The Truth about Issue 2: Meet Shannon Jones in her own words

As I wrote this article there has been talk of a deal on Friday with the labor unions to back off their repeal. If such a thing is true, it is extremely unfortunate, and weak-kneed. It would represent everything that is wrong in politics, which would not be surprising. But lets see what happens.

Shannon Jones came to the West Chester Tea Party to speak about the merits of Senate Bill 5, now known as Issue 2 for the November ballot. The video below is the complete version of her presentation, including the Q & A session where a union president confronted her. The video is long, understandably, but well worth a viewing so that the contents of that meeting can be shared with every Ohioan, because it is worth every single tax payer’s time to understand just what Senate Bill 5 does for them.

Issue 2 (Senate Bill 5) does a lot of things that are very, very good for the average tax payer. Without it and this is not fear mongering, Ohio will struggle to pay its bills for the foreseeable future. In fact, every day that Issue 2 is prevented from being a law is equivalent to running up your personal credit card debt.

Issue 2 does not get rid of unions, or collective bargaining. It allows those things to continue. It does not cut salaries or hurt police officers and firefighters with unsafe work practices. What Issue 2 does do however is make it a choice for public employees to join a union. It does prevent public employees from being able to go on strike to extort higher wages and bring to a halt the services those public sector employees are expected to perform. And it does base compensation on performance rather than seniority. To me, and most everyone who can breathe air, those are very needed and common sense necessities that should be obvious to everyone.

So why are the public unions against it? Well, it takes away the monopoly status that unions currently hold over public employees. Think about it this way. If you are a teacher and you want to teach in the State of Ohio, you must join a teachers union to be employed. The unions know that if they can lobby to create more teaching jobs, then they are guaranteed a fixed amount of union dues that they can budget around. If it is questioned just how important union dues are to a public sector union, just study the actions of Diana Frey, who was considered extremely legitimate until she was accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. Union dues are how unions buy and wield power, so those dues are very, very important to them. But not all employees want to be a part of that type of thing, and should never be compelled by law to be in a union. It should be a choice, and if the unions truly have something valuable to offer, then membership in a union would be lucrative and a choice.

Unions are terrified of Issue 2 and have spent a lot of time and money trying very hard to pull every emotional string they can to hide their true intentions. This is the source of all the misinformation coming from the unions, and the reason they are attempting to hide behind police and firefighters, as a way to appeal to the public and hide the scandalous nature of their desires. And scandalous is the correct word.

The State House and Senate acted quickly with Senate Bill 5 for one primary reason, it wasn’t to bust unions, or hurt union workers; it was to stop the bleeding that is primarily going on in schools all across the state of not being able to control their costs. Unions have nobody to blame but themselves, they have successfully through legislation prevent elected management, (school boards, trustees, and city councils) from being able to regulate their costs with the radical extortion methods like strikes and manipulative work practices in binding arbitration. Years and years of this behavior has completely eliminated any management of tax funds which have driven up the costs and expectation of education and every person who pays taxes should be furious about it! It is solely because of this union monopoly problem that tax levies on Ohio property owners seems to come every couple of years with no end in sight. Issue 2 was created quickly to get the problems exacerbated under 8 years of governorship by Bob Taft and 4 years of complacency by Ted Strickland under control. It’s true that the financial meltdown did not occur over night, it took 12 years. But starting a couple of years ago, the costs of public employees started to spiral out of control which brings us to the current crises where schools are out of money, cities are going bankrupt, and the only fix anybody can come up with is to raise taxes on taxpayers who are already taxed too high.

Anyone who votes NO on Issue 2 is responsible for hurting our school systems, bankrupting our cities, and allowing practices that are highly corrosive to the lives of every resident of Ohio. Anyone who votes NO is guilty of putting off a problem that is already out of control and needs to be dealt with immediately.

When Issue 2 finally becomes law, police will still be on the streets. Fire fighters will still be there to put out fires and help provide emergency medical treatment. Teachers will still be teaching kids. The only thing that will change is those employees will have to adjust their lives just a bit, but elected officials that tax payers put into office to manage their tax dollars will actually be able to do the job they are supposed to be doing, which is something that must happen.

A YES vote on Issue 2 is the only responsible thing to do in order to ensure a positive future. If you have any doubts, just watch the video from the author of Senate Bill 5 herself. At over an hour of real information from a true source, the truth cannot be missed unless the viewer is one of those who want to maintain the monopoly of public union rule.

The control is in the hands of you, the voter. You cannot say this time that your vote does not matter, because with this issue, it matters more than it ever has and the implications will resonate though the scholarship of history.

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

The Worth of Warren Buffett’s Opinion: Looters demand more taxes!

About a decade ago, I was in a wedding party for my brother and we were dining at the Grand Finale in Glendale when he gave me my gift for being in the wedding party. It was a book by Warren Buffett, a man my brother greatly admired, so while the conversation of the evening drifted from tales of marriage and hardship, I read the book at the table.

My thoughts about Buffett were that he was “lucky” to have become rich as an investor. Like many of his type, he became wealthy not by creating, but by a manner of deception, playing on the behavior patterns of the timid and foolish. This isn’t illegal and is a natural part of capitalism, where predators take advantage of those not as ruthless, cunning, or even greedy. The threat of these predators encourages the very good to become better in order to compete, and this is where ideas are born.

But people like Warren Buffett and George Soros did not gain wisdom from the creation of something new. They gained wisdom by dealing with fools and this is the net result of books like what Buffett has put out, and Soros. They gained their wealth by being bottom feeders. They did not earn their wealth the valid way, like a Bill Gates, by creating something from nothing. They simply capitalized on the mistakes of others in a quest for wealth pursuits. So if the goal is simply to “get rich” no matter the method, then the works of these types of “investors” is commendable.

Their wealth however does not make them experts in all things involved in money and value however. Buffett and Soros are not experts on the art of living, and advice from them must be taken in context. If one wishes to become rich by climbing over the backs of others with a sense of ruthlessness and cold-hearted rancor, then their advice should help the hungry investor. But if an advice seeker wishes to know more about the complexities of existence, then these characters will leave that seeker very hungry for more, because they do not understand themselves the nature of society.

When Buffett says that more taxes are needed, he is making the statement of a progressive, not a traditional American. So it is only natural that Buffett would want to continue to fund the social programs created by his fellow “progressives.” The feeding of taxes with the money of the people in American society is a reckless enterprise that if the goal of that society is to have a smaller government that is less intrusive, then of course fewer taxes will be needed to maintain that infrastructure.

If the goal however is to have a larger government well then of course more taxes are needed, so when Buffett and Obama speak about raising taxes, and that people of wealth like them are willing to pay, it must be considered what kind of men they truly are. They value money based exclusively on the merit of the dollar value in relation to other things. These progressive types mistakenly believe that their money has equal value to those who actually create something, and this is the reason they tend to dislike actual producers, like oil tycoons, and “big business” owners. They exhibit a jealousy toward their fellow wealth peers hoping that they can be seen as “equal” to those producers because deep in their hearts they know that their wealth was created by a measure of looting, where they took advantage of someone not quite smart enough to hang on to their money, and not by the benefit of invention.

This is why these types of people do not understand the value of what they are asking. Buffett might understand the value of stock prices, but he does not understand the value of the merit behind the company which holds the stock. He understands the nature of speculating the behavior of ownership and the way the public will perceive the actions of a company, but he does not understand the value of creation, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t say such naïve concepts as blindly tossing tax money into the tax monster that is government.

Much of the corruption in government is due to the money that flows in it. The reason politicians will do anything, say whatever, and make any promise to get into public office is because they want to be in control of the money that comes to them in the form of taxes. Public union’s exist for one reason, and that is to gain control of the money which comes to the public worker. It is money which corrupts government and it is money that ruins the attempts of any country to maintain a reasonable, trustworthy republic. So when a progressive makes the statement that they support higher taxes, what they really are saying is that they wish to maintain the structure of corruption from which they have enriched themselves. For people like Warren Buffett, this is perfectly acceptable. But for people who want to see government become more trustworthy and for politicians to become more representative, cutting the amount of money that is tossed into that black hole of government consumption will make public office much less attractive to the thieves and miscreants who are currently attracted to public office.

To improve the quality of government, society must take away the incentive of those bottom feeders to migrate into public service, and the only way to do that is to take away the waste from which they flock to.

I closed the book at The Grand Finale and kept my opinion about Buffett to myself because the men at our table were all gushing over themselves regarding the achievements of Warren Buffett. The nature of Buffett and those like him are elusive to their minds, because in society, we are trained that the value of something is contained within a fixed dollar amount. So we are trained to believe that Buffett’s wealth gives him immediate value as a person of the mind, after all, he was smart enough to amass massive amounts of wealth, so he must know something important, and the men at my diner table were hungry to unveil that knowledge so that they too might achieve some measure of success, and take care of their own families with some wealth of their own.

As I sipped the remaining contents of my wine that night I knew that the real genius is not in the indulgence of a fool and the advantage taken from them, but it is in the restraint. For the way to truly build society is not always to indulge and roll about like pigs in a mud pit, but to refrain from the impulse to indulge with an eye on the greater good, even when that good appears to be bad to the pig wishing to roll in the urine and feces of it’s own kind to accumulate merit earned by decadence.

And that’s what I think of the opinions by Warren Buffett.

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

Public Unions Should be Illegal: They are simply too expensive and too demanding

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN ARTICLE I WROTE CALLED PAYING FOR PROTECTION: THE ORGANIZED CRIME OF TEACHERS UNIONS FOR MATERIAL SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW.

Leslie Ghiz of Cincinnati City Council goes ballistic on 700 WLW while talking to Doc Thompson about the lack of interest in dealing with the Diana Frey case, the public union president accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. The source of the complacency she is upset about is the very reason why public positions simply cost too much money to the tax payer. Click here to listen to that broadcast:

There is a disconnect between the reality of the public union leader and the rest of the world. Doc Thompson recently did another show where the average tax payer would have a lot of difficulty coming up with $1000 if they needed to without going into debt. Yet the public union expectation when their contracts demand more money is just to raise taxes to fund their demands, and they don’t care at all that they are draining the communities of their wealth, who simply don’t have the money. You can listen to that broadcast here:

The public sector unions have shown no restraint, no sense of economic understanding, no compassion for their employers, which are the tax payers. They have been excessively greedy, corrupt (Diana Frey and she’s not the only one), manipulative, and perfectly willing to walk off the job if management doesn’t see things their way. Their behavior has driven up the cost of their employment simply to the point of being very unattractive as a labor option.

