Category: Doc Thompson

S.B.5 Would Have Saved $1.3 Billion in 2010: Yet the OEA says it’s teachers will suffer when the average teacher makes 55K?

The picture here refers to a report from the Columbus Dispatch which cites that if S.B.5 had been enacted during 2010, the state would have saved 1.3 Billion dollars. That’s a massive figure!

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW talks about the savings S.B.5 would have saved, and addresses the hypocrites within the Tea Party Movement that are now complaining about some of the budget cuts they pushed for.

You can see the whole article for the Columbus Dispatch here.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/26/senate-bill-5-saves-1-3b-study-says.html?sid=101

Most of the savings are not a direct savings to the state, but an indirect cost imposed by “step increases” which is the primary reason I am supporting S.B.5. At Lakota, as I’ve stated many times, the average teacher makes over 62K . When you study the reason Lakota, Mason, Lebanon and all the other large Southern Ohio districts need a levy passed, it is because the districts have to live up to their rising costs imposed by the “step increases” required by state law. So when I asked the question, “why can’t Lakota live within their 160 million dollar budget? Why can’t Lakota cut salaries since they are obviously inflated, and leave busing alone, keep the sports, keep the electives, don’t lay off teachers?” The response was, “we can’t, because we are obligated by state law.”

Step increases are the hidden villain here. I calculated that if the teachers at Lakota took a 30% reduction, which is reasonable considering what they are making, it would save Lakota $29 million a year which would mean the district wouldn’t have to ask for more money in an operating levy.

I’ve written about this elsewhere and if you want to see the other article click the link. All businesses whether they are service oriented or manufacturing oriented have a responsibility to keep their costs in line. One way that businesses do that is to use the 10-80-10 rule as it’s applied to labor. That rule states that 10% of your workforce will be your typical “top” performers, and they will get the most dramatic increases, 4% to 15% depending on the situation. 80% of your workers are average, and will typically get a standard 2% to 3% increase, otherwise considered a “cost of living” increase. And of course every place of business has approximately 10% that are poor performers and they won’t get an increase of any kind. Why? Because those bottom 10% you want to look for another job, and you want them to leave so you don’t have to pay them. It gives you a chance to hire somebody that might want to compete for the top 10% percentile. If you manage things correctly, your bottom 10% are the kind of people who your competition is hiring at the middle 80%, and you want that so you can maintain a competitive edge.

That’s the reason the teachers are protesting. Because their union knows the scam that they’ve been playing against the tax payer is falling apart now that their cost to society has reached a breaking point. Their strategy all along was to continue to push for higher taxes to pay for their scam and they had full confidence based on their track record over the last two decades that they’d achieve that goal. Now, compare what you’ve learned here about step increases, and the imposed cost to the tax payer, and the amount of money teachers are making on average, and then look at Patricia Frost-Brooks, President of the OEA, comments in that same mentioned article from The Dispatch.

“If you lower the wages, and your health insurance goes up, then what does that do to a family? How is the family going to sustain their livelihood?” said Patricia Frost-Brooks, president of the Ohio Education Association.

What planet is she living on? Doesn’t she realize that her teachers are making A LOT more money than the average worker in Ohio? You can read more about Patricia’s view of the world at http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2010/09/lets-revitalize-ohio-not-go-backwards-by-ohio-education-association-president-patricia-frost-brooks.html Notice she doesn’t mention much about kids in that article. Only politics.

Patricia goes into great detail attempting to demean Governor Kasich before the election. The OEA is a lobby group in Columbus where Patricia Frost-Brooks is president of the Ohio Education Association, a statewide union representing 130,000 members in k-12 schools, public colleges and universities and education support professionals. So when you listen to what she says, consider that she has one primary job and that is to protect her members. And in her view, she if protecting her members by driving up their wages, paying them very well, so they will have the expendable income to give back some to her lobby group. It’s that simple.

She accuses Kasich of misleading. She makes that assumption based on her own actions, so she assumes that the rest of the world is playing the same game, and they aren’t. Patricia reveals much of herself in that Progress Ohio Article. She is against school reform, she is against reducing the salaries of teachers to help districts deal with their costs, and she genuinely believes that somehow education costs can continue to expand as they have forever. She is completely out of touch, and if she’s the leader of the union, and is one of the most “rational” minds, then what do the “rank and file” believe? Where do they think all the money comes from? Do they not have a basic understanding of economics?

But Tom Ash, director of governmental development for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said school boards may not do away with all automatic pay increases.

“At milestones during their career, I think there should be step increases in an attempt to retain those people because you don’t want to lose them,” he said. “But the notion that you should do it every year, I don’t know that that’s necessary when you’re also providing an increase on the base salary.”

Mr. Ash is speaking my language. That’s the reality of the situation. For some teachers that are exceptional, I’ll use Lakota as an example, like Mr. Duff, who is a science teacher that I think is great, I don’t want to see him go anywhere. I’d be happy to tell the school board to throw money at a teacher like that. He should make 70 to 80K per year. But for every teacher like him, there are 4 or 5 that are just cruising through their careers, and they do not deserve to make more than 55K per year, no matter how much education they obtain for themselves.

You have to understand that this whole thing is a system. The OEA for years has lobbied to create legislation that creates incentives for teachers to obtain a master’s degree. For many teachers, obtaining a master’s degree is practical and necessary. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 52 percent of teachers hold a master’s degree or higher. Although some states require teachers to obtain master’s degrees, teachers often seek advanced degrees to increase their salaries and obtain new skills.

Read more: Requirements for a Master’s in Teaching | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_6388286_requirements-master_s-teaching.html#ixzz1FA2fulvD

There is a reason Patricia and the OEA wants its teachers to have a master’s degree. That is because the OEA also represent teachers who work for universities and if every teacher working in Ohio continues their education and gets a master’s degree so they can qualify for the financial rewards of obtaining that degree then the money funneled into the colleges can help pay the salaries of the professors staffed at those institutions. It’s what the “working people” in know would call, “job security.” The OEA knows that their teachers at the K-12 level are likely to seek that higher degree if they can afford it with good wages to begin with, but the promise of even higher wages are at the end of that degree. Here are the tuition costs at Ohio State, as listed at their website.
Estimated Costs for U.S. Students

All costs are subject to change without notice. A complete list of quarterly tuition charges by program may be found at the Office of the Registrar’s website. http://gradadmissions.osu.edu/Costs.html

• $11,298 – tuition cost for a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, aslyee, or refugee and a legal resident of the State of Ohio;
• $28,746 – tuition cost for a US citizen, permanent resident, aslyee, or refugee whose residence is outside of Ohio;
• $13,980 – estimated annual expenses for room, board, insurance, books and supplies

The truth of the matter is it’s all about money. It’s always been about money, and it’s a game played at the tax payers’ expense and it has to stop.

Look at this ad from “Teacher World” which is a teacher recruiting website.

With an average teacher salary of $55,931,* teaching in Ohio is a great career choice. Whether you like bustling cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland or state capital Columbus, or prefer smaller towns or rural communities, Ohio has it all. Learn about teaching in Ohio on Teacher World.
http://www.teacher-world.com/statespages/Ohio.html

 

The OEA knows what it’s doing. It’s a shell game. They manage to obtain for their teachers above average wages so they can funnel some of that money into the higher education system. They also have to create the incentive for teachers to make more than enough money so they won’t suffer when they must pay their union dues, because the OEA needs that money to lobby elected officials and participate in the political system.

During this entire process, the OEA has managed to wrestle control away from school boards all over the state so that this financial balance cannot be upset by local communities not wanting to pay outrageous taxes. The school boards are brought into the shell game each November when they attend the OSBA, (Ohio School Board Association) event in Columbus.
http://www.ohioschoolboards.org/osba-capital-conference

 

Check out this video. This is how they sell it.

Once the school board members are taught what they can and can’t cover as board members, the implementations that are put in place by the OEA are safe from scrutiny. This is why the first and only thing school boards are allowed to deal with are the costs associated with direct operating expenditures, which only occupy under 20% of a school district budget. Notice how many times teachers and administrators mention in that video that the only hug a child gets in a day or hot meal they eat comes from the school system. It is ironic that they sell their service and the necessity for the massive amount of money flowing within it by creating the perception that they are the only chance kids have for success in life.

