Category: Citizen Kane

Why Cincinnati is Failing: My Personal Experience with the CBC

With the recent news that Chiquita is considering a move from Cincinnati to Charlotte, North Carolina, it has left Cincinnati in a state of panic as to why Chiquita or any other business would desire to do such a thing. Doc Thompson covers this issue with Cincinnati Magazine Executive Editor Linda Vaccariello in an illuminating broadcast about what Cincinnati has to offer, then considers why Cincinnati has a problem attracting and keeping business in the city.

Well, I have a bit of experience with doing business in Cincinnati that I’ve touched on before, but this topic lends itself to a bit more detail. Well before there was ever a Paul Brown Stadium or even a Great American Ball Park I was with a group who was trying to win the design for the riverfront development project. In fact, the guy I was with presented a wonderful plan to the city council of Cincinnati of which Dwight Tillery seemed to like, (Dwight was the mayor at the time). The plan included paving over completely the various roads that connect the highway system downtown, and put them underground to connect Cincinnati’s downtown with the riverfront. On that paved-over section would be a grassy park, various restaurants, movie theaters, shopping centers, new stadiums, and a plan for including Longworth Hall as a Historic District connected to everything else which would wrap around to join with Union Terminal. The plan received a rousing applause from the people attending this meeting. I thought at the conclusion that the group I was with would undoubtedly be the lead design team which would head the development of the riverfront development.

After the meeting found it odd that none of the city council members, or the media wanted to speak to anyone from our group, after all, we just had the best presentation without question, but we also didn’t have “formal” relationships with any members of city council. By formal that means “friendly” in the world of politics. I knew every member of council through my work at city hall where a friend of mine and I were at that monstrosity every day trying to get the Cincinnati Building Commission to approve plans for a development we were working on which required a simple change of use on an existing building.

What should have been a simple job, relatively speaking had turned out to be a political nightmare. The CBC seemed more interested in creating work for their friends, who are architects, engineers (to design fire escapes and such) HAVAC installers and all those types of related businesses, then in helping a business get their feet on the ground in the city of Cincinnati.

Getting information out of any member of the CBC was like pulling teeth from a 4-year-old kid. I can’t even begin to illustrate without writing an entire book on the matter of how many engineers we fired for not moving at the speed we demanded, which was the speed of business. In fact I remember vividly a conversation I had with our architect and investor at the time. This guy had liked our business plan so much he put some of his own money into the project. Then one day he gave us a call and said, “I heard you guys were down at City Hall yelling at the guys in the CBC for dragging their feet. I want you to know that I have a good standing with those guys, and I find it offensive that you’d chose to do business this way.”

Our response was, “Hey, you’re our architect, you work for us. You don’t work for the CBC. If you are friends with them, that’s not our problem.”

The architect then said, “But you guys are trying to cut too many corners. They are telling you what you need to do and you are bucking them at every issue. They told you the type of HAVAC unit you had to install. They told you what the structural improvements were going to be. They told you how many restrooms you were going to have to install and on and on, and you guys seem to want to argue every fact!”
“Buddy, you are supposed to be working on our behalf. You are supposed to do this arguing for us. We’re not supposed to even be involved in this kind of thing. We’re doing it because you aren’t. Anyone can just say ‘spend more money,’ which is what you are saying, and it’s what they are saying. They want a larger fee for the cost of the project. That is all they are after. They are deliberately driving up the cost to receive the larger fee, why can’t you see that?”

“It’s the cost of doing business and you guys don’t want to pay it. It’s cheap and classless. I’m embarrassed to be associated with you guys. I’ve known those people for years and I don’t know what to tell them when you won’t follow their guidance.”

“Who are they but a bunch of pencil-pushing government workers? If we did what you and the CBC are suggesting you guys would add a million dollars to the cost of this project, and that’s just not in the budget.”

“So put it in the budget!” Said the architect. “Just go raise more money. Isn’t that easier than all this?”

My friend and I looked at each other and realized what was going on. It is the same “looter” mentality that we see in all government, especially in schools driven by radical unions. And here it was in the CBC who had an alliance between them and their friends in the building field. And we were being told to “pay up” or get out of town.

“You’re fired,” was what my friend told the architect.

There was silence for a moment on the other end of the phone. “You can’t do that. I’m an investor.”


“Consider it done.”

My friend and I finished the job by doing all the architectural work ourselves, and we found amendments in the building code that allowed us to by-pass all the additional costs that were just ridiculous excuses to make work for members of the building fraternity which centered on the CBC. The architect went from a friend to an extreme foe, but that’s ok, because he was on the wrong side and chose to put himself there. The situation took years to unravel and was extremely disappointing. My experience in working with Cincinnati is that they have made it entirely too expensive to do business within the city because just like a union, the many political factors have attached additional costs to projects just to take care of their friends in the field.

That’s why nobody would speak to us after the riverfront development meeting. We were in that class as, “radicals” who didn’t want to pay off their friends around the city. The result of course was that we took our business across the river to Covington. My meeting with their building division went something like this.

“You guys want to do what? Well, Ok. Sure, no problem.”

My friend and I looked at each other. “But don’t you want to contest HAVAC units, fire escapes, access ramps, structural improvements and fire easements.”

The man laughed, “Hell no, it’s your business. We want you guys over here. Give me a call when you’re ready to move on this project.”

To this day you can see clearly all the development that has moved in along I-275 by the airport and up in Erlanger and Florence, Kentucky. And in Newport along with Covington where both cities had a very friendly attitude toward business, surprisingly “looter” free. Covington built the Covington Landing and all the nice development around the Convention Center and Newport built Newport on the Levee which turned out to be hugely thriving business. In the process Newport gave new birth to Monmouth Street which used to be a hell-hole of prostitution, gambling, and organized crime racketeering, and turned it into a place that families could take their kids to at night. Meanwhile across the river Cincinnati built two stadiums which went drastically over budget (I wonder why) and to this day threaten to bankrupt the city with the excessive tax burdens they exclusively occupy. And Cincinnati nearly 20 years later still doesn’t have any development on the riverfront. They are just now getting around to that type of development.

That is why Cincinnati fails. And that is why Chiquita wants to move to a dust bowl of a town in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because when times get tough, for a business to survive taking care of the “looters” of a town is not their responsibility. This is the reason so many of those “looters” seek government work, because that is the most secure way to care for their network without having to deal with people like me and my friend who refuse to be “looted.”

This is why Cincinnati is in a state of decline, because it has been overrun by these types and all the people with bright ideas and money will take it someplace else, for all the same reasons that companies don’t want to be limited with unionized labor or to deal with companies who are driven by unionized labor. It’s not because they want to hurt a worker’s rights. Most companies don’t want to worry about that kind of thing, that’s why they hire human resource managers, so they can advise the company how to take care of the employees. Because the men and women of this world with ideas and the money to spend on them do not want to be tied down to the speed of complacency and network friendships. They want to move at the speed of business, which is what drives communities and countries to greatness, and is what the looters of the world simply slow down.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

The 9/11 Virus: The looters behind the masks and the needle

Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior.

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage.”

With the tragedy of 9/11 occupying almost every broadcast and social event of the weekend, the common theme which came to my mind was that I felt that the tragedy of 9/11, as terrible as it was, fails in comparison to attending a memorial service for your own country while it still lives.

As the NFL did its tribute, and the firefighters climbed to the psychological heap to lift the flag high about their heads, I thought of the unions behind those firefighters, concoctions of socialism hidden behind a mask of American Pride and I could only shake my head. “They don’t even know what they are,” I would think to myself in disgust. They have no concept of history. Their rituals are only a few generations deep and keep them stuck into a ritual that reminds them of the greatest defeat inflicted on American soil, an attack that went far deeper than buildings falling in the financial district of New York City, or even the terrible deaths which occurred there. The tragedy of the 9/11 attack is that it forced America to change, to become too introspective, and to meditate on the tragedy itself in a vain attempt at recollection.

9/11 has allowed the “looters” of society to capitalize on this psychological defeat. By looters in this instance I’m thinking of the do-gooder, who shows to the public an effort at honor, respect, and valor, but the inner meanings are sinister and selfish. An example of this type of looter would be the long-lost sibling who discredited their parents, and when the parents die, the sibling seeks to launch the event into a long sought after resolution. These people show up and cry, and act as though they are devastated by the loss of the parents, but their inner aim is to reconnect with the family of which they severed relations for whatever reason. They seek to use the death of the parents as a way to reestablish contact and respect within the family unit itself. Enshrined within the 9/11 ceremonies that I witnessed were many such types, who on the surface of their soul believe their intentions are good and pure, but in reality are quite sinister. These looters seek to capitalize on the decline of America and to actually perpetuate phase 7 shown above. The goal of the looter is to use the tragedy to gain power. When people grieve in those moments of weakness they look to a leader to help put them back on their feet. That is when the looter strikes, and gains the respect and loyalty of the grieved, like the distraught family member using the death of their parents as a way to regain the respect of the rest of their family.

At a 9/11 event that I attended I was approached by a guy who said, “Hey, you’re Rich Hoffman, you’re that guy who supports Issue 2.”

I looked at the guy shifting gears, because the memorial event was touching and my mind was on it. “Yes, that’s right. I am that guy.”

“Well, I want to tell you, I grew up with firefighters, I’m friends with firefighters, and I stand with firefighters.”

I looked out the window as he spoke and looked at the long lines of firefighters gathered around their trucks and a group of motorcycles all propping up the American Flag from the backs, the riders showing AFL-CIO stickers on their windshields and fenders. “So because you grew up with them you have to think like them?”

The man looked at me with a challenging gaze. “I’m not looking to dispute you with a bunch of ‘fancy’ words. I just want you to know where I stand.”

The man walked off not looking back and I felt sorry for the guy as I watched him grab the hands of the nearest uniformed officers to shake them as if to reassure himself that his proclamation to me was one he needed to solidify.

The firefighters at the service I was at, along with all the armed forces personnel gave me the same feeling that I thought watching the start of all the NFL games, that the memorial we were all attending was not one for 9/11, it was for ourselves. And the events which led to that death was an elusive quality that nobody even saw coming. It is like a death by cancer as opposed to a gruesome death by a visible enemy on a remote battlefield. The death by cancer just eats you from the inside out and the death just happens quietly in a bed.

The men I was looking at were good people, but they are carrying within them something that is destroying their spirit without them even knowing it. It’s rotting them using their static patterns as camouflage. Many of them have no idea they even carry it within them, within their belief patterns which govern their lives.

On 9/11 the tragedy of The World Trade Center was just the needle which injected into the body of our American Culture a disease which would topple our society with apathy. For while we attend memorials and contemplate whether or not firefighters and police should be attached to communist philosophies in the form of labor unions, the enemy moves against us. It runs through the blood of our cultural bodies and is turning the elements of our body against itself, with the aim of destroying it.

