make the intent to destroy it with a feel-good environmental concern, you are doing far worse than what the Speaker was accused of.  But the complicit media played along, hung a politician they didn’t like who was a leader in a party they wanted out of power, and they used the levers of corruption of our court system to perform the task of putting someone in jail to hide their complicity in destroying the power grid of Ohio.  I hear it every time I go to Columbus, where attorneys and lawyers brag about their role in implementing solar farms, such as the one outside Chillicothe, Ohio.  And strong-arming companies into EPA compliance that could come straight out of the Karl Marx playbook. No, the real bad guys didn’t go to jail.  They jailed the people standing in their way. 

While all this was going on with Householder, the same federal court system was trying to put Trump in jail. It was destroying Rudy Giuliani’s law practice for defending Trump.  And the now-famous mug shot of Trump was broadcast around the world as the real threats to America were showing their control over our court system.  So, Householder going to jail is nothing short of an exhibition of that abuse of power.  It is tough to stay completely clean in anything when so much money is involved, and you have to give Trump credit for running about as clean a ship as anybody in his position could, because nothing stuck to him.  But if he had not won the presidency again in 2024, he would have had similar charges thrown at him as Householder saw.  And Trump would have been sentenced to not just 20 years, but over 100.   And Big Tish James would be free of any scandals of her own, which she is now wonderfully drowning in.  It’s not enough to say that they are all dirty and that corruption should be cleaned up.  The real game is that the federal government thinks it can pick winners and losers, and it picked FirstEnergy to be a loser because they were trying to supply power to a state in need.  And the government run by Obama, then by Biden, wanted to destroy that power supply to force people closer to a zero-emission world with untested clean energy they knew wasn’t ready to replace the state’s energy needs.  And they used political power through the courts they control to remove their political opponents from the battlefield, and to put them in jail to warn others away from standing in front of them.  That’s the truth about Larry Householder’s case.  And not enough people defended him when they should have, because the next victim could be anybody.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Let the Bengals Leave: They cost too much, lose all the time, and they aren’t worth the money in Cincinnati

I enjoy the NFL product more than most do from the perspective of the premium seats.  Several times a year, I get a chance to watch a football game from the Club section or a private box, and I do like it.  I like the Club Seats at Bengals games, from Paycor Stadium, as they call it today.  I like having the Cincinnati Bengals in town and think it’s great for Ohio to have two NFL teams.  But let’s not forget who does what and for whom here.  Both Ohio NFL teams are complaining about their stadium accommodations.  The Cleveland Browns want to move from their current waterfront Dog Pound and out into the suburbs which seems like a really dumb idea.  Their stadium is right on the Lake Erie waterfront and is really nice.  Most NFL teams have received new stadiums that are exotic domes, such as the new ones in Las Angeles and Las Vegas.  Or they are complaining about getting one.  My favorite team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has a very nice stadium I’ve visited several times. I think they do a really nice job in their community, tying everything together, engaging in community activity, and providing entertainment through sports.  I was never happy with how Raymond James Stadium was publicly funded, as they all are.  But with the Glazer family in Tampa, they built a nice stadium with a big Disney-like pirate ship in it, and it gave fans something fun to enjoy.  And there are events at Raymond James Stadium that go on all year.  They don’t just play NFL football there.  Compared to the Bengals, the Bucs go to the playoffs a lot, and they have won a few Super Bowls.  But the Bengals just don’t win much.  Their season is usually over by December, and they have lost when they have had a chance at the big game.  So, the Brown family in Cincinnati have not been nearly as good of owners as the Glazers in Tampa.  All things have not been equal regarding the NFL experience and the owners who run them.

It was very contentious for taxpayers when the Bengals pushed to get the current stadium they play in, what was called Paul Brown Stadium for a while.  It was not that long ago that it was built; Paycor Stadium is very nice and is one of the big features of the Cincinnati skyline.  And as I said, I attend several games yearly as part of the Club experience.  I’m not a stand-in-line kind of person.  If I can’t get out of my car and go straight into the stadium security and to my seat with a private food service option, I will probably not go to a professional sports venue.  And I’ve been to Paycor stadium in the nice summer months and in the snowy cold days of winter.  And I think it’s great.  But it’s not worth infinite amounts of money.   The Bengals are coming up on the last year of their lease agreement with the county of Hamilton, and they want a better deal.  They threaten to move to a different city if the Hamilton County commissioners don’t lay down and cave to their every demand.  Currently, the Bengals want the taxpayers of Hamilton County to pay $150 million in 2024 and another $150 million in 2025 on stadium repairs, with the team contributing $50 million in exchange for a five-year extension through 2030. However, the county has only committed to $39 million in renovations for 2024 going into 2025 with a sort of blank check mentality. 

So here’s where I’m at with the whole thing: let the Bengals go.  See if another city wants to deal with their crybaby NFL antics.  I’d say the same thing to the Cleveland Browns, too.  While I like the NFL experience, it is a nice thing to have, but Cincinnati, Cleveland, and the state of Ohio generally do more for the NFL than the professional football teams do for those cities.  Good luck, Bengals. Have fun moving to Chattanooga or some other secondary city.  It wouldn’t take long for them to regret the move.  We all remember what happened in Cleveland when Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore only to call them the Ravens.  Then Bernie Kosar, who used to be a quarterback, lobbied with others to bring an expansion team to Cleveland to become the new Browns, named after the Bengals’ owners.  In the end, the NFL, which is more the way I think of the product than I used to, is an entertainment option closer to big-time wrestling.  It’s something for people to talk about on Monday morning around the water cooler.  But not good for much else.  I think the referees tip the scales to favor betting odds, and they do it through play calls at critical times to get one team to win over another in a close game.  (Buffalo clearly converted that 4th down over the Chiefs in that recent big game)  There is too much money involved for the NFL not to be rigged in some fashion, so the whole product’s value is purely entertainment.  And there is a limit to how much money anybody should spend on entertainment.  I think these NFL teams should pay their own way, especially in the Bengals’ case; they should pay Cincinnati for the privilege to play.  It should not fall on the county to pay the expenses of a private enterprise.  The NFL everywhere has a broken financial model that double dips the taxpayers.  But when teams don’t win now and then, a team like the Bengals abuses their relationship with the public.