Yet, the message is effective, and the employees believe what they are told from leadership. One person that believed the message was Ryan Fahrenkempt who was teaching at Lakota last year before being forced to resign in August of 2010. As a Lakota educator, Fahrenkamp hosted a science day for students and was featured in a newspaper article about the shortage of male teachers in the elementary classroom.

He was quoted in the 2008 article while he was teaching sixth-grade at the former Shawnee Elementary School.
“I think that boys at this age need that male influence outside just the home,” he said. “In some cases, they don’t get that in the home,” Fahrenkamp said.
http://www.oxfordpress.com/news/crime/former-teacher-in-federal-court-on-child-porn-charges-1044534.html

Oh, he wasn’t the only one. Just one month later the Mason School System had this happen.

How did Stacy Schuler see herself and her role as a teacher? Schuler said she isn’t perfect and she knows of a healthier lifestyle than she is living now. “I used to wake up earlier to come in [to the school] and work out,” Schuler said. “But I just wasn’t getting enough sleep, and as much as I preach a healthy lifestyle, I would say I’m not a good example of a healthy lifestyle right now.”
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/who-is-stacy-schuler-reading-between-the-lines/

What do the parents think about this behavior?  Listen to a mom read a note from her son during the last school board meeting in Mason, Feb 22nd 2011.  Her son went to Mason several years ago, he graduated in 2007.  This proves that the recent news went on for quite some time.  The woman’s testimony is at approximately the 1/4 mark of the video.  George Coates named in this video was the AP who’s genitals were found on Stacy Schuler’s computer upon her arrest and was a direct supervisor to Ms. Schuler.

http://www.icrctv.net/mason-board-of-education-22211

And it’s happening all over the country. That video you saw from the OSBA, about how school is the only safe haven for many kids is completely misleading. Parents have to be more involved in their kids’ lives. Money will not make that issue go away, because we cannot trust our kids completely to school systems. There are a lot of good people who work within the system, but schools are not the utopia’s that the OSBA envisions and tries to sell to its members.

Click this link to visit a page that attempts to capture all the school scandals in the country. Just pick a city. http://www.schoolteachernews.com/scandal.html

Parents must be an important part of a kid’s life. Schools have sold themselves as an option while busy parents conduct their lives, and in the chaos, people like Patricia, of the OEA, and Governor Strickland, pandering to union money has manipulated tax payers into funding their personal social agendas. And the experiment has been a terrible, miserable failure. Not only is the per pupil spending in Ohio at 10k per student that money has done nothing to prepare children for the world marketplace. MTV is proving to be the stronger influence among young people, and kids get that information for free. The education reforms that Patricia fears so vehemently, like competition with school vouchers, and competitive salaries controlled by school boards, are coming because the OEA have been caught not doing what is right for the children and the communities that send their children to their care every day. Public school is a valuable asset, but is producing at a mediocre level. Not at the level that the wages being asked for dictate. The OEA has attempted to cover that fact with smoke and flashy imagery. But they are the failures behind the curtain. Remember the Wizard of Oz? Patricia is the one behind the curtain in this particular case.

What S.B.5 will do is it will save tax money indirectly, with anticipated increases that used to be mandated by the state will now be controlled at the local level, where tax payers can help the school board adjust their costs to the supplied budget. And it will take control away from the shell game that the OEA has been conducting for years.

That’s why S.B.5 is a great bill. And it’s also why the OEA is so steadfast against it. It’s all about control and manipulation. That’s what Kasich means when he says he wants to return “management control” to local communities. That’s how the economics of the state get balanced and why Ohio can be a model for how the United States as a country should function. We cannot allow a central authority driven by union manipulation to drive up the costs of education in our communities, like it is now. That central authority has to be removed as an influence because they are not elected by the tax payer, yet act as a government authority. The experiment has failed terribly, and it’s time to try a method that puts the responsibility on the local community, and allows competition to do its work of driving costs down, in this case up to 1.3 Billion just for the impact of S.B.5 alone, and make the best and brightest employees excel while the mediocre stay in a budget range that does not destroy the ability of the community to fund them.

The question is, will the communities of Ohio allow themselves to see through the smoke screens and do what is obviously right or will they choose to allow themselves to be scammed by a ruthless adversary. Only time will tell.

Rich Hoffman

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

Paying for Protection: The Organized Crime of Teacher Unions

Should a teacher have to pay dues to a union in order to work for a public school? Of course not, yet that is exactly what’s happening in Ohio and many other states. Such a policy is no different from organized crime, where protection money is required in order to avoid some retaliatory measure. This type of behavior has absolutely no place in modern education!

Doc Thompson talks to Tracy Bailey of the Association of American Educators about alternatives to teachers unions and politics along party politics. It is a fascinating discussion that deserves review. If you are truly hungry for facts, make sure to listen to this interview. Bailey discusses how teachers are listed at the top of many public opinion polls as to people society trusts. But union leaders are viewed equal to used car salesmen in a trust worthy factor, and there is a growing disconnect between those two gaps.

Check out Tracy’s link here.
http://www.aaeteachers.org/

Yet the stories of impropriety continue among the tax payer employees known as teachers. Lakota had a major scandal recently in January from Ryan Fahremkemp and Mason had one with Stacy Schuler in February and there are more to follow on her coat tails. Read this next bit of information coming out of Mason.

You can read the whole article from The Whistleblower at this link.
http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Saturday_February_26_2011.mht

Sex and Drugs for All: The Mason Schools

Here’s yet another Mason teacher, Daniel P. Little, who is still teaching in the district.

Several of our readers said we didn’t report enough detail about Mason teacher Dan Little, 28, and his arrest in the midst of his sex and drugs two-day party spree in Room 403 at the Hampton Inn on Crescent Avenue in Covington, Kentucky. Also present at the party when the arrests took place were five other people: another Mason teacher Russell Fallon, Mason assistant wrestling coach Jabree Jones, Tasha C. Davis, Carrie Little (Dan’s wife), and John L. Miller.
____________________________________________________

I don’t know about you, but I expect better behavior out of the teachers we hire with our tax dollars. I am aware that there are always bad apples in a bundle, but what doesn’t get analyzed from all the chanting protestors in the Ohio and Wisconsin State Houses is that there is a level of expectation that the public has about their teachers. Unfortunately many tax payers throw up their hands in frustration and have stopped “expecting,” because bad behavior goes unpunished, or is brushed under a rug by administrators. That is the crime here, and that is why we are finding more of these stories from teachers that are abusing “The System.”

It is certainly not new, this idea that teachers want to have sex with students, or administrators are having sex with teachers, or teachers like in the case involving Daniel Little are getting together with a group of other teachers along with his wife to engage in extremely bad behavior. This wasn’t just one teacher and one isolated incident much like the Schuler case wasn’t just sex with one student. She was involved with the Assistant Principle also, which has not been discussed much. And Dan Little wasn’t just having a crazy drug party with his wife in a hotel room. It was with several other teachers, people we expect to teach our kids about the negatives of drugs.

But schools hire public relations people known as “spokesman” to clean up these issues and present a public face that the media can assist in portraying. Notice how Dan Little is portrayed on the Mason School System website.

Staff Awards and Honors
Mason City Schools’ staff members are at the top of their profession.
• 31 Mason teachers earned National Board Certification, MMS science teacher Dan Little and Mason Heights second grade teacher Greg Hill won the Rising Above Teacher Award sponsored by Panera Bread Company
Check it out for yourself. http://masonohioschools.com/district.cfm?subpage=185

 

Do you think Panera Bread wants it’s Rising Above Teacher Award going to a drug abuser? Of course not. And would the public be inclined to pass another school levy if they knew about such bad behavior? Of course not. So it doesn’t get talked about. It gets spun and twisted so a moral judgment cannot be made, and by the time the next levy hits the ballot box, the voters have forgotten, because all they see is the awards that were won and published by the school.

That’s where the unions come to play, and that is what the teachers are paying for with their union dues, protection. Dan Little makes $86,000 and he’s only 28 years old. The union has collectively bargained in favor of a teacher like him obviously. Who thinks that kind of financial compensation would be available in the private sector? But that’s not the only thing the union dues purchase for a teacher like him. The union makes it so difficult for the administration to investigate and punish bad behavior that administrators have given up too.