The sad thing is, such as in the case of what that guy said to me, that he “stood with firefighters,” as though the prerequisite for supporting firefighters, teachers and police means you must support unionized labor. My question is, why can’t I support those public workers without supporting unionized labor, which is rooted in socialism? I wanted to tell that guy that, but he didn’t give me the chance. He walked off too quickly, and even if he didn’t it would have taken hours of conversation to even arrive at a place where his mind could accept what I was telling him. He is functioning from a static pattern that he spent over 40+ years forming, and that wasn’t going to change in an afternoon conversation with me.

As I watched the guy and his firefighter friends, I thought of the AIDS virus, how as HIV it attacks the immune system of the human body by disguising itself as a friend, then when it is near, it destroys the body’s ability to fight it off the virus, until it’s too late.

America has been infected, and the events of 9/11 has paralyzed America’s immune system and allowed the virus of our enemies to attack us, to overwhelm us, to turn friend against friend on a premise that was a virus to begin with.

My wife and I avoided the group memorial motorcycle ride. We rode home on our motorcycle alone because that’s the way I wanted it. We both had the feeling that it was the last day of the year that we could take a casual ride together on a weekend, so we wanted to take advantage of it, but deeper than that, I wanted to sort out my feelings on this matter. There is a lot at play that is just wrong about 9/11. You want to be respectful to the families, but America must find a way to remember what happened without losing it’s will to fight for its own survival, by allowing the “looters” to sing us to sleep with memorialized words. And the first step in that process is in recognizing that we were not only attacked physically, but culturally, and that cultural attack is threatening to send America to a memorial of its own, if our internal immune system fails to recognize the nature of the disease. And the first step in doing that is to look beyond the looters who use 9/11 as a platform for power, to speak and seduce their way into the good graces of a unknowing public, and realize what the enemy looks like that peers with hungry eyes behind the many veils from which it hides itself. Then and only then can that enemy be fought before it destroys everything we ever were, without a single shot more being fired as sleep reveals the memorial that awaits us in the loneliness of an empty unidentified night where more than a menace resides in the specter of our soul.

http://web.gbtv.com//shared/flash/video/share/ObjectEmbedFrame.swf?width=400&height=254&content_id=19125107&property=gbtv

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

Bullwhips and Ohio’s Issue 2: “Those forefathers from the ’70’s?'” LOL

Using a bullwhip to demonstrate the benefits of Issue 2, in Ohio makes perfect sense to me. To many progressive minded people a bullwhip represents abuse, slavery, or S&M. But to me, a bullwhip is one of the rarest items of efficiency ever created. It’s a simple weapon that by calculus standards is quite complex. The function of a bullwhip is such that a focused effort applied at the handle of say 10 to 15 mph of thrust becomes over 750 mph of force within 6 feet of the application. For the crack you hear coming from a whip it is nothing less than the sound barrier being broken. Thus, the crack of a whip is a “sonic boom.” That “boom” was created with a small amount of force of which the tapered design of the whip magnifies the applied force into devastating effectiveness. To become so good with a whip that you can capture that energy and project it into a focused point in space is a grand achievement, so to put out a candle with a bullwhip is extremely rare. I only know of a handful of people in the entire world who can do it.

So when I want to demonstrate precision, power, effectiveness, management of resources, I often use the whip. I’ve used my bullwhips to explain to businesses how to function more efficiently, so it only makes sense to me to use a bullwhip to explain how Issue 2 can be effective in controlling the costs of communities all over Ohio. And I do it by showing that Issue 2 will allow communities to “target” their costs specifically, just as I do by targeting the flame of a candle, putting that flame out without disrupting the content of the candle. In this case it is the wax that makes up the candle and it is the flame that consumes it. If I want to save the candle from consumption by the flame, I must blow out the candle. Putting the candle out with at whip demonstrates how incredible force can be applied “precisely” without harming the rest of the candle. So the political metaphor is appropriate. See for yourself.

Who are the flames in society, the “public employees” who consume the “system?” What flames would I target with Issue 2? Well, what comes to my mind immediately is a situation we had at Lakota where a teacher Ryan Farhenkemp just plead guilty to taking inappropriate pictures of a young student while on an out-of-town field trip. That teacher had a serious case of pedophilia, where he desired sex with children, boys specifically, and should have never been allowed to teach. Because the teachers union is so radical, they prevented a proper investigation into this behavior, and did not allow any management to even investigate the matter, until it’s too late. Read more about this situation here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/lakota-teacher-busted-for-child-porn-made-over-65k-per-year/

Just one school district over in Mason another teacher was having sex with the football team, while her boss, the assistant principal was sending pictures of his penis to the teacher’s phone. Many people, including the Superintendent knew that things were not all well and good among his staff, but the teachers union has made investigations into this kind of business nearly impossible, so the bad teachers out there, “and there are many” are allowed to continue on with bad behavior because they are “protected” by a union. Issue 2 will allow performance based evaluations which will help root out this kind of trouble by “allowing” the discussion to initially take place, where now it doesn’t happen at all, because legally, it can’t. Read more about the Mason situation here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/sex-murder-teachers-and-the-taxpayer-ryan-widmer-and-the-mason-teacher/

And to understand how out-of-control the union contracts are, listen to Scott Sloan of 700 WLW read the Lakota Teachers Contract, the more complex something is, the more money it costs. The Lakota contract is not unique, but is pretty standard all over Ohio.

In addition to the lucrative teaching contracts the practice of double-dipping among retired teachers, firefighters, police officers, and school superintendents is so rampant that the projected cost of this abuse is almost unfathomable. It’s a real, significant problem which actually burns our community candle at both ends. In fact I wrote an entire article on just that problem here. Listen to the broadcast there done by an I-Team investigation of which I played a part. The numbers will stun you:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/the-most-important-broadcast-youll-ever-hear-the-crises-in-west-clermont-school-distict-and-every-public-school-in-ohio/

Those are examples of the kinds of “targets” that we as taxpayers must remove from our public employee system to control the out-of-control tax increases that are coming at us. Only in a community do we know what our problems are, and our school boards, city councils, and trustees are there to represent our interests. But often if you go to a community meeting, you will find that even if you speak, those elected representatives won’t listen to you, because the deals are already solidified in the chaos of Columbus. It is the union lobby power that has twisted the arms of legislators and passed legislation like the “double-dipping” provision while the tax payers were busy “working” those lobbyists and politicians, all paid for by us, were having lunch together in Columbus and writing laws to enrich themselves in the chaos they initiated.

I have written a lot about S.B.5, ISSUE 2 specifically. To read what that law does for you, read this article on it:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/all-the-reasons-to-vote-yes-on-issue-2-being-bold-and-doing-the-right-thing/

But the video below will give you a basic understanding:

Those who are in favor of Issue 2 could provide fact after fact, after fact on why it’s a great law. Basically we have a system that is currently in chaos, and there are a lot of people working in the public sector who fully intend to enrich themselves in the midst of that chaos. What you will find is that those groups who wish to take advantage of that chaos against the tax payer will attempt to divert the attention away from the details of an argument to an emotional one. In recent radio broadcasts we have begun to call this the Wookie Defense. Click here to read all about it:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/the-wookie-defense-class-war-is-here-public-unions-against-everyone-else/

You can see supporters of Issue 2 pick apart the recent “Firefighter” ad put out by We Are Ohio here, which will demonstrate unequivocally just how the system is flawed. If these guys won’t tell the truth about things right out in the open, what will they lie about behind closed doors? The answer to that is why things in government cost so much money, and why Issue 2 is so important. The savings doesn’t come from a literal figure on paper. It comes from decentralization in Columbus so people like me can help manage the costs in our communities, where they should be negotiated.

Now, this next video which was put out by a bunch of Firefighters working with a local school is using the same tactics that most public employees use to pass new levies, shows the kind of game they want to play. Now, when I saw this video I laughed hard for a long time. In fact my stomach still hurts almost 24 hours later from laughing at it. It’s not that the people in the video did a bad job. Actually, I think it’s a good effort at a dance routine. What I laughed so hard at is the level of manipulation they are employing in plain sight. They are basically expecting the voter to vote against Issue 2 because they can dance, and that is hilarious.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My stomach hurts again………………………………………………hold on…………Ok. How are the communities going to be weakened if we give the communities more power to handle their costs? Instead of the fire chief talking to his union people and then the union lobby going to Columbus to create a new law that then comes back to our community as an unfunded mandate, how about that fire chief talk to the people in the community about their staffing levels, their pay, and their equipment. That seems like it would create a stronger relationship, not a weaker one. If taxes needed to be increased, then the community could decide, but as it is now, the tax increases are “dictated” by the state through chaotic legislation, which is just how the union likes it. You see these emotional types won’t deal with facts they’ll instead rely on emotion to convince you to throw money at them.

However, in this next video the firefighters attempt to “look” like they are dealing with facts by letting you listen in on one of their picnics. I laughed hard at this one too but for an entirely different reason. In fact, this has been a running joke among my wife and me now for an entire day. We will probably make fun of this one for years to come.

Oh my goodness! “Our forefathers and firefighters tried to do back in the 70’s?” Thanks for that, Joe. In case you missed it that remark is at the 7:45 mark. Dude, the history of Ohio goes back a lot further than the 70’s! Also, hey, Joe you must not have met the mayor of Toledo. He’s for Issue 2. You should get out more, you’d meet more people than a bunch of bobble heads waiting for you to tell them what to think.

 

 

Here’s what’s going on here. The unions are using firefighters because they along with police are supposed to represent authority, and especially in light of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 these union leaders will show that they will absolutely stop at nothing to manipulate the tax payer with emotion and fear. The public is not supposed to question these people, because they have authority over us. Now this video disgusts me, because they are using some “slick” production values to attempt to completely manipulate the public. By allowing the viewer to sit down with those in authority as though it was a privilege, they hope to lure the viewer into a feeling of “entitled” information. It’s simply a variation on Saul Alisnsky’s Delphi Technique. But here’s the trouble, none of the people speaking in this video are speaking about any facts. They are simply speaking about what they fear, which is no more justified than people telling Christopher Columbus that if he sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean, that he’d fall off the side of the Earth. Its fear based on absolutely no foundation.

The next question that arises from this is, even these “honest” firefighters are not willing to address the facts, and instead peck around the parameters of truth, relying on manipulation instead of out-right presentation, then what are they hiding? Well, I published the wage rates of the police and firefighters from my community in the below article. It’s pretty standard stuff all over Ohio. As you will see, they are making very good livings, and as I’ve said before, if the public thinks that level of income is acceptable then fine. But my inclination is that these public workers are very aware that they are making approximately 30% more than the people who are paying their salaries, and they’d rather keep that bit of information out of the discussion, out of fear that the public might turn on them and actually question their actual value. See my article on what these guys make in my community: (the spreadsheet with all the costs is toward the bottom)

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/oh-what-big-teeth-you-have-how-much-to-police-and-firefighters-cost-in-west-chester/

I have been in management for a while now so I understand this issue from many angles. I’ve worked at all levels of a company, and I have dealt with unions. I’ve been in actual fights in parking lots with shop stewards so I know the mentality of these people. Taken individually, most people are good citizens who just want to do the right thing. I once worked with a guy who was a major union supporter yet had a fascination with airplanes and considered himself very patriotic. I thought of him when I heard Joe speak in the above video. He used to say to me, “You are building those units too fast. You have a rate of 120%. You are making us look bad.”

