Category: conronavirus

The Greatness of Truth Social: Controlling market viability

Strategically speaking, as history views it, Trump’s commitment to the social media platform Truth Social will be the defining characteristic that was most important in the political movement that has reshaped the world.   And not enough people are talking about its importance.  But as I have said for a long time, and it’s more obvious now than ever, Trump’s creation of Truth Social, after he was kicked off Twitter following the 2020 election, will always be known as the most important thing he did.  And when it mattered most, just as the many court cases against Trump through lawfare were about to collapse upon him and he was facing hundreds of years in jail and things were looking very bleak, it was his ownership of Truth Social that completely reversed his financial fortunes back into the billions of dollars and took the gas out of the efforts against him, legally.  It’s quite an extraordinary story and is a lesson for all who study these kinds of things.  I love Truth Social; I was one of the very first people to join it as a social media platform, and I see it only getting better with time.  Even though the news that Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X has captured everyone’s attention, Truth Social has quietly gained some market dominance worth discussing.  X has been a significantly improved social media platform under Elon Musk’s ownership, but it has seen a decline in influence.  It has maintained its value to some extent, despite Musk’s claim that X is the number one app in Japan.  There is significant growth on these social media platforms.  However, Truth Social under Trump has emerged as the next great thing, and at a considerable time.

Like many people on Truth Social, I received an offer to participate in their Patriot Package, which provides access to what they call Truth+.  It’s like Disney+ but without all the liberal programming.  So I accepted their offer and have been very impressed with it.   As I started using it, I have been thinking that this is the next best thing in entertainment to come out.  It works a lot like Roku and has its lineup of programming, complete with a TV guide that you can access on your television or computer.  But the programming is better, and this is early in the process.  Already, it has Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News, as well as many other shows, such as The WarRoom, which is on Real America’s Voice, a news station that emerged to challenge Fox News during the same period of post-2020 censorship.  However, there is also sports coverage on it, as well as other programming that is growing, making it a viable entertainment option.  So Truth Social isn’t just a social media app where you can express opinions and get some basic news.  It’s becoming a complete entertainment package that is a real game changer for the media in general and decentralizes information in dramatic ways.  Even though Elon Musk restored President Trump’s X account once he gained ownership, and it could be said that a lot of what made Trump a great candidate in 2016 was his Twitter account where people could see him unfiltered from the media, Trump has kept his exclusive content confined to Truth Social out of loyalty and the necessity of development.  And it has paid off. 

I wasn’t sure what to think about Truth Social over these last few years.  I thought it was great that Trump could continue to post his opinions directly to the public, and people could pick up his message and carry it everywhere else.  And it has worked; it has dramatically decentralized the way a president of the White House communicates with the public.  For as long as there has been a media culture, they have had control over how and what communication is disseminated to the public.  This is something I learned several years ago: it is far better to provide your content to the public, even if fewer people initially see it, than to be accepted by a mainstream media outlet that has its own political goals.  Which we certainly saw with Fox News against Trump when they sought to make him a non-person.  That has been a widespread tactic and for well over a hundred years, has been a real problem regarding free speech.  Sure, you can say and think what you want, but what if nobody can hear it?  For a long time, newspapers and broadcasting dominated the narrative.  Twitter wasn’t the first social media platform to emerge, but it was among the first to provide alternatives, even if, under different leadership, it had a controlled intelligence narrative to steer society toward mass socialism, until Elon Musk changed that.  However, it remains that Truth Social is the official mouthpiece of President Trump, making it historically significant, and now emerging as something that I think will push the rest of the cord-cutters over the edge.  And Trump will replace people like Ted Turner as the king of entertainment options.  A sitting American president has never had the advantage of a personal media platform, which has been a source of incredible frustration for many American presidents, especially Theodore Roosevelt.  What Trump has been doing with Truth Social has been epic, but its significance is just getting started.

And when you control the message, or can’t, it decides what people want through the freedom of information.  In this way, people can express their political opinions without the filter of tampering to determine market viability.  Since the invention of mass media, essentially the printing press, human beings have never had this option authentically.  And now, through Truth Social, and subsequently Truth+, which you access through your regular social media account, there is a competitive option to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Hulu.  Once you pull up Truth+ on your television, it navigates through the channels just like Roku and Spectrum.  So this is a significant improvement for a social media platform that emerged essentially to give President Trump, sent into exile in the world, a voice to continue stating his opinions, and not to let him fall into the dust of history, as Rupert Murdoch indicated they would make him, which was a non-person.  Trump, out of necessity, has become the next entertainment mogul, and that is what it has taken to preserve the concept of free speech, even as we saw from the world just how dangerous it was to have all entertainment controlled by a radical leftist few.  Truth Social, through market capitalism, has emerged as a surprising frontrunner, and the world is changing dramatically as a result.  The goal isn’t to tell people what to think, but to let market viability determine which ideas emerge, as the speech is truly free for the first time. People tend to gravitate to where they can most express themselves through entertainment consumption, making Truth Social more than just a social media platform that communicates President Trump’s opinions.  But an entertainment platform that can replace what we have known in the past with something much better.  And if you are thinking of joining the Patriot Package for yourself, you can’t go wrong.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Radicalism of Stephen Colbert: Trying to kill off toxic masculinity as been very expensive and not worth it

There is a much deeper reason that the news about Stephen Colbert being taken off the air is such big news.  Or why ABC is re-thinking some of its daytime programming, such as The View.  There will be numerous television changes because many of these big production companies have been so committed to progressive causes that the financial impact of it is finally starting to catch up to them.  However, in everyday conversation, the real reasons for economic failures have been largely unexplored.  People know they are generally happy to hear that the Trump-hating Colbert is losing his late-night show, and that many of the other late-night hosts are in danger as well, because of the anti-Trump agenda.  Anti-Make America Great Again agenda points are not popular for good business.  And typically, CBS Studios, a division of Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, would not hesitate to donate $40 million to progressive political causes.  Which is what they are saying the show is losing per year.  It’s not about the money; it’s about the viability of the position.  Losing that much money by putting Stephen Colbert on television every night to attempt to destroy the Trump agenda is more or less a financial contribution to their political platform.  The problem for them is that they spent all that money and committed so many resources to it, yet they were unable to move the political needle at all.  Trump did not end up in jail, or bankrupt as radical liberals had fantasized about.  Instead, six months into his re-elected term, he is doing great, and there are no signs of him slowing down.  And he’s more popular than ever, which is breaking the back of the production companies and their commitment to communism that dates back to the fifties and sixties. 