Administrators and I know this is a hundred percent true because I know some of them personally, spend their time protecting image and not enforcing policy. The inmates do run the asylum and everyone knows it, within the school systems. It is a running joke.

Now I get a lot of letters from people who don’t want to see it. Or they get mad at me for pointing it out, because in their minds, they want to maintain the illusion that they want to believe. And I say to those people that they are irresponsible participants of destructive behavior which directly corrupts our youth. If they cannot see the error of their self-imposed blindness, then they are as bad as the people who commit these terrible acts, because the public trusts these tax funded employees to care for their children.

I started this quest by asking a simple question. Is a the average teacher salary at the Lakota School District worth 62K. For me, no. I think that is way too high as an average. The average needs to be in the lower 50K range to meet the budget requirements. But if the public is going to be required to pay teachers like Dan Little 86K a year, is it too much to ask that he uphold a high moral order in his private life? Is a person with obvious social problems qualified to make so much? Is he even qualified to teach one child let alone a class, or several classes? Yet those questions cannot be asked because the teachers union with all their collective bargaining agreements put in place for “safety” of the employee prevents even asking the question, because the pursuit of justice is far too costly to overcome the organized crime strategies of the union.

That is the heart of the problem. There are a lot of good ideas out there. Doc Thompson as a radio talk host has went above and beyond in examining them. You can listen to hours of his testimony on this site or simply visit this extensive online video library with sound bites from his show. http://www.mefeedia.com/feeds/51484/overmanwarrior

The question is, as the supervisors of these employees, which is all of us that pay taxes, is the system the way it is now to your liking? Do you think it works? Or do you want to do like David Letterman said recently, “why don’t we just throw more and more money at education until it works.” It doesn’t matter if it’s 20K or 30K per pupil! The union bosses bet that you don’t have the fortitude to oppose them, because as long as the bad stuff is kept from your eyes and you can have deniability to impropriety, you can still look at yourself in the mirror each day and feel ok about things. They know human nature doesn’t like to fight, and they have built an empire on the backs of our children at our expense in more ways than just money, and they know most people won’t challenge them directly.

Meanwhile the bad behavior continues in the shadows. It’s everywhere if you want to lift up the rug and look. And we are paying for it all. Our kids watch us and can measure our blindness, and they will take that lack of vision into their adulthood. And when we are all grandparents looking over our children’s lives and the wrecks they have become, the guilt will be on us all for turning away from trouble, and lacking the courage to even question a system that is rooted in tyranny to protect the fates of our children from the organized corruption that resides in the human soul.

Rich Hoffman

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

Bill Cunningham and the Hot Fudge Sundae: Betting on a S.B.5 Referendum.

Want to hear leadership? Listen to this interview of John Kasich by Bill Cunningham from 700 WLW. Kasich is defending the Ohio State Senate Bill S.B.5 from Cunningham who has taken a surprisingly soft stance against the bill, surprising because Cunningham has a long history of looking for leadership in elected officials that take strong positions; yet he is now siding with politicians like Jessie Jackson and Todd Portune, which is highly unusual.

One of the reasons that Cunningham cites he is taking a soft position on S.B.5 is out of fear that the labor unions will be encouraged to put the bill on a referendum to be voted on by the voters of Ohio. Cunningham believes it’s easier and more conciliatory to the unions to allow them to be a part of the negotiation process, and it may take the edge off and avoid a referendum.

I never had illusions that S.B.5 would avoid a referendum. After all, when it comes to union activity, they have a history of pushing and shoving until they get what they want, so a referendum that is well financed by the union is a certainty one way or the other.

So when that referendum happens, I am making the formal announcement that I will bet Bill Cunningham a hot fudge Sundae that the referendum will be defeated when the unions do collect all their signatures and place it on a ballot. Cunningham predicts a 60-40 defeat in favor of the unions based on a 1997 decision regarding workers compensation. What Cunningham isn’t taking into account is the presence of the Tea Party Movement that was not in place in 1997. This time when the unions send out teachers and fireman wrapped in the flag, there will be a counter to them in Tea Party members all across this state telling the truth behind the pro-union campaign.

Even though the numbers of the Tea Party are less, I will take the enthusiasm of the Tea Party over the rhetoric of union organization in a head to head battle between right and wrong any day, and I firmly believe that this new political element will swing public opinion armed with facts the opposite way that Cunningham predicts.

Cunningham has also stated that if Shannon Jones had not introduced S.B.5 in its aggressive form that all the protests and anger created by the unions would subside. But the truth is, Wisconsin attempted such a minor reform, and we see that the intensity of the protests are every bit as radical, so it does Governor Kasich no good to negotiate because unions have not shown any interest in the past of doing such a thing. Only now, with a Republican majority faced with a nearly 10 billion dollar deficit, are there any cries from unions to “talk.” Kasich knows it will do no good to “talk,” and I respect his position because it represents many in this state that feel the same level of frustration.

So the real battle for S.B.5 will be decided by the voters in the state of Ohio whether or not Kasich plays nice. Any reform attempted will bring on union aggression. It’s unavoidable, because the unions are a radical organization that only understands forward advancement. They don’t know how to give back once it’s realized that they asked for too much.

If I’m wrong, which is about as rare as an eclipse, I’ll be happy to buy Cunningham a hot fudge sundae from UDF. But my bet is that these new elements that exist in the political landscape will tip the balance of power in a new direction not to the liking of the public sector unions.

To display this argument I submit exhibit “A.” Witness David Letterman talking to Rand Paul and you can see how the world of yesterday “thought” and how the world of tomorrow will “think.”

Letterman said, “I think he’s wrong, but I’m just not sure why.” A referendum against S.B.5 is referred to in much the same way by Cunningham. His political instincts tell him that S.B.5 is wrong, yet there is a part of him that understands what the Tea Party represents. The truth will be revealed in the tax payer as they vote on the battle ground of Ohio’s ballot boxes, and it won’t be in favor of continued union control over the public sector.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Lists 12 Million in Cuts: But What about the Wages?

During the meeting at Lakota East on February 23, 2011 it was discussed that Lakota was going to cut 12 million dollars from the budget. The contents of the news report and details of those cuts are included here as reported by the Pulse Journal for prosperity to record. Among the many things said are that Lakota needs a new revenue stream in order to survive into the future. Really?

This interview with Doc Thompson below is especially potent. If you have any doubt about impropriety among the public sector employees, then listen to this broadcast. If you want to continue walking around blind and gullible, than only read the latest news from Lakota also below. If you want the whole story then read the article and listen to the broadcast together, so take a break from your schedule and enjoy the broadcast. While you listen compare what you hear to the news released from Lakota, as reported by Lindsey Hilty, about the specific cuts announced by the Lakota Administration. I will save my closing comments for the end of that article.

By Lindsey Hilty, Staff Writer Updated 8:22 AM Thursday, February 24, 2011
LIBERTY TWP. — Tensions ran high at Lakota East High School Wednesday night as more than 200 concerned parents and community members listened to how cuts would impact students next year.
“We’ve looked at all areas of our budget — everywhere,” interim Superintendent Ron Spurlock said. “…We have to start living within our means.”

Many of the budget cuts, he said, likely could be permanent even with the passage of a levy.
“It’s not a pretty picture,” Spokeswoman Laura Kursman said. “And it’s hard to communicate bad news.”
Another meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Lakota West High School to hear about how $12.2 million in proposed cuts to the operating budget may be implemented pending school board approval.
Parents who can’t attend sessions are asked to fill out a survey on the district’s web site to help with some of the future tough choices.

“I’m very worried,” parent Tricia McCaffrey said. “The Lakota School District I moved in to eight years ago is not the school district I have now when it matters for my son. Losing electives and going to state minimums is not why I chose to pay Lakota taxes.”

Elementary reductions: $3 million, 50 employees cut
The goal is to maintain reading supports, supplemental classes taught by specialists, media center access and an accelerated gifted programs. To be cut: sixth-grade band; third-grade gifted program and services for grades four through six; gym, art, music and library time to 30 minutes each per week for grades one to six; one reading specialist per school; three media specialists sharing 14 schools; literacy coaches and two fewer English as a Second Language instructional aides.