Considering the size of the payrolls, some of these repairs that the Bengals want to be made at the stadium, whether it’s 30 million for some new paint or 300 million for structural improvements and general maintenance, the money should come out of the Bengals, and they should be happy to pay it to be treated as well as they are in the city of Cincinnati.  Instead, and this is expected in all NFL cities, the expectation is that the public pays once in taxes to build stadiums for these entertainment options, and then they have to pay again to go to the stadium.  And it costs a lot of money.  Nothing is cheap at an NFL game.   So, the NFL product is a pretty bad financial model, and they treat the cities they play in as if they are doing everyone a favor by watching them play football.  As I said, I think the Glazer family in Tampa does a good job building a relationship with the community that pays taxes for a stadium that is much more friendly to the community than what the Bengals do.  Or the Browns.  And the Bengals, for all the trouble and cost they impose on the community, can’t win enough even to justify themselves.  Everyone knew at the start of the 2024 season that the Bengals were in trouble.  Sure, they had a great quarterback and some great receivers.  But the coaching staff was lazy, disengaged, and lackluster.  And the defense was horrendous.  And that was game one of the season.  Going to games during that entire season was like buying an expensive hot dog so the grandkids could listen to loud music and watch losers lose.  The Bengals have not been good owners; they take, take, take from the community, and they don’t know how to win or give the community something to be proud of.  And my advice to the county of Hamilton would be just to let them go.  Call their bluff and let them leave.  One or two playoff games could have generated more than enough money to pay for the stadium repairs.  When you have several players with multi-million dollar contracts in the hundreds of millions, this money they want from the county is chump change.  The Bengals should pay for everything.  And they should pay for the right to play in Cincinnati.  If they’re going to leave, let them.  See how they like the next place they go.  Cincinnati would do just fine without them and their losing ways.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Ramaswamy, Vance and Musk All in One Place: The future looks bright after Trump finally leaves office

I am glad that a brilliant person invited me to an unusual online town hall on the X platform with Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy, along with others, talking about political events.  It reminded me of just how much power new media has, but more than that, it was a glimpse into the future.  Of life after President Trump.  We spend so much time talking about getting Trump back in office that the more significant issue of what kind of future comes after Trump often gets ignored where it shouldn’t.  We know what Trump will do in office; he has done it before, and history will remember him as one of the greatest presidents in the history of the world.  And because of all Joe Biden’s radical executive orders, many of the terrible things happening to America right now will be able to be undone quickly, and fiscal and social policy that has been detrimental will have quick solutions to them.  And Trump will be able to do great things fast over the next four years.  But then what?  Does the pendulum swing back in the other direction as it is about to do against Democrats, who have grown way too big for their britches and need a righteous ass-kicking?  I have already stated my position, which I think is becoming more apparent to everyone else by the day; my pick for the Vice President of Vivek Ramaswamy is an investment into the future.  I have met him a few times, as well as J.D. Vance, and there is a deep bench of Republicans who are ready to offer themselves in leadership positions.  They are brilliant and personally wealthy, which makes them least tempted toward corruption, and they are willing to follow a blueprint established by Trump that will last for many decades.  So, more and more, the VP picked by Trump for his next term is more important than any other factor.

But there is a wild card in Elon Musk that is new.  Four years ago, even a year ago, Elon Musk was flirting with the idea of a Ron DeSantis candidacy, but he was very reluctant to commit to political discussion as he has been a kind of global citizen as that movement spawned out of the World Economic Forum.  He was their poster boy for the future and, as the world’s richest man, their greatest asset.  So, people were slow to trust anything Elon Musk had to say about anything.  But he did buy Twitter and turned it over to X.  I’m a big fan of SpaceX, and I like Tesla vehicles for what they are: significant innovations in the field of fancy golf carts.  I admire the ambitions of Musk, and I think I understand him pretty well because we are both fans of Douglas Adams, which establishes an intelligence that I can indeed find common ground.  But the person I heard on that podcast with Vivek and Vance at the same time was a person noticeably interested in politics and, I would dare say, supportive of the MAGA agenda.  And I came away from that broadcast very happy that the future was going to be covered and be perhaps even better than with Trump in the White House. Because we saw a blueprint with those personalities that could change the world in a very positive way, all three of them have done great work lately to contribute to a capitalist world and know how to defend it from the global socialists, and that is something new.

While there are people who have been justifiably reluctant to trust Musk on anything, I do have personal experience with some of these people and understand that politically, they are all people who were not necessarily born Republican.  In J.D. Vance’s situation, he was very anti-Trump in 2016 after making a movie about his life with Ron Howard, one of the biggest anti-Trumpers on planet earth.  But as most intelligent people do, they gather information and figure out what’s best, so now, in 2024, even 2022, when he was running for the senate, J.D. Vance has become one of the most excellent MAGA representatives that there is on the world stage, and he has had a significant impact.  He has not let me down, that’s for sure.  I asked him some very specific questions in the backyard of Nancy Nix’s house about this exact time, and he has more than lived up to his answer.  He’s the real deal.  And I’ve told similar stories about Vivek Ramaswamy.  He has grown into his role as Mr. MAGA, but he didn’t start that way.  Like any intelligent person, he has observed the world’s conditions and adjusted his politics to meet them.  Along the way, new friendships have been formed, and I certainly like having these guys on the right side. That’s how you get to be a big tent party, and there is undoubtedly nothing phony about their commitment to a better political world.  With minds like theirs in politics, as they are both still under 40, the future looks very bright after Trump finally leaves office and is out of politics for good.  We may see several decades of prosperity with personalities like this leading the way. 

But I’ve said of Musk before, while others have been very reluctant to support him, that eventually he would figure out that there was no way that Earth could become a space-faring society with the current globalist plans toward communism.  And Musk has undoubtedly become more vocal, which I thought was stunning during that political podcast, to hear all three of those guys and others joining in talking about the future of the world.  Listening in with the rest of the audience, it was clear that Trump was just the point guard in this effort, a way to distribute the ball of capitalism to this next generation, which Musk would play a massive part in.  For the new economy of space to flourish the way Musk wants it to, and so do I, there had to be a regime change across the entire world, and these guys understood it.  I thought it was one of the most remarkable broadcasts I have ever heard and wouldn’t have happened before Elon Musk bought up X as a communication platform.  It’s not so much in the obvious things that the improvements will come.  It’s far more significant than President Trump returning to the White House, tearing up the horrendous Executive Orders from Joe Biden, and making America Great Again.  It’s what comes after that we should all be excited about.  And yes, there is an after.  By electing Trump, we get minds like Vance, Ramaswamy, and Musk on the world stage to build genuinely remarkable economic opportunities that will make it possible to have a whole new market economy on the frontiers of space.  And as bad as things have been, things have real potential to improve.  There is no point in history where such minds have pulled together for the good of the future, but in the wake of President Trump and his bold tenacity poised to save humanity from certain doom with optimism and intelligence unleashed perhaps for the first time in the history of all lifeforms in the universe.  And that makes today a pretty good one.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