I know quite a bit about all this as I have been discussing it for years.  For many people, it has been hard to connect the dots.  However, I hosted a major radio show on this topic, specifically centered on the release of the Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, where Disney killed the very popular character of Han Solo.  A friend of mine and I discussed the poor decision that Disney made in killing off the white hero Han Solo and replacing him with a DEI cast that nobody ever took to.  And now, ten years later, the things we said have turned out to be hauntingly accurate.  After that big, popular show, my friend received an offer to work at Disney for an excellent salary.  I always thought they did it to shut him up and get him off the air.  It is much easier to throw money at controversial voices to contain them somewhat.  My friend loved the Disney Company and hoped to improve it, so more power to him.  I told him there was no saving the company, but he had to try.  But the point of the matter is this: Disney didn’t need to kill off the original heroes of the Star Wars saga.  But they did it anyway, and they did it for purely political reasons.  That’s how radical the hatred in Hollywood is for the Make America Great Again movement, which was emerging openly as Disney was committing to these new Star Wars movies that had a DEI cast, and a killing off of the strongest character of them all, Han Solo, who was made popular by the very popular actor, Harrison Ford.

Now I’ve heard it all before.  People tell me that old Harrison Ford always wanted to kill off the character of Han Solo.  As an actor, he hears all the stories about toxic white masculinity, which he has made a lot of money over the years popularizing.  So, for him, to sacrifice one of his roles to the gods of progressivism is a logical choice.  And he has been saying for forty years that Han Solo should die in the Star Wars series.  However, George Lucas knew better, so they brought him back for The Return of the Jedi, and that character went on to become one of the biggest and most popular in the Star Wars brand.  If Han Solo is on the movie posters, people are excited for Star Wars and the toys that came from that series of movies.  But if the movie posters, as they turned out to be, were just diversity, equity, and inclusion characters, then the public was going to reject the offering.  And in that process, Disney killed the Star Wars brand forever.  I don’t think it will ever come back. The damage was so significant that they begged Harrison Ford to return and make an appearance in the last Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, but it was too late by then.  And Disney has not been making any more Star Wars movies because their DEI characters were being rejected left and right.  A similar controversy arose on The Mandalorian television show involving Gina Carano.  She turned out not to be a DEI hire, but a conservative fighter, and Disney tried to punish her for it, and it blew up in their faces in terrible ways.  We are seeing entertainment that is not intended to entertain, but rather to convey political messages through popular franchises, and it has turned out to be a disastrous business decision. 

So, the writing was already on the wall when Trump was re-elected, and Disney was already undergoing its assessment process.  They had to learn, as a large entertainment company, that their public would reject them if they did not produce content that they wanted.  Kathy Kennedy should have known better about the Han Solo character.  Her husband, Frank Marshell, should be able to help her understand it.  He produced all the Jurassic Park movies and was the German mechanic in the very popular Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, notably in the fight scene.  He’s not a progressive lunatic.  However, he and Kennedy are fans of Jimmy Buffett and music from that era, so they have a left-leaning side that certainly comes through in their movies.  Kathy, as a woman CEO, went completely DEI and began pushing for female directors and characters.  I mean, they killed off Han Solo, knowing he was the father figure of the series, and they gave his famous spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, to some girl that nobody knew, as if the public would just accept it.  And they never did.  And the franchise took a permanent hit that it will never recover from.  I tried to tell them.  My friend and I laid it all out on that now-famous radio show, so we know the Disney bigwigs heard it and offered us jobs afterwards.  I have had numerous companies offer me money to try to keep me quiet, essentially.  I don’t blame my friend for taking the money.  Many people do, and it can lead to a fulfilling life.  And that is essentially why nobody understands these kinds of things structurally.  But that’s what’s going on with Stephen Colbert, and many others that will follow.  The man-hating Hollywood has not been working, and if they want to survive at all, they will have to make adjustments because the consumer is the boss.  Not the studios, and they have had to learn some tough lessons, too late.  The ramifications of all those bad decisions are only now becoming well-known and prominent.

Rich Hoffman

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

Making Parents into Children: When motherhood becomes destructive

It’s something most people have to deal with at some point in their lives, and I think we don’t do it very well.  However, it’s one of those things that doesn’t have many good answers, and that is the care of elderly people.  As our parents age, what do we do when they struggle to care for themselves and lose independence?  For me, I think death is worse than losing freedom and independence, quite literally.  And as I look at medical costs as a government offering, keeping sick people alive longer as they lose their freedoms with more government dependence is the worst kind of sickness of them all, and I think people are better off no longer living.  But, we have a lawyerly society that is way too litigious and a snoopy medical industry that is full of cosmetic do gooders who have created policies and rules that pay a lot of money and give medical expenses quite an income, so there is a lot wrong with the entire industry and the problems come down to just a few basic human assumptions that are more emotional than practical.  And most of us would rather not think about it, but what cost is the nursing home industry to our society for the services they provide when the litigious decision making process puts the burden of care judgement on people not prepared to deal with an emotional crises, making a lot of the wrong kind of people rich off the process, feeding a parasitic health care industry with a demeaning end of life trajectory that the courts find acceptable, but on scale of human need, is dramatically lacking.   And it takes lives once well lived, and essential, and makes them into uneventful closures of forgetfulness and an almost vile hatred for the perpetuation of the human race that has vast evil wrapped all around it.

I usually don’t associate with many people in the healthcare industry, especially those involved in care for older people, for all the reasons mentioned.  However, I did run into Commissioner Dixon and his son, Brent, at a recent event, and we had a good discussion about this very topic.  I hadn’t seen Brent for many years, even though we live in the same general area, and I knew he had managed a nursing home facility, so we hadn’t seen each other since we were ten years old and racing together in a soap box derby event in Hamilton that was the talk of the town back then.  So it was fun to see him again and talk about what has happened over the last four and a half decades.  And I like Don Dixon quite a lot, so we had fun catching up.  But nearby, because of some nursing home talk, a couple of women caught on to our conversation, and it provoked in them discussions they were having about a father in their lives. One of the women was the direct daughter, the other one was a sister-in-law.  And they were talking about how their dad had fallen and hit his head, and they were worried about him and thought he was losing the ability to be the caregiver to his wife, who is in an entirely dependent state.  So, for the discussion with these two women, they were determining that their dad needed to go to a home before he hurt himself and let something bad happen to their mom.  And as I was listening to this conversation, it was getting more revolting by the moment because there were a lot of psychological things wrong with it. 

So, for clarity, I think it would be better for the dad they were talking about to pass away of natural causes at peace in his own home, on his own terms as much as possible.  But the decision was a legal one; if the kids knowingly allow the father to care for the mother and something happens to him, it would provoke something to happen to her, and then they would be found guilty of elder abuse in the eyes of the court.  But even worse than that was a social neurosis that involved the women regarding the decision-making process of how to manage their dad.  Here was a man who had lived his whole life doing things that were important to both society and himself.  And had raised a family and done many things, and now all that was coming to a close with the impending doom of losing personal freedoms to the point where he was just a fetus entirely dependent on the parental figures of society at large.  And this was not the way human beings should be planning their exit from life.  The women I noticed were very animated about this topic for unusual reasons, and it was not by accident that they both had kids who had just recently grown up and moved away from them; emotionally, they were looking for a new baby to care for.  Being middle aged women without the prospect of a baby to have, to give them the feeling of meaning that motherhood often does, they were instead taking that emotional baggage and looking to apply it to their parents, to make their elderly parents into incapable toddlers unable to care for themselves to satisfy the lack of importance they were feeling as aging mothers. 