Junior school reductions: $1.7 million, 25.5 employees cut
Reduce day from eight bells to seven with 26-minute study hall, four core content classes and two electives. Programs eliminated include wood shop, English double block, band team teaching, jazz band, an intervention math class and department performance supplemental contracts. There will be two fewer media specialists.
High School reductions: $1.9 million, 28 employees cut

Elective classes to be based on enrollment numbers with limited options, elimination of seventh bell; class size increases and 23.5 credits possible with 21 needed to graduate.

Special Services: $858,500, 19 employees cut
Six fewer special education aides, one counselor per junior school and reduced nursing aids.
Athletic reductions: $1 million cut

No funds for junior school athletics; $550 per high school athlete per sport with no family cap; supervision supplemental and sports information directors positions eliminated, and decreased transportation budgets.
Central Office: $874,143, 5.5 employees cut

Elimination of an assistant superintendent and several central office support positions. Changes to contracted services and a hold on filling positions also led to savings.
Transportation: $2.8 million cut

Already implemented in part, but in August, no student within two miles of school will receive transportation. This will impact half of Lakota’s student population.

Now, that they’ve announced the cuts, keep in mind that the average salary at Lakota is 62K per year for teachers, and those wages occupy over 75% of the total budget. When S.B.5 is passed in the Ohio State Senate and the House of Representatives, which will happen soon, the School Board will then have the power to begin discussing wage issues and other catastrophic costs that are currently being imposed by the teachers union. It would be my hope that the LEA would come to the School Board to renegotiate their very expensive contracts, but they won’t. So make sure to let the school board know that the best way for them to cut costs is to get their ballooning salary expenses under control.

After S.B.5 is passed the administration will not be able to blame the state for those costs any more. The power to control the costs of the district will fall within our district once again. So make sure you let them know that you know that. Because when it is discussed that a new revenue stream is needed, it is clear that the administration doesn’t understand the situation. A school can only consume revenue in the form of tax dollars. They cannot create revenue unless they sell something. Their solution is to implement some cosmetic cuts and ask for more money during the 2011 fiscal year. And that’s not going to happen. So what’s their plan besides asking for more money?

They don’t have one. They are going to have to think differently. Because asking for more revenue to feed wages they’ve allowed to escalate irresponsibly is not going to work. It’s a complete lack of management.

It’s time for a new plan, or to step away and let people who know what they’re doing to manage the situation. The old way won’t work because the community isn’t poised to pass another levy no matter how they chose to spin it with their new spokesman. “Lakota hasn’t passed a levy since 2005.” What will never be forgotten, because I’ll never let people forget it, is that after that levy was passed, in 2008, the LEA bent the community over backwards for increased wages which drove up the costs we are seeing today. So we won’t be traveling back down that path again, no matter how it gets manipulated to the public.

The union should have renegotiated their deal instead of letting employees be let go to preserve their own selfish interests. The cuts Lakota announced don’t begin to deal with the districts real problem, and does not deserve an approved levy in 2011. Once the administration brings the wages under control and the union agrees to some wage reductions, then we can discuss further funding from the community.

Rich Hoffman

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

A Democrat is Supporting S.B.5 Bill in Ohio: Putting people ahead of politics and emotion

As Columbus, Ohio fills with union protestors like expected, the “real” working people are left to other devices to participate in this issue. After all, the protestors are making the case for themselves why we should pass Senate Bill 5. The primary reason aside from all the financial reasons is it is obvious that the public sector will continue to function in their absence, because life is going on while thousands of them take off all at the same time to march on the Ohio capital.

Those of us with real jobs, where our value is missed even if we take off one day, must write, give interviews to newspapers, talk on the multiple talk radio stations, or vent our frustrations at the hundreds of tea party meetings that conjugate all across the state a few times a month.

The intent of the protests is to look like a unified force, and such a force is supposed to function to intimidate the election process. It’s worked in the past, and union bosses are hoping it will work this time. They have a list of Senator’s that they are hoping to intimidate which I’ve included below. But their overall strategy is to make the whole issue of collective bargaining appear to be an “us against them” kind of thing, or a “poor rising up against the rich.” These are tired diatribes however and because of these strategies over the years it has finally caught up with us. If S.B.5 is not passed or if it is passed but watered down to appease the mob, the people who vote it down will be held directly responsible. Because like any right thinking person who understands economics, this issue is not about political revenge, or rich versus poor, but is about balancing our financial books and creating a business friendly environment for potential jobs, and it crosses party lines.

Listen to Jeff Berding, a democrat from southern Ohio speak to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW about his support for S.B.5.

If you are a frequent visitor to this site you know that Jeff isn’t an isolated politician when it comes to understanding reason. There are hundreds of hours of such conversations documented here just like the one you just heard. I admit there are hundreds of thousands of words written here and many hundreds of articles, videos and sound bites, so it can be overwhelming. That information is here like a library to help discuss topics that aren’t covered by the popular press. You can search for that information by checking the calendar off to the side of this article.

You can also pull them up by Googling “Overmanwarrior” along with whatever topic you want info for.

What’s happening in the country is Americans saw what happened to our film hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California when he started strong only to be wiped out by the unions, unable to do anything to stop the financial bleeding in the state, much the way they are attempting to do in Ohio. The unions have a long history of this kind of thing, and it’s designed to scare politicians that the people elect to represent them, which actually subvert the process. That’s one of the biggest aspects of these protests that are wrong. Public Sector Unions use money they’ve made off the tax payer to lobby members of elected officials through strong-arm tactics to subvert the will of the people who elected those politicians. That’s a very bad thing. The people who are currently in the state house of Ohio, and Wisconsin are there because tax payers do not want to become the next California, and expect bold action to return our states to prosperity lacking deficits. And the people protesting and speaking out against S.B.5 are short-sighted and selfish. They are looking at their tiny sector of the economy, which has a major impact on the whole, and seeks to preserve their imposition on society.

Some Senators have given the unions hope because of comments these Senators have made, and they are the targets of these protests. The protests are designed to break these senators’s resolve to reason out of fear from reprisal or the possibility of not being re-elected.

Sen. Bill Sietz R – Cincinnati District 8

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-8068
Email: SD08@senate.state.oh.us
“While there is much in the bill I think is good, there are some things I think are decidedly a bridge too far,” said Sen. Bill Seitz,

Sen. Frank LaRose R – Fairlawn District 27

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 2nd Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-4823 (614) 466-4823
Email: SD27@senate.state.oh.us
Sen. LaRose, said he doesn’t believe the system is functioning as well as it should, but “I think that reforming collective bargaining doesn’t mean getting rid of it.”

Sen. Keith Faber R – Celina District 12

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-7584 (614) 466-7584
Email: SD12@senate.state.oh.us
The question is, what will the bill look like? Sen. Faber,, the Senate’s No. 2 GOP leader, said he was confident there would be “clear majority support in my caucus.”

Sen. Scott Oelslager R – Canton District 29

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 2nd Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-0626 (614) 466-0626
Email: SD29@senate.state.oh.us
Sen. Oelslager, expressed the most definitive opposition to the bill. “I’ve been a strong supporter of collective bargaining my entire career.”

Sen. Gayle Manning R – North Ridgeville District 13

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, Ground Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 644-7613 (614) 644-7613
Email: SD13@senate.state.oh.us
Sen. Manning, said she understands the teachers’ perspective, but she also understands the budget deficit and has not made a decision on the bill.

Sen. Bill Beagle R – Tipp City District 5

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-6247 (614) 466-6247
_Sen. Beagle, said the bill’s replacement of continuing teacher contracts with one-year contracts could be difficult to implement and is a fairness issue because administrators can have five-year contracts.

Sen. Jimmy Stewart R – Albany District 20

Majority Floor Leader
Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-8076 (614) 466-8076
Email: SD20@senate.state.oh.us
Sen. Stewart, would not say whether he supports the bill, but he stressed he is searching for some middle ground with “some of my labor friends.”

Sen Jim Hughes R – Columbus District 16

Senate Building
1 Capitol Square, 1st Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-5981 (614) 466-5981
Email: SD16@senate.state.oh.us

Sen. Hughes, said he is keeping an open mind on the bill and offered no commitments to its major provisions.