I’d say to him, “You make yourself look bad by holding back. We have a contract deadline and you are jeopardizing it by not filling the production requirements. You could build at least three times faster than you are, but you and your friends won’t do it. So I’m picking up the slack so we don’t miss our deadline.”

“Kid, this whole union thing doesn’t work if we don’t stick together. It takes all of us, in solidarity.”

 
I’d smile at him, because he knew what my reaction would be. We got along in a friendly way because we both shared a love of airplanes even if we differed politically. “Now why would I want to do that when I can work extra overtime, make more money, by doing the work you and your fat ass friends won’t do?”


He’d chuckle and say, “You know back when we walked the picket line we’d call you a SCAB. In fact, I’d tell you that behind your back, they’re calling you a SCAB around here because you are up the ass of management.”

At this point I would turn down the radio and lay down my wrenches and all the guys working nearby would stop to see if a fight were about to break out. “Dude, to me a SCAB is something that heels a wound. When your body is cut open, you better pray a SCAB forms to heal it. If I am a considered a SCAB around here, because I like this company from head to toe, I like the people in management, and I like the people on the paint line, then that’s a compliment. I like them all to some extent, and I’m not picking sides to suit the needs of your unions political position, which I adamantly disagree with. If I’m a SCAB it’s because I’m here to heal all the wounds you union fools inflict upon yourselves with your adversarial relationship with management in an attempt to bleed the company dry in order to garner more money for yourselves.”

He’d put his hands up defensively as the union stewards would come in closer for a listen. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you out. They (management) will use you against us, to break down our solidarity, brother.”

“I’m not your brother or any of you other guys. I’m here to make a living for my family, and if you idiots want to produce at a 40% efficiency rating, I’ll do my work and your work and take your money in overtime so I can take my wife to nice movie, or out to dinner. It’s your loss.”

Then the union steward would step in. He was a guy who clearly didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. So confrontation was inevitable. “You jeopardize everything we stand for.”

“Then you are standing for the wrong things.”

“You are too young to know what you are talking about. We worked hard for every right the people in this company have. You are ignorant, you have no idea. Someday you’ll want us, and we won’t be there for you, because you wouldn’t stand with us, and by then we will have collapsed.”

“Is that the kind of talk you use to get your wife to sleep with you? Because you’re wrong, this contract must be met. If you make yourselves a pain in the ass to the customer, they won’t give you another one, and you’ll be out of a job and all your union bullshit won’t mean anything then. “

At this point the union steward waved me off and said, “Forget it guys. He’s a puppet for management. He’ll never stand with us.” The crowd broke up and went back to work. For that day, all the workers improved their efficiency by about 15% points on average. Then the production values fell the next day back to what they were.

I made about 80K that year in overtime opportunities, picking up the slack of the union work force. The contracts did fall behind, but I made decent money for a while. The confrontations did get more violent after that, but that wasn’t a big deal. Management took my side in the injuries to the employees because they saw that I was trying to help them. But with all my effort, I couldn’t prevent the company from going out of business when the salesmen told me that nobody wanted to give our company a contract because they didn’t want to deal with our delivery times, and our union work force. So once the contracts were fulfilled, the work dried up and the company was sold within two years of that discussion.

The public unions are at that point. They have negotiated themselves out of value. Their services are too costly taken collectively, and they have built a system where much abuse is taking place, such as the double-dipping issues. If they were a private business, they’d be going out of business. But these are public employees, and we need those services. We need teachers, we need firefighters, and we need police, and we will have them regardless of Issue 2 or not. We will have strong communities too. But we won’t be used and abused as tax payers by greedy unions who force upon us a system that is rampant with undisciplined spoils. Ohio is at a point where we must have the ability to remove with surgical precision the trouble areas, and no politician in Columbus can do that. Only the members of the community know where the real trouble is, and Issue 2 gives our communities the tools to remove those trouble spots that are both costly financially, but also ethically.

Issue 2 will change things for the public unions. It will force them to deal with the tax payer more evenly. But this notion that Joe has…..that firefighter who thinks our forefathers are from the 70’s….. that Issue 2 will take away his “seat at the table” he is just sadly mistaken.Issue 2 puts the tax payer at the table equally with the unions, because right now, the only people at the table are the unions and their friends, the people we elect, yet they control, because of how the law was before Issue 2. The public is outside the door and when we ask to come in we get some stupid dance like you saw above. And when we ask what’s going on, we get the Wookie Defense and many of us are tired of it. Issue 2 brings everyone to the table equally, and that is what the public unions are afraid of, because once we get there, we’re going to find out just how much they’ve been screwing management, (ALL OF US). And they know that we will be mad when we find out. That’s what they are really scared of in regard to Issue 2. That is a wrath they aren’t prepared to deal with.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

The Great and Powerful “O”: Government and casinos are basically the same thing

All week long we heard about the “jobs” speech from President Obama as he attempted to address the nation before the opening of the NFL season Thursday September 8, 2011. Obama’s speech was a silly exhibition of naïveté. I cringed watching him thinking of all worlds’ dictators; George Soros included who were also watching with hungry lust on their minds. For the imagery of a fool president speaking in generalities that are completely worthless to the political landscape, dictators will lust after those images with pornographic seduction. I am sure they were licking their lips the way a hungry lion gazes at a herd of gazelle prior to pouncing upon those passive creatures for an evening meal. President Obama is simply embarrassing in every way.

And to cover up his obvious lack of worldly knowledge, the President seemed to evoke his usual Wizard of Oz persona where he almost seems to take on the personality of that factional character from that fictional tale to represent a fictional presidency and offer America a “jobs bill” that is simply no different than a Las Vegas slot machine.

The reality of what Obama uttered in his speech was that if you pull the government lever, somehow, magically jobs will appear. That by spending more money on the slot machine, that America will receive some kind of “jack pot.”

Yet as the Great and Powerful O travels all over the Midwest in his bus, the strain of the financial structure of the whole government gambling mentality is taking its toll. When talking about Social Security, which is a ponzi scheme by design, Rick Santelli argues with Thomas Friedman over the merit of Social Security, and what Friedman fails to understand is that if Social Security were built with some level of honesty behind the premise, then it might possibly work. However, because those in government all-to-often behave as though they are in a casino, the money gets spent on games like that slot machine to pursue jack-pots which simply don’t exists, or if they do, it’s just to convince people to spend more money to get a bigger jack-pot.

When people who are in decision making positions can’t even admit to what they are doing, and don’t understand what name to even give to things like Social Security, they are no different than a gambler with an addiction.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim that the best way to save money would be not to pay any of the people who were in the room when the President gave his speech to congress, because to those people, the whole ordeal is just a game, a slot machine that will have a pay-out to some fortunate soul who manages to pull the lever and get a “jack-pot.” But before there can be a jackpot, someone must put money in the machine, and once there is money in the machine, then the Great and Powerful O can then decide how he will spend it. I believe the Great and Powerful O is convinced that by spending money in his government casino, that he is helping people. But what he’s really doing is just creating more “dependent,” and “addicted” people whom the government exploits for its own ends. Just like a casino.

SEE MY ARTICLE SPECIFICALLY ON CASINOS:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/kasich-and-the-casinos-the-many-levels-of-evil-all-at-war-for-justification/

But don’t you see dear reader, that the Great and Powerful O, or any of those Looters of Washington have no power unless you put money into their machine. They are toothless fools with no bullets in their gun. It is you who put the bullets in their gun to use on you to force you to spend money on their casino schemes. If you don’t give them money, they have no power at all!

You have the power to stop it and I would propose that we should do so. The best way to end the corruption of the casino is not to give the casino money. Don’t give it money, and it will go out of business soon. The same with government, if you don’t like the level government which is expanding rapidly, all you have to do is starve it of what it eats, in this case it is your tax dollars. If left to their own devices, they will never stop eating. They are simply no different than this poor woman who proclaims she cannot stop eating. But consider the amount of food it takes to maintain this body. Where did she get it………her family fed her. They brought it to her when she became so big that she could no longer get it for herself. Yet this woman cries and proclaims that her situation is completely out of her control, just like government.

And study the compulsive gambler. Listen to this poor guy. How is he any different? It’s exactly the same, the compulsive gambler and the “spend happy” politician. Both believe that if they spend just a little more money, they will hit a “jack-pot.”

The government programs like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, education, all of it, are simply images similar to a slot machine dressed up to convince you to put money in their machine and give them power. As ridiculous as that first video was, with the Wizard of Oz slot machine, using images from that great movie to seduce people into putting money into it, to feed the gaming industry, is manipulative and excessively exploitive. Government does the same for exactly the same reason. It’s a game! It’s a racket!

And the Great and Powerful O is a racket also. I would say that he is simply no different than the large woman who became so obese she could no longer go into public and move around on her own. These are addictive personalities who are hiding their disorders from even themselves, and they will beg and plead to anyone to help them by bringing more food or more money.

The Great and Powerful O is determined to seduce people into spending their money on his casino like programs by taking advantage of people suffering from addictions by feeding those addictions to prop up his own power base, because that’s how a casino makes its money……..from addictions.

It’s all about fancy lights, and sweet talk with seductive music all designed to control the sign-stimuli which make a human being function.

Call it what it is……………………..a scam! The whole thing! And while you wonder why that woman’s family didn’t stop feeding her so she wouldn’t become so obese, or the gambler’s wife didn’t stop him before it was too late, ask yourself why you vote to pay more taxes when the game is simply designed to drain you for all you’re worth and when you’re done, the system will drain someone else, until they are done, then it will move on to someone else, completely consuming every part of their life, financially, and socially until there is nothing left. And all the while the government will convince even itself that it is helping its addicts by at least caring for them, which is the greatest sin of all. It’s the justification of just another addict whom is on a destructive path beyond their control, and that begs the question, why did we continue to feed it when we knew it was wrong to begin with?

The answer is of course is that we failed to call it what it was…….until it was too late.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

The Truth behind Anger: The lonely path of a patriot

“In the beginning of change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.”
Mark Twain.

That quote comes from a friend of mine and it’s something I’ve been contemplating in some detail because it fits much of the wave of animosity that has been thrown in the direction of the Tea Party and accurately describes the elusive quality of true patriotism versus popular patriotism. Another friend of mine, Matt Clark is onto the same “elusive” threat that is perculating in our current social order. Matt addressed some of that elusive quality in a broadcast done shortly after an interview with me over Labor Day weekend.