When the public union representing the teachers at Lakota in 2008 went on strike, and a deal was made to appease them, to keep the teachers from walking off the job, I decided that I would not support another school levy until the public sector union was out of the equation. They simply drive up the cost of education too much. The unions make it impossible to have an intelligent conversation about cost controls, because the direction of the negotiations always migrates back to the welfare of the employee, and not the product they create.

I have noticed that the television stations lately are focused on the catastrophe of public funding and are resorting to the feel-good stories of emotion, which plays straight into the kind of manipulation the unions have used to extort massive sums of money, (tax money) for themselves. It is never asked by the established media why all these public employee jobs are going bankrupt, because the answer is simply too painful. Public employees, particularly teachers are too expensive. They cost too much money to employee, and they did that to themselves with extreme labor practices such as threatening to walk of the job with strikes.

The legislators who made it law that a teacher should have a master’s degree to keep their teaching certificate helped perpetuate the situation with legislation. They did as they always do; they created laws without considering the cost of compliance. That is the problem with electing small-minded people into positions to create laws, because they are unable to take in the whole picture. Since they too are public employees and not responsible for creating the funding, they don’t make the connection but simply take money from the public in the form of taxes, so they bare no responsibility.

Public employees do not exist for the benefit of job creation. They are not there for the convenience of the employee. But that is the expectation. The tax payer is expected to jump through hoops to figure out how to appease the high expectations of these out-of-touch employees.

If I were the superintendent of a school, which I could never be because there are actually laws to keep people like me from being hired by a district, the unions have covered their tracks in every direction, I would simply let the teachers walk the next time they attempted a strike, and I’d hire cheaper labor. It is the cost of labor that is the problem and is creating the demand for more taxes in every sector of government service. Government in no capacity should ever be paid more than the average wage of the public, because it creates an incentive for people to attempt to become a government worker that will do anything to become employed by the government because it’s simply too lucrative.

Teachers should be paid fairly, and if they want to make a lot of money, they should work for a private institution that will pay them according to their expectations. If the United States were the best in the world, I might buy into the union argument that we need to pay for the best to have the best, but the United States education system is not the best. It’s average and that’s being generous, and I think it fails in entirely too many ways. It certainly isn’t worth the amount of money we are pouring into it.

Politicians and news organizations looking to simplify their stories focus only on dollars spent equals’ value to the child, but that simply is not true. We could pour all the money the United States produces into education and the result would still be a flat line. Education is an elusive quality that comes from the strength of a family and the mentors that surround a child. Children just do not learn on an assembly line and making the factory more expensive won’t improve the results.

I’m not against public education. I think it’s a good thing for people who come from broken homes, or poor families. In those conditions, it is possible for a teacher to have a major influence on a child, because the teacher can fill the role that the parent is neglecting. But in families that are strong where there are two parents, grandpa’s and grandma’s and the family has a middle to upper income, there isn’t much a public school has to offer in the development of a child but a baby sitting service. I know that hurts the feelings of many “sensitive” guidance councilors and teachers, but those are the facts. As a tax payer, I’m happy to employee some of those people in my district for some of the underprivileged, but having hundreds and hundreds employees all making extremely lucrative incomes is simply not good business.

But it is the unions who have high-jacked the entire process, allowed no management control on a run-away train that just goes faster and faster requiring more and more money to fuel. To me, they are not worth the money. They are guilty of being too greedy and out-of-touch. To be honest, I have never seen a system so screwed up, as wrong as you find when you lift up the rocks of public sector unions. The entire situation is terribly out of control which directly affects the overall cost. I believe the teachers for the most part believe they are in the profession for the kids they teach. But the union leaders are clearly out for the greed of the position and have shown no restraint on their demands. And the teachers who have voted to keep those types of leaders in place are all guilty of putting themselves over their job to the children and the more I learn, the angrier I become.

Being foolish is not against the law. If the union leaders wish to be so foolish as to be out-of-touch with the rest of the world, that’s their prerogative. But when they ask me to fund their foolishness, that is passing the fool baton to me, and I’m not going to carry it. They make it my business when they ask me for more money to support their folly, and I know better. Therefore, I will not support public sector unions with any more additional taxes until they remove themselves from the process. They are getting in the way of proper management of public employees and should be outlawed. We have tried that little public employee union experiment started by President Kennedy and it has failed, and needs to be abolished as a practice.

The unions will call it union busting. I call it practical. I do not recognize the authority of any union to take my money out of my pocket and do what they please with it. Such a practice is simple robbery. It’s nothing else and needs to be outlawed at every level in government. Until that happens, there will never be any management of government costs which is just plain foolishness when money is the primary concern.

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

The Devil of Public Education: The Mask of School Pride

I was on the air with Doc Thompson of 700 WLW to discuss the meeting at the Lakota School Board from August 8, 2011 where a 4.75 mill levy was placed on the November ballot. Click below to listen to that electrifying broadcast where I reveal that many people within the school district consider me the “Devil of Public Education.” So I returned from the confines of my hellish existence to have a lively discussion about the state of public education in Ohio with Doc.

(There is about 2:40 of this recording that overlaps toward the end. It’s not your computer; it’s a defect of the original recording. Just stay with it, because it will pass.)

There has been a lot of tension at Lakota over the last couple of levy battles, and now that Lakota is attempting to pass yet another levy, that tension is returning. I spoke to quite a few people from the education side of the school district after this particular meeting and tension was the general atmosphere. The fights of the past have been contentious to say the least. That was when it was revealed to me that many of the employees in the district consider me the incantation of the devil himself because I hate public education!

Well, I’ve heard that kind of thing before. The most obvious circumstance under which I’ve heard that kind of rhetoric is at football games where the Cleveland Browns come to play at the Bengals stadium or worse yet, the Pittsburg Steelers. For me the emotion is even greater when my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers plays New Orleans or the Atlanta Falcons. In fact when I heard that Troy Evans the linebacker for the Saints was providing busing to residents of Lakota, which is an idea that I think is great, my first thought was “darn” why did it have to be a guy who played for the Saints!!!!!! I HATE THE SAINTS!!

But why do I hate the Saints or the Bengals hate the Browns or Steelers? Because emotion is what sports is all about. The drama of a sporting event is all about picking a side and rooting for your team to win.

Schools do this also. The game between Lakota East and Lakota West is always a big game. It used to be that a game against Princeton, or Colerain was always a big game. There’s always been a lot of rivalry in these games. Fights occur between players in movie theater parking lots and parents will fight with other parents from other districts in the stands. It’s an innate response to the human desire for competition.

So it is only natural that a school district will use “School Pride” to unify the students and parents to the goals of the school, and will use that same pride to pass a school levy and make those out who are against the increased spending of taxes as “The Devil.” Such relative generalizations are indicators of a frail psyche. I indulge in them for competitive events like football games, or any other type of conflict, but in the grand scheme of things, I keep focused on the “big picture,” where my counterparts cannot.

The organized labor element of public education has a cleaver little scheme going, of which they are entirely aware of, they use this “School Pride” issue to drive up the wage levels of their personal incomes, because while human beings participating in that school as employees, students and parents are functioning under the spell of “School Pride” no amount of money is too much so long as their school system WINS. Rational discussion that might otherwise occur in any other business environment are ignored in favor of the passion for the fight!

This is how school levies have migrated out of control. Organized labor has used “School Pride” to pass tax increases which has translated to exceptionally high incomes for the members of those unions. Administrators strapped by legislative rules negotiated by organized labor cannot manage the costs of the organized labor, so they resort to “School Pride” to sell the public and cover up their weakness of administrative influence.

This is the state of all schools, and “School Pride” to the people outside the functioning mechanisms of the school doesn’t work so well, and now that wage levels have reached a “diminishing marginal return” on the tax payer investment, people are turning down school levies, because they see no end in sight from schools asking for more money. That is why 85% of all school levies across the State of Ohio failed in the August elections of 2011, because “School Pride” as a spell doesn’t work when the pockets of the people supporting school are empty.

With the Cincinnati Bengals, Mike Brown has obviously taken advantage of the taxpayers and he makes no apologies for it. His contract is bankrupting the city, yet he doesn’t care. And he continues to put a terrible product on the field giving fans very little to cheer for. Yet like mindless fools, there are still fans that show up and tailgate for the Bengals when the Steelers or Browns come to town and will proclaim that the Bengals will be victorious! The facts don’t matter at that point, because the game is about emotion.

And that same emotion is at play at Lakota and schools all across Ohio. The LEA (Lakota Education Association) has negotiated a contract for itself that is bringing extreme financial hardship to the district. And they, like Mike Brown, don’t appear to care one bit because their actions prove so. And all Lakota can do is make a guy like me, appear to be the “Devil of Public Education” because they have no other card to play. The truth is too painful and admitting that they are helpless to control their costs is just embarrassing. Calling me names is far easier, so that’s what they resort to.

That is also why schools fail time and time again. Because the solution is not in the emotion of the fight, it’s in the business of the numbers. And once the game is done, the reality is difficult to deal with. So like a drug addict needing another fix, those in education who rely on emotion to manage their business find themselves always in need of more, because the reality has not been addressed properly and never will while those in charge use “School Pride” as a mask to cover the real problem.

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

LAKOTA TAX INCREASE of 2011: If the superintendent wants to be paid like a CEO, act like one

On July 12th of 2011 Michael D. Clark covered the Lakota School Board meeting for the Cincinnati Enquirer about the inevitable tax increase the school district is planning to impose on the tax payers. Here is what he reported:

Voters, who in November 2010 rejected a 7.9-mill school levy, will see the 4.75-mill, continuing operating levy on the Nov. 8 ballot once the board conducts another, state-mandated vote next month.

If voters in the Lakota School System approve the 4.75-mill property tax hike, it will cost the owner of a $100,000 home $145 more in annual school taxes. That will of course be $290 per year on a $200,000 dollar home.

“The schools are the community’s schools, and it will be up to the community whether we continue to move forward or slide backward,” said Lakota Board of Education President Joan Powell.

???????????????????????????????????????????????