 

It’s not hard to see how some of these senators might be intimidated by the constant chants of “Kill the Bill.” To have emotional testimony from firefighters, police and teachers proclaiming that they are the hinge pins of society will work on your conscience if you are not a strong-willed person to begin with. After all, people are people and nobody wants to hurt anybody when it comes down to it. So it’s difficult to reason fact from fiction when emotion is used as the argument.

If you’ve worked on a school levy campaign like I have, you learn to see the false prophets and all the emotional testimony. Even though these are senators, it is hard to develop the experience needed to do what is right when people pull on your heart-strings. But that’s what has to be done. So be sure to send those fine people an email letting them know that they can walk that plank of sharks protesting in Columbus and you’ll be there for them. After all, think how it must feel to have hundreds, maybe thousands of emails, and letters filling their offices while they can’t even go to lunch without seeing a sea of protestors chanting at them. The protests are designed like torture, to alter people’s reality and make them think less clearly.

The reality is 15K, 20K or even 70K is not very many people. The real mass is out there in the plains and hills of Ohio, and they are busy working and watching. And if politicians waver from their task, those politicians will be removed and new ones put in place until reform does happen. It’s as simple as that.

If anyone questions the level of corruption at play here listen to Richard Trumka brag about his influence over the White House. If anybody hears this and doesn’t think there’s something wrong you’ve completely lost your way.

That is just another reason why all this public union business has to stop. It is an issue that transcends Democrats and Republicans. It’s too important to play politics with. And it requires courage in the face of adversity. The unions are betting that they can scare away enough Republics off S.B.5 through sheer intimidation. They don’t have to worry about the Democrats not voting their way, because they put those people in office……….with our tax money. Who do you think those Democrats represent? The farmers, laborers, businessmen, who aren’t, and don’t want to be represented by a union?

Congratulations Jeff Berding for reaching across the aisle and showing the kind of boldness these times require. It may hurt politically in the short-term, but it will give you a proud story to tell your grandchildren someday when they are looking for a hero and you can offer them one with your grand story. Because doing what’s hard is what we take pride in when life darkens around us.

And Senator Sietze, I was inspired by your speech last year calling on Governor Strickland to “lead.” Well, now you have a Governor willing to “lead.”

I personally think your reasonable comments about refining S.B.5 and reading it thoroughly is wise. But remember, the only reason Democrats and the unions are willing to talk now is because they pushed everything too far to the point of breaking the tax payer backs, and they see that it’s a real possibility of losing forever collective bargaining. The problem with Republicans, traditionally, is they always back off the throttle when they shouldn’t. It should be a positive to take the high road. But the political opposition never does, and if you “negotiate” too much, that window will close forever. We arrived at this point in history because Democrats pushed and pushed and pushed while good people took the high road.

I get the high and low negotiation process. I’ve done it myself many times. But when it comes to the kind of activity that goes on in collective bargaining, use the strong cards you have when you have them, and play the game to win in the long run. Not just to appease the current masses. It’s best to avoid a referendum process, but consider how many of those people in unions vote purely as Democrats because of their pay check. So long as there are public unions involved in politics we will never know what is the true nature of our Republic, because the numbers will always be skewed. Unions tell people how to vote and that’s a problem.

Being nice won’t fix this problem. It was imposed on all of us by years of greed and ruthless manipulation and it falls on us now to act with uncommon valor.

Rich Hoffman

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

Teachers Cheat in Wisconsin: Lying about why they’re off work

During school levy campaigns, it doesn’t matter if it’s Lakota, Mason, Little Miami, Lebanon, just name the Ohio district and you’ll find a multitude of accusations of impropriety on behalf of the teachers. Teachers through their unions have learned how to “game” the system, and they’ll do whatever they can do to achieve results for themselves. This has been most obvious to those of us that work on anti-levy campaigns where State Revised Code prohibits school officials and administrators to use school resources to work on campaigns for levy requests, but they do it anyway.

Teachers and administrators participate openly in extortion tactics such as cutting busing to make transportation inconvenient on parents of the district, and other cosmetic cuts imposed for much the same reason. There is a level of arrogance in these school systems that you might experience from organized crime elements, yet we send our kids to these institutions and pay the tolls because we don’t have much choice. It’s easy for us to turn away from the crime because much of it is done in the gray areas of the law.

You can learn a lot by observing people while under duress, and now that there are protests in two states over legislation that is seeking to end collective bargaining, there’s a lot of duress from unions. The union rank and file is now out of their comfort zone and showing what they truly are, including President Obama, who has attached himself to the movement. And what we are seeing is much of what many of us feared in our deepest darkest anxieties. At the protests in Wisconsin teachers, the same people that we trust to teach our children are openly seeking doctor notes from physicians that have made themselves available to falsify documents to excuse those teachers while they protest.

Doc Thompson has some great sound bites with examples of this behavior which is extremely disgusting. He also has some great quotes from the testimony Jeff Berding who is a Democrat that has come out in support of the S.B.5. Jeff testified to collective bargaining abuses to Cincinnati’s personnel costs that are growing 18 percent annually. The city’s contract with police gives officers an average of $87 an hour for working holidays and can let workers retire with six-figure sums for unused leave, totaling $93 million. Listen to all that from Doc himself from the February 21, 2011 show.

If you really want to see what is behind this type of insidious behavior, look who emerged from his Clown Rally in Washington, Ed Schultz. It would seem that Ed couldn’t get a crowd to come to him, so he went to the crowd. Listening to these people says a lot about their mentality. What they are chanting has nothing to do with a middle class life style. What they want is essentially un-American. It is clearly socialist theories that people like Ed have been pushing for years. (That’s why the system is bankrupt, Eddie.)

It’s a good thing to know these things, because the next time these schools ask for a levy, people will know what is behind the numbers. So I encourage those protests to continue as they are and show us all what you’re made of. I’ve known for a long time. Now, it’s time the rest of America see it for themselves.


I wonder what the parents of those kids think? I’d be ashamed if my kid was participating in this vile, disgusting, hippie-like behavior. Maybe that’s why these kids are doing it, because their parents yearn for the radicalism of the 60’s. Maybe they get the ideas from MTV and through their music which again craves the radical 60’s. It’s probably a little bit of both those things topped off with the influence of radical teachers toeing the union line on a daily basis. My opinion is that nobody in the United States should behave like this. This behavior belongs in some third world country, because that’s what this behavior gets you. And to all you left winged hippie sympathizers, all you’re doing is proving Glenn Beck right. He called this behavior from you people over a year ago. If this is what education is all about these days, I want NONE of my money to go to it, because it’s not working.

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

The Hive Colony: Union Protests Ignore Rational Warnings

On this site are literally hundreds of hours of radio broadcasts not just from one host, but multiple hosts, and not always from the same station, although primarily from 700 WLW. Why? Well, I’ve been a “working man” all of my life. I’ve been on all sides of the labor issue, read many, many books and newspapers, but WLW has always been a good source of information. I’ve listened to WLW for three decades and most of the time they are right on. It’s not some right-winged conspiracy. They talk about the topics that people want to hear about, so if you want to know what society thinks about something, talk radio is a great finger on the pulse of modern civilization.

Listen below to Darryl Parks covering the S.B.5 Bill.

When these organized elements usually represented by unions and democrats express anger at talk radio, and Tea Party type people, they are showing their vast ignorance, and it is embarrassing to know those people actually vote. The reason I say that is they have an obligation to American Society to learn about the world around them, yet they don’t do it. They tend not to read books, or newspapers, unless its for the sports stats, and they are easily manipulated by corrupt union bosses that are bent in a socialist direction.

Tea Party types, conservatives, and people over the age of 30 unless they are working for a powerful public sector unions, tend to read other pages of the newspaper besides the sports page, they read books, they watch Fox News because Fox News represents their world outlook, and they probably listen to talk radio during part of their day.

I’m aware, because my stats show it, that there are thousands and thousands of people looking at this site every day, and half of those people agree with me, and the other half are scanning my work to see if they can poke holes in what I post. For those people I put up all these radio broadcasts and video. There are well over a thousand videos on this site and I’ve watched every single one of them at least once. I’ve read more books than a whole lawn full of protestors, and for the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written here, I’ve researched millions of words to get to the content. So I have no sympathy for ignorance.