It wasn’t hard to see how many terrible decisions were being made, which had enormous social costs and were destructive to the individual lives of the parental figures.  And baked into the rule-making process was a desire to humiliate older people and their personal lives into dependent toddlers who ended their life the way they started it, wetting the bed, having their diapers changed, and needing help even to feed themselves.  And there are a lot of women like these two talking who are feeling old, thrown away by their husbands and kids, and they gravitate to their elderly parents to turn them into dependents to give meaning to their lives, which is losing value by the day.  And, of course, a significant amount of money is invested in this process to generate something from it for a very parasitic industry.  In my opinion, I would say let the parents have their independence for as long as possible, because it’s better than losing it.  And if the dad passes away tripping on a pebble on the sidewalk, he is better off than a much slower death while in a nursing home.  And the lawyers should stay out of it.  And the emotional children who have been trying to give meaning to their own lives by making their parents into replacement children for their own grown children have created a real mess.  The costs associated are more parasitic to the burdens of those who define care than to the values of a life well lived, and to protect that meaning from life to death.  A few years in a nursing home and turning once strong people into complete dependents, in my eyes, is far worse than death.  And it is something we should completely reconsider.  Because the emotional children of older people are not in positions themselves to make decisions for their parents because they are dealing with their own sense of value as their children grow up and away from them leaving everyone feeling empty and useless in the process, and no amount of money can solve the problem in the way that human beings require it to be solved.  However, what we can be sure of is that we should not make our parents dependents to avoid dealing with our lack of security once our child-rearing days are behind us.  There is more to life, and adults need to figure that out, rather than putting their parents in homes to satisfy their selfish needs to care for somebody in an infinite state and quell the whims of motherhood once it has been unlocked in them for the perpetuation of the human race, for which they are no longer needed. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Aliens Attacking Earth in November: Why the Epstein story is suddenly hot

It’s been all over the news, but what are we supposed to think about it?  Harvard astrophysicists Avi Loeb and Adam Hibberd, along with Adam Crawl from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies in London, hypothesized that an interstellar object, 31/ATLAS, recently discovered on July 1, 2025, was an alien spacecraft due to its unusual trajectory and speed.  And that they were coming to attack Earth in November.  Coming from any kind of source, that was a surprising story, and it has certainly soaked up the news cycle.  But I wouldn’t worry about it very much.  To all those who are concerned, I would bet that the likelihood of the visit isn’t conquest or aggression, but rather a ballot drop of mail-in ballots for Democrats ahead of the next election.  Since Trump has pushed illegal immigration back and is deporting so many of them, Democrats need new voters.  So whether it’s illegal aliens or aliens from outer space, Democrats can’t win elections if they don’t cheat.  And in the case of this story, I’d say it was created by Democrats looking to preserve Democrat ideas about the way the world should work.  And its timing does not surprise me. Instead, it’s expected.  There are a lot of people in the world who consistently turn to alien stories when they want to scare the public into some sort of government expansion argument, and there are desperate people at every level of society who want to stop the Trump agenda.  And I would not doubt it if aliens are one of them.  If these guys think this is an alien ship, it’s not the first time they have visited Earth.  And it certainly won’t be the last.  But to assume that this is an alien attack like the ID4 movie, or some catastrophe film like War of the Worlds, is a yearning for the politics of old to avoid being washed away by the new. 

And this brings up another issue that certainly involves the Deep State and its desperation to hold power and control.  We are going to see a lot of strange things over the coming months and years, so we’ll have to use a lot of rationality to get through it.  There are many crackpots and losers like these Harvard physicists who often make such claims, but why did this one, which was posted on the arXiv preprint server as a non-peer-reviewed paper, gain public attention on July 16th 2025?  That’s when you have to ask yourself why this story, as ridiculous as it is, suddenly had legs and made it into the established news cycle.  Well, it’s for the same reason that the Epstein list is suddenly hot.  The way our intelligence departments work, who are trying to hold onto power, use fear of the unknown all the time to justify their continued secretive work without any budget accountability.  And they are trying to maintain control during a very bullish Trump administration, where many things are changing in ways they don’t like.  I think they always had this poison pill story to unleash on the public regarding Trump, because they saw how he paused a bit when Elon Musk suggested that the Epstein list wasn’t released because Trump was on it.  Truly, if anybody had any dirt on Trump at all, they would have used it far before now.  But if intelligence agencies can split up the MAGA party against Trump in some way, they are certainly going to try.  So fear and ambiguity are their weapons of choice, and undermining people’s confidence in people who are a threat to Deep State control over all of humanity through administrative bureaucracy is their means to do so.

There has suddenly been shown footage of Trump judging beauty pageants of very young girls, and they are trying to tie that to a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the Lolita Express trips to sexual escapades with young women.  And Trump did indeed know Epstein, and he did live a playboy life for a time.  Young women are often a part of beauty because attractiveness is fleeting, and if we are going to discuss beautiful women, young women are certainly part of the conversation.  However, Trump did own the Miss Universe pageant, which included Miss Teen USA, and he was very active in managing the operation.  For Trump, it was more of an aesthetic appreciation of beauty, the way people judge high school cheerleading competitions, rather than the kind of illicit sexual practices that it looks like Jeffrey Epstein was a part of.  So, with Trump on the list, there are likely many people who were part of high society who were also.  But that doesn’t mean all of them were falling for the temptations of illicit sex for blackmail that Epstein was trafficking, likely for the same intelligence agencies who let out this recent story about the aliens attacking Earth.  The goal isn’t the truth, but instead starting rumors that might instigate discontent and undermine unity among peers.  And the hope has been for a while that if these intelligence agencies could use some of this old footage of Trump to create a lack of trust, they’d do it.  So, of course, they will try.  But if there were any there to the story, they would have used it long before now.  Liking beautiful women, who are typically young, isn’t the same as sexually abusing them and having that information used by intelligence agencies to control influential personalities for fear of those stories getting out.