A.I. and Robotics are the Keys to Future Economic Development: They don’t call off, do drugs, and protest for government expansion, which makes them wonderful

I am not afraid of technology in any way; ultimately, A.I. and robotics will end up working with people in much the same way as they did in Star Wars, as actual characters built by humans, but part of the real story of history as it expands.  Being worried about technology taking over the world, in some Terminator way, I think, is giving technology too much credit.  As I have said, the most dangerous thing in the world is a government unchecked to develop bioweapons like COVID-19 to terrorize the world behind the shadows of Davos, Switzerland.  And to let artificial intelligence go off and develop in similar ways such an example is scary.  But that is a current and significant problem, whether or not humans do it or artificial intelligence.  This is a reason we must have an effective government, to protect people from vile threats to the human race, like the World Economic Forum, but limited in what it can do to individual rights, so that government can never become so big that it abuses its authority tremendously, such as we have seen over the last several years, especially since 2020.  I understand the concerns about transhumanism, but I also know its need, which was presented quite well to my wife and I recently when it was late and we were hungry. We hadn’t had any dinner, and we were both exhausted.  So we went to the McDonald’s close to our house for some quick food.  Now, I hesitated going there because since Covid, they have struggled at this location to staff it adequately, and almost every order we have had from them has been horrendous; they miss lots of stuff, get the order completely wrong, and charge the incorrect amounts.  They have been slow because their staffing levels were inexperienced and unmotivated, and they often called off too much from work, making them short-staffed.

A trip I made with some friends to a Cincinnati area robotics manufacturer. There are some excellent options out there.

Many McDonald’s locations are now utilizing at least an A.I. menu board, which takes orders much better than humans do, and it works great, which was our experience at this particular McDonald’s.  It probably shaved 45 seconds off our total interaction time in the drive-thru, which is very important to me.  I often don’t have 45 seconds to give to anybody, so speed and accuracy in a drive-thru exchange are critical to me.  Our experience at McDonald’s was excellent that day, another thing I warned about years ago.  All this talk about pushing the minimum wage has devastated the economy, and I warned everyone what would happen.  Commercial outlets would replace human workers with machines, robots, A.I., or whatever they could handle.  That is certainly the case at Walmart today with self-checkouts and now at fast-food restaurants.  The labor it takes to keep open a fast-food restaurant is relatively high, and wherever you see a collection of them, such as at a highway intersection, there is a lot of labor needed for that area to sustain itself economically.  So, artificially impacting the profit margins of an economic enterprise has been devastating to anybody concerned with hiring labor.  To pay for the extra workers, companies must cut the amount of staffing they have to make for all the numbers to work out.  Socialists and communists think that businesses exist to provide jobs and that by forcing companies to pay an artificially high wage rate, they are doing everyone a favor.  But companies exist for the marketplace, for real economic value, so meeting those needs is their first concern, and when labor is artificially high in value, then all kinds of financial problems emerge when it comes to the amount of work produced. 

This a robot that is specifically for inspection. It works really well!

I included an accompanying video of a recent trip I took with some friends to a Cincinnati manufacturer of robotics, for my interest is to see what they could and couldn’t do.  Because it’s a simple math problem.  You don’t want to limit your economic development in a culture by the availability of labor, especially with Ohio legalizing drugs, the government using Covid to try to get everyone to work from home, people dependent on government for subsidiary income, welfare, and putting unmotivated people into the workplace, then having all the same companies trying to hire all the same people to do work.  Suppose there are only 300 million people in the United States available to do work, including the millions of migrants inspired to invade our country by the Biden administration.  There isn’t enough labor to sustain a 19 trillion dollar economy with a yearly GDP.  So if labor is not available, or if that labor has been tainted with destructive politics that has not prepared the marketplace with viable talent, then you have to solve the problem some way, and the most obvious is to do as McDonald’s and Walmart have already been doing, and that is to automate as much as you can and use robots to do the routine work that humans have traditionally done.  If you don’t, there is no way to facilitate the economic expansion that could take an economy like America up over 19 trillion dollars.  Suppose you want to do more work in a culture. In that case, utilizing the workforce properly is the key, and you can’t allow yourself to be limited to the availability of labor if you want an economy to grow. 

To make matters worse, not only is the labor of this current generation tainted with laziness, drugs, and horrendous work habits, there just aren’t enough of them.  With birth rates down, we don’t have enough labor to meet the economic needs of our commercial demands, so we have created a constraint.  But like the Japanese, who have used their limited labor well with a relationship with robotics and other means of simplifying labor constraints, there are many automated examples of economic expansion without actual human bodies building it.  Then there are the gross inefficiencies of the Chinese government, who have over 1 billion people ready to work, but they still can’t produce more economic output than America because their government is their primary constraint, as a communist, centralized government.  For America to recover from its 35 trillion dollar deficit, massive economic expansion under President Trump that pulls off all the restrictor plates is essential.  And there aren’t enough human bodies to perform the work, even if every illegal immigrant in the many millions was put to the task.  It wouldn’t be enough for the opportunities, economically, that are coming our way with the space race expansion.  So, I’m excited about robots and A.I. and whatever means of production can be utilized to fulfill market needs. Instead, I don’t like to see a lack of labor holding back an economy.  When I want a sandwich from McDonald’s, I don’t desire a bunch of excuses about call-offs and lazy, pot-infested losers holding back the economic exchange.  Robots and A.I. never call off work.  They don’t do drugs, drink, get divorced, and go through complex social hardship spells in life.  They are consistent and do what you program them to do.  And they don’t talk back.  They don’t protest for the government or demand paychecks when they aren’t doing work.  They are always there, and for an economy in need, that is what we all need for labor in the future.  Dependable, fast, and never complaining. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Morality of Speed: Bad guys are slow, good guys are fast

I talk about it every year, and it’s that time again for the Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County, Ohio, which is a yearly vacation for me. And I continue to get asked about it because it’s work for a lot of people but a paradise for me. I have participated in several annual events at the Annie Oakley Festival, some for over 20 years. And out of all the things I could do, I find this particular weekend, the last one of each July, as my refuge from the mundane effects of the Administrative State. I hate slow people in life. Even though most people are pretty slow, they frustrate me tremendously, and out of all the other days of the year when I have to deal with them, I always look forward to the Annie Oakley Festival because it is there where speed and accuracy are celebrated in the traditional American ways rather than this slow New World Order globalism garbage. I love speed and have always been obsessed with it because when it is experienced, there is a morality to it that is unique to American culture, and each year at that event, I get to experience it without restriction and be around other people who appreciate it with a kind of raw understanding of morality. The world under the misguidance of the Administrative State is designed for slow, stupid people, and I find it pathetic. My idea of a vacation is to be away from those kinds of people, even though I may be exhausted at the end of all the competitions, which last all weekend. It’s a good tired. Because it is refreshing to be away from slow people, lazy people, and people who hide behind the Administrative State to appear valuable when all they are, are mindless bureaucrats.