While these union protestors drive around listening to FM radio and following the current pop culture music trends, and watching popular TV shows like Two and a Half Men and laughing like fools at the adolescent humor of that show, they are ignoring the vast wealth of evidence that has emerged about the unsustainable path that America is on, and which they are participating in by practicing open extortion.

Many of my friends, some of them are seen in these pictures taken at the Rally at the State House on February 17, 2011, read a lot too. That’s why we’re friends because we enjoy learning things and we spend our spare time talking about the things we learn. My friends in the Tea Party are informed, speak for themselves, and are generally grounded people. The reason the Tea Party does not have a leader, is because that is not what the Tea Party is. America does not have leaders! The Tea Party does not have a leader!

Unions do. When I look at union leadership it disgusts me because it’s too much like a “hive” mentality. Europe functioned for centuries with that same type of “hive” mentality, where there’s a king or queen, then nobility, then the workers. Union members tend to behave just like bees. Watching the union protests in Columbus reminded me of my observations of a bee colony, only the bees are much, much harder working. But the social structure is similar as well as the mentality.

The Tea Party Movement has been born because the people that don’t think with a “hive” mentality have been getting “stung” for years by the working bee union types that just keep scooping up the nectar of tax money and “coughing” it up for the queen, or whoever is their union leader. That money has then been used to buy political power that works against those original tax payers, so many of us have caught on to the scam.

American society was never intended to be a “hive” of any kind. It was supposed to be as the Tea Party is taking things, which is a society of individuals free of any queens or kings or leaders that are drunk on power.

That’s where the ignorance from those who love the “hive” mentality are perplexed, and call the Tea Party a bunch of “Tea Baggers.” They wonder how a leaderless society could function. Who initiates policy, creates law, and protects the poor?

Self-reliance is a gift we give ourselves. It’s the best feeling in the world in fact, to do for yourself and if you have something left over to help your neighbor, kids or friends. Leaders are not needed because there is a right way to do things and there is a wrong way to do things. If you know the difference, you don’t need someone to instruct you. If everyone does the right thing, like what you see in the Tea Party Movement, where everyone is generally good, non-violent, avid readers and up-to-date on current events, they might even be committed to a religion so they are spiritually grounded. What sets them apart from everyone else is that they know the difference between right and wrong, and they don’t need government to instruct them how to behave.

The welfare culture however took our nation into a “hive” like civilization and it weakened the sociology of America, much to the disgust of lovers of self-reliance. But because self-reliant people are good, and non-violent, they took a back seat.

For decades, and decades these “hive” lovers continued to ask for more, and more to where we currently are, and that’s financially strained. I can speak for myself, and I know my thoughts are shared by thousands of others, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of corruption. I’m sick of being lied to in politics. I’m tired of Public Relations Firms spinning situations against the tax payers. I’m completely sick of knowing more than the people around me and allowing the “hive” to rule, because they don’t know what they’re doing.

So the Tea Party isn’t going away folks. If you are one of those “hive” workers, I’d advise you to use this site to your advantage. Listen to the radio broadcasts, read the material, watch the videos. I put them here to help you learn how to be self-reliant. I’m offering to help you break away from a “hive” mentality to save you from yourself. You’d be advised to use the material to your advantage.

But if you want to continue to be in the “hive” because you think there’s safety in numbers, you are betting on the wrong horse.

Let me put it this way. If you saw a colony of bees building a hive on the corner of your house what would you do about it? You’d knock it down so it wouldn’t have the opportunity to sting you or your family. It’s not the bees fault though. They are just trying to live their lives and their commitment to their queen. Suddenly you come along and knock down their hive and everything they’ve worked for is destroyed, and they’ll want to sting you, of course. But you, as owner of the home, and caretakers of your family can’t allow the bees to sting your family. So you may feel bad about it, but you’d have to destroy the hive to protect your family.

That’s where we are in America. We cannot let the “hives” that have built their colonies on the house of our Constitution to continue. The humane thing is to help them become self-reliant people so they can survive on their own merits. But the hive is coming down, and there won’t be any queen bees in America’s future. We’ve given the hive a chance to live peacefully with the rest of American society and they always try to take over the house and sting anyone that gets too close. And it has to stop.

The first step to removing the hive is to remove the nectar that feeds it, and that’s tax money.

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

Freaks, Losers, and Malcontents: Radical Union Leaders Launch Mindless Fools to Attack Taxpayers

In Ohio we are seeing plenty of these radicals show their inability to think for themselves in protest of Senate Bill 5.  Listen to Brian Thomas of 55 KRC interview Senator Shannon Jones and Mike Wilson of the Cincinnati Tea Party discuss the merit of S.B.5.

Unions think collective bargaining reform is about revenge, or it’s some conservative conspiracy.  Yet this is what the union opposition say is happening.  A guy sent me this comment while I was writing this article.

I listen to Doc’s show on 700; he is clueless on Labor and the issues that surround labor. Unions and collective bargaining have built the middle class in this country. What you’re seeing is big corporate interest trying to tear it down. Fire, Police, Teachers and all public workers should be getting a big thank you everyday for the job’s they perform. When you have a Gov that is bought and paid for by Wall ST. this is what you get.

What does Wall Street have to do with any of this?  I’m not part of big corporate interests and I want this bill. I don’t want my tax money going to union activity. End of story. These people live in a bubble their union leaders have created for them and they all say the same thing which has no basis in reality. Unions have used extortion tactics, such as strikes, marches, protests and other radical behavior to drive up the cost of their services, and people are sick of their act. This has nothing to do with the big Republican machine. These radicals have been pointing in that direction for years, and they simply don’t get it.

But we know what they’re about, because everywhere they use the same strategy.

Look at the Teacher’s unions in Mexico this week.

This is what they are doing in Wisconsin:

And this is what they were doing in Ohio:


Listen to this guy insult Tea Party people. Is this the cop, fireman, or teacher you want living next to you?

Here’s the problem with these people. They have no ideas, little financial knowledge or common sence. They only think that if they yell loud enough, like children, they’ll get their way, because that worked in the past.

But to all you malcontents, and radicals, I have news for you. The Tea Party isn’t going away. If the Republicans like you try to blame for this does not vote on bills like S.B.5., we will replace them with people who will do the job. So you can scream, cry, stomp your feet and carry your signs, because it won’t matter. We’re awake, and we’re not going back to sleep.

This is what we’re going to be doing from now on in every state in the union.

Get used to it!

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

S.B.5 My Testimony to the Senate: Protests Erupt but only one side is right

February 17, 2011 marked the third day of testimony in Columbus over Senate Bill 5. It has been a contentious debate, but the facts are all on one side. The union influence is centered completely on emotions and clinging to the past and they can’t argue any facts of a financial nature. Most of the people promoting the bill are people of reason, thought, business sense and tea party supporters. Doc Thompson covered the issue live as the protests escalated prior to testimony. If you want to hear the facts, Doc lays them out there for your convenience at around the 10 minute mark.

Below is my own testimony for the record that I’ll include here in its entirety. It can’t be stressed enough how important this bill is to Ohio and the future of our financial strength. As the union groups attempt to fluff their feathers to appear larger than they truly are while real working people continue on with their jobs, too busy to attend such protests, feel free to make your voice in favor of this bill known by sending your support to Senator Bacon at the email address displayed.

2/17/2011

kevin.bacon@senate.state.oh.us

Senator Kevin Bacon
Ohio State Senate
Columbus, OH

Re: SB 5 – For the Record

During the year of 2010 I was heavily involved in a resistance group to oppose the requested levy increases by the school district of Lakota, from South Western Ohio located in Butler County.

There are many reasons that I can see for the implementation of a collective bargaining reform bill such as Senate Bill 5. It is obvious to me and many of the voters that participated in defeating the Lakota Levy on both 2010 occasions that unions under the collective bargaining bill of 1983 have done what they accused business of doing, and that is acting greedily and knowing no limit to the impositions of their demands. Nor did they show any sign of caring what the cost off those impositions where to the tax payer. The result has been an unfair system that has formed between the public sector worker and the tax payer.