In all likelihood, alien intelligence has constantly been communicating with human beings from the beginning of time.  And I would argue that modern-day America has all the power in the world, politically, to destroy the society of any attacking aliens.  I do not think, as H.G. Wells did, that a sophisticated society of high technology could beat us all in war, only to die of convenience of disease upon contact with human beings and lacking an immune system to fight off diseases that are earth-born.  And more so, alien communication likely occurs all the time through multidimensional considerations, as many shamans throughout the world have been doing for many thousands of years.  So, a couple of Harvard geeks trying to apply their favorite science fiction movie to their anxiety over government funding for their projects being cut, with Trump in the White House, doesn’t mean they understand the nature of conflict with alien societies.  That they would spin it to fit their worldview, likely shaped by science fiction movies and video games.  However, the intelligence groups that leaked the story to the public are another matter.  It’s the same strategy that has suddenly made the Epstein story hot, while it was very cool all through the Biden years.  Why is it a story six months into Trump’s wildly successful second term?  Because it’s an attempt to manipulate a gullible public, this just shows how little they respect any of us.  Suppose the spacecraft is a group of aliens coming to Earth. In that case, I think the most likely scenario is that they are bringing illegal ballots from illegal aliens, this time from space, to help Democrats in the upcoming election.  Because you know what I say, if Democrats can’t cheat, they can’t win.  And if they can’t count on illegal aliens to keep them in office, then they will have to turn to aliens from outer space.  But as far as attacking the earth, that is fear talk as usual by the people we are supposed to trust.  But obviously can’t.

Rich Hoffman

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

Violance in Downtown Cincinnati: The political result of using racism as a weapon of social unrest

It’s one of those incidents where soft policy on minority communities baked into skin color profiles and years of Democrat radicalism caused a lot of harm.  After the Cincinnati Music Festival downtown at the corner of West Fourth Street and Elm Street on July 26th, 2025, a massive fight broke out where obvious violence toward a white couple by a large gathering of people of color exploded due to a very light police presence, and it went on for way too long.  This mob hurt people, and the mob under any conditions shouldn’t have been allowed to grow like that into such a menace.  People from the scene have said that the fight broke out due to racial comments, but there isn’t anything that could have been said that justified the violence that was captured by hundreds of cell phones and was distributed online, beating all the mainstream news outlets in content.  In the video I provide, I took one of the best clips of the violence that I saw and walk people through it for context.  It was out of control, and it was a violent episode perpetuated by a large group of people who felt entitled due to their skin color, and the social acceptance of violence perpetuated by political efforts to present a degraded condition in a part of downtown Cincinnati that is supposed to be one of the best in the area.  This site was just up from the sports stadiums, so it’s a part of town where the economic situation has been a priority, and here was a massive fight that showed obvious racial violence getting national news in a very embarrassing way.  The incident itself was bad on many fronts, but under any conditions, no matter what was said by anybody, public displays of violence like this have no place in our society, and the Cincinnati Police Department, the Mayor, and the City Council are going to have to explain all this.  Because in a lot of ways, they lit the fuse to this violence through their racial policies by feeding that monster for many years leading up to this unfortunate event. 

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1949431682060189731

I was very proud of the Covington Police Department, which fought against the ICE protesters trying to shut down the bridge over into Kentucky, just a short distance from where this big fight broke out.  But what was missing was the police arresting people and beating them up for disturbing the peace.  The City of Cincinnati made great news around the nation for showing intolerance for violence in trying to shut down an important bridge and vandalizing property by a group of socialist radicals who had no right to do so.  But given the nature of any music festival that combines alcohol and late nights without much of a police presence, bad things were bound to happen, and by the way things transpired, it almost looks like the political figures involved with Cincinnati City Council wanted this kind of violence to take place.  And when it did, there was an unspoken agreement between them and the mob.  I can promise one thing about all involved in that violence: none of them were Republicans.  Law and Order, GOP voters don’t behave like that.  But Democrats who have been bred into their social positions through color revolution propaganda, where outside money pours into minority communities to create instability, the results are mobs who behave with such violence as we saw in Cincinnati during late July 2025.  The only way to describe the people doing all the punching and repeated kicks to the head was the same kind of people who would support ANTIFA rallies, or protest in flash riots after a police shooting.  And even though the police union won’t want to admit it, they might blame the light police coverage on budget restrictions, workforce supply, and other issues, the unspoken truth is that this music festival was going to involve a lot of people of color, and nobody wants that kind of controversy on their record, so they went light on the coverage and violence exploded anyway.

We need to have law and order for everyone, and everyone must play by the same rules.  We can’t allow progressive talking points to allow one set of behavior for one group of people and to let another group of people off the hook because of the color of their skin, and the propensity for public relations nightmares to happen if someone from that demographic group gets arrested and shown all over national television for roughing up minorities.  To avoid such controversy, the police would rather roll the dice and hope nothing bad happens than to have something bad happen that would attach them to international news.  And when violence like what we saw here does break out, I’m sure there is relief among their police ranks that at least it wasn’t one of their members involved in that video footage.  It was better to let it play out, watch the video, and arrest the people involved after everything cooled off.  But the fight went on for far too long.  The media didn’t want to cover the story because it was a no-win situation.  And the lack of justice only makes it easier in the future for people to get away with worse, because they didn’t get punished the first time.  In many ways, the lack of punishment for past wrongs led to this complete social breakdown because the participants felt entitled to conduct violence, due to the politics involved.

However, here’s the thing: when people wonder why people move to the suburbs, this is your reason.  They don’t want to be around gangs of thugs who behave like this.  Cincinnati has made an effort to make downtown friendly, encouraging young people to make Over-the-Rhine a cool and hip destination.  But looming among the population, there is a lot of crime and a lot of bad racial violence that happens but gets underreported because nobody wants it to explode across the nightly news.  If cars get broken into while visiting the economic zones, the news doesn’t report on it because they don’t want to destabilize the radical groups who live in the area.  And that is the genuine fault here: the failure to realize that many of the people we are luring in for economic reasons can interact with the dinosaurs, and we expect them not to be eaten by the dangerous animals is unrealistic.  And if we aren’t going to have better security than what we saw at that Cincinnati Music Festival, then we shouldn’t have events downtown.  It is because of a fear of this very thing that, after a Bengals game or the Reds, people get back in their cars and go back to the suburbs.  Because they don’t want to be attacked by wild animals, encouraged by Democrat politics to riot over anything and everything.  And now Cincinnati has a major black eye that I find embarrassing.  The police should have been there to beat the hell out of all the malcontents, no matter what their skin color was.  And their failure to support law and order under all conditions paved the way for this violence to happen.  Ultimately, that falls on the city’s politics.  They created the environment that allowed for that violence to occur because the participants had no fear at all of law enforcement.  And that is why things broke out so violently.  The footage shows clearly, no matter what was said, nobody deserved to be beaten like what that couple was, especially the woman with the dress on who was cold cocked in the face and knocked out unconscious in the middle of the street.  Those images will cause a lot more trouble than if the police had arrested troublemakers early and dealt with the political fallout later.  But it was Democratic policies that made the whole fire ready to burn, which is why people tend to avoid going downtown for anything if they can, because there is always the potential for violence, which nobody wants to deal with.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota’s ‘Rumor Has It’: Government schools are run by expensive lawyers and PR firms