Here is the problem with what Joan said in that statement. Lakota has no choice but to continue to be a good school. Speaking for myself, I pay thousands of dollars a year into the school system, and I expect nothing less than an excellent district. Going backward as Joan suggests is not an option. Excellence and quality is required. It is completely expected by me as a tax payer. In other words, I am not spending a lot of money in taxes to get a crappy school system.

However, the school board is citing that a loss of state and federal revenue dictates that the district must go to the voters for more money, and if Lakota wants to maintain a great school, then the property owners of Lakota must pay the difference.

But that’s not what’s going on.

The reality goes back to an October evening in 2008 when hundreds of teachers packed the Lakota School Board Meeting with black shirts showing unity and demanding a 3% increase in pay or they were walking off the job. They were going to strike! You can see the news cast of that video here. You have to click on the link because Channel 5 has disabled the code. It is the events in that video which has caused our current financial crises at Lakota just 3 short years later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kvPQPJ_F1A

Here’s another link, again this one will take you away from this page, but it’s worth the look. Listen to Kit Andrews report that Lakota’s per pupil amount was just over $8,000 per child. Now it’s almost $10,000 per child in just three years. How long does anybody think this can go on? What’s the plan to reduce the per pupil cost because that costs is almost completely driven off the labor cost of the employees, not brick and mortar costs?

http://eplayer.clipsyndicate.com/cs_api/iframe?windows=1&va_id=726521&show_title=0&wpid=0

To demonstrate just how quickly Lakota salaries went up after the strike attempt of 2008 the No Lakota Levy group has assembled the spreadsheet below.

Now, what does all that information mean? Well…..the average teacher’s salaries by school from the time of the strike threat in 2008 to the present look like this. The year of the strike the average teacher salary was $56,633. Just two years later the average salary was $62,331. The spreadsheet above shows the average rate of pay per school and the amount of increase at those schools. In essence, there was a 10.1% increase in the cost of an employee at Lakota right after the strike.

2007-2008 $56,633
2008-2009 $59,041
2009-2010 $62,331

Lakota currently has over 600 employees who make over $65,000 per year which ties up over $47 million dollars in budget costs. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHO AND WHAT LAKOTA STAFF MADE IN 2010-2011.

The way to fix the budget at Lakota is simple. It must be decided to not have as many employees making such large sums of money, because asking the district to carry that many highly paid employees in a district simply destroys any attempt a district of any kind has of balancing its budget.

To provide an idea just how quickly these costs can migrate out of control in 2009-2010 Lakota started the year at 59K per year and ended at 62K per year. During that year the district carried 434 employees who were paid over 65K per year. However, just one year later, that number jumped to 625 employees who made over $65,000 per year. I’m sure some of those people retired, or moved on to new jobs, but they still showed up on the payroll for that fiscal year and must be counted. The amount of increase in payroll demands from one year to the next, just one year, was $15,647,689.00. (The source for that information comes straight from the Pulse Journal wages edition published each March. Add the numbers up and that’s what you get) It is that number which causes the need for school levies.

Now recently the teachers union came up with a 3 year agreement so they could avoid the effects of Senate Bill 5, which was signed by Governor Kasich early in 2011, which puts a stop to the out of control “step increases” which has caused much of the trouble, because under a step plan, even though the teachers agreed to a “wage freeze” in August of 2009, they still received a wage increase under the “Step” plan which is why the salaries of the teachers went up so much over the course of one year. The teachers union at Lakota and other unions who have negotiated similar contracts plan to get S.B.5 repealed before their current contract expires, thus allowing them to resume back to their normal spending addictions, such as in 2008.

Having teachers making 65K or more is not a big deal if they only consists of the top quarter of your workforce, and in a district like Lakota which employs over 2000 staffing positions for more than 18,000 students the costs can get out of line quickly if not watched carefully.

Lakota has managed to bring their budget under the $160 million mark consistently on their 5 year forecast, but if it doesn’t balance the budget, then it’s not enough.

Tax rates at Lakota are already too high. There are too many homes going into foreclosure and higher taxes just aren’t attractive to potential home buyers. So the task at Lakota is to maintain its excellent rating, while also bringing down their costs and providing some relief to the tax payers, not more burden. If the loss of state and federal revenue forces the budget under $120 million a year, then that means the administration at Lakota needs to tackle their expensive costs, the amount of employees they have that are exceptionally well paid, to balance the budget. If that means letting those positions move someplace else so they can make more money and replacing them with cheaper labor…….fine. That’s the way the process works. Over paying employees is not good business, and does not make a district great. It makes fools of the management to even entertain such thoughts.

But statements that Lakota will be going backwards if we don’t pay more taxes are eerily similar to the kind of nonsense Lakota went through in 2008 when the labor threatened to strike, and got their pay raised as a reward, which the cost was passed down to each and every member of the community. If we are going to have to pay our new Superintendent Mrs. Mantia $165,000 a year, and the school board will justify that cost by stating that she is operating like a CEO of a company, well then we’ll expect her to drive down the costs in the same manner as a CEO does for their shareholders. I expect Mrs. Mantia to maintain Lakota’s excellent rating and current quality while driving down the labor costs to balance the budget. If she must let go of some of the expensive labor in favor of less expensive labor, then she must do that. But raising taxes is not an option. Any fool can do that. I could put my dog in charge of the school district and he could wag his tail to proclaim taxes need to be increased to meet a budget.

In the end, the Lakota Administration has not had the heart to do the right thing. They were outsmarted when it came to the labor dispute of 2008 and they are seeking to hide their shame with tax increases. The revenue produced by the community is more than sufficient to run an “excellent” school, but it is not sufficient to pay employees 20% to 30% more than the average income of the taxpayers themselves. The math just doesn’t add up.

Tax increases are an irresponsible measure by minds that lack the wisdom to see where they have made an error. And the greatest error is in pretending that more money will somehow fix the debacle. Lakota needs a long term plan for dealing with “declining revenues” because that is the fact of our age. People will be making less, properties will be worth less, there will be less coming from government and the bubble of tremendous benefits for public workers is at an end. And during this transition Lakota has an obligation to the millions of dollars our community produces to have a great school to maintain that service. Because failure is not an option! Lakota will not go backwards, and it cannot raise taxes. It must do the hard things that balance the current budget, or step aside so people who know what they’re doing can do it for them.

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

The Symposium of Justice: The gamble of Rich Hoffman

If it is once again one against forty-eight, then I am very sorry for the forty-eight.
Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Daily Telegraph (London, 25 Oct. 1989), referring to the 1989 Commonwealth Conference.

That quote from Margaret Thatcher accurately sums up my reasons for putting out the book, The Symposium of Justice back in 2004. Recently at the Annie Oakley Wild West Showcase in Greenville, Ohio many of my friends from there had been talking about my 2004 book and how prophetic it now seemed in 2011, and it took me on a journey down memory lane about the content of that artistic work. As I ate Chinese food from a fairground vender my wife and I had a discussion about just how crazy many of the things I wrote about in The Symposium were at the time of its publication, and ironically how true many of those things had become in a world that is clearly headed in the direction of events written about in The Symposium of Justice.

My publisher back then was against the entire book. There were many arguments about content, which resulted in a rushed publication date. The editor who was working from an office in Paris quit altogether leaving the entire editing process to my wife, who can read and edit basically, but she wasn’t a professional editor but she stepped in to meet our deadlines. The conflict basically went like this, “Mr. Hoffman, what are you thinking? You open the book with the attempted rape of a young girl by a disgusting pedophile. You have old women who are terribly rude dissected by some future race of aliens thousands of years in the future. You go off on some tangent where there is a dragon slayer hunting dragons! Then you have a group of rebels launching an attack on Washington D.C. with flying cars! ARE YOU CRAZY! You’ll get no positive reviews within the United States. No paper will provide an endorsement. No TV station will touch this material. I mean you’re main plot point is that you have this vigilante running around in the night like some kind of Batman character using bullwhips to punish criminals, and trying to free society from a mind control device that is emitted in radio waves which affect the brain and make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do! Mr. Hoffman, we advise you to rewrite this material, to stick with the primary storyline of the vigilante and expand on that character arch. You need to make this novel much more contemporary (progressive). As it is now, it belongs in a dime store saloon in Nevada, 1890. This type of pulp literature won’t even resonate with young people in the comic book market! The main character, this CLIFFHANGER/Fletcher Finnegan has absolutely no weaknesses. He seems to be a superman able to fight off thousands of enemies all by himself! Where is the conflict in that? What is he afraid of? Even Superman had Kryptonite which gave him human appeal. Your character is the perfect man, and there are no perfect men, so how can the audience relate?”

I remember that conversation so well because I was standing on the phone in the middle of Comp USA at the time buying a new computer and the French editor, exasperated with me put her boss on the line, another French guy who spoke good English, but definitely had a French accent as he spoke, every word had a kind of accentuated thrust at the beginning of each sentence. My publisher at the time was a Canadian company. Being my first book, I couldn’t get the big New York publishers interested, so I turned to Victoria, Canada, capital of British Columbia to a publisher who would carry the title if I put up the upfront cost of publishing, which I did. My editor and company contact however was in the Paris, France office which is why they even took the time to speak to me, because I was paying them upfront. That company was purchased by an American firm a few years ago and they are now located outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, and they still carry the title only under different ownership. But even under those conditions, the publisher of my book had serious concerns. They hadn’t seen anything like it and weren’t sure what to do about bringing it to the market place.

In duress prior to a rewrite my wife and I took a trip to Niagara Falls and stayed at the Marriott Fallsview Hotel and Spa to get away from our normal environment for the weekend and talk about what to do about the book. We went to Canada because the publisher was in Canada and I wanted to put my mind in a unique setting so I could think clearly on the issue, and Clifton Hill like Gatlinburg and International Street in Orlando, Florida is a hotbed of commercialism, audaciousness, and imagination. Walking around the commercial districts targeting an international audience which seemed appropriate since The Symposium of Justice was an international publishing effort my wife told me, “It’s your book, your vision. I think it’s great. It’s our story, it’s about our struggles. It’s your autobiography, your heart, your soul. If you want to change it to match the publisher recommendations it’s your call. It’s also your writing career.”

I remember looking at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit as she said this and thinking what a monstrosity of commercialism it was. “If I stick with it, my writing career may be a short one.”