My focus of this testimony is on what I consider to be the most pertinent of the many benefits of S.B.5 and that is the elimination of “step increase” as a hidden cost that is deceiving communities all across Ohio. As much of the talk from Fire and Police Unions has centered on their lack of ability to strike, teachers can, and do. “Step Increases” are an ominous appeasement to those potential strikes that is largely hidden from the eyes of tax payers.

In October of 2008 the LEA (Lakota Education Association) threatened to strike and staged a demonstration against the school board. Their reasons for the strike were increased wages and benefits. In the small hours of the morning on the final day of contract talks a settlement was reached, and the LEA achieved its objective.

Two years later Lakota had an operating budget of $160 million dollars even with the declining revenue imposed under the Strickland Administration which favored allocation of state funds to poorer districts. Lakota saw a decline in state funding but through their property taxes, which saw approximately $11 dollars per $1,000 in home evaluation going directly to the schools, still maintained the large budget mentioned.

In the spring of 2010 again the LEA was pushing for a renewed contract and threatened to strike. They did this just months before a new levy request was being placed on the ballot in May. This was a reckless enterprise on their behalf and showed incredible arrogance in an economy that was already weakened. The residence of the Lakota District easily defeated that levy in May.

By August the LEA had announced that they would take a “pay freeze” in order to work with the school board on bringing down their costs as the announcement came from that same board that another levy attempt would be coming in November.

As I looked at the financial situation I realized that the reason the Lakota District was in trouble was because nearly 80% of their budget allocation was tied up in salaries and benefits, so it was obvious to me that the LEA should renegotiate their contract to fit the needs of the community. The average salary of a teacher at Lakota had been during much of 2010 $59,000 per year. As the new school year started that fall, those salaries on average had crept up to $62,000, and this was a baffling statistic. After all, the LEA had just agreed to a pay freeze.

I had loosely understood what “step increases” were but didn’t really give it much thought as to the impact on community budgets. I learned through the campaign that fall how devastating they truly are to financial forecasts. The reason is that often communities only consider the finances of their local districts. They don’t concern themselves with the affairs of their neighboring districts. However, the teachers unions do. The LEA is an arm of the OEA (Ohio Education Association) and they do have a statewide strategy that they impose district by district. It’s a game communities have been unaware was occurring, until now.

Knowing the game was larger than just the situation at Lakota I took my story to WLW radio in Cincinnati and engaged in many debates on the air hoping to get input from school districts around the region, and that’s how I learned about the terrible cost and manipulative nature of “step increases.”

As the facts that are known to many of the law makers that have graced Columbus for many years became apparent to me and a small army of tax protesters that were gathering in Southern Ohio and pockets all over the state, it became evident that communities were being selfishly misled intentionally and action would be needed to return real management power to the district where we elect members of the community to manage our resources.

School Boards under the current system have no choice but to just keep asking for increases in funding because they are so constrained by legislation lobbied and secured by the same forces that have collected themselves to protest this bill S.B.5 and the people who fund this activity have been manipulated and outright lied to regarding the intentions and motives of collective bargaining agreements.

This education funding issue that has plagued Ohio for decades is an unsustainable path, and collective bargaining is at the heart of the problem. I have planned to stand in the way of every single levy initiative for every district that wants my help until true reform is initiated from our State Representation. I consider any further property tax increases for any district in Ohio to be as good as throwing money on a fire. The money will not go to improving test scores for kids, or making children more comparable to students in the international stage. The entire nation is seeing the same story from its public education system, and it has failed in its current form. No amount of union rhetoric can hide that fact now. A majority of the voting public is now ready to admit it to themselves. Putting this bill on the table for discussion is a bold move by this legislative body and hopefully is a sign of things to come, for I do not believe if S.B.5 goes far enough. Many, many reforms will need to be implemented to give the State of Ohio the competitive advantage it needs to step out in front of the nation in education.

There are programs available that could save the State of Ohio a lot of money and make it a premiere state of education reform in the country. Representative Bill Coley from my district has started that process in the last session of congress with a technology bill which allows students to use technology to greater effect, and take away some of the “brick and mortar” costs imposed on school districts currently. There is also “School Choice” which is a phenomenal program utilizing all the best traits of competition to make education better, that will trickle down to the culture of the children attending those education systems.

But all those programs will take courage and they start by dealing with the type of resistance organized by groups like SEIU who have flown in protestors to lobby against this bill. They are applying their work to Wisconsin also where the governor there is also trying to reform their collective bargaining issues, only to be degraded as the villain from the Austin Powers films.

Such actions have taken our state through the collective bargaining process to extort millions of dollars from the intended target of those dollars and it has been to a loss of the entire state not only in being disingenuous to the tax payer, but to the competitive nature of the state as a whole. Over the next decade, the states which become swifter or most innovative will become the guardians of prosperity. Collective bargaining is a failed system that does nothing but help the people on one side of that bargaining, which leaves everyone else feeling depleted and used.

Innovation in most every category is available to Ohio ripe for the picking. But we have to have the courage to reach beyond the fence of collective bargaining to pick our harvest and unleash the true potential that resides among the true labor of Ohio.

Thank you for your service.

Sincerely,

Rich Hoffman

…………………………………………………………………………..

Now, have a look at the below video and compare the union comments to what you heard from Doc Thompson above and make a decision on your own. I can speak for myself; I support completely Governor Kasich and the Senators that stand behind Senate Bill 5. We can no longer afford to allow emotion and luxury to govern our actions.

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

Mustache Mob and the Army of Insecure Men: More debate about the value of public sector services

Upon hearing the testimony in Columbus on February 15, 2011 primarily against Senate Bill 5 by the organized elements of union influence, I find it astonishing how many times I’ve heard, “we serve the public, when you call 911, we’re on the other side. That’s why we’re more important, and that’s why we should have collective bargaining because we are entitled to things because of the risks we take.”

Well, I never take bullet point answers at face value. I look deeply into everything. It’s a hobby of mine. Before I say what I’m going to say next, I’ll say that I see a certain value for police officers, firemen, and teachers, because they all kind of get thrown into the same pot. They cost a lot of tax money and most of what they sell is based on things most people don’t want to do themselves, so tax payers surrender some of their freedoms for the convenience and trained professionalism of those professions. A world without police officers would be more violent. Their presence in the world discourages bad guys from doing bad things.

However…………..my experience, which is extensive speaks that sometimes the bad guys are the cops themselves, and this occurs more frequently than people care to admit. It’s not popular to bring that little fact up, just like it’s not popular to question the integrity of teachers, because those professions through their union marketing machines, have made doing such a thing a social taboo. Reality though is a different story.

Ever wonder why so many police officers wear a mustache? Young boys when they first discover they can grow facial hair are quick to grow a mustache because they want to prove that they are men, or at least on their way. It’s a primal desire for males to gain acceptance with other males by displaying manhood and mustaches are a way to do it. My personal experience with people that have mustaches though is that when they have them, they are trying to hide something from public opinion or even from themselves, and wearing a mustache is a dead give-a-way to a person of questionable character.

I’ve raised two girls, and the very first thing I taught them about sex, and males is that if a young man or even a middle aged man has a mustache, don’t trust a thing they say. Look for the hidden messages in their words and never get too close to them. Now that’s a general term, and there are probably many good people that have mustaches and all they are hiding about themselves may be some secret desire to wear women’s clothing, or hiding from themselves an attractiveness to other males, so their secrets may be harmless. The dangerous mustache men are the ones that wear a mustache to hide what they are really up to, and that’s a quest for power, and an assertion of dominance over other males, and women which is a biological remnant from their adolescence which they carry into adulthood.

I’ve known of situations where police have been involved in many bad deeds, and most of them had mustaches. Not all of them. I know one that used to work for me that was very clean faced and took so many liberties with the truth that he could even lie to himself, and while he was a police officer he got himself into trouble pulling over women and exchanging sexual favors to get out of tickets. He was the worst kind of bad guy because he doesn’t give off visual clues to his intent. But as a general rule, as I explained to my kids, there is a reason in the early days of cinema that the villains had mustaches. Because at a primal level, the human mind acknowledges there is something not quite right with people that wear facial hair.