After a recent school board meeting one of the board members, whom I have grown to enjoy speaking with, even if I don’t agree with everything they do, accurately answered for me when another person standing nearby asked me “So are you with the Tea Party? Are you a leader or something of that group?” The school board member looked at the woman and said, “I think Rich is doing his own thing. I don’t think he’s with any group. He speaks for No Lakota Levy, and at times he does for the Tea Party, but I think Rich is on his own crusade, his own personal war.”

I looked at the school board member and wondered if it was a derogatory “shot” at me, or just a general comment, and I determined that there was sincerity in the statement so it was the later assessment. So I added, “Not everyone wishes to go as far down the rabbit-hole as I am.” I then addressed the original speaker. “I believe that for an idea to be authentic, then you must remove the politics, the ‘group oriented’ portions of the argument before the truth can be seen, and once seen, that truth can then be brought to the larger organization. Those who chose to stay within the safety of the confines of a group will not explore the parts of a problem which reside outside the group. Regarding many of the problems of our day, the source of the trouble resides outside the many social groups, so to fix them one must leave the group.” I received the usual empty nod feigning understanding, which I let go because I’m used to that. The conversation was a polite one, and it simply isn’t possible to educate people in one sitting. They have to want to understand and many people just don’t want to.

When people ask me about my daughters the first question is, “What sports did they play when they were in school? Are they in any sororities now?” Often in those moments I have to deal with the conversation in the same way I did with the board member and their friend, knowing that many of the things I may say will come as a shock to them, so I generally find that I must explain it like I’m teaching someone a concept they are just now learning. “No, I encouraged my kids to stay out of organized sports.” “No, I would consider their membership into a sorority as a slap in the face to everything I ever taught them.”


“WHAT!” “WHY!” “OH MY, That’s so anti-social!” They don’t say those things of course, but you can see the words scrolling across their eyes.

My wife and I were going to dinner the other night at one of our favorite restaurants, we were on our motorcycle and we pulled up behind a mini-van stopped at a traffic light which had three stickers on the back window. The first sticker said, “FOP member,” the second “WCBO West Chester Baseball Organization,” and third was a “Masonry” sticker.

“Boy that guy is really, ‘connected’” I told my wife. “Look how proud he is of it.”


And here is the fundamental difference between me and that guy. He would look at a guy like me and say, “That guy is an anti-social, isolationist. He’s a stone thrower.” And I look at a guy like that and say, there is a coward, a person who is hiding from his personal demons by participating in group oriented behavior. Groups are to the adult what bedding covers are to a small child. The child believes that the covers will provide protection from the monsters which reside in a bedroom closet. And the adult believes that memberships will provide security to the harsh realities of daily living.

In the “patriotic movement” of the last couple of years, suddenly being a patriot has become fashionable, like wearing a popular name brand item of clothing that will come in and out of fashion. The same people, who scamper to the store to buy the latest brand of Under Armor, or Nike tennis shoe, are now joining the Tea Party because it’s become fashionable to do so. And that makes me happy to suddenly have all these new people who are interested in the things that I have always been interested in. However, I keep my distance, because I know that many of those people are only committed to the cause so long as it’s comfortable.

The reason that progressives are attacking the Tea Party the way they are is to let those people know that if they do not toe-the-line, then they will be cut-off from the established society. As I watched the Presidents speech on Thursday September 8, 2011 I was keener on observing John Boehner during the speech then the president himself. Boehner is wavering in his position. He only understands politics as usual, and the political community is threatening to cut him off if he follows the Tea Party, and Boehner likes to have a sense of “belonging.” So the threat is very real to him. His face told the whole story, and I can see that he is willing to “buckle.” The President and the rest of the progressives are about to win him over.  (Check out Boehner in this clip.  Does that look like someone who is willing to fight on our behalf.)


This is the essence behind “country club” memberships, political parties, sport organizations, motorcycle clubs, fraternities; all those groups exist for networking, as a hedge against the troubles of living. And in politics, even if it’s on the other party side, it is essentially a culture that provides safety to the individual, in group behavior.

Most of the Tea Party people I know are just nice people who are learning about their nation’s history. Once they learn that history, they will tend to vote differently. But I don’t see many people among them who are truly willing to “fight” the system itself, because they want the security of the “system,” flaws and all.”

In my life, I let very few people close to me. I have a lot of “friends” people whom I like and they like me. But I let very few people close to me except those who wish to exist without the security blanket of “belonging” to others in the form of a group. As I’ve taught my kids, “don’t be a follower, be a leader. Make your own path through the forest where no path exists. If you take the paved roads of life you will have an easier time, but you will not learn anything unique. You will see nothing that everyone else who has taken that same road has seen already, so your life may be mildly enjoyable, safe, but you will always have a feeling of yearning for the mysteries that reside far away from the paved roads of life. It is better to get ‘cut-up’ by thorn bushes and branches as we carve our own path in life. There will be dangerous animals and snakes that hide in the tall grass that are scary, there will be thousands and thousands of dangers that reside away from the safe paths in life, but the treasures of life are always where people do not go, for the act of discovery is in this constant push into the unknown. So if you want to play sports, play it. But avoid the mentality of the group who stays on those “paved roads” of life. Because they will not discover anything unique and they will be controlled throughout their lives by the orientation of the road. That means that the architects of their lives are those who built the road in the first place, which means that their lives are not authentic to their own experience.”

And that comes back to Twain. He knew as many intelligent people have discovered over time that the visionary, the patriot, the scientist who brings forth a new idea, that are ridiculed by the groups who wish to protect themselves, just a child pulls up a blanket to hide their faces from the monsters in a closet, that new “dynamic” ideas are a threat to the foundations of any group, even a simple sports organization. Because groups are built upon static patterns and the “leaders” in every group wish to remain “leaders.” So they will always attack a “dynamic” in order to preserve the “static.”

All advancement of the human race come from “the dynamic” so I see very little use from participating in the “static” except to be “friendly” with my fellow community members, because the way I see it both sides of the philosophical position need each other. But the true patriot will find the road a lonely one, so looking to your neighbor for reassurance is wrong, because it will never come.

As the real patriot explores the world away from those “paved” roads and discovers all the treasures that are hidden from the rest of the world, the patriot will soon find upon returning to the safety of civilization that there will be no shortage of “patriots” who wish to suddenly be affiliated with the patriot, and they will seek to make “patriotism” a new group in which to belong. This is the success of Glenn Beck and the rise of the Tea Party. Beck found a philosophical treasure and shared it with people at 5 pm on The Fox News Network and people clamored to that new-found truth, which was always there, but it just wasn’t lying along side the path society was on. (By the way, good luck on GBTV. I hope you blow the networks out of the water, an actual broadcast from off the path, what a concept!)

What I could have told the school board member and their friend was that I’m on an eternal “treasure hunt” always looking for new ideas from which to bring back to the safety of society. But I personally have no interest in safety, or blankets to hide my eyes from worldly dangers. Instead, I along with my daughters and every member of my family who has listened to me walk to the point wherever it is most dangerous, because it is there that the worlds treasures hide from those on the paved roads built by social groups. So it’s not that the groups of humanity aren’t nice, or the people in them aren’t just. They just aren’t looking for the same thing in life that I am. On those paved roads, I get bored quick because there is nothing there worth seeing if my aim is uniqueness.

It is in all this explanation which reveals the genius of Mark Twain’s statement and provides a key to understanding why those other patriots out there, those who wish to be truly so, feel so alone and hated. It’s Ok, the hate tells you that you are doing the correct thing, for if everyone loves what you are doing, then you are on the wrong path. The louder and more violent the hate, the closer you are to a discovery of something that has always been hidden to the eyes of everyone else, that which is buried in plain sight but far away from the paths built by human groups to protect their fixed perceptions of existence.

The anger thrown in the direction of the patriot and innovator is of two sources. First it is the leader of a group who wishes to maintain the static patterns which empowers them, so they attack any threat to their power. That much is obvious. But the second is much deeper, and psychological, it is a genuine jealousy that the attackers lack the courage to forge their own path and seek to hide that fear from themselves, so they lash out at those with the courage to live on their own terms. The root of the anger is more about what they know about themselves, and less about you, the patriot. For in that role, the patriot is but a mirror of what the attacker wishes in the depths of their souls to be, which left unfulfilled become the monsters of nightmares, where not even the sheets of a bed can protect from as sleep ceases to be a safe-haven from the realities of living. Life on the safe path after all has its cost. It may save the physical body from harm, but the mind rots during the journey.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

Motor City Madness: The chirping birds of James Hoffa

I’ve said before that America was developing it’s own unique philosophy called Transcendentalism in the 1830’s to the 1840’s through the work of Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margret Fuller and many others, who at the time were observing the “American” experience and articulating it into a philosophy of a new nation. After all, that was the intent of a new country, and that was to come up with something “new.” It was in that march that American’s had the debate about abolishing slavery, which made it the first nation in the world to do so.

But in the middle of this awakening came “European” ideas from Germany, and London in the form of Marxism. This occurred in the 1850’s and involved several American newspaper editors who were the emerging “Victorians” and loved with homesick yearning the secure psychological blanket of Europe and rejected Transcendentalism in favor of Marxism. And instead of the two ideologies playing out against the American consciousness in the 1860’s, America had a Civil War which stopped all thinking in a positive direction. In the aftermath of this war which ended the terrible act of slavery, but at a cost to national pride which would recover in time, Marxism grew in power with the same motivations that English kings hired privateers and pirates to sabotage Spanish vessels in the 1670’s, to stop a competing nation from exceeding beyond the reach of the almighty England. In this spirit Marxism was pushed into America in the same way that it was pushed throughout Europe and into Russia. Lenin grabbed hold of Marxism and used it in the Bolsavik Revolution to overthrow the rulers of Russia and turn it into the Soviet Union, a communist nation. In America there wasn’t a Lenin, but communist though came to the United State during the rise of the Industrial Revolution on the backs of the labor movement. The founders of unions in America were Communists inspired by the work of Karl Marx and this was the birth of the “labor movement.”

The Labor Movement is Anti-American because of this history. It is because of this history that I suggest America return back to the principals of Transcendentalism, a philosophic period prior to the Civil War and the chaos perpetuated by the labor movement. All those current leaders associated with the labor movement should be rejected, because their path is the incorrect path completely for America’s direction.

It is nothing against the unions to say that they don’t have a “right” to exist. In America, any idea should be able to be explored. But failed philosophies do not have a right to be artificially propped up such as what is happening in America currently with the public sector unions. And the essence of that failed philosophy is in the union workers insistence that “somebody” create a job for them. This is a ridiculous notion and rests on the foundation similar to a little bird freshly hatched from an egg which “chirps” for the mother bird to drop food into its mouth. When these union leaders cry out for someone to “create” jobs that’s what they are doing.