I’d rather not think of Lakota schools, ever.  However, they are in my community and serve as a great example of everything that’s wrong with the public education system.  And they’ve had it for a while, but recently they’ve updated it with some content that many people have pointed out to me as a reaction to me personally.  I have to address it, even though there are many other things to consider in the world.  The biggest problem with government schools is that they assume they have the moral authority to collect property tax money because they have been given, by law, the expectation to provide for the upbringing of children in our society.  So they presume to have a moral foundation that defies criticism from the public, much like a parent might say to a child that they must do as they say, not as they do.  Meaning their authority is not to be questioned, and that is certainly the premise of their “Rumor Has It” section on the school website, which seeks to address rumors that might damage the image they want to nurture with the public.  My suggestion to them is that if they want to maintain a lofty image with the public, they should live a life befitting that image.  And don’t attend education conventions and get drunk, making fools of yourselves.  Or, cover up for bad behavior once you discover it because you fear that the public won’t want to give you tax money from their very valuable real estate transactions.   Be good, do good, and provide a positive role model for kids, and there wouldn’t need to be a damage control page on their website.  But when they act as they do, then try to control the narrative that gets out to the public, they leave themselves wide open to criticisms because they suck a quarter of a billion dollars out of our local economy to advance essentially Democrat political platforms that the rest of the community find reprehensible, such as transgender bathrooms, and woke social policies.

https://www.lakotaonline.com/resources/community-resources/rumor-has-it

I’m certainly not the only one; there are many more people these days who are critical of public schools than when I first started discussing these issues three decades ago.  And for really good reasons.  Public schools are going to change dramatically over the next few years, as I have explicitly warned everyone during that period.  And that is because people no longer find the value in them the way they used to, as a free babysitting service for their children while they are busy at work doing adult things.  That whole experience is something that this most recent generation of moms is dealing with, including the lack of fulfillment in their careers and the social implications of being paid the same as a man, for instance.  That is something that Democrats care about politically.  But biologically, women want a man to be a man, and women don’t want to do the jobs of everyone just to justify some government assumption about dual-income families that they can generate even more tax revenue from.  Many people are rethinking everything, including how schools should teach children and what they should teach.  And many of the people who have chosen to work in the public school system are far behind the curve on the direction education is taking early in the present century.  But what it has been has not given us a society of bright intellects.  It hasn’t produced many Thomas Edisons or Albert Einsteins. Instead, it has given us people who can barely put two sentences together and balance their family budgets.  And they have no moral authority to lecture anybody about anything. 

In the video provided here, I address many of the Rumor Has It bullet points with some context.  The essence of the issue is that there are two main problems with government schools, such as Lakota. One issue is that they have too many lawyers who make excessive profits from the system, and a properly functioning school board is not possible under the current conditions.  The second problem is that PR firms are too heavily involved in their communication process, including the Rumor Has It page.  They are much more interested in controlling the narrative with the community than in listening to and acting on it, and that, over time, has significantly eroded any trust that anybody had in them.  And they did that to themselves.  I think one of the most interesting statements that they make on their Rumor Has It page is the first item, “Lakota Local Schools is committed to being transparent and providing factual information to our community.”  Then immediately after it, they say, “Some of the loudest and most misleading rumors can taint even the strongest of school districts.”  There is a lot said there, but in essence, they have an impression of their social role that they don’t want to be challenged, and they are intent on pushing away any contrary opinions that might not give them the social respect they are seeking.  And to maintain that illusion, a significant amount of money is wasted in the process, including the money spent on PR firms to create a social illusion about the value of government schools, when reality tells an opposite story. 

Ultimately, what it always boils down to with the kind of people who support the John Dewey Public Education utopian vision, which the Democratic Party has built its platform on, is psychological validity in terms of the meaning of life, as well as an assumed parental role.  And parents want to be the parents to their children; they don’t want shared custody with a government school system, and that is at the heart of all education issues and how much we are willing to pay for that service.  Busy parents need someone to watch their kids while they are at work.  Teachers want to think that they can bring meaning to other people’s lives through the education process.  Most administrators are relatively empty individuals and seek to fill that void with social engagement built on big government ideas that earn them community respect they couldn’t obtain any other way.  The creators of public education had socialism and communism from Karl Marx in mind when they attacked property tax as a way to fund a new generation of social indoctrination among the youth, and destroy the concept of private property as the foundation of our entire country.  And once the smoke clears on all that, government schools like Lakota aren’t proud of their American heritage; they are intent on progressive politics that normal people find repulsive.  And the more criticism they have experienced, the deeper they have dug in, making the problem even worse.  I did find one thing very interesting on their Rumor Has It page, where they were backtracking on the proposed levy increases that they had been discussing for the fall election.  They say on their Rumor Has It page that the bond issues to fund the Lakota Master Facilities Plan have not yet been determined.  And I’m sure they said that because of some of my very popular articles on the matter.  Well, I knew they were trying to find an open window to put these levies on the ballot, and they announced it through Michael Clark, their staff reporter, who happens to work for the Journal News.  And he announced the $506 million sweeping facilities plan, which would be issued with two levies on July 1, 2025.  So, like a lot of things on their Rumor Has It page, it’s not a rumor.  However, instead of a PR document trying to control a narrative they don’t like, due to the public reaction to their actions, the article Clark wrote, which typically comes straight from Julie Shaffer’s mouth on the Lakota School Board, indicated two tax hikes on the fall ballot. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Dismantaling the Department of Education: The Ohio House overrides DeWine’s veto on property taxes

Remember, I told you this was going to happen, and now it is.  However, with the July 14th ruling by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision, the court granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause a federal judge’s order that required the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees fired as part of a reduction-in-force.  The majority ruling lifted the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Massachusetts, who had concluded that the administration’s actions aimed to dismantle the department without congressional approval and couldn’t be done.  A lot was happening with this ruling, which is why I am so proud of the tie clip I always wear that people comment on so much. I got it at the Supreme Court when I visited there in March, ahead of all these significant rulings.  Regional district judges were not going to be able to stop the Trump administration, and the mass layoffs that would dismantle the Department of Education were going to happen, sending the management of education back to the states, where, in Ohio, we know what that means with the incoming new governor, Vivek Ramaswamy.  Many education-oriented individuals point to a decision like this and argue that we are becoming a country not committed to education.  However, it’s the exact opposite; we need to get the administrative types out of the way so that positive reform in education can happen. This is why a Governor like Ramaswamy in Ohio is so important, as he has many fresh ideas that would improve education.  And getting the Department of Education types out of the way makes all that possible.  There is a lot to be happy about, but it’s hardly a surprise.  I’ve been warning about it for years, and as of 2025, everything is right on schedule. 