Many of the old stunt performers, cowboys, gunslingers, and general roughnecks I hang around in some of these Western preservation groups all understand something that most people have forgotten, which will likely be returning shortly. In traditional American Westerns, which most of the world still enjoys, speed dominating evil is a consistent theme at the core of all values. When the good guy was faster to a dueler’s pistol, we cheered for the demise of the slower bad guy—the villain. (villains lost because they are slow) The value of speed was directly connected to the morality of capitalism, and society generally understood the metaphor. I spoke this year with many of these old fast-draw professionals who feel like they are a dying breed. I told them this year that I thought that young people might find themselves very attracted to the old fast-draw traits as globalism’s effects were failing worldwide, and people would be looking for a replacement. There are consistently good Westerns doing well on streaming services, like Hell on Wheels, and shows like Yellowstone. Some video games, like Red Dead Redemption, are very popular with young people, so it’s not like Westerns are dead or dying. It would only take a film studio like Angel Studios to start making traditional Westerns again, and people would flock to see them because they enjoy those kinds of stories. Hollywood may be a dying business model, but that doesn’t mean the Western will die with it. Hollywood used to be all about Westerns, and their demise started when they stopped committing themselves to Westerns. You can tell how people feel about Westerns at these shows I go to, especially the fast-draw events. There is always a crowd watching, and we are amazed that we shoot real guns that fast, competitively. Most of them have only witnessed that in movies and television shows.

Part of the suppression of Westerns, starting with those who finance movies, was the desire to build a global administrative state to mask production from performance expectations.  As globalism has proposed, the administrative state’s goal is to slow down the world to the communist intentions of centralized authority.  Those were the villains in the old Westerns, so it’s no wonder they don’t like Western values.  They want to slow the world down with bureaucracy so that centralized communism can rule.  But they are so slow and pathetic.  No wonder they want to legalize marijuana because they want people brain dead and too slow to think, to ask questions, and to meet reality head-on.  Most of my life is about dealing with slow-minded administrative state losers who seem only to want to slow things down.  So when I get to compete at Annie Oakley, speed becomes the priority, and it is just so refreshing.  I practice Fast Draw most every day in some form or another, so I’m always thinking fast about things.  But to express that speed in public, where people appreciate it, is very refreshing.  Usually, this Annie Oakley event charges me up for the rest of the year, just those few days.  I attend other fast draw events throughout the year, but what makes Annie Oakley stand out is that it’s done in a public forum with audience attendance.  Most competitions are held in private venues, so the general public cannot witness them.  At Annie Oakley, it feels like it would be like to have been in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.  And I love it!

Many Americans have been polite about the slow world of the administrative state and the ridiculous European concepts of the World Economic Forum.  They don’t have a culture in Europe or Asia where people can express themselves with guns, rapid draw in the classic Western way of dueling a bad guy as the Bible would define villainy, to establish individualized law and order.  Speed was the way to achieve justice, and the action was from a superior individual against the masses of slower bandits.  I’ve never learned to accept a lack of speed in life, no matter what it is, production, driving down the road, going to the grocery, everything.  I read fast.  I think fast.  I am happiest when things are fast.  I’m a guy who will drive a 51-foot RV rig at 85 miles per hour, happily zipping in and out of traffic, and I don’t care how much gas it burns.  Because I like to go fast.  But there isn’t much more satisfying in life than the fast draw events at Annie Oakley, whether with bullwhips or traditional six guns.  The participants and the audience appreciate speed; when you see it, you know all is right with the world.  And in the end, when the World Economic Forum types must face reality and deal with the speed of American culture outside of their Davos forums, where they talk to each other in a vacuum, they’re going to learn that they are the bad guy, and slowness is not going to be acceptable.  Americans like things fast, whether it’s a Chick-fil-A drive-thru, highway traffic, or a running back on a football team.  Americans want things quickly, and Cowboy Fast Draw represents American culture in so many satisfying ways that I am happiest when I compete with other fast gunslingers.  I’m more comfortable than anywhere on Earth under any condition.  And I never get tired of it.  Slow people are terrible.  But fast people, the world could use a lot more of those.

Rich Hoffman

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The 4th of July is all About Defiance: It lets the world know that the government works for us, not the other way around

Without question, the 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays throughout the year. I always talk about my love of The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers; why wouldn’t I love the celebration of starting a new country built on that philosophy? Yet this year was different. In years past, there is a lot we didn’t know, perhaps suspected, about the motives of government and some of the diabolical characters that make themselves known through traces of corruption. It’s always been a problem, but now, more than ever, the hostile forces against America have been caught doing their ill will. China, specifically, and their parents in the World Economic Forum have been caught buying off politicians, attempting to change rules, such as in California, where celebrating American patriotism is under experimental regulation. We have just survived the attempts of a global takeover of the entire economy where many millions of people died from a bioweapon built by governments for the purpose of centralized control through communism in Covid-19. The compliance threat has been baked into our culture through government-run healthcare and governors who grade well under China’s spy network that ranks them according to their compliance with global communist standards. We are seeing attacks on our culture and country, unlike any other time in history, whether it’s the Revolution itself, the Civil War, the War of 1812, or the Spanish American War; this modern warning of passive-aggressive communism introduced to us through those we’ve hired to protect us, our politicians, our corporations, our media consumption is a real threat. We have just witnessed the coup by our intelligence organizations of an American president who lacked the blood of the Kennedy Assassination but was more arrogant and culturally destructive in many ways. So many were correct to wonder what we were actually celebrating on the 4th of July. But I wasn’t one of them because it’s all obvious to me.

The 4th of July is all about defiance, which ultimately, all these attempts against our culture will fail because the Chinese, the World Economic Forum terrorists, and the finance activists for progressive Luciferians of their sacred Morning Star do not understand the nature of the 4th of July, as Gavin Newsom learned by trying to regulate 4th of July celebrations in California only to see from a flyover anywhere in the state a lot of people from all political persuasions defying the mandate with personal firework shows in their back yards. Fireworks displays are not about community-organized events where everyone comes out and wastes a whole evening sitting on a blanket to watch other people blow things up. The 4th of July is about defiance. About buying illegal fireworks and lighting them off and letting the police and all authorities know that there isn’t anything they can do about it. The message is that we are a nation of laws, but only to a point. And in 2023, we are at that point. The attackers of American culture are expected to capture our nation like in a game of chess. They would capture our country and win the game if they captured our king. But in America, we have a representative government. If our king gets captured, we just find another one. We don’t work for the government. The government works for us, which is different from other places worldwide. And on the 4th of July, people buy fireworks happily to send this message to the government, which is probably one of the only things people generally agree on. That defiance is the key to American culture, and it is something we celebrate with great enthusiasm.