This is why I do not have any respect for labor unions or their leaders. Their actions show me that they do not have what it takes to be an American, which is a foundation of self-reliance. They are “dependent” on a third-party to care for them and they preach this philosophy of dependency as if it were a “good” thing.

To provide an idea of the type of people who run these modern unions, have a look at the invitation letter that was put out to the labor unions up in Detroit where the President was scheduled to speak. Have a look at the people on that list and measure their worth against what you know about the state of the world. I will make the statement ahead of this analysis to proclaim that every one of them are technically a social “looter” as defined by the great American novel, Atlas Shrugged. They are looters because they exist by taking from others. This includes President Obama who is only wealthy now because of what he was able to loot from public sector service. This looter mentality is common in Europe, but it was rejected during the Transcendentalist movement of the 1840’s.

______________________________________________

Dear Friend,

Michigan is honored to have the President of the United States in Detroit on Monday to celebrate Labor Day. All are welcome to be part of this important tradition. In addition to the President, speakers will include Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, national AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, UAW President Bob King, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, Members of the Michigan Congressional Delegation, and special musical performances by the fabulous Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin and the Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit.

Downtown events begin with the actual labor day parade at 9am, followed by the rally at the GM Parking lot next to the Renaissance Center on Atwater Street, between St. Antoine and Beaubien. Gates will open at 10am and guests can enter at the corner of Rivard and Atwater Streets. The events is free and open to all. Do be aware that all attendees will go through airport-like security and should bring as few personal items as possible. No bags, sharp objects, chairs, umbrellas, liquids or signs will be allowed inside the venue. Cameras and cell phones are permitted.

Join Deborah and me as well as our friends, family and other community members in honoring the working men and women who make America strong! Hope to see you Monday.

 
With every good wish,
Sincerely yours,


John Dingell

______________________________________________

The only person on that list who has achieved anything on their own was Aretha Franklin. All the rest of those people are “social parasites.” That means their existence is completely dependent on the labor of someone else to support their livelihood, just like a baby bird in a nest. And if you think about it, the yelling and screaming that the labor unions are doing is done for exactly the same reason as the baby bird, to convince someone to feel sorry for them and drop food into their mouths because they are hungry.

When people who are marketed as “significant and important people” such as what those on that letter are made out to be yet completely live off the labor of the public, how can they be determined to have any kind of “self worth” in regard to their ability to produce work. How can the baby birds be looked to for leadership? Because that’s the indication, that we are supposed to look at these “dependents” for leadership, none of those people have any new ideas, not a single one is producing anything. The only production they are speaking of is by taking resources from one place and then turning it into something else for which they will take the credit for. But who created the labor to begin with? Not the people on that list. They took it from someone else just like a baby bird takes a worm from the mouth of an adult bird and converts it into something else. In the baby bird’s case, it converts the worm into “shit.” In the case of the union minded president and union leader like Trumka they create a “government job.” Both things are essentially equal in the metaphysics of science, the bird shit and the government job.

Now many will question how I can say such a thing, that this whole notion of Transcendentalism is a step backward, that society has advanced beyond all that nonsense of the 1800’s. Well, no it hasn’t. You see, this whole progressive mentality that rides on the back of the labor movement has it’s roots with Karl Marx who wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and the roots of much of what’s wrong in American Philosophy today, and if you want to fix it, you have to go to the root problem. The foundation of that labor union mentality is flawed from its root. And there are better ideas in existence from that same period that could work better for America and should be explored.

When the union movement says they are fighting for their very lives, they are right in some respects. But the life they are fighting for is one that was never theirs to begin with. They exist off the collective lives of others and such a philosophy is doomed to fail, and a nation should never build itself upon a collective premise which requires the looting of some people in order to support other people. If America had begun the nation with such a mentality it would have never made it passed a couple of stump speeches in a city square. Europe knew this, and this is why they slid the notion of communism under the door to weaken America as a world power that they didn’t have the personal ambition to compete with in the world market place. Europe planted the seeds in the 1800’s and that idea grew into it’s own entity by the 1940’s to the 1960’s to give us what we have today, a bunch of wanna-be leaders chirping like little baby birds shitting all over themselves and looking for more to eat. And the more they eat the more shit they make. During this process they never stop being hungry and because they are dependent on others to feed them, and lack the courage to fly from the nest from which they reside, they just continue to “chirp” insistently irritating us all with the utterances of a failed philosophy from a failed continent and supported by social looters.

The American Worker is not what the labor movement is all about. The American Worker is simply the soil from which the tree that is the labor movement grows. If the tree were removed by its roots the soil which produced the tree would still remain. And when I look at the ugly tree that has become the labor movement, I would think a better tree would be much more attractive to the soil of the American Worker. That is why I look to Transcendentalism for that next species of tree from which to plant, because the tree of the labor movement is dying and hollow, and when it collapses it may fall down and wreck the house we live in, and nobody wants that, including the silly baby birds that live in the tree chirping for more food to eat.

Who declared war on whom James?  The peaceful Tea Party or the mobster driven teamsters known for roughing up people who won’t cough up their “protection” money.  Hey, you’re a lawyer.  It’s all in the wording, isn’t it?  : )

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

THE WOOKIE DEFENSE: Class War is Here, Public Unions against Everyone else

I was on the air with Matt Clark during his radio show at WAAM and things got out of hand quickly after he played a segment of the Wisconsin Class Warfare chants which took my mind from the serious discussion of what Senate Bill 5 is and why people should vote for Issue 2 on the upcoming November ballot, and become something much more humorous. But after Matt played a segment from a Wisconsin teacher, then the new Firefighter ad put out by We Are Ohio, it brought my mind to something that had first been discussed on the Doc Thompson show just two days before, and was the only way to explain the foolishness of the public sector union position……THE WOOKIE DEFENSE.

When I was on 700 WLW with Doc Thompson talking about a different but similar issue regarding the Lakota School Levy where the union there refused to look at the facts of why they have an out-of-control budget, Doc and I were both frustrated so we started laughing and joking around to blow off steam, and we started talking about THE WOOKIE DEFENSE which came from an old South Park TV episode. It was purely spontaneous and made for some great radio. (There was some trouble with the Podcast of it, so I don’t have it up yet), but it was still on my mind when I was speaking to Matt up in Ann Arbor, Michigan where THE WOOKIE DEFENSE came up yet again, because it was the best way to explain how ridiculous the position of the public unions truly are.

Matt played the clip during our interview, but in case you want to see the video from the show SOUTH PARK you can see it here:

When I first saw that episode many years ago, I laughed for a long time, because I have seen THE WOOKIE DEFENSE all my life. It is used whenever someone is guilty and trying to cover up a mountain of facts against them, to distract attention away from themselves so they can sneak off and hide away from that terrible light of truth. And with the whole public sector union debate, they have been very bad, very greedy, manipulative, and they suddenly see people are finally starting to look in their direction for much of the budget trouble that has been going on. So they are using THE WOOKIE DEFENSE to attempt to deflect that attention.

This ad is the first ad to come out from the group We Are Ohio, which is the primary group established to repeal Senate Bill 5, known as Issue 2. They know they cannot argue the facts of what Senate Bill 5 does, which Matt and I spelled out in the interview above pretty well. So they attempt to misdirect everyone with an emotional ad. Check it out:

That is THE WOOKIE DEFENSE. First of all it is not “illegal” to ask for more employees. That is simply ridiculous, about as ridiculous as talking about Chewbacca living on Endor during a murder case. But the other misleading issue here is that this firefighter makes it seem like they are always putting out fires somewhere, when in fact, fires are pretty rare and could probably be handled very effectively with a volunteer fire department to save staffing levels. Of course when there is a fire or other emergencies you want plenty of firemen to show up to put out the fire, but in all reality there isn’t much to do for these guys. And as far as danger, firefighters aren’t even in the top ten most dangerous jobs. Issue 2 does not dictate staffing levels of employees; it just puts it in the control of localities. So the choice of words from the Firefighter in that ad says a lot, that those public sector employees are afraid that the public might see that they are overstaffed. As it stands now, I don’t know, but their actions seem to indicate that this is the case, otherwise they wouldn’t be so concerned about staffing levels. SEE MY ARTICLE HERE ON WHAT THE MOST DANGEROUS JOBS ARE.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/trash-collectors-are-above-police-officers-why-unions-use-the-police-to-gain-power/

I’m not trying to take anything away from these people, but I know exactly what they do for a living. If you were to go to McDonald’s and ask the workers there how many people they need to run the restaurant, 99% of the time you’ll get an inflated answer. It’s up to management to decide how much staff is really needed. I’m not the type of person who would ever run out of a burning building in danger, I would always run in. I never have been and I never will be the type who runs away from anything, so I don’t carry any guilt in my heart like a lot of people do who look at these people as examples of courage. I’ve been a first responder at every place I’ve ever worked, and have dealt with heart attacks, strokes, seizures, lost limbs, severe lacerations, you name it. And I have personally had such serious injuries myself where my bones have come through my skin and I’ve had to slide them back into place, I have been “degloved” on my finger tips where the end of your finger gets all the skin ripped away leaving only bone and blood vessels. You pick up the skin slide it back on after you clean it, then go get your stitches…….calmly, otherwise you might pass out. I’ve also been in several car accidents, not with myself as the driver, but others, most of them over 100 MPH, so I know something about blood, and carnage. And I’m saying that to me, being a Firefighter is a pretty good job. I would do it if I were retired and didn’t have to be in some “brotherhood.” I’d do it for the fun and service to the community. Every so often you have to go to an accident scene and clean up a mess or attempt to save the life of someone who is bleeding out all over the road and you know they won’t make it. Even more rare is the fire that burns down a house, but they do happen, but not too often. So what is a firefighter doing with the rest of their time? Well, that’s THE WOOKIE DEFENSE. (LOOK AT THE MONKEY)

I’ve seen all the fireman in my area show up to put out a backyard brush fire, where the home owner was just trying to clean up debris from some trees he had trimmed and was burning the limbs under controlled circumstances. Some panicky woman nearby smelled smoke and called the fire department and they sent out their two big trucks, an ambulance and three police officers. It was an embarrassing over-reaction to the situation and I told the fireman as much. “You never know the level of the danger, sir.” Yeah, right, it’s called “we were bored and playing cards and had nothing else to do, and this gave us an excuse to justify our existence. Emotional reactions sell. It’s THE WOOKIE DEFENSE.

And that’s the essence of the labor movement, emotional over-reaction to virtually everything. Facts are not the realm they deal with, it’s all about emotions such as fear. Examine this next ad, again put out by SEIU. This We Are Ohio group is estimated to spend nearly 20 million dollars on this kind of thing, some of that money coming from SEIU and other national unions.