I would also add on July 21st 2025 in the state of Ohio the Ohio House voted 61-28 to override Governor DeWine’s vetos on property tax measures in the 2026-2027 budgets, specifically Item 66 which eliminates the authority for political subdivisions to levy replacement property tax levies and restricts school districts levying certain types of levies such as fixed-sum emergency, substitute emergency, and combined school district income tax and fixed-sum property tax levies.  That measure is now headed to the Senate, where I fully expect it to pass, and change the way the state sees property tax in general—another benefit of the upcoming Vivek Ramaswamy administration.  Property tax is no longer the crutch for big government that it has been.  Trump’s administration is headed in a similar direction, viewing property as something precious and not forcing owners to become perpetual renters of their property through excessive taxation.  DeWine was concerned about the budget submission, specifically how property taxes are used to fund schools.  What all this means is that public school districts are going to face numerous changes, including how they collect taxes to fund union-run public schools.  It’s not just the elimination of the centralized Department of Education that is coming to them, but also in how they collect funds from local property taxes to run their progressive endeavors.  What is happening here is that education is being redefined into a marketplace value as opposed to what it has been, which has been a kind of Brave New World socialist indoctrination center that seeks to produce more Democrats as voters.  Many people believe that the previous rules have been fueling our nation’s destruction.  And across many changes, that perception is headed in a different direction.

When the Department of Education was created in 1979, it proposed using the power of the central government to protect union employees from the scrutiny of judgment while teaching children the same socialist values.  Such as taking the category of History in school and changing it to “Social Studies.”  And during this period, kids were being taught not that the creation of America was a great thing, but that it was built on the backs of enslaved people, corrupting thousands of children in the process through central government oversight, taking away from the states the ability to compete with other states for a better education system.  Because essentially, everyone was being taught the same flawed information.  Now, the priorities for education will be decided at the state level.  School Choice will become much more common, as it was well represented in Trump’s recent Big Beautiful Bill, meaning that we are moving toward a society where tax money will follow the student, not the zip code.  And that’s why this veto override in Ohio was so important, because it initiates a process of shifting away from property taxes funding all this centralized government and its growing expansion, to the point where people can no longer afford to own their property.  The public schools have, for years, not had to manage their finances well, which the teachers’ unions have been delighted with.  However, it has driven the per-pupil cost of teaching children out of the realm of reality and is too high.  This makes it impossible for the state to determine how to fund education for students, as the costs are so high and dependent on property taxes to cover the state’s funding gaps.  To achieve a truly competitive cost structure, the Department of Education must relinquish its power and be decentralized. 

What that means for public schools like Lakota, which I discuss frequently because they are in the district where I live, is that they will have to rethink everything they do.  And they will have to compete with other schools in the immediate area for the right to teach a student.  This year, in 2025, they have some costly levy requests that add up to half a billion dollars for infrastructure, the building of new schools after tearing down some of the old ones.  And for what, for teaching jobs that are changing dramatically and are being pushed by A.I. for ability.  When states like Ohio apply funding to students, rather than to the zip code institution, the fat cow that government schools have been living on will be gone.  And they are going to have to earn their dollars, which they are not used to.  This union-dominated structure was always poised to fail.  You can see it when you visit the White House; all the big unions are in the buildings just outside the front gates.  Government unions view the collection of taxes from an ever-growing government as the foundation of their existence, which means low performance standards for all involved.  However, we don’t like what these government schools have been producing, and we have been intent on changing it for the better.  And that starts with mass firings at the Department of Education by the Trump administration.  And for all the government school administrators who are tempted to cry foul, I warned you, and you should have listened. They were mad that I said such things, and now they are going to find themselves extinct. And the fault for that will be theirs, because they were told what was going to happen and did not prepare for it.   Reforms to education are necessary because what we have had has been inadequate and expensive.  And at every level, from funding to curriculum, significant changes are coming.  And schools will have to adapt, or fail to exist at all. 

Rich Hoffman

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

If You Aren’t a Good Person, Linkedln Can’t Hide It: The Affair of Andy Byron

I think I have a little more hope for humanity after the very public reaction to Andy Byron getting caught at a Coldplay concert in Boston cheating on his wife with Kristin Cabot, the head of his human resources department.  It was the now-famous Kisscam embrace where the stadium was watching the jumbotron, and the camera panned to Andy, who promptly ducked out of sight.  Nothing says I love you like fleeing the public eye.  I mean, if you are going to have an affair, maybe he should have been more proud of it.  What kind of man did the boss of human resources think she was getting from a guy who would knowingly cheat on his wife with her, and even deny it in public when caught?  The whole incident was a multitude of bad that points to a multitude of worse.  However, a lot of good did come of it, as Byron was the CEO of Astronomer, an AI tech company with many billions of dollars.  After the public’s anger circulated the world, Astronomer dropped him as their CEO, which is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.  I mean, how can you make deals with people if they can’t trust you to at least be honorable to a person closest to you, as a wife?  What does it say about anybody if they can’t make one basic relationship at home work?  How are they supposed to create a culture among many employees if they can’t do it successfully?  I tend to be very skeptical of most people and the way they maintain their marriages.  I think people are too easily lax with the rules, and it shows a lot about their character when they do cheat.  I can’t imagine why a grown man with adult children would want to attend a musical concert.  But the public reaction to the affair was a pleasant surprise. 

Of course, kisscams all across the world started to make fun of the incident, as most people saw the way Andy Byron handled the whole situation as inherently evil.  It’s not a good idea to cheat on your wife.  But now you’re a billionaire and a successful person, maybe thinking of starting a new relationship to outpace the mistakes of a previous one.  That might appear to be a justifiable reason.  But with your head of human resources at your company?  Aren’t there other girls to cheat with if you are thinking of doing it?  And it looked like there were other people there from the office who knew of this affair because they were embarrassed too, once they were caught.  What does that say about everyone involved?  If you have to duck away from cameras, you are probably up to no good, and what’s worse is when someone does something anyway.  It reveals a lack of good judgment, which raises questions about why he was ever appointed as a CEO in the first place.  I know people go to a lot of trouble to look good on paper with their resumes and LinkedIn professional profiles, but they often fail to meet the expectations of reality, which is very common these days, especially in CEO positions.  Anybody who would go to a music concert as a middle-aged person with their head of human resources and openly flaunt an affair to the world, but acts like a coward when caught, is showing terrible judgment that fancy interviews and speeches can’t hide.  People are aware of this, and it highlights a deeper issue with individuals who run companies, as Andy Bryon did. 