These global attackers, after all, had just tried to suppress Americans under stupid Covid rules, with mask mandates, with social distancing, with government-driven vaccine mandates of dangerous medicine, which has caused people great harm and has the government in trouble due to liability for its terrible decisions in breaking constitutional law for a grab for power, we would be a very different world right now if not for the American trend toward defiance. Of course, we gave the government a chance by listening to them up to a point. But once we realized how dumb everything they were doing was, people rebelled and stopped following the law with the mask mandates; they found ways to push back against the vaccine mandates and conspired to undercut the government that works for them as a natural reaction. And during that critical year of 2021 going into 2022, Americans had been tested, and they held up and destroyed the plans of Bill Gates and his World Economic Forum terrorists. And we discovered that China had been behind the release of the virus from the beginning and did so knowingly. The attack on America had been an expectation of human behavior and that if our “leaders” were captured, then Americans would fall into a line of compliance and do what they were told. But what actually happened was entirely on the opposite side of the expectation scale. Americans expect to be free, and anything that takes that option away from them, they work to undermine in their lives. There is no way to capture American culture with communist tyranny in the same way it has been done in China and elsewhere in the world, and discovering that these modern attackers have forced the globalists to hit the pause button on their diabolical plans.

I have my favorite fireworks store that my wife and I like to go to; it’s the one on the border of Indiana and Ohio in Richmond, Indiana. I enjoy the drive, we usually stop somewhere in Eaton, Ohio, for a bite to eat, and we make a nice day of our journey every year to that fireworks store where I don’t mind paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars just to blow stuff up in our driveway. I enjoy the experience of buying them, they are so happy at that fireworks store, and we usually go a few days before the 4th of July when the parking lot is full. What’s interesting about that particular Shelton’s fireworks store is that the parking lot is actually in Ohio, but the store where you actually buy the products is in Indiana. They have a line about 15 feet from the door across the whole length of the parking lot that makes it clear that after you buy the fireworks, that you are breaking the law in transporting them across state lines. Breaking the law is part of the fun and a gentle reminder to the government that they are not in charge. Ultimately the people are. They govern by our consent. But the 4th of July reminds them that they are ultimately not in charge and will never be. I never get tired of seeing all the different people there spending small fortunes just to prove that rather large point. The buying, transporting, and discharging of fireworks is not just a useless enterprise from a rich society that can afford to spend expendable income on such a destructive pastime. It’s a message of defiance that laws are followed up to the point that the people decide they are either too stupid or too corrupt to follow. And that the ultimate check on power out of control is defiance, a culture that rejects the power of their politicians even as they have now been brought under the control of foreign interests. And that makes blowing up fireworks, and buying them, one of the great treasures of any culture that I never get tired of.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The NFL Experience: There are things more valuable than safety and security

The very next game after the Bengals had the Monday Night Football game canceled, I had a chance to go and see them in Cincinnati play the Baltimore Ravens for the last game of the season. It had been a busy year where literally every weekend was spoken for. But knowing that the Bengals were going to be in the playoffs and that, especially during this time of the year right after Christmas, this is when I like the NFL experience the most, I wanted to go to a game and enjoy what that product did for the entire city on a cold winter afternoon. It’s hard to experience the NFL product fully; it involves more than just watching the game for three hours out of your day like you do when you watch the games on television. Even that is hard for me and is often difficult. I get pretty mad when the team I’m cheering on doesn’t win because I feel that I wasted my time on them only to end up feeling not encouraged. So attending sports events for me is a lot like gambling. With my life so carefully managed from one moment to the next, investing in an experience where I don’t control the outcome is a lot of risk. But once the Christmas lights come down and we enter the full clutches of winter, I love that our culture produces the NFL playoffs to edge us through the hardest winter months. By the time the NFL playoffs are finished, and we have the Super Bowl, which I consider a great American holiday, we are almost ready for spring. The maple syrup starts flowing, and we know the days of extreme cold are ending. So the NFL experience is very valuable for all kinds of reasons, and they are best viewed from the Club Seats in Cincinnati. 

I was not supportive of the NFL calling off the game against the Bills literally just a few nights earlier because the game itself means so much more to people than just the events of a player who happened to get hurt. The NFL is a very progressive corporation, what many call the No Fun League, putting on the field a uniquely American product. So the NFL is always in an interesting tug of war between appeasing their fan base and marching to the beat that comes out of the World Economic Forum’s strategic intentions for world domination. And, of course, the attack comes from where nobody really understands the direction. While fans watch the military flyovers during NFL games, which are quite spectacular in their own way, and complete the National Anthem with hats over hearts, the tide of the game, which is entirely out of the NFL’s control, takes on a life of its own. And it’s something you can only ever really see in person by experiencing firsthand. During this particular game, I had a very personal relationship with the military craft that was used, and they flew over very low, so low and slow that you could see the pilots. With all the fireworks, I had my grandson with me, which was quite a ceremony. Clearly, he was having a moment with the whole stadium, and patriotism was fully in the air. The haters of American culture might have the ear of the NFL and are pushing for its destruction through woke policies, but the current of American society itself was on full display all around us, and I found it very refreshing, worth its own currency in those cold January months.   

Ultimately, the NFL is like a pioneer trying to cross the current of a raging river. They started something that Americans genuinely love, and that made them happy until their masters of finance leveled an attack against our culture, trying to use that love as a device of hate, to destroy that very culture by luring innocent people near it, then to influence them with extortion to social behavior changes that were controlled by the Desecrators of Davos as I call them, the Bond villains who are a part of the World Economic Forum. And those types of people called off that game against the Bills to remind people that safety and security were more important than the results of a game, which I will always argue are oppositely true. The result of a game, or an event in life of any matter, is far more important than safety and security. American football, represented by what the NFL puts on the field, is a dangerous sport that represents capitalism at its finest. It is different from European soccer in many ways that are critically important to our culture. Soccer is a kind of pinball game where skilled players get a random chance to kick a ball into a goal uniquely. American football is all about planning and precision. You get four downs to get 10-yard increments. Every play is like a business plan, and success is the end zone of all that planning and coordination paying off. The offense on the field is all of us. The defense is life itself, trying to keep you from scoring. Football in America has much more going on than most sports. People have an unconscious understanding of it, even if their conscious reality manifests into too much beer drinking and dancing to booming music. Football in America has a unique relationship with capitalism, and we have a perceptual understanding of that value, which is why globalist forces are attacking the game the way they are. If you want to bring down America, which many forces in the world do, then American football is the way to do so. That leaves the owners of NFL teams in a strange place. Do they follow the rules of wokism from the World Economic Forum, or do they listen to the fans who continue to make them rich and allow the currents of capitalism to wash over them in a way they enjoy and can thrive in? 