That is almost laughable if I didn’t see it with my own eyes; I might not believe that they think people are that stupid! Do they really expect anybody to take them seriously? The answer is yes! They are using fear outright to mask the facts of the matter and achieve their objective. It is in essence, THE WOOKIE DEFENSE.

Now, when the manipulation and heart-strings do not work, as they usually do, the public sector unions do not resort to the facts. This goes with teachers unions which I’ve talked about on the local level, but it also works at the state and national level with virtually every public sector position in existence where the labor leaders are taught the methods of Saul Alinsky which is a “radical force” that can be achieved in mass. Alinsky states that the white middle class was fertile ground and must be exploited to achieve his ends. Alinsky is taught to union leaders all the time, in fact The Delphi Technique is used aggressively. Don’t believe me, well, read this article from Playboy with Saul Alinsky from 1972:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2009/08/26/saul-alinsky-shocks-us-like-an-electric-eel-targeted-middle-class/

This is why I wrote about Playboy Magazine in yesterday’s article. Be careful what ideas are suggested behind the large breasts and removed panties of women. Sign stimuli can be used to mask the true intentions of an organization. It’s done all the time. Sexy women in ads are just another form of THE WOOKIE DEFENSE.

The result of Saul Alinsky’s penetration of the middle class can be seen now in this rhetoric which is becoming violent. Matt played this clip in his radio interview, but here it is again with the actual visuals.

Clearly whether these people know they are pawns or not, they have been radicalized and are willing to be turned loose on the public if they do not get what they want. And here’s the 100,000 thousand feet public union strategy, the kind of thing that Alinsky, Piven, and Ayers think about; if they were playing a chess game, which they have been, their public unions have captured all the key pieces. They have the police through the FOP. So if violence were called for in the near future, the police would be on the side of the unions, (at least enough of them to divide the force politically) because that is where they think they get their money from. The unions also have control of the fire departments. God forbid a “house were to burn down,” of a political enemy. It happens more than you think it does. And they have control of education which teaches entire generations of young people these crazy radical ideas that are rooted in communism, not directly mind you, but through cultural divergence, in essence, another form of THE WOOKIE DEFENSE. People like Saul Alinsky have “control” of all our public sector positions and have radicalized them against the people who pay their salary. And that army is being called upon to attack anyone who questions the political party of the radicals.

Well, I’m going to forget about being civil for a moment. I chose to write this forum as an offering of peaceful exchange, and as long as I can go on the radio and talk ideas, and write them here to let the voters decide what they want in their country, I’m happy to continue. But……….if a bunch of thugs, my employees in the public sector want to talk about a fight, well now that’s where I draw the line.

You see, Saul Alinsky teaches, because I’ve read all his books, (so I know what he’s thinking) that the middle-class is spongy and can be pushed around. Well, I am not concerned about fighting. I’m not Glenn Beck, or any other peace minded person. I love war. In fact, I crave it! I’ve engaged in war my entire life, most of it behind the scenes, quietly and at all political levels. And that kind of talk about fighting just flat out pisses me off. I don’t care if your public sector workers have 10,000 or 100,000 fools behind your battle cry, numbers do not concern me. I don’t care how many people are behind me, I will fight you if you raise your fist to me and you will be defeated……..handedly. Trust me. Numbers will not matter. (Ironically, this is what my book The Symposium of Justice is all about.  I wrote it way back in 2004, well before there was ever a Tea Party)  So keep talking violence. Play the role of radical to your own defeat. It’s your decision. Because this whole threat of violence is just another page out of Saul Alinsky, and these idiots spouting the rhetoric of it have bought into it, but it’s really just another form of THE WOOKIE DEFENSE.

During the last levy campaign police offers under the guidance of the FOP in Lebanon were stealing signs for the school levy. They were caught doing it, but who was the property owner who caught the cop going to call…………………….the police? That’s what we’re talking about here people. These unions have grown entirely too powerful and we are seeing that there is a very real danger of them being turned against all of us. They will attempt at first to appeal to your fears. Then they will resort to violent radicalism. And if that doesn’t work, they will circumnavigate the political system completely and they will use the police and firefighters to do their bidding. At the time that the school levy signs were stolen it was asked, “Why do cops care about a school levy?” The answer is that they are all brothers and sisters of the union, and they look out for each other.

Public unions have no real rights. They shouldn’t even be technically legal, but were made so without congressional approval or validation in the senate, but by President Kennedy signing Executive Order 10988 which made public unions legal by presidential dictate.

Why did Kennedy sign that Executive Order? Well, probably out of pressure from his mobster friends. Kennedy owed them something, and there was a lot of money to be made in government contracts tied directly to the labor unions, of which the mob attached itself. But I believe that President Kennedy, the womanizing, partier, yet articulate speaker made a fatal mistake in not understanding what a progressive labor movement really was. Listen to this speech from him just prior to signing into law his devastating Executive Order 10988.

And there you have it from the man himself. That is why Kennedy signed that order, and from there that’s why we have public sector labor unions, and the trouble we have today. When Kennedy did this he did it thinking he was doing a good thing from his progressive political mindset. But his accident was no different from if he had slept with a woman, which he frequently did, and accidentally got her pregnant, then used THE WOOKIE DEFENSE to hide the “Love Child” from the public.

And since that day when Kennedy signed away a part of America’s freedom, progressives, Democrats, labor leaders, community activists, radicals, communists, Harley Riders, fireman, police officers, teachers, mobsters, and entertainers have all sought THE WOOKIE DEFENSE to hide the “Love Child” of Kennedy’s relationship with the mob, and in doing so they have used enormous sums of money to hide that “Love Child.”

Public sector unions should have never been made legal, but now that we have them you can’t just kill the “Love Child.” But you can’t let the “Love Child ruin your life in guilt either. You have to deal with it, be responsible to it, and treat it fairly. But you do not put up with a threat of violence from it, and you do not just throw money at it to shut it up. We cannot let this “Love Child” use THE WOOKIE DEFENSE to hide the sins of the entire ordeal, the fact that the public labor unions are the “Love Child” of President Kennedy and the Mob, or hide how we’ve let the public labor movement take control of our government in virtually every aspect.

I hope that the exchange in this discussion is a peaceful one. I’m prepared to fight any way the public unions choose however, because I don’t even recognize their right to exist let alone their ability to take money from me without my consent, which they do through my taxes. We can do it the right way with elections, of which the labor movement has so many employees who will vote in their direction, it may already be too late if enough people don’t get it under control right now. Or we can do it with violence, which will happen if those union thugs decide to raise their fists for a fight. But THE WOOKIE DEFENSE will not be allowed to be used. That simply won’t work anymore. We’ve been screwed over by it for too many years now, that we can see it coming.

So as we prepare to vote for school levies, Health Care Reform, and Issue 2, ask yourself why the people who support all those things which equate to an expansion of more government use THE WOOKIE DEFENSE to distract people away from the facts?

Because the facts do not favor them, and they cannot meet those facts on the battlefield of ideas, so they resort to fear and violence to shut down the argument, which are the direct results of the sins of a slain President from a time before many of us were even born, to fight a battle conceived in the smoky back rooms of Las Vegas and that Presidents love of public attention, women, and an adoring Father who sought to build a European Dynasty here in the United States by way of the name Kennedy, at whatever cost. Instead of dealing with all that, everyone just uses THE WOOKIE DEFENSE to hide the truth.

Issue 2 is an admission to that “Love Child” and to figure out how to bring it into our family once and for all, and that means living with the rules that the rest of us have to live by.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

Thank a Feminist: What is Lingerie Football and why Playboy is involved?

Doc Thompson talks to Lisa Richards from Women Fighting Sexism on 700 WLW in what turned out to be a very revealing discussion that I think spills over into many other aspects of society. Ms. Richards represents a portion of the human population that has “other” problems and seeks to fix them through activism. It is evident by listening to her in this broadcast that she has a real dislike for men, who unfortunately for her make up half of the population.

My thoughts are that women like this are suffering, and I think they need help. I covered this syndrome in another article so repeating it here would be redundant. Have a look to review:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/how-to-fix-a-neurotic-woman/

I personally think that feminism has been very destructive to women. I wrote an entire article on that topic as well which can be seen here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/the-lie-of-feminism-a-mountain-of-work-that-has-to-be-undone/

Lisa Richards is not alone, and I frequently see the footprint of her type in the radical dialogues of organized labor, particularly teachers unions and that’s where the opinion of these lost souls becomes costly. It’s not against the law to have a flawed opinion, but when you follow the origin to destructive human behavior which costs money to fix, which we find in the education profession, it is people like Richards who brought about the unintended consequences from which many suffer.

For instance, let’s look at Lisa Richards’s militant hatred of men, and her desire to prove that women can be every bit superior to men. That is the platform of her position, and has been the foundation of the women’s movement for 100 years of progressive politics. What has it given women?

I’d say women have now become every bit as disgusting and sexually driven as men. They are just as aggressive and selfish too, so from that aspect, feminists have achieved their objective which can be seen in the new football league called Lingerie Football, which airs on the progressive television network MTV. (What this has to do with music is nothing. MTV is simply the ‘progressive’ channel, designed to prepare the minds of the young in all manners of progressive politics.)

In male football, the men are well-built, they show their assets anytime they can, and they behave the same way. Football is meant to be attractive to the opposite sex. With women, they are attracted to small waists with narrow butts of men, as I pointed out in my article on sign stimuli:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/supernormal-sign-stimuli-what-is-it-an-how-it-runs-your-life/

Women like large shoulders and narrow hips because in the role of sex, these are the parts of the mating ritual that will hold a woman down and allow the man to enter without difficulty. A man with large hips just doesn’t fit so well, and makes sex less desirable for the woman. So women like these things, the shoulder pads and uniform of men are designed to be appealing to women as much as ad protection in the game play. That’s one of the reasons the NFL is successful, it appeals to men’s aggression, and the sign stimuli of women, so men and women can share the game together.

The Lingerie Football League must do the same if it wishes to elevate women to the same level of game play and public approval as the men in the NFL. So the LFL has learned what the WNBA never learned, and that there must be some sexual attraction to the players for people to accept the sport, because sports are a primal activity rooted in sex. At a subconscious level, sports is a way of determining who wins, and that determines the best genes which indicates who is suitable to reproduce with, so without those elements, sports loses much of its appeal. For a sport to be successful, it must appeal to both men and women to have market value. So feminists have achieved equality, because men in the NFL market their game exactly the same way.

Women are hitting each other just as hard as men do, but yes they must wear less clothing because if they are to appeal to men’s sign stimuli, which they must to be successful, the women can’t cover up their sign stimuli. So the breasts must be exposed as well as the entry points for the penis in the woman’s pelvic region. For the women, the feminists the get the satisfaction of knowing they are just as fast, just as strong as men, that they can hit hard and be respected just as men are. But for men to stay interested the costume designers for the LFL knew what they were doing and applied scientific reason to the process.