When you are a compromised person, and let’s face it, we have a system that has been put in place in our employment culture where we put weak people in positions of power on purpose so that they fall very easily to every little woke rule, or letter from Larry Fink.  And CEOs like Andy Byron lecture the rest of the world toward progressive causes.  Much of what they do as leaders is cosmetic to cover up their lack of personal integrity.  They use their jobs to cover for their low moral conduct.  And nobody knows a person better than their family.  If things aren’t great in the bedroom and with your kids, we have a culture that has given the illusion that a job can replace those valiant efforts with a personal title of social respect.  And if you are cheating on your wife and kids with some other woman, especially one who is supposed to enforce a standard at the workplace against such actions, a level of hypocrisy has been revealed that clearly shows people have strong opinions about the matter.  And if people are outraged, that’s a good thing.  We often don’t get to see people like Andy Byron beyond news clips.  But behavior tells us far more about people, and that takes all the fancy talk you see on resumes and makes them much more real.  Nothing says I love you more than ducking for cover when trouble comes.  And nothing shows leadership more than violating all your company rules and showing everyone that you can’t even maintain a marriage.  So how can you lead a company, or even a department?  If you have such bad judgment on little things, then how can you guide billions of dollars of value to the proper place?  The answer is you can’t.

When Byron and his lover Kristin Cabot were caught, it was a classic male-to-female embrace from behind.  When a woman surrenders herself in such a passive way, it’s undoubtedly a mating response to further advancement, leading to sexual intercourse.  It’s an affirmation of safety, that the embrace of a man will make her feel secure with his arms around her, and she holding elements of his arms to show a willingness to be in the passive sexual role.  If the woman were doing the same to the man, it would be weird.  A larger male embracing a smaller female for sexual union by asserting safety and security to the recipient of sex is a classic signal that everyone understands.  But to affirm that it was all phony in an instant, that all the personal contact and pillow talk were as flimsy as Andy Byron himself, was something everyone also understood the moment he dodged the camera once he realized he was caught.  And she did too.  It was a fun affair as long as nobody knew about it.  Or that everyone at the office knew, but that they thought they could all conspire to keep it a secret from the world.  People don’t like that kind of behavior, and they let everyone know it in the aftermath.  And people were not understanding of Andy Byron.  They looked down on him, and that is a good thing.  That means people aren’t all out there cheating on each other at every turn.  That there are still a lot of people who think that their relationship to their families is still the most important one in their lives, and that if they aren’t successful there, they can’t be successful in other things.  Progressive, Democrat society would like to believe that job titles give people power that personal behavior can’t.  And no matter how we construct our culture to think that flawed people can be CEOs of big companies, the public has other opinions.  And if a man doesn’t dare to stand tall under fire, even when it’s just a camera pointed at him, how can he lead others in anything?  The answer is, he can’t.  Nobody can.  Flawed individuals create flawed companies and societies.  And people do expect leaders to be more than average and to stand tall under fire.  And to do the right things, even when it’s hard. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Don’t Cry for Obama: They opened the door for punishment of their many crimes

Don’t cry for Obama; he put himself in this mess.  And certainly don’t think that Obama is too privileged to do a perp walk in handcuffs in front of the media.  I will never forget it, or forgive it, when they marched Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, down a hall in handcuffs and put him in jail for four months, as they did Peter Navarro.  I will never forget the Trump mug shot when they booked him in Fulton County.  And when they did everything they could to destroy him with legal cases meant to kill his entire family, I will never forget what they did to Alex Jones, to Roger Stone, to Rudi Guiliani, Sydney Powell, and General Flynn.  What I watched happen over the last several years was nothing short of a coup against our form of government, and it was a communist revolutionary type like Barack Obama who was dead set to use all the powers of government to destroy our government in just the same way that Che and Fidel Castro did in Cuba.  Or any communist revolution for that matter, around the world, whether it be in China or Russia.  What they tried to do in the United States was every bit as bad, and they went for our jugular.  So now the shoe is on the other foot.  We have extensive evidence of what Obama directly did as president, which only confirms what we already suspected.  The evidence is significantly worse.  They didn’t just talk about destroying the people around Trump; they tried actually to do it, and where they could, they did.  So yes, when people ask me if it’s even possible to prosecute Barack Obama, a former president, it is because Democrats already opened the door to the possibility in the way they handled Trump.  Remember, the goal here is to define who runs our country, and if we let Obama and his gang of thugs loose, we surrender to their domestic terrorism in a way that will encourage others to do so in the future.  So I would argue that we can’t afford to let them get away with it.

After Trump made his feelings very clear about what Tulsi Gabbard had released to the public about what Obama’s role in the Russiagate scandal was, Obama released a statement essentially trying to hide his crime behind the dignity of the Oval Office, just as it was expected that the Deep State would hide his terrorist intentions behind his skin color.  Obama was created to undo the notion of a free country run by free people who picked their elected representatives.  And there are a whole bunch of malicious characters behind Barack Obama who need to be snuffed out and destroyed within American society.  It doesn’t just end with Obama.  But, Obama was caught trying to hold power as he was a sitting president, and he orchestrated a coup against the incoming administration that was every bit as radical as when the Castro brothers overtook Cuban society.  And Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Brennan, and many, many others deep within the CIA and FBI were in on it, and they paid for a doctored-up dossier working with foreign governments to undo a sitting president.  They broke every kind of protocol to destroy the results of a free election.  And all those involved must be punished because they didn’t respect our system the first time.  They laughed at our sense of justice and counted on their ability to hold office and control the legal outcome.  And when they had power, which people took away from them in the 2024 election, they abused their power, making it so that a counteraction is now mandated.  It’s not compassionate to let them go with all we know; it would be foolish.

There was always a notion behind the crimes Obama committed during his presidency that by the time everything caught up to him and his partners, America would be a different country.  In no scenario did they think that a person like Trump would become president, let alone twice.  And there were no calculations that Trump would survive all they threw at him to stop him from running for a second term.  Because they understand this, they know they have been winning elections through election fraud for years, and they are aware of what I have been saying about elections, whether we are talking about 2020, 2024, or any of the upcoming elections, such as 2026 or 2028.  If we keep Democrats from cheating, or make it harder for them, they can’t win elections because they are a dramatic minority, just as in the communist uprisings around the world had been, minorities taking control of majorities through the illusion of force.  And that was tried here in the United States by many members of our intelligence departments, and Obama was put in place to be the inserted wrecking ball, hiding his communist intentions behind his skin color, so that we couldn’t have an opinion on his actions because we had to prove we weren’t a racist country.  Or that we couldn’t prosecute him for what he did during his term, or as a puppeteer during the Biden years, because of some respectability of the office he held as a former president.  Trump was a former president, and they tried to destroy him and all his associates ruthlessly.  So now that the shoe is clearly on the other foot, we must have justice, and that means Obama in handcuffs, a mug shot, and jail time for the gross abuses of government he used to keep his party in power.