She looked at me, the blinking neon lights of Clifton Hill glittering in the slight chill of an October, Canadian evening and said, “it was you who ran around in the night with your whips trying to catch that rapist and protect your family, it was your family the police targeted because you wanted to expose that drug trade they were covering up, it was you who worked that second job as a cook to make up the financial difference of what we needed as a family, so you could spy on the local teenagers and find out who the dealers were, it was you who have spent nearly two decades reading mythology and philosophy in your “spare” time. If you want to listen to some French chick that’s about five years older than your own kids, just so you can sell more copies of the book, then do it. It’s your writing career. But think about what you admire, the artists you’ve enjoyed who society sometimes takes a century or even more to appreciate because the writer is so far out ahead of the rest of the world. The ideas you stick by in this book will follow you all your life and then some.”

We returned from that trip and I had decided to throw all the dice out there and keep the book pretty much the way I had written it.
________________________________________________________

Chapter 1: Scarface the Rapist: A convict is released from jail and encouraged by law enforcement to harass the pubic with fear by raping a young girl, so the public would support more law enforcement. The rape is interrupted by a vigilante named Cliffhanger who beats the rapist to near death with two bullwhips leaving the community split on how they feel about it. Cliffhanger gives the young girl a manifesto called “The Symposium of Justice” to be published in the local newspaper which includes Cliffhanger’s Ten Rules for living, and numerous stories written by Cliffhanger to make the argument publicly on the merits of the vigilante versus the rule of law.

Chapter 2: Stereotypical Reality: is the story published in the town paper of two vain women who are contemplating why they should live forever. One of the women is extremely wealthy and is considering a new technology called cryogenics, to freeze her body upon death to be awaked at some future time when technology can revive her. This woman realizing that she is virtually immortal becomes audaciously arrogant and rude to other people as the natural wisdom of age is interfered with the illusion that death is not on her horizon, so she reverts to a teenage mindset. When the public has had too much of her rudeness she is killed and revived in the distant future to find an alien race has found her body and is using it to perform genetic engineering to build slaves for themselves.

Chapter 3: The Veil Master: The mayor of the town hires an assassin to kill Cliffhanger for interfering with his plans with the rapist. The assassin is an arm of “The System” a progressive global group of which the mayor is attempting to climb in political power. The mayor reveals that the entire town is under a scientific experiment he is developing for “The System” which emits a radio wave that directly affects the pituitary gland in the human brain and makes citizens behave impulsively in ways they can control. The mayor explains to the assassin that if the results of his town are positive, then “The System” will be able to employee the same “mind controlling” methods all over the world.

Chapter 4: The Perilous Bed: Another story published in the town paper which Cliffhanger introduces his Ten Rules for Living to the community, hoping to fight off the mind control methods of “The System.” It’s about a young knight who wants to marry the daughter of a much respected noble. He thinks that by cutting off the head of a dragon, it will earn him the right to ask the noble for permission. The noble turns the dragon head offering down, but invites the kid to attempt to stay on a magical bed, in a magical room that will hurl three perilous tests at the young man. If the kid survives, he earns the right to ask the nobles daughter to marry him. (This was a story intended for my son-in-law which he understood)

Chapter 5: The Overman: A grill cook, the fastest man around who is mysteriously wealthy and married to the much respected town council woman Misty Finnegan, works with the local teenagers at a popular restaurant in town. Fletcher Finnegan has frequent duels with the local teenagers who respect the older man very much, but consider his thoughts “out dated” for the times. Fletcher seems to be particularly interested in a young girl who works at the restaurant as a cashier, who is the older sister to the little girl who suffered the rape attempt. The cashier is currently dating a kid who also works at the popular restaurant called, Republics. That kid is a known drug dealer and argues often with Fletcher Finnegan about morality.

Chapter 6: Return of the Flying Tigers: Another story published in the local paper to justify the vigilantism of Cliffhanger. America is in a civil war. The coastal regions have turned against the interior of the nation. A group of video game freedom fighters are recruited by an old man to lead a rag-tag offensive against the nations forces stationed over Washington D.C. Using M400 Skycars, the old man hopes to have a tactical advantage over the best defense the military has in scoring a psychological battle for the resistance by bombing the air craft carriers stationed at Annapolis Military Academy.

Chapter 7: Fran Calls: A follow-up story in the newspaper is about Hurricane Fran when it hit Chapel Hill, North Carolina and a group of tree trimmers head to the region to help with the clean-up and get rich over the insurance claims. As the work dries up, fights break out among the workers that could lead to death as everyone fights for the remaining money left as civilization returns to the region in the wake of the disaster.

Chapter 8: The Veil of Knowledge: The town mayor takes the assassin and the assassin’s personal army of specialized killers to the location of the mind control device, which is hidden in a water tower just outside of town. They are all given medallions which absorb the invisible radio waves leaving them immune to the effects of the powerful impulses. A plan is set to capture and kill Cliffhanger brutally by setting a trap.

Chapter 9: Tabernacles of Joyless Lust: A newspaper story about a real-estate agent trying to repair a deal gone bad. The agent is in an affair with her boss who is using the relationship against the woman plunging her into a law suit against her clients whom she is particularly fond of.

Chapter 10: River Dual: The mayor and his assassins raid the riverside home of a local gunsmith for two reasons. They want to make an example of the man for his support of firearms, and they hope to lure Cliffhanger out into the light of day for an epic battle which is exactly what happens. The mayor and all his assassins, except for the primary one, are killed in the battle. The primary barely escapes with his life.

Chapter 11: The Other Side of the Fence: The last newspaper story to be seen by the public, a young divorcee has found herself in the arms of a very abusive man. The man appeared to be everything a young woman dreams of until she leaves her husband and lets the new man move in. Once the man is in her home she finds he’s not what he advertised, and is now in fear of the man not only for herself but her young child.

Chapter 12: Salad Bar Goddess: The assassin is sent to an upscale restaurant near the town where his career took a nose dive. This “hit” given to him by “The System” is a chance at redemption for his failure at the river. His target is the outspoken Fletcher Finnegan who has been all over the newspapers and television recently speaking out against the policies of “The System.” The assassin’s job is to locate the man, kill him in a highly public place in front of his family, and send the subtle message to the town that resistance is futile. At the restaurant where Finnegan is reported to be at, the assassin sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen at the salad bar. He recognizes the woman as Misty Finnegan, whom he remembered the slain mayor had been trying to get into his bed, and was denied much to his frustration. The assassin is then shocked to find that the woman is strangely unconcerned about his presence as she returns to her table where her small children are eating with her husband, making eye contact with the assassin several times with pity on her face. Then the assassin makes eye contact with her husband and discovers it is he who is the target of his assassination. It is Fletcher Finnegan himself, and he is aware of the assassin’s presence also, as he stares him down from across the room. The assassin looking into the eyes of Finnegan is startled to see absolutely no fear there, which is an emotion he is not prepared for. He had never met a man without any fear behind his eyes of any kind. It was at that moment that the assassin had seen that same look in the eyes of Cliffhanger, and that the two men were one in the same.

The assassin is filled with envy, at the direction of his sad and pathetic life. He suddenly realizes that his entire life has been nothing more than slavery to “The System.” He is jealous of Finnegan for being enough of a man to be able to have a woman like Misty Finnegan, because such a woman could have her pick of any man. And she didn’t pick Finnegan because of money, prestige, or any level of power. She picked him because he was good. And no woman of any worth would ever want the assassin for anything other than being a thug, a brute, a mere puppet to his masters.

The assassin realizes that if he wanted to do one good thing in his life, he’d let Fletcher and his family live, because he was on the wrong side, clearly. He nods to Fletcher and proceeds to leave the restaurant where he throws himself in front of a truck on a highway to commit suicide. The assassin knows that “The System” will hunt him for not completing the contract so he’ll be killed eventually anyway. At least this way, he can do it on his terms.

———————————————-

I remember when the Pulse Journal came to my house to do an interview about my book when it came out in the spring of 2004. He wanted to talk about my whips but wasn’t sure how to make such depressing topics appealing in a newspaper article to the general population. I had the same trouble at book stores and other media events, where the focus of the story was on my use of bullwhips, but nobody wanted to touch the content of the story, rape, murder, civil war, mind control, drug trafficking, spies, global conspiracies, it was just too much for the general public to accept, and the media was lost in how to cover it.

The book was obviously extremely anti-progressive, which was well before anybody was talking about what a progressive was. It sold to my friends in the Western Arts community who bought it because the hero had a whip and it reminded them of Zorro, but they were uneasy with the heavy political overtones and scientific basis behind the mind control plot, as were many people who weren’t prepared to deal with such things.

I reminded them that the old Republic serial called Zorro’s Fighting Legion had a similar story line. It was over the top stuff and fun, but it also taught kids valuable lessons about fighting for what they believed in. But as many of them told me then, society has “outgrown that kind of entertainment.”

It took me a while to get over some of the self-criticism I had about the book because every aspect of it was uphill. But as my wife had told me, “why are you writing this? Is it to become wealthy, is it to have a career as a writer, or is it to create a work of art that will stand the test of time?” I picked the later.

It has been only recently where people who have bought it have made excited comparisons to Atlas Shrugged and other kinds of art work that has direct appeal to those in the Tea Party movement. Well, I didn’t even know about Atlas Shrugged when I wrote Symposium. I wrote Symposium based on observations I had been making about the direction of the world, and I wanted to put those observations into a format of “pulp fiction” that people understood and could relate with to articulate that message.

A cowboy friend of mine approached me at The Annie Oakley Festival last weekend and told me, “I thought you were a little off the deep end when I read that book 7 years ago, but you know what, it don’t seem so crazy now.”

I smiled at the guy. “Who would have ever thought?” He was there when I did book signings of that book all those years ago and the public bought it because they saw me performing and wanted something of mine to take home to their friends with my signature in it. Most people didn’t understand the book at all, and told me as much the following year. But the people who did were people many would consider “conspiracy theorists.” I had people travel the length of the country to meet me the following year just to shake my hand because my book, “spoke to them.” But in talking with these people, it was obvious they were the social extremists out there and while I appreciated their support, I was frustrated that the general population just didn’t get it.