That’s how the men do it. In fact if these women didn’t look like women, I think I might even forget that they are women, but just gladiator warriors in the arena of battle. That means they have achieved social equality. The LFL is smartly marketing itself with this in mind and in just two short years it is taking on the qualities of legitimacy from its origins as a publicity stunt.

The LFL game looks like football and the pace is the same. Without the big hits, the LFL would never get away with “equality.” Flag football attempted for years to achieve what the LFL has achieved, because women can’t respect themselves as equal unless they are willing to take or give a big hit, or even fight brutally, the way men do.

So to women like Lisa Richards, you have achieved your success, you have brought women down to the same level of men, instead of goddesses to be aspired to, you and the feminist movement have made them equal to men, and your march to exceeding that mark is well on its way.

You can hear the same feminist wrangling in the labor movement, and there can be no question that much of the perceived value, and cost along with the budget breaking pay increases that society has thrown at feminists for years to help them feel “equal” in society have not placated them. They just keep asking for more.

These are the results of the feminist equality as launched by progressive politics. Like many progressive policies, there are unintended consequences. I’m sure Lisa Richards and her kind despises the LFL Football games, but it is they who made the LFL possible. And the whole process of “man hating” which launched the feminist movement and has brought women down to the level of men, and actually wrecked budgets because financial decisions are made collectively toward women as a whole, and not as individual performers. I’ve seen these feminist types littered with abundance in the Pro School Levy advocates I’ve had to deal with in many political fights. They fully expect that because they are women, that logic should not apply to them. Most of them sound just as off their rockers as Lisa Richards did. It is their psychological problems at that point that they become social pariahs, because logical discussions are no longer within reach with these broken women.

People are often shocked when they learn that my wife and I have been married for over 20 years. While most of the time it wasn’t easy, much of the trouble we have had in our marriage was due to the fact that when we were married, we made a decision to reject progressive politics, and that meant everything related to feminism. My wife has never had to work, she raised our children and when I came home each day my dinner was waiting on me. We share our household obligations in the traditional sense completely, because it is my observation that feminism doesn’t work, and deep down inside, most women don’t want it to work either. Most of any trouble my wife and I have had in our marriage were a result of family members attempting to impose upon our marriage the progressivism of the age, which I rejected as destructive very early in my life, and I would not budge, and at times those expectations from family members was very overwhelming. They did not see as I did, what the whole movement added up to, and that’s creations like the LFL. So when I raised my two daughters, I taught them the same thing, don’t listen to progressive politics even if it comes out of the mouths of treasured family members. Just look at them as sick, or senile concoctions of regressing social evolution, it will lead you down an unhappy life of unfilled expectations. I told my daughters that one of the reasons so many men are selecting women from other countries to marry and not America is because women from other countries, especially economically impoverished countries, are that foreign women tend to still believe in traditional marriage responsibilities.

I explained to my daughters that men want a partner in their life, not some radical short-haired vigilante. Men want to be pampered; they like to be cooked for. And they like a woman who stays interested in sex, and not some social “equality” thing. Once equality takes place among the sexes, a man would just as soon have sex with another man because if the whole activity of sex for them is simply ejaculation, they can do that with a man the same as a woman. But it is the woman who is the traditional “goddess” figure in culture, who thinks of the things men don’t and encourage the man to be a better human being, that challenges a man to always improve that drives society. The feminist movement has turned that whole social structure upside down and ruined it in America. That’s why men are looking for wives in other countries, where those women still believe in a traditional family structure.

So I’d say the same thing to Lisa Richards and almost every woman who chants for “equal” rights in the labor movement, what I told my own daughters, that men don’t want the kind of woman the feminists want to be. And guess what, because of this new globalism, you will have to compete with “other” women from other cultures who still believe in traditional values. In fact my oldest daughter had to go to England to find a man who still thought the way I do about family, valor and being an honorable man, because the United States isn’t making them anymore.

Ultimately, that is the anger you hear in Ms. Richards voice, that her beliefs have led her down a path of loneliness, and her life will always have a lack of fulfillment in it. Her only real option will be to find companionship in another woman, which will always lack real sexual fulfillment because even with sex toys and other techniques, the experience just isn’t the same. And she will never find a man of any real passion because men who have passion are either already taken by another woman, or a man will simply grab a plane and fly to another country to get a nice looking woman who doesn’t have a bunch of stupid hang-ups.

Meanwhile, as America finally achieves “equality” in the 100 year war of feminism, men who just want to have sex with other women, it’s never been easier, so they are happy. They can now watch football and see plenty of the fine attributes of a woman without even having to do any work to see it. And this cheapens the whole ritual of sex for men, which makes them lazy, and less of a man. I would never advocate an age where men were free to beat on a woman with impunity like what happens in the Muslim culture, which these same feminists are advocating mysteriously due to their beliefs in progressive politics. There was a time where men in American culture played straight into the feminist hands with binge drinking and treating their wives badly, which is a crime in and of itself. But the baby in this case was thrown out with the bath water. Feminism has been terrible for American culture and the people who advocate feminism are extremely expensive as public servants because they expect to use money to fill aspects of their lives where a penis is missing. And that’s a shame, because every woman should have the honor of experiencing the wonder of sex with a man who truly loves her. And every woman should witness the benefit of watching a man work all day and all night just to have the honor of pressing himself and his pheromones upon her, and to know that he had to earn that right and does not take it lightly, which brings added meaning to the entire ritual, and actually elevates the consciousness of the human race in the bliss of an enchanting evening.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

The Circus of Lakota: My Debate with the Pro Levy People

The most accurate emotion to articulate when schools ask for more tax money is one of humor and can be seen in the following video.

Before I get into the details of last my recent debate with the Pro Lakota Group remember our buddy Ryan Fahrenkamp, the Lakota teacher busted for child pornography and being a pedophile? See my article that I broke back in January here, the one that all the Pro Levy people accused me of being such a “rush to judgment,” “unfair,” and “inaccurate.” Read what I said……………..way back then.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/lakota-teacher-busted-for-child-porn-made-over-65k-per-year/

Now read what happened on September 1, 2011 while I was preparing for a small debate with Sandy Wheatley of the Yes Lakota Group at the Lakota West Freshman building.

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/crime/ex-lakota-teacher-pleads-guilty-to-child-pornography-1243985.html

I will deal with Fahrenkamp in a separate article because the debate with the Pro Levy faction at Lakota deserves an extensive mention here. I only bring up the Fahrenkamp case because Sandy Wheatley chose not to deal with facts and figures in her debate with me, but with bible quotes, taking the high moral ground, as though money spent equaled quality. As she spoke I couldn’t help but wonder why she was placing the entire teaching profession on such high moral ground when one of Lakota’s ex-teachers had just confessed to taking “inappropriate pictures” of a child during an out-of-state trip.

“Ryan Brant Fahrenkamp, 42, of Mason, plead guilty to child pornography charges in U.S. district court, according to court records. Fahrenkamp was arrested at his home by FBI agents and local police in January. Fahrenkamp was a teacher at Lakota Schools for 14 years, most recently teaching at Endeavor Elementary School in West Chester Twp.

Fahrenkamp admitted to keeping child pornography on his school-issued laptop and also to taking inappropriate photos of a former male student during an out-of-state trip, according to court documents.”

I would have thought that Mrs. Wheatley would have taken some sort of position on this activity since she showed her extensive knowledge of bible verses, but instead she focused her whole speech on attempting to use the Bible to disqualify the “facts” she knew I would present. I was extremely disappointed by this approach, because taking the high road and using the Bible for some sort of political advantage seems cheap, but then not attempting to separate the levy campaign from Ryan Fahrenkamp on the day of his admission seemed either naive, assuming she didn’t know the news yet, or manipulative in that she attempted to talk around it. Because when the statement is made that we need to invest in our schools, someone on the Pro Levy side needs to articulate a plan for how to detect and remove people like Fahrenkamp in the future. Because there are others out there, just look at the Stacy Schuler case in Mason, the district next door.

You can see that debate between Mrs. Wheatley and myself here:

Sometimes the only way to see the clowns of society is to go to a circus, and in a lot of ways these kinds of political forums are just that. People often think that they are worthless exchanges, so intelligent people tend to stay away from the circus of politics. But like I’ve said recently to a friend of mine who was questioning the validity of these types of events, you go to the circus to see the clowns, and that’s how you learn what they’re up to. If intelligent people don’t get involved and actually go to the circus sometimes that leaves the clowns free to not even put on a show, so they come up with other schemes to fill their time. The game in the circus act is this, when a politician doesn’t have an answer, they seek to attack the data and inject emotion into the argument, and this can be seen by the efforts of the Pro Levy group. This is precisely why education is so expensive, because many of the decisions are not based on facts, but on emotion. We are asked to suspend all logic and not apply the same rules that we might apply to paying our electric bill or some other serious matter. We are just supposed to pay the increased tax but not question how the money is spent.

My biggest rage of the evening came from Jamie Green one of the school board candidates during the Q&A phase. (I’ll have video up of that soon.) Jamie, a former school board member from back in 2005, attacked my data too. I submitted a question to ask her how, but there wasn’t time to get to it in the forum. “You have to be careful what information you get out there,” she said of my material.

So Jamie officially eliminated herself from my support, in fact I’d say that if Lakota had someone like Jamie Green on the school board that would be the event which what would take Lakota backwards. It’s certainly not my charts.

Why is Jamie Green and Sandy Wheatley upset with my “FACTS,” those elusive numbers that speak some strange language from a far-away land called “reality.” Why did they sit in the audience and huff and puff as I spoke flustering about like fish out of water, well, because those facts show that more money does not make a better school. As shown in this spreadsheet, which came from the presentation shown in the video, money spent does not amount to quality. Here is a list of many school districts in Southern Ohio all with different rates of spending per pupil and of many different ratings.

This next graph is the same date but shown differently, it takes away the names but instead plots their position in relation to the cost spent and the results gained. As shown, there is no behavior which indicates more money is justified. If what Jamie and Sandy are saying is true, then Princeton who spends $15,922 per pupil should easily be an Excellent with Distinction district, because they spend the most money. But they only rank at “Effective.” On the other hand Bethel-Tate Local spends $7,167 per pupil but they have the same ranking as Lakota. Lakota spends $9,806 to get that same rating. By the logic of Jamie Green and Sandy Wheatley all the schools at the top of their per pupil cost should be Excellent with Distinction, yet many aren’t. Look at Winton Woods who is spending $12,636, they are spending a lot of money, near the top of the list, yet they are at the bottom of the category rating.