Among the many stories I could tell about bad police officers, that are using their positions of authority to profit themselves, I could testify that I actually had a police officer tell me to move from my home if I didn’t like the drug trafficking that was going on with the teenage kids that lived across the street from me years ago. What I found out was that this particular police officer had been a trouble maker when he was a kid and straightened himself out, or so he said. Turned out, he was making money on the side from the kids covering for their drug trade to kids at the high school. He had a mustache. Once he realized I was a “holy roller” as he spread the word through the police community, and that I was not going to play nice, he conspired with other officers to “lean” on me. There was a police offer that lived two homes down from me that worked in a different municipality, and yes, he had a mustache, and he became friends with the officer covering for the kid’s drug trade. He had teenage kids that behaved badly and I scolded them more than once for making too much noise or playing their radio too loud in front of my house, because it was disrespectful. I thought because their father was a cop, that he might see things my way, but he didn’t, instead he worked with his kids and the drug dealers across the street to run the “holy roller family” out of the neighborhood.

So I started video taping all this and I sent it to the chief of police thinking this bad behavior would be exposed. I actually had a drug deal on tape and I hand delivered it to the Chief.

All it did was make things worse.

These police officers did nothing to put themselves on the bad side of the law, other than turn their heads and take money for looking the other way. What they did do, and I see the same behavior from teachers trying to get their levies passed, it’s they use the kids to do their dirty work. That’s a common strategy, to get the youth to do the ugly stuff because they’re too young and naive to think for themselves.

The straw that broke the camels back came when a majority of the kids in the neighborhood turned against my kids for riding their bikes down the sidewalk of their own street, again encouraged by the police officer dad, and the corrupt local police officer, that a mob of these boys ranging from 16 to 19 gathered at the drug dealing house across the street from my home and called my wife a “bitch” when my wife confronted the boys about hassling my kids.

My wife called me at work; I left immediately and came home. Once I saw the mob I ran into the center of the to fight any of the kids that wanted to take a swing. There were about 22 to 25 of them, most of them just over 18. The boys didn’t expect that kind of aggressive action, so were unprepared. Eventually the mother of the house came out and had all those boys go inside her home leaving me by myself on the front yard. Technically I was wrong and could have been prosecuted for assault, but I estimated that she didn’t want the police to come break up the fight, and the police didn’t want to come, because they wanted deniability. So no cops came even though every neighbor up and down the street witnessed the act. I recognized that a situation of complete lawlessness was going on in my neighborhood and it occurred to me that the only way I could put a stop to it was to respond with violence and make a big incident of the issue that would transcend the community I lived in that was covering up this whole issue. I had been warned by the police officer that I either looked the other way as a resident or I move, because he wanted things to stay the way they were. And I wasn’t about to do that. So we had an all out war.

I began to patrol the neighborhood with my bicycle at night and if I caught kids out where they didn’t belong, I chased them down with my bullwhip. It got pretty violent at times.

My kids, who were only about 7 years old at the time, were hassled too. One boy that was about 15 spit on my oldest daughter while he was in a group of kids numbering more than 10. I tracked the kid down with my daughters and their friends in the car and dragged that kid by his shirt to his house and made him apologize on his knees to my daughter in front of his father who was working in his garage. His father was appalled and proclaimed that he was going to have me arrested because his son was under aged and he wanted to fight me, which I agreed to. Instead he called the police, but they never came, because it was me, and the police didn’t want to bring light to their other activity.

My wife and I eventually moved and bought a place that had some property and space. She and I agreed that we were the type of people that enjoyed our space and my bullwhip hobby was intimidating to many of our neighbors anyway. So we moved.

At my new place things worked well for a while, until I became involved in a property dispute in my township. Since I was the lead opposition to that property dispute I was a political target. My wife noticed that she was followed by township fireman everywhere she went. She kept seeing the same people. They never spoke to her, but they seemed to be everywhere she shopped. I told her not to worry about it.

We often built bon fires in our back yard which was legal, and I started to notice that every time I built them, someone would call the Fire Department.

Down the road would come a parade of Fire Trucks, police and even an ambulance to put out the bon fire I had in my backyard. One time in particular I had been practicing with my bullwhips in the back yard when 5 firemen and a few first responders came into my yard without saying a word to me with a hose to put out my little fire. I was furious.

I had a major argument with the police officers at the scene and the firemen that had brought 5 vehicles to my home, lights blaring and sirens whining. I counted 11 public officers at the scene, 8 of them had mustaches.

I gave them the cost of what bringing all those vehicles to my home cost the tax payer and when they heard that I spoke in that language they instantly backed off. “Sorry sir, we just wanted to check things out. We had a report.”

I said, “No, you are looking for a way to brag to your buddies, the township trustees, that you hassled me. And you did this in an attempt to embarrass me, and put me in my place. You’re showing off for your employers.”

They looked at me like guilty children caught stealing cookies. They said nothing more, got in their cars and trucks, and left.

I told my story in a commentary in the local paper and exposed the waste of tax payer funds in that trip to my house by the fire department. After that everyone pretty much left us alone. The fire department personnel stopped following my wife around. And they never bothered me again for a silly bon fire, which I continued to build.

I could go on for many pages more instances of such corruption. Like I established, I’ve employed people that went on to be police officers and I know the things that go on behind the public eye. I’m friends with people that are pretty important in the law enforcement community and I understand all too well that speeding tickets, DUI check points and other activities are all about generating revenue, and not public safety. And I know there are quotas, even though they aren’t called that directly. I know of cases where a home dealt drugs for years, but was “suddenly busted” when an important raid was needed for the papers for budget approval by the taxpayers.

And a vast majority of the participants of this questionable behavior were by officers that wear mustaches.

Am I a purist? Maybe. I expect the product that’s delivered to be what was advertised. I expect people to behave ethically. But my experience which involves teachers, police officers, fire departments, first responders, mayors, congressmen, council members, business leaders, I have not been shy over the years, more often than not I am let down by the corrupt nature that is revealed.

Now, many of the people that don’t want their pay reduced that are benefitting from collective bargaining are good people. They are doing their jobs, taking care of their families and trying to be good people. It’s not their fault that insecure people attracted to authority positions are in the same field that they are in. And it’s too tempting for such insecure types to not suck up to local politicians in hopes of promotions or kick backs. None of this is new. We all know it, but we don’t discuss it.

And this behavior is not unique to this decade. When I was a teenager I was at a party hosted by a cop. His daughter was the practice girl for the entire school, he knew it, and was fine with it. He provided alcohol openly to under aged kids and didn’t think anything of it. He wanted to be the “cool cop” in the neighborhood. He was almost identical in personality type to the officer I originally talked about, that was letting the house across the street deal drugs. He thought it was a good party till a big fight broke out on his front yard by two different guys that wanted to have sex with his daughter on the same night, and there were injuries that were embarrassing to him. But the EMT guys kept everything quit and the papers weren’t notified and he was never reprimanded. And he had a mustache.

So when these people in Columbus are proclaiming how important they are, think about your own experience. I often wonder if we might not all be a bit safer if they didn’t do their jobs. I can say that the only time I’ve called the police in recent years, it’s to take a statement that I’ll need for court. Because I take care of the situation by the time they arrive. And as far as EMT’s and Fire Departments, I would always take a victim to the hospital myself, even if it cost me a law suit. I wouldn’t waste precious time waiting for a paramedic. So I feel that most of the service they provide is very over stated.

It really comes down to a social decision. If society wants to be staffed at these levels in public service positions, that’s fine. But the unions spin their usefulness so they can justify the expense. When public servants realize their jobs are under scrutiny from the public, they’ll clean up their act. They may even shave off those mustaches and stop hiding the sins they commit when they think nobody is looking.

You get what you ask for and if you don’t ask or keep your eye on these crooked mustache men, they’ll play you for a fool. Without question there are many that will look at what I’ve written here and think it’s a conspiracy or that I am angry at public officials because I have a bone to pick. No, I have a history of sticking up for myself and others and when you do that you make enemies. And when you have enemies you see the true nature of people in their anger and actions. The difference between me and everyone else is that I’m willing to say what everyone else thinks, but don’t feel comfortable saying. I feel comfortable saying it because I’ve seen it for myself and can stand with certainty behind my words of what goes on behind the eyes of crooked men.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com