At a film festival a few years ago Gery Deer laughed at the small line of people who seemed to follow me everywhere I went, he’d call them “Hoffman’s radical groupies.” He knew the obsessive type; they were similar to those who frequent Star Trek Conventions, and Star Wars events. Only these were “conspiracy theory nerds” and they would line up to have their picture taken with me.

“I feel like an idiot posing for pictures with these guys,” I’d say to Gery.

“Hey, they’re fans. Be happy you have them. Some artists work their whole life to get one fan that will drive across the country to have their picture taken with them.” He’d pat me on the back. “You have a nice little handful.”

My wife would sit back and smile, knowing that those types of activities were something I didn’t enjoy doing. “I didn’t want to appeal to just the radical fringe,” I’d say to her.

At the hotel in Cleveland, at a film festival where I won a screenwriting award for a different project, but had been receiving a lot of comments about The Symposium she said to me at the pool while I was swimming, “Do you remember the homeless guy in the movie Always, who Richard Dreyfuss as a ghost was talking through. The homeless guy was one of those guys who just saw too much, and was close to the edge of death, so close that he could see beyond his surroundings. You’re like that only you have learned to function in the world like a normal human being. Many of these people haven’t learned to do that. They see TOO much, so they seem crazy to the rest of the world that is really just half asleep. That is the pain of being too awake, is that you run the risk of having your brain fried.”

She was right, and this comment went back to the one that started it all back in Niagara Falls, that time and perception would catch up if I let it. The important thing was to put it down on paper and let the art speak for itself.

This is fresh on my mind now, because more and more people are thanking me for writing The Symposium of Justice and even though I have put that book on the shelf and am moving on to new projects, it gives me great pleasure to know that it is touching people’s lives. So to those of you who wanted to know the story of how that book came to be, and why I don’t talk about it much, it’s because for one, I think it’s cheesy when involved in high-profile cases like I am, to always be pimping a book. That book for me is something that has meaning beyond these current years, so it’s not important to me to have my ego massaged with a boost in sales. It’s more important to deal with the issues of the day, which currently is protecting S.B.5 and fighting school levies which are obvious crimes against the tax payers. But the creative side of me does enjoy knowing that people are touched by something that was extremely difficult, and controversial to create, that fell short of my quality standards because of the circumstances under which it was produced, but the heart of the project remained uniquely in place because I had angered everyone involved in publishing and marketing to bring to being something that was WAY out in front of the political curb.

And for that I’m very proud. When you take on an endeavor where you are outnumbered by a lot, and you stick to your guns because you know in your heart that you are right, it feels wonderful to have that weight lifted off your shoulders as the times prove that the numbers against you were wrong, as usual.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SYMPOSIUM OF JUSTICE AT AMAZON.COM:

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

Sleeping with a Sleazy Salesman: The Path of the Obama Presidency

On July 29th 2011 President Obama said “I don’t know why the Republicans in the House are voting for their own bill, it doesn’t have a shot at becoming law. We need to reach a consensus as a nation.” That statement is the reason for this post. What Obama is really saying is “play our way, or not at all.” The Democrats have been very resistant to doing the right thing also, but are misleading the nation with this game, that America can no longer afford. Be sure to watch every video of this one as well as read the text and take your time. This is a history lesson from our recent past that must be remembered right now. Now, let’s study the pattern of behavior which indicates what the true intention of this game really is about for the current President of the United States.

Like many of us, Jim Garvin is trying to understand the most recent comments of President Obama about the debt ceiling. As I watched the video below I felt for Mr. Gavin, because he represents most of America right now. The bewildered look on their faces is one of betrayal, of being lied to. Most of America knows they are being lied to by politicians from one side or the other. What they don’t know is who to blame, how to determine who is lying, and what to do about it.

What Obama and the political class have done with the federal budget is evident in this video. This spending behavior has been going on for a very long time, and represents a sickness in American politics. It is not appropriate to justify this behavior as “it’s just politics.” The American people have this dangerous tendency to deduct from their overall income what they pay in taxes. If they don’t see the money come out of their wallet, if that money is already gone before they even get their pay check, then they have a tendency to not even care what happens to that money. It’s as if their frustration in not having control of how their money is spent; they remove the thought from their minds completely, which politicians are well aware of.

I once knew a black salesman who reminds me a lot of President Obama. In fact, I’d dare say we have all known someone who considers themselves a “slick” talker who can sell anything to anybody and talk a woman out of her panties without them even being aware of it. I once watched this happen when I went for a drink with this guy and watched him work the bar, “Hey baby, what’s happening you sweet thing.”

I watched and listened and rolled my eyes. What woman would ever fall for a line like that? Anyone could tell that this dude was a creepy guy, right?

The salesman slept with that girl about 15 minutes after he met her, and when I spoke to the salesman about it I asked him how he could do it, how he could have sex with that girl, leave her with a fake phone number after he did the deed, then go back home to his wife and have sex with her in the same night, then come back to brag about it at work the next day?

He was a tall, lanky guy who moved almost identical to Barrack Obama. “Do what my brother,” he said to me using his pinky equipped with a gold ring to scratch his forehead. “I did that little girl a favor. Women love what I got’s to give em’ and if I’d given her my real number she’d be callin’ for more. And I can’t have that. She was lucky she got it once.” He noticed the distress on my face so he added, “Dude, listen. Fu**ing chicks is like selling to customers. You have to convince them that what you are giving them is what they need. And by the time they realize they don’t need what you want to give them, it’s too late, because they’ve either given you the money already, or they’ve given you a piece of ass.”

“But don’t you feel guilty taking advantage of them?” I asked.
“My man,” He said. “That’s cute, that you think people should feel guilty about making money, or fu**ing women. If you want a clean conscience, then take it from me, you will die a poor man looking for your next piece of ass.”

I didn’t dislike that salesman, I learned a lot from him. I learned everything I didn’t want to be. So it isn’t some psychological impairment that makes me think of this salesman every time I hear President Obama talk. It’s just that Obama uses the same kind of manipulation that the salesman uses. It may not be for the purpose of having sex with women, but rather to get people to buy what he’s selling. For this kind of salesman, outright lies are normal. In fact, they are so normal that they can even lie to themselves. When Obama sat down with Google to give a town hall type of speech during his campaign in 2008 it reveals a lot about Obama.

In the clip below with Google, Obama talks about patriotism in a way to cover his true intentions and disarm the client, which is the audience. Just like the con artist who wishes to conceal his dishonesty he cleverly uses gifts to keep people focused on the topics he chooses. For this particular crowd, it is discussions of technology. Obama guarantees every home in America will get broadband access under his future administration, and that his administration will stand up to the light of day by putting ear marks and bills online for all to see. He also talks about saving the planet with green jobs which is appealing to progressives naturally, even if it’s impractical and warped with idealism. When I watched this speech I thought of my old salesman friend who might say, “baby, I’ll by you a diamond necklace if you’ll suck my big **** out in my Cadillac outside.” The girl hears, “Cadillac” so maybe this guy has money. She hears “diamond necklace,” so maybe she can steal this guy away from his present woman. And sucking on something appeals to a natural biological urge many women have and gives them an illusion of control over a man because such an act is an act of trust, since the genitals of a man is the most delicate part of his body. The same types of buzz words are used in this interview, except it’s not sex that is for trade.

Unfortunately for such con artists sometimes they get caught in the lies they tell and this is the case where Harry Reid and President Obama had spoken against the increase of the dept ceiling in 2006. Reid explained that it was only because he was playing politics and it was wrong, so now in 2011, he’s right and everyone should buy into a debt ceiling increase. Obama had perhaps the worst statement. He said that his perspective as a senator was basically not as enlightened as that of the President, where more aspects of the economy must be considered. Without question in some future speech Obama will say that the President of the United Nations must consider the entire world, and not just the affairs of the United States, which is a job he is openly campaigning for.

On occasion there have been people like Mr. Gavin who recognize that something is wrong and they’ve questioned Obama. Such was the case with Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign. All the guy did was ask a question and Obama talked the situation into a 5 minute speech trying to justify the scam. Obama would have done better to give a short answer and move to the next topic, because it made Joe the Plumber a celebrity, which the left then proceeded to destroy Joe’s character any way they could. But it was Obama who made the mistake in this exchange. He knew that Joe was seeing through his campaign rhetoric and Obama, the salesman wanted to see if he could overcome Joe’s opposition. When words failed, Obama became very touchy openly putting his hand on the shoulder and arm of Joe the Plumber. This is very similar to a man who has been confronted by a scorned woman and uses touching to take the edge off the woman’s anger, knowing that touching helps psychologically break down the barriers of mental resistance to an idea.

With many of the positions Obama has taken, Muslim radicals seem to have gotten a free pass under his administration. He behaves very strange for a guy who claims that he’s a Christian. The trouble with a man who claims he’s a Christian and not a Muslim is that in politics it is calculated that a Muslim could not be elected, because people are tense over the aggression of many fundamentalists.

Christianity has been attacked by the Obama administration mysteriously. So if Obama is pretending to be a Christian when he is in fact a Muslim then he is deliberately misleading the pubic for political gain. And if he is willing to do that, what else is he willing to mislead the public on? That is the trouble. A man should be willing and able to stand on what they believe, not what they think people want them to believe. Such people are no different from people like that salesman who lie about how much money they have to sleep with a woman. They will say anything to get into the woman’s pants. But even the best of them get caught in their own lies. Here Obama lets it slip that he’s a Muslim then corrects himself to being Christian. Was it an accident? (More on this later)

In this next clip Obama continues to ridicule Christian faith. For a guy who again claims he’s a Christian, he seems pretty angry about it. I mean I personally don’t care if he’s a Muslim, or an Alien from some other planet. My concern is why does he feel he must hide it? Why be misleading?

Glenn Beck shows the Michelle Obama clip where she stated this was the first time she was proud of America. I personally can’t ever recall any upper level politician saying something like this. To me, this clip reveals much of what type of conversations go on at the Obama dinner table, when the cameras aren’t running. Michelle, at the time being inexperienced at deceit in politics spoke her mind, and has since learned to put a softer edge on what she say’s publicly.