I tend to be very free with the wallet at these kinds of events; I like my children and grandchildren to know how vital NFL games are to Americana itself. I don’t complain about the expensive drinks or hot dogs. I like the very expensive jerseys and hats. I like to tip the guys out front of the east entrance who are playing the drums. I love the energy and the celebration of life that is obvious at all NFL games. And I wish everyone could win every time. It is much like gambling to investing so much time and money into the NFL experience, but I see it as nothing but positive. And after going, I was reminded how dumb it was to cancel that game just because a player was injured. When bad things happen, we want to take time to see them taken care of. But there was more going on with the Bills player who suffered a heart attack on the field during Monday Night Football during the first game of 2023. Likely the heart attack was brought on by the NFL’s push for untested government vaccines, playing their role in the Great Reset by Klaus Schwab and the gang of destroyers who gather every year in Davos about this very same period. There are a lot of hostile forces in the world, and fans at NFL games are uniquely prominent in their effects, which is obviously frustrating for those forces. That’s why games should never be canceled, no matter what. The show itself has a value that transcends the way antagonistic forces shape logic, and the rebellion against their wrath is very much the core of the NFL experience, an unintended consequence. It’s what people cheer for during the game and why going to the games is such a cherished activity. And it’s why we must fight to keep our corporate products out of the hands of global politics intent to rule us all behind bureaucratic rules and regulations centered on safety and compliance. Those are the real enemies, and we love to cheer when our football teams score, regardless of what defense is set up to stop us. In the end, that’s what people celebrate, and it’s certainly worth doing.

Rich Hoffman

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A Class Action Legal Need Against Lakota That Should Happen: I’ll gladly be the first to put my name on it

Of course, there has to be legal action against the Lakota school system and directly against their public employee Matt Miller, the controversial superintendent. A reasonably sized class action lawsuit is around 20 people, and there are more than enough people involved already to participate in one against these parties after the desist letters issued by the superintendent’s attorney Elizabeth Tuck were sent out to at least 6 to 7 different people issuing threats of financial destruction for essentially being concerned about the actions of the superintendent. The issue was always about children, character, and legality, which was quite clear from the public speakers at Lakota during their meeting on November 7th. Under any circumstances, concerns about abused children are the first priority. When it was learned that this public employee, Matt Miller, participated in sexual fantasies about kids who attend the school he manages, people were upset about it. This was, of course, the talk of the evening at the various election night ceremonies that I was involved in, and these letters from Elizabeth were the topic of much anger. There would have to be an answer now that the action was taken. It centered around the language of the threat letter itself, where it emphasized that Matt Miller had spent 30 years building community goodwill and his professional reputation and that the people are receiving one of these threat letters initiated, published, and disseminated false, destructive, and defamatory statements about him as part of a malicious conspiracy to damage that goodwill and reputation and either effect his termination or extort him into resigning. Well, that’s what started this whole process because Matt Miller was guilty of doing all those things to Darbi Boddy, the newly elected school board member, so if that were the standard, well, then he would be vulnerable to that action as well. Reviewing that part of the letter reminded me of a discussion I had with school board members a few years prior regarding Matt Miller.

At the time, I could have cared less about Matt Miller or why the board was worried that he would sue the board for millions of dollars for a contractual breech over his actions that were revealed during his messy divorce. To be somewhat fair to the school board, who didn’t know much about legal matters and consulted their attornies on the risk of enforcing some judgment about their public employee that might be protected in his contract for lack of some “morality” clause. So instead, they turned to cover up as much of his behavior from the public as they could. That’s also the same dumb advice they received recently when they tried to shut down public comments at school board meetings. And the same boneheaded tactic behind these letters of intimidation that were issued by the Tuck Firm representing Matt Miller in an attempt to repair a reputation that he damaged by his own actions. The effort behind it all has been to contain bad behavior, not correcting it.   And when you start adding up all the fees for PR firms, lawyers, and the other elements of what public employees cost a community when they go bad, the cost is extraordinarily high. Likely, Lakota schools had paid out as much money as Matt Miller could have sued the district for anyway, so where is the advantage? I’ve read his contract, and it could be argued that what he has cost the community should be compensated by him back to the taxpayers because of his behavior and could certainly be argued by a competent presentation of the facts to any court. 

What we see at many levels is mismanagement of the Lakota school system by public employees, and the school board, who simply hired too many firms to bridge their lack of knowledge on these kinds of disputes, and to hide all that mismanagement from the public.  To compensate for that expensive level of incompetence, they have turned to harassment to shut down critics who expect much better from their school district. For my part, I have no tolerance for someone who engages in sexual fantasies with children at any level, and they shouldn’t be running a school because of that condition. If it’s not against the law, it should be, and maybe there needs to be a legal case to make it a law for the future. Perhaps it’s not against the law because nobody ever thought anybody would do such a thing. Regardless of what people think about the law or the definition of evidence, there is a police report where Matt Miller admitted to doing this very real act, which is part of the public record. So this interpretation of evidence that Elizabeth Tuck has proposed in her intimidation letter is full of opportunities to clear up any loose ends that might be debated in the future. Especially when kids are involved, any recipient of knowledge that may be illegal or harmful to others must see something and say something, which is what occurred. The behavior was conducted and is the responsibility of Lakota’s public employee, and that employee is liable for damages that they have incurred upon the public with their actions. And the school district is liable for the damages imposed on the public for their lack of management of their employee, who clearly feel entitled to a job at taxpayer expense no matter what personal conduct they have decided to participate in. The person who committed many bad deeds does not get to attack the people who find his behavior reprehensible, and everyone just quietly hides. It has become known that there are many threats imposed on the Central Office over this issue, so this is an extensive campaign of intimidation that cannot be tolerated in our community. 