Don’t forget, if not for the whole Russiagate issue that Obama started, there would not be a war between Russia and Ukraine right now.  It was because of this deteriorated relationship with Russia that diplomacy crumbled, and a war was started that has killed many millions of people.  The war was always a cover story for the Steele Dossier and the people behind it, who were guilty of committing treason against our country to remove an elected president from office.  Trump isn’t the first time; they did it to Nixon, and they outright killed President Kennedy. Many of us have long suspected that those things happened, but now we have the proof, and we can’t just turn away from it.  We can’t allow a Deep State to think it’s in charge of our government.  And we have to punish their agents as we catch them, and Obama has been caught, without question.  Trump didn’t enter office looking to punish his political rivals.  However, he can’t disregard the crimes committed against him leading up to this point.  He has no obligation to turn away from justice, and that’s what we elected him to do.  People want to run a self-ruled government.  They don’t want a bunch of loser Deep Staters running their country for the benefit of globalism.  We have been too lenient in the past, which has given these people a false sense of security, leading them to believe they could get away with anything.  So yes, we have to send a message.  But don’t fret over the methods.  Obama and many others already went too far with Trump, and now the shoe is on the other foot.  So don’t cry for Obama.  It won’t start color revolutions in the streets to see him arrested and marched down the street in chains.  He did it to himself, and now he and many others must pay for the crimes they committed.  And no amount of fancy talk will help him now.  He’s busted!  And if people take to the streets to protest the arrest of Obama, we will bust them too, arrest by arrest, and if they get violent, with bone-crushing force. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Thank Goodness Kristi Noem Thought to Ask the Question: We don’t have to take our shoes off at the airport anymore

Thank goodness Kristi Noem thought to ask the question, because many things in government are just like this.  Someone comes up with a stupid rule, and we end up following it for the rest of our lives without question, even though it was dumb to begin with.  And that was certainly the case when it came to the security measures that were implemented after 9/11.  Our FBI and CIA didn’t do a very good job in detecting a terrorist cell within the United States training to fly planes in Florida, but not caring to land them, and our security got caught napping, so those terrorists were able to get onto commercial planes and use them as weapons of war.  And the crises of that moment made people clamor for corrective action, which human beings most often overreact to.  And the Department of Homeland Security was created, giving us the TSA, and the dumb policy of removing shoes at the airport while going through security.  Now, over twenty years later, it hasn’t saved anyone anything, but it has certainly cost a lot of time and misery.  And until Kristi Noem was put in charge of Homeland Security and asked everyone working there why we were still taking off our shoes at security checks, nobody had an answer.  The only thing they could say was that we were doing it because we had always done it.  Never was the question asked whether we should be doing it at all.  Thankfully, Kristi Noem, due to the weak reaction to that question, changed the policy, and we no longer have to remove our shoes at airport security checkpoints.  It’s a significant step toward addressing many issues that amusement parks have already identified.  An overreaction to security to cover the impediment of actually doing the job the first time is a dumb idea, and it’s good to see that policy go.

It has been terrible to deal with the security procedures since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The entire creation of the unionized TSA has been a disaster, making traveling by plane a miserable experience.  I try not to do it unless I have to travel overseas, because essentially it takes all day to travel.  I never feel comfortable arriving at the airport less than two hours before a flight because many things can go wrong, especially at security.  Nobody is saying that we don’t want security on flights.  However, it’s the kind of overcompensation that we see with the TSA that’s the problem.  Private security would be much better than unionized labor, which often fails to perform effectively in any field.  There is plenty of technology these days that can detect bomb making equipment just through a quick scan.  We don’t need to take off half our clothes through the demeaning process of vulnerability in front of hundreds of other people.  This idea of stripping away your identity into a near locker room vulnerability is just dumb and lazy.  And it never made us a safer society.  It just made us feel that way.  If people just did their jobs the first time, many of the well-known terrorist attempts that we know of on airplanes wouldn’t have happened.  However, these days, the technology is so advanced and intrusive that there’s no need to take off all your clothes to board an airplane.  With domestic flights, and I fly out of Cincinnati, if the destination is east of the Mississippi River, it’s much better and faster to drive.  And because of that, think of how much money airlines lose because of the TSA rules.

People don’t talk about it as much as they should. Think how much money Homeland Security has cost airline companies by being such a pain in the neck that people don’t buy plane tickets.  It’s a massive opportunity cost.  Before the creation of Homeland Security and the introduction of the TSA’s overly restrictive rules, many airlines had significantly larger hubs.  Delta operated a central hub that served numerous destinations from Cincinnati well into the 1990s.  Because flying was easy and not so intrusive, people chose to do it.  Once they turned the experience into essentially a locker room at the YMCA, it has cost airlines a lot of money in lost opportunity cost.  Some of the low-cost carriers have found a way to adapt somewhat.  However, the experience of flying has deteriorated significantly.  If you want to dress up and go somewhere to show the best version of you to the world, you don’t fly in a plane.  Because it’s such a demeaning experience.  And for a long time, amusement parks were just as bad.  However, they have recently upgraded their scanners, and as a result, they wave everyone through much faster.  The scanners can practically see through your clothing, leaving nothing to the imagination.  But at least you don’t have to strip down almost naked to go through security.  We live in a society that needs to do things faster, not slower, or safer.  We need people to do their jobs better the first time, and everything would work so much better.  And to Kristi Noem’s point, nobody had even thought to ask the question, “Why are we doing this dumb thing?” all this time.  When the answer was, “because we have always done it.” 

The convenience of flying and getting somewhere far away quickly has become a ridiculous compromise of personal merit, and it never should have been.  The airport’s safety policies have ruined the experience of traveling with others because people often show up in their pajamas, knowing that their travel day is going to be intrusive and demeaning. When you pay that much money for something, it shouldn’t feel the way it does.  It should be fun and rewarding.  People should dress nicely when going to the airport.  By default, due to excessive regulations, airports have become unpleasant places with excessive security, ineffective communication systems, and dirty and uncomfortable seats.  And the staff treat the whole experience like you’re lucky to be there, rather than being grateful that you bought a ticket that funded all their jobs.  The concept of prioritizing safety over profits, when in reality it was always laziness that was the real problem, has made owning an airline too complicated and a draining experience for customers.  And if not for Homeland Security and the TSA specifically, we’d have many more consumer options in airports that are much better for us than what we currently have.  And most of the time, it always starts with asking the right questions from leadership. “Why are we doing this dumb thing?”  And when nobody can answer it, you eliminate the policy.  Thank goodness, because of Kristi Noem, we no longer have to take our shoes off at the airport.  And hopefully, we can roll back many other misguided ideas that were implemented in haste to make people feel safe, when the reality was far from the case.  In all things economic, whether it’s amusement parks or airports, faster is better, and more options are always preferred.  And we don’t want dumb, mindless rules to ruin economic activity that should bring us joy and opportunity.  Just because lazy security guards don’t take their jobs very seriously and have to be turned into a union-led monstrosity to give an illusion of effectiveness, the truth is very far from it.

Rich Hoffman

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