Instead, Jamie Green and Sandy Wheatley will say,“don’t pay any attention to Mr. Hoffman’s facts. It’s all a matter of ‘interpretation’” and graphs can be made to say anything. Really? What these apologists are doing is hope that they can capture people’s minds with Bible quotes and some kind of former school board “experience” where the typical behavior is to bow to a labor union who behaves like a bottomless pit in funding demands. They are doing the same thing with this levy issue that they did when Ryan Farhenkamp was busted for child pornography. They talk out of both sides of their mouth. When a child pedophile, who worked 14 years in the school system, ironically under Jamie Green’s watch while she was a board member, pleads guilty to the charges, the Pro Levy people say “you can’t assume all teachers are bad because of the actions of one teacher!” Then they turn around and say, “Teachers need to collectively make ‘X’ amount of dollars to qualify your school district to be an ‘Excellent with Distinction’ school.“ They will then say that all teachers should be taken as a collective unity of quality. So which is it, independent assessment or collective altruism, because they can’t have it both ways?

As Sandy Wheatley basically said in her presentation that anybody can take selected sections of some information and paint it anyway they want to, which is what she was accusing me of doing with my “mysterious” graphs and “technical data.” She picked the story of when “Judas hanged himself,” from Mathew 27 then another quote of the “go and do likewise” portion of the Bible which is from Luke 10:37. She picked totally unrelated parts of the Bible to make her point, but she also sought to use that body of work to claim a moral high ground which is traditionally beyond refute. Well, I’ve read Biblical Archeology Review for over thirty years and I have about 21 volumes of the Biblical Encyclopedia of the Holy Bible, so I know a bit about the Bible myself. I read the actual book about 5 times before I was out of high school, and I have seen this kind of thing done many, many times by politicians, even within the Bible itself, where they think they have a right to use a Holy Book to shield some kind of truth, and that makes me VERY angry. Of course those stories aren’t even related to each other and that was her point. This is great insight into how the Pro Levy people and the school system in general operate. They do just as Sandy Wheatley did, they select the stats they like and ignore all the rest, just like those completely unrelated sections of the Bible, and they assume that I am doing the same thing, which I would consider unspeakable. This is precisely what they did with Ryan Fahrankamp, news that broke the same day they were pleading their case why they needed another tax levy. Instead they gave an emotional appeal that just dealt with the facts they are prepared to deal with. I would think that anyone who wishes to use the Bible in a political position would also take a hard stand against the extreme “sin” of one Ryan Fahrankamp. But in this circus of politics, that’s not what the show is about.

I would say further that it is this very tendency that gets Pro Levy Supporters into trouble with the labor unions and puts the district in a weak position with those labor negotiations. The union does deal with facts and employee mass and they routinely out-maneuver the more emotion Pro Levy types every time and to hide their sins, the Pro Levy people resort to words like “morality” and “good for the community” without ever defining how throwing more money at an obviously broken education system ran by a public union empire can somehow be redeemed through the sacrifice of yet more tax dollars.

The reason is because their foundation arguments are corrupt with the premise that the school itself is the guiding light in a child’s life, instead of just an important social and cultural aspect. If you go back to that chart and see which schools are failing, even with extraordinary amounts of money spent, you will see districts that are statistically high for single parent households, welfare recipients, and other “entitlement culture victims” and the children coming from those communities cannot be saved by the school. That is the real crime and the solitary fact that the Pro Levy people do not wish to answer. Just like they can’t face themselves in a mirror and take responsibility for not detecting that a pedophile was allowed to take a child on an out-of-state school sponsored event which put the child in danger, because the school itself failed to recognize the danger. There was not a value system put in place to assess teachers by merit, so administrators didn’t even bother with the frustrating task of posing the question to the labor union. The mountain is too steep to climb, so everybody avoids it. That’s how someone like Fahrankamp falls through the cracks.

The failure in all of this is not being able to diagnose the problem, because the Pro Levy people have a system of belief which rejects hard data in favor of emotion, because it is emotion which allows them to overlook the hard data that is all around them to detect the Ryan Farhankemp’s of the world before the danger ever happens. For the same reason they won’t look at the data I present, because the reality of what that data tells them is something those people are not emotionally equipped to deal with, so they hide their beliefs in the scattered quotes of a Bible without understanding the meaning of the whole body of work, and they’ll insult the intelligence of those of us who know better by suggesting that nobody look at the man behind the curtain. They want you to stay focused on the image, not the content and that would be fine if this were all just a visit to a movie theater where we are supposed to suspend belief for a couple of hours. But this is millions of dollars, and the lives of many, many people and such seriousness requires detailed analysis and honesty, even when mistakes are made, so that the entire community can move forward without the infantile desires of former school board members to have once again a “name plate” which bears her name in some illusionary honor.

All this amounts to is that you are not supposed to ask any hard questions or even look at the facts. But you’re supposed to sit quietly and watch the clowns in the circus do their silly tricks and not question the motivations of the personalities behind the face paint, or even why so many of them are packed into one car in some comic diatribe. Because what the real show is truly about is money, and protecting that money with some mild entertainment to keep the audiences placated as to the bona fide show that is going on behind the scenes. Such behavior has been the act for decades, so it won’t change overnight, but for me personally, I’m tired of all the clowning around that has been going on, and I’m ready to see the school walk a tight rope instead, and display the ability to balance themselves in a more serious portion of the show that is ultimately a circus.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

Trash Collectors are above Police Officers: Why unions use the police to gain power

As the campaign gears up from the union rank and file attempting to repeal S.B.5 known as Issue 2 at the voting booth, they only have one honest card to play in which to hide the massive amount of extortion and manipulation that the public sector unions are guilty of; and that’s to hide their plight, the entire merit of their existence behind the good work of the police and firefighters. They will attempt to use these groups to hide the massive accumulation of sins that have been committed against the public.

The unions will do as they always do and that’s attempt to make the tax payers feel guilty. They do it with pay for teachers by saying, “it’s for the kids.” And with police and firefighters they will say, “but it’s for their safety.” Unfortunately for them, the union attempt to paint police work as terribly dangerous is very misleading. There is without question danger in the work of police and firefighters. But, it is the union who broadcasts every single fatality to the media so to put a light on it, so the perception in society is that police and firefighters are the only ones suffering from on-the-job fatalities, and if you listen to the news and union reports, every time a police officer puts on a uniform, they are at risk of death.

Well, it’s simply not true, being a police officer is not that dangerous, not compared to other jobs in the private sector. Below is the recent report from MSN News published by Career Builder of the top ten most dangerous jobs most likely to lead to a fatality. As shown, police officers come in at number ten. There are a lot of jobs, including roofers, fisherman, trash collectors and the like who come in ahead of police officers, and fireman don’t even make the list. The difference between those jobs and the public job is that there isn’t a union there whose sole purpose is to take every fatality, every injustice and attempt to capitalize on misfortune in order advance their wage rate, or work hours.

Source:
http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2747-Job-Info-and-Trends-The-most-dangerous-jobs-in-America/

Top ten occupations with the highest fatalities per 100,000 workers.

1. Fishers and related fishing workers: 116
2. Logging workers: 91.9
3. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 70.6
4. Farmers and ranchers: 41.4
5. Mining machine operators: 38.7
6. Roofers: 32.4
7. Refuse and recyclable materials collectors: 29.8
8. Driver/sales workers and truck drivers: 21.8
9. Industrial machinery installation, repair workers: 20.3
10. Police and sheriff’s officers: 18.0

I’m personally a guy who loves danger. I have thought about being a police officer just so I could have the opportunity to be in dangerous situations. I have contemplated a life in the military for the same reason, so I’d have a chance to roam the world and be in dangerous situations. The trouble is, I’m not a “yes sir” type and regiment is not to my liking. So those jobs are unattractive to me for the 90% of the time that they aren’t in danger. So I’ve found my dangerous kick in other ways. I’ve done work as a bouncer, a body-guard, and most dangerous of all, a repo man. I know what it feels like to go to a door with a guy on the other side swearing that if you come any closer that he’ll shoot you through the door. In my case it was really tough because as a repo man, I couldn’t carry a gun at the time, because the insurance company for the client wouldn’t let me. So I had to frequently approach hostile people under dangerous situations much like an officer has to when they pull over a driver, or approach a house for an arrest or domestic violence situation only without a gun. I know what a bullet sounds like that passes right by your ear, or strikes the car you’re driving. And it is my opinion that many in the law enforcement profession make too much of the danger because in my opinion they know the danger of the job and that’s why they get into the position, to help keep society safe even if it means they will be in danger.

The people I know who are truly tough, and bold, soldiers who have been overseas in war, who have seen much death, they tend not to talk about it much. That is the proper thing to do. Even if somewhere deep inside they get involved in danger for the thrill of it, taking a life from someone does not feel good, or even being indirectly responsible for the death of someone doesn’t make you proud. But if you put yourself in that business, those things will happen, and it’s best to tuck it away somewhere deep inside.

But when it’s used to pick up women in a bar, or to get free donuts from your local bakery, or to prop up artificially the wages of union labor it makes the people who do it manipulators of little worth. It cancel’s out the worth behind the risks they take in favor of undermining it with an attempt at glorification. That glorification is what the unions are attempting to capitalize on to preserve their empire, and the police and firefighters are allowing themselves to be used by organized labor to climb on the backs of their merit to manipulate the political aspirations of the union leaders.

If the police and firefighters allow themselves to be used this way it will diminish them greatly, because in all reality, they are simply sharing the risks we all face in providing for our families. Their lives are no more at danger than the rest of us as the statistics show clearly. But as they attempt to highlight their danger in hopes of protecting the level of control the public sector unions currently hold over all tax payers, the only conclusion that can be drawn from such an effort is that of a crybaby attempting to get something for the noise they make, and I see no valor in such an act, and therefore little value.

As an example of this let me point out that pilots are number 3 on the list. When was the last time you heard an airplane pilot crying about how dangerous their job is? When flying on a commercial airline, pilots are always examples of cool. When they hit turbulence, or have an aircraft malfunction while in flight their typical reaction is, “we’re experiencing some technical difficulty. We’ll have it worked out shortly and we’ll get back on course.” Their voice is always even, with no reflection of the danger present.

With police, it’s approaching a vehicle with their hand on a gun ready to draw at the slightest inclination. (I know people who can draw and fire their gun in less than .25ths of a second, so putting a hand on a gun is not for readiness, its intimidation) I call that over-reaction, when compared to the coolness of a pilot, who is statistically in a much more dangerous job. Yet people don’t think the pilot is ever in danger because the pilot doesn’t complain. It’s a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Any good deeds committed under the heroics of danger get cancelled out when the value of such an endeavor is used to promote a “collective” manipulation, and that is truly a shame that is lost upon the minds of many.

Police and firefighters are doing good valuable work for society. But they make a mistake by allowing parasites to ride their backs, and their valor for a cause of pure self-preservation to justify the reign of control from an empire built by President Kennedy in 1963. And it cheapens their efforts dramatically.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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