There’s a lot to consider in taking action to recover losses caused by Matt Miller to the community. The school that mismanaged that employee and allowed that person to commit all these acts against an elected school board member, loss of reputation, defamation, destruction of Darbi Boddy’s brand, and the reputation of others, logic has to be put into the language of legality, which many people glaze over when the subject is brought up. But the same effort that we raised money to elect school board candidates to now articulate the case from very competent legal minds is not unreasonable. I already have several contributors who are eager to start that process at a high level. When it is considered how much the Lakota superintendent has cost by his lifestyle actions in reputation management as opposed to direct contract enforcement, there is a very justified approach to resolving this manner properly, where the public is in charge and not the activism of employees who initiated the guilt on every level, especially in the defamation of character that was invested into the destruction of Darbi Boddy which started all this in April of 2022. Matt Miller would have been good to just stick with the fruit basket he gave to the new school board members in January. But when he made a move to get rid of Darbi Boddy, well, then her supporters were going to fight back. That was politics, and all is fair in it. But when fantasies with kids became known, well, that changed everything. And at that point, there is an obligation to the preservation of children. And if Matt Miller turned out to be innocent, and the police cleared him, everyone could have gone about their day. But he admitted to it in a police report, which is real evidence even if his legal counsel doesn’t want to acknowledge that it exists. That evidence is available with the Butler County Sheriff’s department, and it’s on Protect Lakota Kids.com.  And it will undoubtedly be part of any court cases that are being conducted going forward, along with a lot more information that perfectly justifies a public uproar. But the one who puts himself in all this mess doesn’t get to lash out at those who find his behavior reprehensible. There is a cost to what he has done to the community, and now, because of this culture of harassment that has come from his direction, we must correct that behavior because the school board didn’t do their job and manage him properly, as they should have years ago. Instead, they spent a small fortune trying to cover it up, much more than a legal dispute over his contract would have cost initially.  Further, I would propose that the gains acquired from this class action legal resolution, after the attorney fees are paid, would go to a war chest for future school board candidates, to give Darbi Boddy help in the future.  That would be a way to take this very negative situation and make it into something the community can be proud of.  There are more than enough occurrences of a lack of public transparency and a desire to keep the public in the dark to allow competent legal representation to acquire positive gains.  I will be the first one to put my name on it. 

Here is the whole meeting for context

The school board and its out-of-control employees should have never tried to defame, destroy, and remove Darbi Boddy from her elected position. That is what started all this, and now they have shown where a lot of lost money has been going, and it hasn’t been for the kids. It’s for bad management and entitled employees who behaved in self destructive ways which forced the school district to clean up the public perception, at great cost to the taxpayers.

Rich Hoffman

The Police Extortion of the Cincinnati Bengals: Communist labor unions always expect “the rich” to pay for their mismanagment

For me, and this has always been the case, there is a limit to how much of the thin blue line I’m willing to pay for. We need police in our society; we can’t function without them. We should not defund the police as Democrats have suggested. But when you are dealing with public sector unions that always want to expand government, “defund” is not an open checkbook that is beyond the reach of management. Throwing infinite amounts of money at police or any government employee is a bad idea. Society should pay for the police and to pay for them well. But not infinitely.

Traditionally, when police or fire employees insist that they always receive more money, they say, but we run into fires, we run into gunfire, so you don’t have to. I will volunteer to run into a burning building to save a dog any day of the week. I will gladly engage with a dangerous group of shooters any day of the week, any hour of the day. And I’d do it without pay because I would look at something like that as fun. So I’m not a big fan of that argument. Yes, police work is dangerous. But those who get into it understand that. It’s a privilege to wear the badge. The community should support the police enthusiastically. We should all live by the laws of our society, constitutionally supported. But the arguments of pay, such as what Dan Hils did on 55 KRC with Brian Thomas, is an exploitation of the standard union point of view, which is always communist in nature, to attempt to argue more pay in all the ways that the police unions expect it. There is a limit to what police are worth. When an FOP president makes the case from an obvious liberal point of view to a radio talk show host who is typically a small government kind of guy, it makes for an interesting debate that often hides in the cracks of our society.

Everyone knows I’m not a big fan of the Cincinnati Bengals. My favorite team is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and it has been since Mike Brown fired Sam Wyche as the head coach. My support of Wyche went with him to Tampa from Cincinnati, and I have never forgiven the Brown family for that firing. They are losers as NFL owners. They run a bad organization that does not represent the city well. Sure they went to the Super Bowl last year because they have really good players. But over the years, they don’t know how to close the deal, and if they win, it’s usually because they get lucky and the other teams overlook them. But I don’t like this Billionaire Bengals talk from the FOP president, Dan Hils. I also have to remind people that every labor union in America started as a communist idea. Every entertainment union, government sector union, and union that runs some manufacturing aspect are all Karl Marx’s products. With Trump he’s a former Democrat who has opened up the tent of the Republican Party to include labor unions. In politics, there are many viewpoints, and people often don’t get everything they want. So it’s worth discussing unions’ problems with the same people who now consider themselves MAGA Republicans. With that in mind, all this talk about the Bengals paying double time and triple time for traffic staff before and after games is a perfect example of how the same people who will talk about saving money with taxes on one topic find themselves nodding in agreement with Dan Hils on the extortion racket being played out with the Cincinnati Bengals and talked about on the air as if the Bengals should pay whatever it costs for safety because they have the money and can afford to. Just because someone like Dan Hils, from the perspective of a communist police union, thinks that the Bengals are rich, does that mean they should be obligated to pay some artificial value for more traffic cops at Bengal games? 

I go to Bengal games a few times a year, and I prefer the great seats when I go. When I arrive, it’s usually where the player entrance is, so I get to see all the security they have at these games from that point of view, and there is a lot of police there—a lot of security. I tend to think that the Bengals should hire their own security for their own events. But as Dan Hils points out on Brian Thomas’ broadcast, the Bengals can’t pay for their security on a city street leading to and from the stadium. Those are city streets, and the police union has it rigged so that only they can provide traffic services. It’s the same kind of mess that you deal with at any union where tasks are placed in silos, and restrictions to productivity are also associated with the labor assigned to that task. For instance, you might have a box of pencils sitting on a dock meant for the office area. But the unionized dock workers are on a break, or have called off work for the day. Or maybe they are on strike. So there sits the box of pencils. The office people need them. They can look through the window into the dock and see the pencils sitting there. But they are not allowed to go in and pick them up so they can get their pencils. They have to wait for the union to perform the task. That is the kind of political game the Cincinnati FOP has going on regarding city streets leading to and from the stadium. Because the unionized police want a monopoly on the work, they complain that the work just can’t get done because they don’t have the staffing or the money. But the Bengals aren’t allowed to provide a solution. Or perhaps the people attending the games might volunteer to help direct traffic. They are prevented from helping because they are not lawfully permitted to perform that task. 