To know who Obama is you have to watch all his speeches, not just the ones where he attempts to appeal to all of America, the people like Mr. Gavin. Here is Obama among his people at the Campus Progress meet talking about alternative fuels. Campus Progress is a progressive organization designed to build a progressive political base which is in direct competition against people like me, who are American traditionalists. Progressives hope to erode the effectiveness of traditionalists by appealing to the naivety of young people hungry to rebel from their parents. The trouble with progressives is they attempt to undermine American Politics with a Trojan Horse mentality, by breaking through the barriers of American’s defenses and destroying that opposition from behind those defenses. That’s alarming because Progressives know that their ideas cannot compete directly with traditionalists so they seek the subversive route. Here Obama congratulates the creation of Progressive Leadership and the role of young people in the future.

Knowing that traditionalists will reject much of what Obama is trying to implement, he seeks to appeal to young people by admitting that he smoked marijuana, a lot. When Obama says that he is angry that Washington plays politics, and nothing gets done because of the grid lock, remember that the only reason Obama made this statement is that he was tapping into the same political demographic exploited by Bill Clinton when he played a saxophone on MTV. It’s all about politics.

I hate to bring it up because the relationship that President Obama has or had with Bill Ayers cannot be ignored even though a discussion about that relationship is as contentious as talking about the birth certificate issue. For those who don’t know who Bill Ayers is listen to him talk about his life in The Weather Underground. Obama launched his political career with Bill Ayers as a supporter in the living room of The Weather Underground leaders.

Here is a video with radio interviews of Bill Ayers where his life parallels Barack Obama’s rise to fame. Bill Ayers is a very manipulative and radical hater of the American way of life. He has demonstrated the extent of just what he is willing to do against the American Government. He is an open enemy to all things American, and the government knows it and has known for years exactly where he is at all times yet he’s been free to continue his radical movements with other methods instead of the radical violence of his early years. He’s a retired professor at the University of Chicago. In a new edition of the Bill Ayers memoirs called, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War-Activist, he added a new afterword about Barack Obama describing the blogospheric characterization of their relationship as “neighbors and family friends” (“In 2008 there was a lot of chatter on the blogosphere about my relationship with Barack Obama: we had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fundraiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.”).

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

Obama tried to back off the Ayers connection, but the evidence was just too overwhelming. Now this video isn’t from Fox News, it’s by CNN. Ayers is a man who is willing to do anything to accomplish his objective. When he and his wife bragged about the rise of Barack Obama as a political power in Chicago politics there is no question that Ayers at some point told Obama, “They’ll harass you for knowing me. That’s OK. It’s worth it to have one of our kind in The White House. When they ask don’t feel bad in denying you know me. I’ll understand.”

One last warning about Barack Obama, a look into his past, this video was done in 2008, well before Glenn Beck. Tony Rezko was a major fund-raiser for Barack Obama. Rezko and several others were indicted on federal charges in October 2006, for using their connections to the state boards to demand kickbacks from businesses that wanted to do business with the state. While the others pleaded guilty to the charges, Rezko pleaded not guilty and was found guilty of 16 of the 24 charges filed against him. Rezko also worked with Rod Blagojevich who was just convicted this year in late June of 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, conspiracy to commit extortion, and conspiracy to commit bribery, as well as trying to sell President Obama’s former Senate seat in exchange for political favors. This is the circle of associates around President Obama. All these people have displayed the ability to look straight into a camera and lie about their innocence or provide misleading information.

Source article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rezko

I’ve said a lot on these pages about looters, people who primarily look at public service positions as a way to enrich themselves off tax money. Look at how Michelle Obama and her husband behaved before he became President of the United States. This is how Obama got some of his money that he is so proud of when he state, “people like me are willing to give back some.” Obama has been bragging about his wealth even as far back as the Joe the Plumber question, which I didn’t realize until I just recently looked at it again.

Obama has shown that he will lie, especially in politics. There is no question that he will and has been caught many times as shown above. Listen to him in this CNN investigation.

When you listen to Obama speak about the budget below look at his record. Here he lies 7 times in a 2 minute speech.

Being Muslim is not a problem, as discussed. But lying about it so that a person can get elected is a big problem. Here is convincing evidence that Obama is a Muslim which is proof that the man will lie about a seemingly insignificant issue. So what does anybody think he’d do over a really big issue?

The reason this whole Muslim issue is relevant can be shown from this statement about the condition of the flag and the Muslim faith as told to Dale Lindsborg ‘s Meet the Press from Sunday’s 07 Sept. 2008, 11:48:04 EST, Televised broadcast. The then Senator Obama was asked about his stance on the American Flag.

I had forgotten about this whole issue until a friend of mine reminded me of it after reading other stories I have stated about President Obama and his position over this recent budget battle. The text below is quite startling.

General Bill Ginn, USAF (ret.), asked Obama to explain why he doesn’t follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.

The General stated to Obama that according to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171…

During rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present (except those in uniform) are expected to stand at attention, facing the flag, with the right hand over the heart. Or, at the very least, “Stand and Face It”.

‘Senator’ Obama replied:

“As I’ve said about the flag pin, I don’t want to be perceived as taking sides….” “There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression….” “The anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air, and all that sort of thing.”

Obama continued:, “The National Anthem should be ‘swapped’ for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song ‘I’d Like To Teach the World To Sing.’ If that were our anthem, then I might salute it. In my opinion, we should consider reinventing our National Anthem as well as ‘redesign’ our Flag to better offer our enemies hope and love. It’s my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren. If we, as a Nation of waring people, conduct ourselves like the nations of Islam, where peace prevails – – – perhaps a state or period of mutual accord could exist between our governments ……”

“When I become President, I will seek a pact of agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, and a freedom from disquieting oppressive thoughts . We as a Nation, have placed upon the nations of Islam, an unfair injustice, which is WHY my wife disrespects the Flag, and she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past.”

“Of course now, I have found myself about to become the President of the United States and I have put my hatred aside. I will use my power to bring CHANGE to this Nation, and offer the people a new path. My wife and I look forward to becoming our Country’s First black Family. Indeed, CHANGE is about to overwhelm the United States of America.”

Dale Lindsborg, Washington Post

This compelling story brings us to one central question, addressed by Mr.Garvin in the start of this article outlining the behavior pattern of one of the most subversive American Presidents in our history. This President was launched into politics by radicals and crooks. He is a public sector looter as defined by the work of philosophy Atlas Shrugged and gained his wealth in that fashion. He has shown that he will lie about his religion. He will lie about his associations. And he will be misleading about his true political intentions.

Just like the salesman who had slept with the girl, without question the girl felt used when she attempted to call the number and found out the smooth talking salesman had lied to her and even given a false number. She had believed everything the man had said because she wanted to. She wanted to believe that there were people who actually told the truth, especially when they spoke so wonderfully, and were pleasant to look at. Normal average everyday people like the woman in the bar, and millions of Americans of all different political affiliations want to believe that there is good in people, especially attractive people.

Sailors have told stories for generations about sirens that used their songs of seduction and elliptical attractiveness to lure those men to their deaths with enchantment upon the hidden rocks disguised below the surface. But it’s not just beautiful women who perform this seduction. Sometimes it’s fast talking salesman with gold rings. Its governors, mobsters, and senators, who use public office to enrich themselves, its radical reformers who hate America and launch a fellow board member into a path to the presidency from his living room, or it’s the President himself, who has his eye on a prize most American’s can’t even conceive, because the audacity of the deception defies credibility. That deception is the end of America as we all know it and a prized position with the United Nations heading that organization toward global concerns.

Lies are not hard for those types, and in this budget battle the fight isn’t over fixing the budget, or even the debt limit. The fight is over our ability to fix it, because the intent is to collapse America as a world power. And the fear from thousands of radicals like Bill Ayers is that their 40 year strategy to end America under the smile of a good-looking, smooth talking President is in jeopardy, because it’s no longer just the radical right, the conspiracy theorists, the Fox News junkies who see the problem. It’s the average, every day people like Jim Garvin who have the look of who just fu**ed me! And why did I let them do it!

Many women have woke up to an empty pillow on the morning after a drunken binge. Now America is about to roll over and see that there is no head in that pillow, and that while we slept the man we brought home not only took advantage of our condition, but also stole all our money, and material goods and headed home to the object of their true desire, a marriage we did not know about until it was too late and we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

Rich Hoffman

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

S.B.5 IS UNDER ATTACK: Do you have the courage to keep it?

That video created a hail fire of anger among the public sector union class over the weekend because it was evidence to them that the side protecting Senate Bill 5 is able to muster up the support of high-profile national names too, like they have been doing. Unions hate competition!

The public union sector class, which is what we should call them, as they claim to be the entire middle class for voter identity, was able to gather 1.3 million signatures to repeal Senate Bill 5 after John Kasich signed the bill into law that went into effect on July 1^st 2011. It is because of S.B.5 that the OEA (Ohio Education Association) all over the state of Ohio scrambled to pass their teachers union contracts, so they would be grandfathered in when the bill became effective. The union knew that they needed to appeal to the masses if they hoped to successfully repeal the bill in the fall election by putting on a softer, more cooperative face. But even more important, they needed to protect their members from budget cuts before S.B.5 could be used against their tyrannical grip on local tax budgets. The effect of these contract negotiations placed districts like Lakota, which is the 7^th largest district in the state of Ohio into financial solvency again where before the contract negotiations the finances were grim.

That is just a sample of what S.B.5 as a bill will be able to do for the tax payer. The out of control costs that are currently at play in all government positions, especially teaching positions, can be managed finally by the local district. There is a lot more costs that must be managed which will continue to make school districts fiscally viable.

The same people against Senate Bill 5 are used to push environmental issues. Notice how it’s always about children. Progress Ohio, who has produced many videos like the Anti S.B.5 videos shown here is a progressive group which seeks to “progress” society into the progressive trends that we have been traveling down, and they are at the front of the labor movement politically. You can learn a lot about these types of people by studying what they think is important. The children are put in the front row used as props, and the topics are always emotional. This is why these people cannot be allowed to give themselves pay increases, which is what has been happening. They have no monetary discipline. It’s ok to hire people like this to be a park ranger, but they are an overly emotional group that exaggerate everything, and are not capable of firm business decisions. Anytime money is at play, business decisions must be firm, and understood.

Saturday I received this email from a friend of mine with thoughts about the upcoming Lakota levy, which even though the school board solved their immediate problems with the new contract is looking to cover the cost difference lost in state funding and federal allocations in the upcoming years, and they seek a tax increase instead of the options sent to me in the email by my friend.