Spoken like a true communist union president, Dan Hils places all the blame on the Billionaire Bengals because they are rich and can afford to pay whatever the members of the Thin Blue Line require. But the Bengals’ options are to use Dan Hils unionized employees at rates of double time or triple time to pay for the mismanagement of the police force in general at whatever cost they decide. Rather than hiring their own people at $15 per hour or less to perform a task that is only worth minimum wage for a few hours on a Sunday to keep people from running into each other. And because we are politically on a path to support the police no matter the cost, someone like Brian Thomas, who is a small government guy, gets pulled into a discussion about defending a government union’s ridiculous extortion racket. And from the perspective of Dan Hils, his argument is that the Reds pay for the security, as to other sports events in the downtown area. So why don’t the Bengals pay too? Well, because the police union is forcing a customer to pay for goods and services that they control exclusively, and they expect to pass their mismanagement off as an undisputed bill, which is ridiculous. The police are great to have, but I don’t like their labor unions. I’d volunteer to help the police if there weren’t so many dumb rules that keep people from helping them. In many ways, they create their own problems by forcing restrictions on themselves and then expect a community to pay for their mismanagement of financial resources. And at a certain point, when they ask for too much, the community should just get rid of them and form their own law enforcement that doesn’t have a union attached to it. And my argument would be that it would work far better and be a whole lot cheaper. Just because rich people can afford to pay, that’s not up to Dan Hils to decide. It’s up to market values to determine, and the FOP of Cincinnati clearly isn’t interested in that kind of discussion. They are just like everyone else; they want the most money possible for the least work produced. It’s up to management in all cases to determine the value of that ratio.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

A Man Who Gets Divorced Loses Leadership Ability: What is wrong with Tom Brady

I haven’t talked about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a while because, honestly, the world is at war, and who really cares about NFL football? But this story is about Tom Brady, who almost everyone agrees is the best football player of all time. His marriage, his retirement, and why the Bucs aren’t as good on the field as they are on paper is an interesting study on the impact of good leadership on any culture, whether it be business, entertainment, or politics. What Tom Brady is going through is a good baseline for just how important leadership is to any culture. He has traditionally been the best on a football field not because he is the strongest, fastest, tallest, or most creative, but because he has a way of making the people around him better, which is why he’s been in so many Super Bowls and Championship games and won many of them. And when that leadership isn’t working, it’s obvious why. So with the Bucs at 3 and 3 at the point of this article is not over for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They are playing in the weak NFC South division, so they are still in first place even though the Bucs should have won close games against Kansas City, Green Bay, and Pittsburg. But they lost those games because they were simply outplayed, and it’s quite clear that the team is distracted by Tom Brady, his retirement status, his marriage trouble, and his general age. It has to be tough to be 45 years old and playing with a bunch of kids who are 25 years old, old enough to be his own kids. And the head coaches are all the same age or even younger. 

What’s different about this year with Tom Brady is that the NFL obviously doesn’t want him around. The media doesn’t either. They have moved on to the Patrick Mahomes types, the Josh Allens, the much younger and mobile quarterbacks who are part of the new story of the NFL. The Bucs have done the woke thing and put people of color in charge of their coaching staff, even though they obviously have problems making decisions. They aren’t the best people for the job; they were put there because of color, although Todd Bowls, the head coach, made great news when he recently dismissed the measurement of color, which gained national attention. Bowls is a great defensive coordinator when he can dominate the other team. But his playcalling is terrible in close games when the other team isn’t intimidated, and that has certainly carried over into this year, where he remains the defensive play caller, and he just can’t stop the other team. Everyone has gotten so used to being lazy on the field and on the sideline because they just expect Tom Brady to get the ball at the end of the game and win it for them that some of these games are just getting out of reach. Tom Brady usually has an opportunity to still win the game for them, but people are happy to let him do most of the work. And that problem comes from leadership. The coaches are lazy; the players reflect the coaches. One thing about leadership that is always obvious, people adapt to the personality of the leader, so when a good leader is present, it’s evident to the world because the culture takes on their personality; when there isn’t good leadership, it’s just as evident for all those reasons. 

And every day, the news is that Tom Brady is getting divorced from his wife, Gisele Bundchen, a person many consider the most beautiful woman in the world. During the Super Bowl year of Tom Brady’s first year in Tampa, she was a tremendous asset. The other players looked at Brady and his wife, their children, Tom’s love of his parents, and his good-guy image as the best in the world, and they played off it. They listened to Tom Brady because they wanted to be like Tom Brady and have what Tom Brady had: good successful life in every way people measure success, money, beauty, ethically, and categorically. But this year, Tom Brady looks like a person like everyone else. Even at press conferences, Brady goes way out of his way to appear just like the other guys, that he’s nothing special and that he continues to play because he wants to be around his teammates. This is to other players who often have to think about whether to tackle at full speed a 300-pound player with their 250-pound bodies at 20 MPH with a head-on collision that will undoubtedly hurt the next day, a weak proposal. While they know, they have a few million dollars in their bank accounts. Why are they going to hit the other player so hard again? Especially since everything is always about Tom Brady?   Unless you have a special coach who can motivate such players, a lackluster effort is almost baked into the problem.

But specifically for other guys, they look at people they follow, and if the leader can’t hold together a marriage, then why should they listen to them about anything? A guy going through a divorce is a loser, no matter how fair that assessment might be. If you can’t hold a family together, why should anybody listen to you about anything? If a woman who knows you in your most vulnerable state, behind the media curtain, isn’t so in love with you that she’ll do anything to stay with you, then there is something wrong, and a locker room will quickly figure that out. And that holds true for everything, not just sports. If a leader can’t lead a family, they certainly can’t lead an organization, a school, or a society. All men know that once a wife leaves a man and is off to Chuckee Cheese with a new one, and a man loses his kids to a stepfather, it’s over. A family is broken beyond repair, the children will grow up with likely problems as a result, and the leadership potential of that man is gone. There is a lot of effort in the world to try to hide personal behavior behind processes, but that is just not how human beings are wired. Tom Brady is the best of all time because he did everything well. His private life was successful, which then carried over into on-field behavior. But this is the problem when you stick around too long, people start thinking of him as just another guy, who has problems just like everyone else, and at that point, the magic is gone forever. This is why I thought it would be good for Brady to stay retired, ride off into the sunset, and let history remember him as the best. But to lose that leadership ability, which he clearly has, especially now that his wife is clearly not with him, the cost is far worse than just lost games. Tom Brady has lost his leadership brand. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers may still win their division. Tom Brady may even win another Super Bowl. But in doing so, he has lost what is most important, his leadership brand. And once a man loses it, it’s nearly impossible to get back. And to the way I think, that isn’t worth another chance at a Super Bowl. 

Rich Hoffman

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