_______________________________________________________________________

Rich,

I hope you are well. I continue to track the ridiculous actions of your district. What is not making sense is why deficit spending platform is not the main theme against a levy. In addition, there is no need for a levy, even under their current June assumptions until 2014. Therefore, there is more time to make them:

1. Updated and renegotiate health care and not continue to carry such egregious increases in assumptions upwards of 9.5%

2. Change the split of health coverage with employees

3. Remove pickups for employees

4. Remove administrators raises

5. Remove step raises

6. Look more closely at their revenue assumptions

a. 2010 the district collected over $75.6 million – 2011, they say they will only collect $71.4 million. Ask for a “BUDGET TO ACTUAL” NOW THAT YOU HAVE YEAR END TO SEE IF THEY UNDERSTATED REVENUES BY $5.1 MILLION.

b. If they understated revenue in 2011 by $5.1 million, you need to carry that forward for 5 years and you pick up $25 million in revenues

7. Benefits are not impacted at all, yet the community is suffering. That MAKES NO SENSE

My thoughts for your day. Let me know if I can help!

________________________________________________________

I have a lot of people who work in various education positions all over the state who send me information like this. They are frustrated with the way the system works and want to see changes made. This guy is one of them.

My response to him was that until school boards use S.B.5 to bring their costs down, the real costs such as what he assessed in his email to me, then this school tax levy game will continue. As of right now, the school board knows the unions will never go for removing step increases, taking real pay cuts to bring labor wages in line with the private sector, change the health care coverage, the union won’t agree to even one thing on his list, let alone all of them. That is why Ohio needed S.B.5, because collective bargaining has driven up public employee costs since 1983 to such an extent that now it is abusive to the tax payer, and has been for some time.

It is these same public sector unions who have tried to label John Kasich as a Wall Street Stooge, as though Wall Street were the ultimate evil in the world. And they of course hate Newt Gingrich who is a presidential candidate who has advocated unpopular big government warnings.

Many forget, because their memories are shallow that it was Newt and Kasich who balanced the budget in the 90’s in the Federal government which Bill Clinton reluctantly went along with. And these are the guys who are involved in solving Ohio’s budget problems which can be seen as a microcosm of the nation’s problems.

The public union, big government types know this and they have their own weapons they plan to use. Of those, is Bill Cunningham of 700 WLW who has for a long time considered himself a libertarian/conservative, but is mysteriously in favor of big public unions. Bill is the guy at the end of the above Kasich video shaking his hand. Cunningham seems to only advocate change so long as it doesn’t interfere with his income where his real allegiance appears to be his law practice, which of course employees many public employees who work hand in hand with public sector union employees every day and has made him personally wealthy. One of those is his own wife, who is a current judge in Cincinnati. Sheriff Jones of Butler County, who is my neighbor and a fellow Tea Party supporter over immigration reform, is one of the charismatic Republicans who the unions have targeted to help lead the march in repealing S.B.5 this fall. The TV spots are being planned for this as I write this article featuring all the great feats that your local police and firefighters are doing for your community, kissing babies, helping old ladies across the street, and why they need S.B.5 repealed.

Sheriff Jones is the same guy who has openly stated that he doesn’t understand where all the jobs in Hamilton have gone, as he marches to the FOP drum of union brotherhood. So economics is not his strongest topic, but using emotion to win elections is. After all, this is the same guy who wants to sue Mexico for all the illegal drugs coming into America. Here’s a hint Sheriff Jones, they left because union wages closed down Fisher Body in Hamilton, Norwood and other places. The union’s wages and benefits were just too steep to cover those costs, so they left. My grandfather worked there, and I know what kind of pension he had, and even when I was a little kid, I wondered who was paying for him and his friends when they were in retirement. It didn’t add up. In fact many people in my family were or are union people. And they are wrong to blindly follow union mandates just to protect their pay check. They’ve all been told.

The union strategy of course is they think people like Bill Cunningham, Bill Seitz, and Sheriff Jones who are Republicans with connections to Fox News can somehow offset swing voters into doubting the validity of S.B.5 into a repeal. What is forgotten is that these Republicans are the types who have built their lives around public sector service, so they do not have an objective opinion. To them politics as usual is the only politics there is.

To people like me, politics as usual is simply too expensive, and cannot endure. It is a shame that the police and firefighters unions have jumped in front of the teachers unions to shield them and muddy up the fight for reform, because it will also expose how bloated those services are in the dispute. Emotion will not win this battle, this time.

Listen to Glenn Beck explain the pension pyramid at about the 7 minute mark to understand the beginning of the problem. Glenn Beck is 100% right when he says that these problems can only be sustained for one generation. Politicians like Sheriff Jones and Bill Cunningham are part of that generation who voted for the whole thing, and it is difficult for them to admit to themselves that they brought us to this terrible crises. So they defend their mistakes just like a person caught in a lie tries to justify what they’ve done. But the facts are the facts.

There is no question with 1.3 million signatures public union membership has tipped the balance of power perilously close to ending what the American republic was founded on. When employees can vote themselves raises, which public sector unions have notoriously abused at the expense of the tax payer for years, even the big government President FDR himself cautioned us against it. President Kennedy was the man who through executive order, made public sector unions legal, which should have never been done.

Click here to read President Kennedy’s fatal error:

If you want to know the truth, of why these public sector unions want to maintain the status quo, all you have to do is follow the money.

Click here to see what West Chester police and firefighters make, which is within Butler County, Sheriff Jones’s territory and FOP brothers, to see what they are protecting…………………

…………..go ahead, you want to know the truth don’t you. CLICK HERE:

And Lakota, one of the largest schools in the state of Ohio also located in Butler County. Why do you think the OEA wants S.B.5 repealed? Go ahead, CLICK HERE:

It will take a very high voter turn out to protect Senate Bill 5. Nobody is asking anybody to take a rifle into a field and defend their liberty from tyranny……….not yet. You still have the opportunity to protect yourself from an ever-expanding government by simply showing up to vote. The unions will certainly show up, because their income which they get exclusively from the tax payer depends on it. So they will be there. It must be expected that they will have almost 2 million voters who will show up and cast a ballot in November. This is why it is dangerous to have too many government workers. When they outnumber the tax payers, they can enact policies on their own at tax payer expense. They can vote themselves raises, which is why they make so much money, and management is powerless to do anything about it, because Ohio Revised Code created under union lobby power has prevented management controls and driven up the costs.

So in November, If you don’t see through the smoke and mirrors and allow yourselves to be conned, you will not only be responsible for higher taxes which will come your way in order to pay for all these elaborate public employee salaries and pensions as the system collapses on itself, but you will have turned away from an opportunity to march toward the America as it was intended to be in favor of an American headed in the direction of Europe. And it will be your fault, because John Kasich along with the house and senate did exactly what they said they would do, and that is stare the problem in the eye and do the hard thing even when the status quo makes threats and harasses them.

Click Here to read about how the SEIU threatened Ohio Senators in a restaurant, to attempt to threaten them into not voting in favor of S.B.5. CLICK HERE!

They gave Ohio S.B.5. The question is now, as a tax payer, do you have the courage to keep it?

Rich Hoffman

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

Liberty Twp Tea Party Turns Two Years Old: The Rise of a New Guard

The evening July 11,2011 sun beat hard upon the converted barn at the Niederman Farm where the Liberty Twp Tea Party met to celebrate their 2^nd year. There have been a lot of battles over the last couple of years, and as we gathered for the pot luck dinner it was evident that there would be a lot more.

As this meeting was taking place Obama and the local Speaker of the House John Boehner were battling over the budget and the debt ceiling. Obama is approaching the negotiations as though various sides, Tea Party Republicans, moderate Republicans, Rhino Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, Progressive Democrats, and far left radical Democrats all are committed to 100% of their particular positions, and must be prepared to give a little so everyone can agree. As I scooped up some potato salad that my wife had made I wondered how a person like Obama could ever become president and even say such a thing. There’s only one right answer, and the president is missing it. There isn’t money for the programs his party have given away to buy votes. That’s the bottom line folks. All those various politicians have for years purchased votes using our tax money, and now those fools are stuck trying to explain why they’ve bankrupted the system.

The people around me at this gathering are all there for the same reason, we recognize that the government has let us down and taken the nation on a path it doesn’t want to go. Not everyone has come to that realization yet, because they still hope that somewhere, there is a magical golden egg that will be laid by some golden goose. Increasingly, these elected representatives are being seen not as leaders, but as con artists and thieves who have stolen from each of us and sold us back bath water claiming it to be an elixir of life.

While the various ceremonies of this event were going on the Lakota School System was voting for yet another school levy attempt literally right down the road, not more than 3 miles from our location. In this meeting, everything that is wrong with the government can be seen in the microcosm of public education funding. Public sector unions, politicians using their education support for votes, and school administrators hoping to use school boards as a political launch pad to become noticed by leaders of one of the two parties have bought into Keynesian economics, like the rest of the government, and they were wrong.

When John Keynes introduced his Keynesian economics model from the ever-increasing socialist tendencies of the rest of the world, politicians saw an opportunity to exploit that model for their own accents to public supported power. Keynes was wrong, and every system using it is failing, including schools. The correct answer is not more of the same theory, but something else completely. In schools, the task is to convert over to that system without destroying the opportunities of the kids and parents who support the school. But in education, just like all things in government, the prices of labor, of the services created by labor, and the revenue which supports the entire foundation are artificially inflated, because competition is not allowed to kill off the waste, because government protects those enterprises. This drives up the costs everywhere for everybody. And presidents like Obama and school boards like what we have at Lakota, only know to close that inflated value with increased taxes. They can’t understand any other option because their brains are not wired to accept anything else.

At Lakota they are going for a tax rate that is less than what they’ve asked for in the past. This is consistent with President Obama’s comments to Speaker Boehner, “You can’t get everything you’ve asked for.” In the minds of these people bending a little on their political position is what the process is all about.

But it’s not. There is only one right answer, not a mixed drink of many tastes. With something like a budget deficit whether you’re talking about a local school district, or a Federal government, there is a way you got there, and to get out, you must do the opposite of what put you in that position. That’s the only way. If you spent a lot of money-making political promises that you didn’t have the authority to commit the tax payers to, or you are a school district that allowed a public sector teachers union to drive up your labor costs recklessly, then you have to admit that you were wrong, that you spent money that wasn’t yours just as a person addicted to gambling must admit that they have a problem before they can get help. You can’t throw more money at the addict, because they’ll never get better. You have to take away their money so they can’t go to the casino anymore to throw away our money on some jackpot they hope will fix all their problems.

As I sat among friends and family I thought about the worst issue in the news of them all, and that’s the case of the murdered little girl in Florida, the Casey Anthony trial where the mother appears to have accidentally killed her little girl with an overdose of chloroform and drove around Florida with the body in the trunk for everyone to smell the decomposing body. The girl was a reckless young woman, and the prosecution went for the death penalty for the severity of the crime. Last week, Casey was found not guilty; the jurors didn’t have the inner compass of morality to be able to pass judgment on a peer. Society has lost their ability to judge.

Most have anyway, except for the people having diner in a country barn with me on that hot July evening. Of American society, these people who the radicals advocating Keynesian economics, progressive global government without borders, and idealists who have never found their way out of the soviet fueled radicalism of the 60’s, those people call my friends here “teabaggers.” “Teabaggers, meant to be a term of peer pressure, of insult, an attempt by those who are advocating evil openly, to keep society functioning with their eyes closed and hope that somehow their failed theories will somehow come true in the final hour, and if they don’t, they’ll be remembered for their compassion, and not as the thieves they truly are.

I feel privileged that after two years, the Liberty Twp Tea Party is still here, and it’s growing. And it refreshes the soul to partake in these events, as the aroma of barn yard animals and community prepared food mixes in a unique waltz of perpetuity. Because this is how it was in the beginning, and this is the way of the American, to always be ready for a fight, to roll up the sleeves and eat well before a hard day’s work, or the battle that looms on the horizon. Because only by the path of those in this barn, is the path to liberty and freedom. And the only right answer in the entire nation is present on the tongues of those in attendance, because they are the last of their kind and Americais waiting for them to fix the nation that has been hijacked by tyrants of good intention.

Rich Hoffman

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

Over a Million Signatures to Repeal Senate Bill 5: Gained from an emerging police state

The following article should be viewed like a movie. The videos here are extensive, and in the order presented, tell a compelling tale. That tale may have truth, they may be filled with conspiracy theory and thus paranoia, and the opinions many be in the context of such paranoia. However what cannot be disputed is that in 2011 the police and all authority have a lot more power and intrusive capability than they did a decade ago. They are also more expensive as wages and pensions are destroying budgets everywhere. Politicians hungry for the FOP vote are quick to add more and more police to make tax payers feel safe, but the subtle strategy is to create so many government employees through union membership, that politics can be steered where desired.

Police officers and other public union employees in Ohio gathered up more than a million signatures to put a repeal of S.B.5 on the November ballot, a bill that would give communities more management control of their costs. For anyone concerned with a smaller, less intrusive government the union control of public sector employees is deeply concerning. The sheer volumes of public employees that don’t want any changes are displayed in the above and below videos. In fact this very issue is the primary topic of my new book tentatively called, Tail of the Dragon due out in 2012, where politicians use public employees and their families, to shape policy. They do this with excessively high pay which turn republican’s employees into democratic votes due to the luxury of the rate of pay. These public employees no matter how dangerous the job or any other condition is making an average of 30% more than the private sector job, and that buys votes. This is why the public sector unions do not want S.B.5 to stand as law and will fight with everything they have to maintain the status quo.

In some way or another we all know that the status quo is spiraling out of control. Everyone wants police officers to protect them from criminals, but that doesn’t mean we want bored cops parked on the side of the road to pull us over for speeding tickets, seat belt violations, or DUI check points. And lets face it, for every police officer hired, that officer is going to be expected to do something, and if there isn’t a lot of crime in a neighborhood, who is to say how many police officers even need to be on the payroll of the tax payer.

But according to the FOP union, there isn’t a limit. They want an infinite amount of officers and will always ask for more. This is why S.B.5 is needed, so that management can control this tendency somewhat, because over-staffing is causing budget deficits. And to justify the over staffing, law makers (politicians) keep inventing new jobs for these positions which ultimately push up against constitutional limits.

The following video is why it is entirely possible to have too many police officers, and just how dangerous it is to give them too many rights to “protect and serve.” Do you want Mr. Wesley Cheeks to have the right to break down your door in the middle of the night just because he suspected you of a crime? I’m sure Mr. Cheeks is a nice guy but is he worth 60K per year to be a cop, or even a 100K per year with unlimited overtime? Should Mr. Cheeks be given any level of authority over any of us? How many cops are on the current staff in your neighborhood that is just like officer Cheeks?

When Cheeks was pressed about the validity of the law he started to say dumb things, the kind of things that were really on his mind deep down inside, particularly when he says this “isn’t America anymore.” It might have been an accident what he said, but he revealed his political inclination. Do you think this officer would vote politically in a way that his FOP president didn’t tell him to do? Do you think this guy is capable of independent thought at all? I don’t and that makes him dangerous, because he is simply a soldier that will carry out his orders and he gets his orders from politicians, and we know they can’t be trusted. So this is the essence of the problem looked upon without emotion.

Here’s another case of police abuse over political motives. Listen to this guy. This is a separate case from the one above, yet it is so similar. Why do these police seem to be protecting the Obama Presidency? It’s an FOP condition, and Obama is friendly to labor unions. It’s that simple. So here you have a case were police officers are using the law to influence elections. It may be in just a small way, but if hundreds of officers, or even thousands across the country are all doing the same thing, the impact can actually be a percentage point or two in election participation or actual voter results. It’s harassment intended for a political objective.

It does my heart good to see people like the V-Man putting on a mask and protesting some of the police abuse that is going on in his community. Now, who can argue with The V Man? Is he wrong? In my experience, when police need a levy passed, that is when they do the drug raids. That is when they start the campaign of showing how much work they do. That’s when whatever dangerous situation they participate in gets reported in the paper. The trouble is, the police always know who the drug dealers are. They always know where the crimes are committed, but they often put it on the back burner until they need to use their endeavors to gain a political advantage. There will be a lot of that kind of behavior as the vote for S.B.5 gets closer. But the V-Man brings up what the police do most of their time, hang out at the station and wait for something to happen. And when we hire too many cops there are a lot of cops to sit around waiting for something to do.

So if people are starting to fear the law enforcement, if the TSA is reaching for union protection, which only increases the number of union voters that will shape public policy, which is incredibly dangerous, it can be concluded that the United States is already in a police state. We know that the Indiana Supreme Court recently voted to allow for unmolested entry of police officers into homes of suspicion. That means that if a law enforcement officer wishes to enter you home you have no right to prevent them from doing so. Here is a reasonable argument that the United States is now a police state.

Now have a look at a full length documentary called Police State 4, which the V-Man referred to above from Alex Stone. It’s over two hours long, so you might want to grab some popcorn. It’s a well done documentary that brings up a lot of great points. You don’t have to believe everything in it. But if you watch it critically, you must recognize that we have a dangerous trend in America.

Here’s another documentary called Invisible Empire also produced by Alex Jones. The facts are hard to dispute because the behavior we have seen over the last decade prove how quick certain factions of government were prepared to expand the police powers from what they used to be to what we are seeing today. This documentary is also over 2 hours, so you better grab more popcorn.

The war is happening all around us, as shown in this Alex Jones radio broadcast where he talks about Ron Paul going after the TSA. It’s a shame that Ron is virtually alone in this endeavor.

There is without any question a dangerous expansion of law enforcement and the intrusions by them upon America. They are becoming more and more a branch of military service intent on controlling our population. The problem with the conspiracy theories is that they often appear to come from radicals, so the message gets lost. I do not think that the government planned 911 so they could expand government police power into a new world order, gradually taking away the freedoms of Americans so they are more equal to other nations throughout the world. Because the trouble with these global advocates is that if everyone wants to move to the United States, and doesn’t stay put in their home countries, then globalism will never take root. Global government needs to frustrate the plans of the freedom lover who climbs in a boat and rows to America to flee their tyrannical home governments. So taking away the freedoms of Americans helps control the aims of the world in this way.

We know that the CIA and the FBI and who knows what other organizations are funded by the America tax payer use manipulative tactics to achieve an objective. I think with 911, globalists probably working as sleeper agents within the United States government, and had been fanning the flames of Muslim extremists hoping for an attempted terrorist attack that would be caught before the deaths occurred. The intent all along by the globalists would be to expand government with a branch of government such as Home Land Security. If such a thing happened it wouldn’t be the first time subversive groups like the CIA got caught with their foot in their mouth. America has propped up many current terrorists in a subversive fight with other nations that the our relationship with the United Nations prevented, but the desire for nation building was still present. It is naive to consider that such tactics are not being done on us all, just as it has with other nations.

Whatever the reason, police powers are expanding, and the unions that protect them are not allowing for staffing adjustments, or wage reductions that can allow management bring not only their costs in line without raising taxes, but also to reduce the amount of officers needed for a community or city. There are so many union regulations and inefficiencies, and so much dramatization going on with these law enforcement positions, that true staffing levels cannot even be considered. Instead, under union, and political motive, law enforcement just continues to grow perpetually. S.B.5 is a bill that will help with some of the wage level issues that we are seeing, but it doesn’t go near far enough in preventing the rapid expansion of government employees that we are seeing and the justification of those positions by trampling over the constitutional rights of American citizens. The window for doing anything about controlling this emerging police state is closing where such action can still be done peacefully, with just a simple vote.

The question is how willing are Americans to let their freedoms erode before they say enough. If they declare it now, they can do themselves a favor later. But if they wait too long………………………………………it won’t be a good thing.

Rich Hoffman

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

	vwells34 on Where Evil Lives in Butler Cou…
	Rich Hoffman on The Blurry Bigfoot in Ohio: Pa…
	Anonymous on The Blurry Bigfoot in Ohio: Pa…
	Anonymous on The Mysterious London Stone: S…
	Anonymous on ‘Prehistoric Worlds Or,…
	Rich Hoffman on ‘Prehistoric Worlds Or,…
	Anonymous on ‘Prehistoric Worlds Or,…
	Anonymous on ‘Forbidden Archaeology…
	Rich Hoffman on Amanda Ortiz the Termite of We…
	Anonymous on Amanda Ortiz the Termite of We…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: