Category: Education

Channel 9 News Report on Eduction Issues Coming Soon: The Art of Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking to me is the only form of eduction suitable for the 21st century. What is divergent thinking? Watch this video and learn about it.

On Monday April 18th, 2011 I did a long interview with Channel 9 News that will be shown on May 9th 2011. This will be an investigative report involving education issues and will also feature two other education reformers in Jennifer Miller formerly of the Mason School Board, and Sharon Poe, the leader of the levy defeat of the last Mason levy attempt. It promises to be a revealing report that I will not disclose until the airing of the program. Needless to say, there is a lot wrong with modern education, one of those things is in the quality of the teachers. It has been taboo to speak about this quality problem, but as evidence to those concerns look at this video just released.

To me, as I told the reporter, education is one of the most obvious things you tackle when you’re dealing with corruption, because it is obvious that there are many that work in the education profession that wish to hide behind the good will of the tax payer, and the robbery of that group is blatant. Now calling it robbery is not a stretch of extremist rhetoric. When money is taken from one group of people and given to another against the first person’s will, it is robbery. And all forms of taxation could be said to fall under that category to some extent. With schools money is given freely, and the money is spent and when the money runs out, more money is asked for. Most of the money is taken from the people who vote against a levy, and the money is taken from them against their will. I don’t want one cent of my money to go to a teacher who thinks like the young girls that are in that video. “Empowering?” I don’t want people like that teaching the kids that we’re going to hand this world to.

That kind of abuse makes me furious! And it is wondered by many, why people allow crimes to be committed right out in the open for all to see. Well, the answer is that people want to believe that other people are good, and have their best interests in mind when action is taken. But what makes people so naive to begin with? What makes them so weak-willed and soft to the core. What makes their beliefs so fragile, even malleable? I would put the blame on public education, where social engineering has been underway for many years.

I don’t believe that the social engineering was consciously manipulated, but is the result of an inner desire of all forms of government to dumb down its customers so that those customers will continue to seek the services of government. And the customers of government are the tax payer. This is the reason that at every turn government seeks to make the world excessively safe, and dependent, so that government can survive and expand providing security to the fraternity of government agency.

Any threat to that fraternity is to be sought out and destroyed out of preservation of the government entity. I make no secret about it. I don’t like public education. It does not produce the type of students I think are relevant to society. It’s not the kids fault or even the parents directly. The school systems have for decades allowed them to become social police officers regulating life’s dangers such as making the shape of a gun with a child’s hand while they try to play cops and robbers, or discouraging any type of behavior that might be perceived as violent. And the result is that kids grow up to become passive adults that are easily steered by the persuasive words of a con artist like Barrack Obama, or even a Bob Taft. (He was a Republican) How anyone in society could listen to Jessie Jackson or Louis Farrakhan without asking why those people have a national platform to speak from, but just to accept it as a fact says everything, that people have allowed themselves to become so dumbed down and sensitive that they can no longer think critically. The fault of that starts with parents and then public education is to blame. As I look around at the way people vote and spend their time, I would say that public education is a miserable failure, because people are only living the lives of a fraction of what they should be.

As long as Farrakhan convinces people of these types of things, people will look to him for help, just like the silly teacher wearing the “Tax the Rich” shirt. Anyone that listens to a person like this is not capable of divergent thinking, and will be victims of manipulation. Hitler used the same methods as Farrakhan and people followed for the same reasons leading to the destruction of Europe.

The way the world should be is that a school should not have any business in whether or not a kid attends school. Truant officers have no place in American society. Who gave them any authority at all? Of what intention were they even conceived? Is it of the social need of a child to get an education and become a productive citizen? If so, how have the results been? Have they successfully made American civilization a better country, or just a complacent country that easily follows new rules such as seat belt legislation, or legislation against texting in a car. Look at the definition of truancy as described at Wikipedia:

Truancy is any intentional unauthorized absence from compulsory schooling. The term typically describes absences caused by students of their own free will, and usually does not refer to legitimate “excused” absences, such as ones related to medical conditions. The term’s exact meaning differs from school to school, and is usually explicitly defined in the school’s handbook of policies and procedures. It has no relation to homeschooling, although sometimes parents who practice homeschooling have been charged with this.[1]

A good friend of mine recently said to me, “kids need to be pushed, and that is the role of the teacher.” That thought drove me to consider……………………..why?

People have a natural desire to do well. So that leads to the definition of, “well.” Someone must understand what, “well,” is before they can define it. But public school defines well in a mechanical way, by grades A thru F. Wellness is somewhere between those two measures. But wellness is much more than that, so with such a narrow scope we are already setting kids up to fail. We believe that to perform “well,” we can coax them to perform with force, and that is the role of the teacher, to push the child to wellness.

But this does not work, because if the child is not inclined to act on their own, then the action of their being is built on a false premise and a life of inauthenticity will lay in front of that person that they will carry into their adulthood. So if a child is forced against their nature, they are broke down and rebuilt into something else, and that something else is what we are seeing the impact of in the brain-dead nature of our society.

That is just the beginning of my dismay at public education. But as a fundamental thought I see abuse of public school officials taking advantage of a broken system by falsely advertising the benefits of their services to busy parents that don’t want to consider the success or failure of public education as a whole.

So there is a lot to consider on this public education topic. At the most simple form it is disgusting that we’ve allowed public officials to police us with so many restrictions, and for us to accept it without debate.Because we have been so complacent, it has empowered these useless officials in New York to contemplate the removal of kick ball and wiffle ball from summer camps. That’s how far it’s gotten and if allowed to continue, we won’t have much of a society in a few decades. We will have softened ourselves up like veal to be eaten by a superior competitor, in this case another country, or even a hostile religion, because we’ve allowed ourselves to be taught not to question, but just to get a good grade from the teacher who trains us to follow direction without thought.

This happens because of traditional learning that does not prepare the mind to think critically with divergence. If our society is to survive, we will “PRESERVE” the divergent thinking of our children and not destroy their minds with mind numbing, Marxist disguises of social engineering known as “public education.”

Reform now before it’s too late. And certainly don’t throw any more money at it. To find out why, tune in to Channel 9 in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 9th at 6 PM.

Rich Hoffman

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

Donald Trump for President: Why Not?

Why should Donald Trump be the next president? Let’s forget that he’s flip flopped on several issues. Let’s forget about his multiple marriages. Let’s forget about all the morality of the position. After the Clinton administration and now the Obama administration, the American Presidency is a joke. The royal illusion intended for that symbolic appointment is gone.

Obama has made an absolute comic exposition of the presidency. He has shown the world that the President of the United States is a token, iconic role that means nothing. Obama is a community organizer, no different in intellect than someone who runs a union like friend Richard Trumka. He knows how to rally people to a cause, but he doesn’t know what to do with those people or the idea once he gets there. Obama reminds me of the underwear gnomes from South Park. Obama has lots of ideas, and he knows what he wants the end result to be. But he doesn’t understand the process in between of actually getting to the target. He’s an idealist at best, but a terrible manager. He wouldn’t make it past round one of Celebrity Apprentice. I would say that Sharon Osborn has greater management ability.

So when I hear people say that Donald Trump is not a serious enough candidate to even consider for the American Presidency, that Trump’s desire to throw his hat in the ring as a kind of circus stunt and not to be taken seriously is misguided. I say why?

Does Donald Trump know business? Yes. He wrote The Art of the Deal, a pretty good book about business. That would be a good guy to represent America at the United Nations and foreign countries. That would also be a good guy to help our economy out of the slump it’s in, and see beyond lobbyist to put the tools in the hands of business to get America back on its feet, such as drilling for oil in again. After all, isn’t that why we made Alaska a state? Yet we’re not using it. China and the Soviet Union are using their resources. Trump is already rich, so who thinks that money from George Soros could influence Trumps opinion?

Obama is going to raise over a billion dollars for his next campaign. Where does anybody think that money is coming from? It’s from our enemies, and yes, the United States has enemies. Call them that! What presidential candidate can overtake a president with so much money and ability to manipulate the population with rhetoric?

The next election will be a circus. Don’t have any illusions that it’s going to be a serious endeavor. So why not have a president that is actually successful at business, that represents what being an American truly is, that represents capitalism in all its glory and ugliness. I would like to have a negotiator like Trump on the world stage, and as for a circus actor, nobody is worse than Obama. He has lowered the bar to make any candidate a legitimate option. I could run one of my nephew that is 5 years old and get better results.

I remember the negotiations Reagan had with the Soviet Union during the 80’s and Reagan held the line in his sheer belief that he was on the moral side of God. His determination shocked many of his advisors who second guessed him to no end. But Reagan did us all a favor with his hard-line negotiations and in hind-sight appeared to be a brilliant negotiator. The United States could use the best that we have in that department, and in this modern age, it’s Donald Trump.

So I say put Donald Trump on the ticket. Let him go at Obama, because the next election will be a fist fight, and that’s the kind of guy it’s going to take to win this presidential election. Not some soft-spoken nice guy that is super smart but doesn’t have the ability to convey their ideas to a public that just wants to watch TV reality shows. Trump understands how to do that. He’s currently a TV star, so why not?

I think Trump is the best candidate. For those that believe otherwise and are looking for the spotless hero on a white horse, they are not options for 2012. Those people are working in the cracks of society and are not in a position to become president. Trump is the best strategic option to beat Obama. He’s the best option because Trump knows how to win at everything he does. The goal of the next election is to beat Obama. The current president is a cancer to the body of America.

Rich Hoffman

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

Birthday Presents and Angry Lakota Mothers: the cost of social kindness

I received the following note from an angry mother, upset about the kindergarten schedule at the Lakota School System. It is so audacious that I decided to respond to it with a full explanation, because I can see by the way she’s writing that there are a lot of pitfalls in her life that are of her own making. Does this make her a bad person, or a bad parent? No. But she is a victim of this modern way of thinking which has been directed by a progressive philosophy which simply does not work in the raising and daily living of human beings. So my response is one that I hope others will learn from.

Comment from bmarcum

I have a kindergartner at one school and two kids at Independence. Both schools start at the same time. She will have to take the older ones early and the process at each school will be at least 25 minutes. So she will have to take the other child to the other school and then pick her up at noon since kindergarten will NOT be a full day, and then at 4:00, she has to pick up the older ones. Thanks for the loss of income!

Ok, this lady says, “Thanks for the loss of income.” Why can’t people understand the value of a budget? This person like many others believe that if our budget is 160 million, which is what it has been, then the residents of Lakota should increase their budget to 167 or 175 million to meet the increase in budget demands without question. And we are supposed to do this because this woman needs to get her kid to kindergarten?

This leads me to some obvious questions that she should ask herself. Is it my fault she has kids so close together? Why isn’t she home during the day? Does she have to work because she and her husband bought too much house, too many cars, or ran up their credit card debt too high? Is she a single woman and if so why did the marriage not work? What is she doing about finding someone to help her with her family burdens? Is there a mom that can help, a dad, a brother or a sister? If not why? Do they live in another town? If so, why does she live away from them? Are all three of these children from the same man? Are all three of these children from her, or did she obtain a few of them from a new marriage with a man who has kids from a previous marriage? If so, why did she marry a man with kids from another woman? Didn’t she think that she might have trouble raising them?

I’m sure some of that doesn’t apply to her, and I’m sure that some of it does. But as a tax payer, none of it is any of my business. It’s her life and her decisions………………….until she asks me for money. Or until the school system has to engage in a program to help a woman like her by supplying buses or schedule deviations to accommodate her busy life. In fact, the school issues where the school attempts to be everything to everybody for every possible circumstance is the microcosm of the macrocosm to the federal problems. Every program created to help women like her is money, it’s expensive, and it plays to the weaknesses of our population by pandering to them. So I do not support it. I do not want to pay for behavior that will perpetuate the destruction of our population psychologically. And I don’t want my personal property taxes to go up just so she can get her three kids to kindergarten. That’s her job to figure out. Not mine and certainly not the school system.

Now I can read your mind dear reader. I see the stir in your soul from the coldness of my words and attitude toward my fellow-man. Well……let me tell you something about human nature and I’ll use my children as examples because they represent my own form of success and proof of my theory.

Human beings like to be challenged. Competition is a natural process that cannot be engineered out of evolution. You can see it in young people when they play video games. In the video game world, all things are equal. Strength, speed, agility, it is the mind that guides the characters, and if you have ever played a game online, you’ll see that human beings are a competitive species. So to make the most of the human race, competition must be a part of the society. This is why capitalism is the economy that produces skyscrapers and communism produces village huts. And we are teaching our children to create village huts. That is the direction of our current society and I do not support it without question. It is not important whether or not it’s inconvenient for a mother to get her three kids to kindergarten. What’s important is that she thinks of a way to do so. The competition and will to survive is the key to making a prosperous human being. So to my mind I would help that woman best by giving her the challenge of figuring out the problem. Not throwing money at more convenience, because that makes people lazy. It’s the “I can’t find the remote” syndrome. You know, where you keep the TV on the same channel even though you don’t want to watch what’s on that station, because you can’t find the remote to change the channel. You could still get up and change the channel manually on the cable unit itself, but often that isn’t even an option in the mind of the lazy TV viewer. When I was a kid, before TV remotes we always had to change the channel by hand. It is with the invention of the TV remote that such a task seemed laborious.

This is what has happened to people with the busing of students and the offering of various electives which create options for possible scholarships which are dangled in front of parents as a kind of lottery ticket to financing their children’s college tuition. What is never asked is whether or not that college education has become cost prohibitive, or whether it’s even needed for that particular child. It is just accepted at face value that it’s a useful enterprise no matter what the cost. That kind of thinking is insane.

With my kids who are both girls, I let them find the hard way through most everything. When they learned to ride their bikes, I let them wreck. When I took the rappelling, I let their hair get caught in the line. When they were learning to walk I let them fall down and didn’t pick them up with every bump of the head.

And those rules don’t just apply to them. I lead by example. In the past, when my wife needed the car to drive the kids to school I rode a bicycle to work, every day rain or shine for 12 miles or more. I did that for over 10 years, because my wife and I didn’t want the expense of another car. I seldom go to the doctor unless it’s very serious. In fact it was just the other day that I was playing with my oldest daughter’s dog and his teeth opened up my finger all the way to the bone while I was trying to rip a dog toy out of his mouth. It would have required about 8 to 15 stitches, but instead I pulled it together tight while my son-in-law poured Superglue over the wound to close it up. See, I didn’t have time to go to the doctor. I had a meeting that night that was of urgent importance, so there wasn’t time to sit in a waiting room. There weren’t any ligaments torn and the nerves were ok. As long as no major blood vessels were torn, and they weren’t because I could see them, patching up the skin wasn’t a big deal. And I wasn’t going to cancel my meeting. So I fixed it myself. Now, a week and a half later, it’s all closed up and looks good. I was able to grip a basketball yesterday for the first time in over a week, and throw a football.

My kids are used to this kind of thing and they understand how to bounce through life’s tough spots. For my birthday my oldest daughter made me a work of art that is displayed on the wall over my small library I have in my living room. It is a collage of all the things she thinks of when she thinks of me.

Now, as a father it was my job to make sure that she has things to think about on such a day. It means a great deal more to receive a gift like that, which she made by hand, as opposed to some manufactured item produced by someone else. Because there is value in her production, and her production is a reflection of how she feels about me. And if I didn’t give her anything to feel, that would make me a bad parent. And if I had just done what everyone told me to all my life, I would have been a crappy parent.

As I look at that collage of images it looks all jumbled from a distance, just like life does. So it is an accurate metaphor of my life which is her point in the piece. But up close, if you take the images individually, the tapestry of images becomes much more defined. The theme is one of adventure and always pushing the boundaries of things. Which is the greatest gift she could give me, because as a 21-year-old married woman, I see that the things I spent so much time and energy teaching her, she understands, and is applying it to her own life in her own unique way, and what could be better than that?

But when my kids were growing up, I didn’t follow the rules of society. I took what I valued, and rejected the rest as tripe. I picked the path I wanted instead of the one provided. I do that at state and national parks too. I seldom ever stay on the trail. I break the rules often, proudly.

So what do I say to the woman who believes that she is owed transportation for her children? I’d say, where is your husband and why doesn’t he solve the problem for you. Why are you relying on a bus or a school schedule for your success? And if Lakota cuts too many programs, take classes online. I did that for my kids. They graduated at 16 and 17 years old so they could visit Europe for their senior years. It was their idea. They learned more in the British Museum and the streets of London than they would have in some library at Lakota East. I’d also ask why she and people like her believe that the school budget should just continue to increase without any reason. When it is known and proven that the results of the money will not make her children any better. And that pandering to convenience will make them social liabilities later in life. Those kids are future voters. Toughen them up so they have some perspective on life. And relax. Take control of your life. Don’t look to someone else to fix your problems. That costs money and doesn’t work anyway. It only makes people feel good for the moment, which is the spectral menace of charitable behavior.

That’s just some friendly advice. At the bare minimum, don’t ask for more money at Lakota or any school system. Because as my good friend Darryl Parks utters often, “If you vote for a school levy……………YOU’RE STUPID!

Rich Hoffman

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

Glendale Tea Party Rally and the Opening of Atlas Shrugged: the film averaged $5,608 per screen, GREAT JOB!

What you see above is the back cover of The Coming Insurrection written by The Invisible Committee. It’s in the philosophy section of my second favorite book store in town, the Barnes and Nobles at Newport on the Levy. I have read that book in two trips to that store. I started it on a trip to Newport about 5 weeks ago where my wife was looking for an exotic cookbook, so I had some time to knock out about 50 pages, then I finished it on Friday night.

I didn’t buy the book because it is what I’d consider evil. I wouldn’t want to put a dime into the pocket of its publishers. I don’t believe in banning books, but fear nothing in reading the mind of my enemy. And that’s what those people, and any who wish to think like them, are. Let’s be clear about that. But fighting with guns and knives and sticking the decapitated head of my enemies on a pike is getting a bit ahead of things. After all, we are still able to attempt a diplomatic approach where the rule of law still has some weight, and as long as it does, I’m happy to participate in the battlefield of ideas with superior thoughts. But the threat from these fringe leftist groups is looming, and they intend to break down that diplomacy which will be to their detriment. For when and if they succeed, they will find that the only protection they had from people like me was that precious law they sought to overthrow and rewrite in their image. I feel such a warning is only fair; after all, they started the threats of violence. Richard Trumka has insinuated as much and given his connections to the White House, I can only conclude based on the arrogance of President Obama that a violent insurrection from those fringe groups is coming. And when it does, they won’t find complacent participants to steamroll over.

Part of that diplomacy and avoidance of some violent future is in the Tea Parties all across the United States. It’s laughable that many in politics consider the Tea Party group extreme, because as far as Tea Partiers go, they are a lot more peace-loving than I am. On April 15th 2011 it was a particularly important day for those of us that hope for a peaceful resolution to the growing tendency of a new kind of civil war within the United States, this time over class warfare. I was full of exuberance on this particular rainy evening as my wife and I attended the Cincinnati Tea Party Rally in Glendale, Ohio where Doc Thompson was the master of ceremonies.

It was a wonderful event set up in the town square that reminded me a lot of Glenn Beck’s rally in Wilmington, Ohio just a few months ago. Seeing people attend these meetings, hearing speakers like Doc and Mike Wilson, and meeting Senator Shannon Jones it gives me hope that intelligence may actually get our nation under control from the types of people who are openly seeking to rob us all with our eyes wide open, and avoid the future I hinted to above. Does saying such a thing make me an extremist? Hey, gas prices are headed toward $5 a gallon, and government seems to be accelerating the problem pushing us to electric cars. Public employees are threatening to repeal S.B.5 in Ohio with a rally of their own in downtown Hamilton on Saturday April, 16 2011. The people in that crowd were led by people like David Pepper. Look into the faces of freedom’s adversary. Here the Hamilton County Commissioner advocates his narrow view of the world with those like him, conspirators in the economic decline of our nation.

Here are those same types of people at a Seattle Tea Party Rally showing themselves in action and the contents of their minds.

This is the kind of guy our President is. I see his Health Care Bill as a direct assault on my country, and my personal sovereignty. I think his union support is an alliance of thieves, and I don’t appreciate him speaking to my representatives the way he does in this back-room meeting. If I were in that room and he spoke to me like that, I would have smashed him like a bug. That’s no threat, I’ve done it before to people over less, and his tone is “fighting words” by any definition. Very disrespectful.

That tone is no different from an invitation to a parking lot fist fight and I would have obliged him instantly. I can’t believe this guy is our president. I don’t have any tolerance for his “Chicago” style politics. Obama, Bill Ayers, Trumka have openly threatened violence, and I’m the type of person that will meet that blow for blow. I can beat people like that any way they want to play. They don’t have the intellect to rely on, so if violence is their game, fine. Big mistake on their part.

The rally at Glendale was very metaphoric. As I stood in the square filming and taking pictures there were three trains that passed by the station there, each at least 20 to 30 cars each. That meant there were 60 to 90 train cars going someplace coming from somewhere and that made me feel happy. The reason was that I had butterflies in my stomach over the premier of Atlas Shrugged Part 1 down at Newport on the Levy and I had read a lot of bad reviews from the Hollywood establishment and I loved the book and really wanted the movie to be good. The reviewers criticized the film for not adopting to the modern age by getting rid of the train oriented story line. And here I was watching three trains roar by in a half an hour from the CSX Line. Trains are a sign of an economy where things are happening. So it was my first inclination that the reviewers were missing the point of the film and were wrong about it. I had promised the booking agent for the film that Cincinnati would be a great market and I promised a sellout at the Newport on the Levy location, so all during the rally with the Cincinnati Tea Party I was thinking of our next destination which was the 8:20 PM showing of Atlas.

My wife and I left the rally to arrive at Newport in the drifting rain. The lights were on at Great American Ball Park across the river as the Reds were playing the Pirates. We arrived at around 7:45 and much to my relief, Atlas Shrugged was SOLD OUT! I have never been so glad to not be able to buy a ticket. We picked up tickets to the 10:45 show and headed to the Claddagh Irish Pub which is a favorite of ours when we go to Newport. We had a few beers, and watched the Reds game on the big screen while a major storm rolled in across the river outside. We like Claddagh because it’s a medieval looking place full of cubbyholes for the kind of meetings I attend a lot, where your neighbor can’t listen to what you’re saying. If offers the good kind of privacy for passing time, especially with your wife.

But that only went so far and after an hour or so, we went over to our favorite book store where I finished reading The Coming Insurrection. I became angry at the tone of that book, especially what was on the back cover shown in that picture.

We went to our movie; I was relieved that it was good. I already put up a review, so there isn’t any reason to repeat it here. Needless to say the weekend numbers were reputable. The film made a respectable $1,676,917 gross, averaging $5,608 per theater. The producers are considering expanding to over 1000 screens for the next weekend so that’s great.

I went to bed with hope that a violent future can be averted. If enough people become educated, watch movies that aren’t controlled by radical left-winged filmmakers which is just about everyone, and reading books that pander to a liberal publishing industry, while liberal unions are pushing for even more taxes to pay for their very expensive public wages, if the Tea Party continues to do its work and films like Atlas Shrugged are shown to people who haven’t or won’t read the book, this country has a chance.

The voice of reason has been quiet on the front of small government types and the loud mouthed big government types have had the microphone for way too long. John’s work on Atlas Shrugged is encouraging. I hope it goes a long way to waking up enough people to hold off the looters, and leaches attached to public service.

We are not a democracy. We are a republic. Union jobs are not middle-class. If they are public jobs, they work for the tax payer and the tax payer is not required to increase their budgets just to pay for labor we don’t need for a government that just wants to keep growing and infringe itself upon us. For too long we’ve let these big government types have their way with running our government and it’s time to stop. They can stop with reason and of their own accord but if they have in mind violence, they’ll get back more than they can imagine because they don’t have a right to steal from the rest of us. And they don’t have a right to a job. And they don’t have a right to over-regulate our states and nation just to create a job. Just visit your local BMV to see them in action. And on a Friday night, the cops with the checkpoints to issue out speeding tickets and DUI’s in order to drum up business for the courts, and god forbid the tax looters of all kinds.

If there is anything that one must reflect on tax day it’s, why do we pay so much in taxes, and why are there so many that want us to pay more!

I like the trend and I hope that the pendulum will continue to swing to the right and bring things more to the middle, because the radical talk I’m hearing from the left are fighting words that can only lead to one end, and that’s not what they want, believe me.

It’s not radical to not accept threats issued by these radical leftist groups, unions and public officials. It’s not radical to demand that government shrink. It’s only radical to the people foolish enough to take public jobs thinking that government was the way to build a career. The clash is inevitable with these people because they built their livelihoods on the backs of those that supply all the money and are tired of carrying the extra load.

Some of my personal critics have said about me, “you don’t work well with others. You don’t collaborate.” No……I don’t. When I’m hired for a job, I am the dictator that functions as the sole decision maker. Why, because to me, it is a wasted effort to carry around everyone else. I compare collaboration to hauling around a wheel barrel full of rocks, the minds of co-workers and other management being the sluggish rocks that do very little but slow you down and add weight to your load. My view of government is the same. Most of them are just dead weight that doesn’t contribute anything productive to the world around us. We throw money at them just to give them a job, and to me that is a tremendous waste. And the same thing applies to this whole big government versus small government issue. Government is not there to give you a job. Anybody that thinks so is sadly mistaken, and you should do yourself a favor and start looking for another line of work. It’s fair warning from fair people. Don’t make the transition any more difficult than it needs to be. But don’t make threats. And don’t play Chicago politics………………it’s a fair warning.

The Coming Insurrection might work in Europe where their minds are soft and their hearts are softer, but you can forget about it in the United States. Don’t even try it.

Rich Hoffman

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

RIP Teaching Profession: Why are kids so dumb?

What does a “master’s degree plus 30” mean to me as a tax payer?  Yet that’s what a teacher from Lakota named Mary who teaches in a blue ribbon award-winning middle school, stated as a justification for her worth when she came straight out and asked what she was worth live on the air to 38 states and part of Canada.  She was responding to my appearance on 700 WLW with Darryl Parks on Saturday April 16, 2011 during his morning show. 

Come to think of it, what good is a blue ribbon award?  Who gives it out?

The State.

Why?

To give people the illusion that taxpayers are getting the value for their money.  But why do they believe such things?

Because people buy homes in school districts based on whether or not a district is “excellent.”

Who decides if a district is “excellent?”

The State. 

Why would the state do such a thing? 

Because it justifies all the jobs of the people employed in the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio School Board, the OSBA, and the Ohio Education Association so that they can make people feel they are getting value for their tax money. 

It is interesting that one day I drove all over the city and I noticed that Springdale City Schools, Princeton, Lakota, Mason and Sycamore all had “excellent” banners on their high schools.  That leads me to believe that getting an excellent rating is pretty easy, because so many schools have it.  So what’s the value in that? 

The answer to all these questions is that it’s all deception designed to manipulate people into voting for increased taxes on their property.  The teachers union has openly scammed against all property owners in the state of Ohio with their endorsement of these deceptive practices.  I hold them more accountable because they are the organization that provided the lobby to politicians and Ohio Department of Education members to obtain these meaningless ratings like “blue ribbon schools” or an “excellent” rating.  And the next responsible group is realtors.  They love those awards because it makes selling a home in those particular school districts easier.  So they are usually at the front of efforts to pass a school levy. 

Darryl hit the nail on the head during our radio interview.  He said the teaching profession will soon RIP.  Why?  Because technology will eliminate millions of teaching jobs in the near future.  It will not eliminate them to be mean to them, or to hurt their feelings.  Technology is the most logical next step in the evolution of the teaching profession.    While teachers should be re-educating themselves for the evolving market they are instead holding onto the past.  This is what they were doing while I was on the radio with Darryl. 

They were collecting signatures for the repeal of S.B.5. like a bunch of short-sighted looters that lack any vision.   The speaker in this clip says that we need good schools in order to teach our kids to read.  Yet with all the millions and millions of dollars we spend on education, out of the thousands of dollars each of us pay on our property taxes, 1 out of 4 people are functionally illiterate.  Because of that, our education system is a dismal failure that is in serious need of reform.  Just listen to Miss Teen USA.

So to all those fools trying to repeal S.B.5 enabling them to loot our tax money and give themselves vacations to Cancun should ask, what value are you? 

Can you honestly answer it?  Because blue ribbons and excellent ratings are just words on a banner.  The true excellence is in the quality of our society, and by the sound of that girl, we’re in a lot of trouble.

Rich Hoffman

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

ATLAS SHRUGGED WAS SOLD OUT AT NEWPORT ON THE LEVEE: MY REVIEW OF THE FILM

I read all the reviews for the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 film as they began to pour in on April 14, 2011. The reviews were predictably not kind for all the same reasons that Frank Oz was overlooked in 1981 for an Academy Award in his portrayal of Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. The reason back then was that the Screen Actors Guild did not regard puppeteers as actors. The Directors Guild also clamped down on George Lucas for putting all the credits at the end of the movie instead of the beginning which prompted Lucas to quit the guild and make Return of the Jedi using Richard Marquand, who at the time was not a member of the guild. Marquand at the time had only a few credits to his name, The Legacy and the TV movie Birth of the Beatles.

I am reminded of that little piece of history because so many critics seem hungry to criticize Atlas director Paul Johansson for his lack of experience directing only One Tree Hill episodes. The criticism that the film received a flat screen treatment meaning it seemed to resemble a high production value television show is sophomoric and is uttered strictly from the mouths of the unions, and have no merit. What are they comparing Atlas to as far as a film of value, something like Jackass 3-D? Atlas Shrugged is an ambitious film that takes on a lot of ground. I personally think they went too fast in the development of the story. They could have gotten away with another 50 minutes of film time, something the producers may want to release as a director cut when the film comes out on DVD. There were exposition shots of the government action in the macrocosm that needed to be there to develop why building the train line was such a big deal, and people who have not read the book might find it difficult to follow the story without repeated viewings. Because the cut of the film is trying to fit into under 2 hours at 1 hour and 40 minutes Atlas focused on the microcosm of the characters Dagney and Rearden. I understood it because I know the book so well, and people who do know the book will be happy to see that the filmmakers went to a lot of trouble to stay true to the nature of the book.

I see the film version of Atlas Shrugged as an experiment rather than a literal film meant to be taken on its own. It’s a work of philosophy put into visual form, and it requires a level of sophistication to begin with. Film is supposed to be like that. I can think of Koyannisquatsi, the great film by Godfrey Reggio that featured just a series of sped up images taken from all over the world to articulate the evolution of man in the current age into a society oddly similar to a microchip. Powaqqatsi a few years later did much the same to the soundtrack of Philip Glass.

I thought of those films while watching Atlas Shrugged. The filmmakers of Atlas were capturing the images of the book without attempting to duplicate Ayn’s work. The most notable and effective elements of this filmmaking style was John Galt in the opening scene only referred to in exposition by Rand where Galt stops Midas Mulligan on a rainy street and convinces him to leave the “outside” world. The other was the scene involving Hugh Akston. I thought the part of the film involving the static electric motor and Akston’s knowledge of it was hurried through due to the films running time, but when Askton hit the screen there was instant uttering’s of approval from the people in the theater watching the movie with me. All Akston had to do was appear on screen and the members of the audience were satisfied with the visual rendition of his character. In this way, the film version is interesting and fun because it serves as a visual companion to the book instead of a replacement, which I think many traditional thinking people might not understand.

Atlas Shrugged is an independent film. I’ve seen a lot of them, been to more than a couple of film festivals and seen a lot of bold attempts by young, and old filmmakers. Independent film has emerged as a powerful force because Hollywood does get stuck in its business model, which has been controlled by the political left, and has virtually ignored the portions of the market that go to Tea Party rallies and read books like Atlas Shrugged. To Hollywood, films like Hangover, and the next Scream film is the safe bets that fit into their understanding of things. Atlas Shrugged is about a foreign world to many on the political left, and they are not used to seeing views that are conservative in nature competing with their ideas and they don’t like it.

Atlas Shrugged because of the amount of characters and scale of the story will not work as a traditional film, with a lead like Angelina Jolie as Dagney and Brad Pitt as Rearden with a top-level director making over one million for his work along with all the supporting characters of John Galt, Francisco, James Taggert, and the other 50 or 60 characters that would all require SAG minimums depending on the scale driven off Jolie’s 20 million minimum and Pitt’s 20+ million per picture. Before anybody shot one frame of film there would be over 80 million in just wages alone committed to the film, which is why the movie had not been done up to this point. And a movie like Atlas Shrugged will never pull a ROI at the box office if the budget exceeds 100 million. This is a film for thinking people, so the scope of the film must match the intention, and that is to bring an epic story to thinking people and keep the budget to where the filmmakers can actually produce parts 2 and 3 without the contingency of waiting for DVD sales to refill the budget coffers.

My wife and I sat till the last credit scrolled across the screen at approximately 12:45 in the morning. I had to catch the late show because I attended the Tax Day Rally in Glendale where Doc Thompson was the MC. We left that event to catch the 8:20 showing at Newport on the Levee. I arrived about 7:45 to find the film sold out! Crowds of people swarmed around the ticket windows trying to get a ticket to Atlas Shrugged. So we bought a ticket to the 10:45 showing and killed our time at a nearby Irish Pub and enjoyed the storm that swept across the Ohio River while we waited. Our late show was about half full, which surprised me. What also surprised me was that many of the viewers were by themselves. I can’t recall seeing a movie that had a majority of the audience showing up by themselves. Now, the left normally would criticize those types of people as loners, and belittle them. But wishing them not to exist will not make them go away. These loners are the people who reject TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, or Two and a Half Men. These are also the types that reject reality TV shows, so their only entertainment is books, and the History Channel, because Hollywood isn’t making their kind of movies anymore. Atlas Shrugged is their kind of movie and many of them clapped at the end and stayed for most of the credits.

I sat with my arms crossed taking in what I had just seen and watching the reaction and found that the John Galt theme was racing through my head, which is a good sign. That means it was an effective soundtrack. I realized that Atlas Shrugged was the kind of movie that moves so fast and covers so much ground in such a short time that it requires repeated viewings. One viewing will not do it.

It was well acted. I thought Dagney was a believable person. In fact, the characters weren’t so beautiful that they were beyond the realm of reality which I think helps the film a lot. Again, with A list actors, that would have been a problem. Our society has become used to seeing extraordinarily beautiful people in leading roles, and that takes the situations out of our contemporary realities. When we leave the theater people don’t look like what we see in the films. So films take on a mystic of escapism. Atlas Shrugged is not out to do that. It seeks to place itself into the mind of the viewer’s experience, which is another reason for the cast to appear as it was. I thought the casting of Francisco D’Anconia played by Jsu Garcia was very good. Also of Paul Larkin by Patrick Fischler, that actor captured perfectly the treason of the good friend that was supposed to be of Mr. Larkin. Grant Bowler who played Rearden was excellent. This film is an obvious set-up for the part two which goes down the psychological rabbit hole, and I can’t wait to see Bowler stand in front of the federal court and tell them he does not acknowledge their authority or right to exist. Bowler will be able to pull it off.

I knew Tayler Schilling was going to nail Dagney in the first scene where she woke up to a phone call from Eddie Willers, also played very well by Edi Gathegi, in her apartment sleeping on the couch. A picture is worth a thousand words and Tayler got it. The character of Dagney is not an emotional person, and she played it straight until the incredible scream at the end of the movie. Here was a person that spent the whole movie trying to fulfill a promise to Ellis Wyatt, to get him a railroad, to repair the damage done by her brother to Wyatt’s business. Dagney is fulfilling a promise that she believes in with her entire soul to execute only to have Wyatt quit at the end and run off with John Galt.

Now the criticism that I’ve read is one from people who don’t understand what the big deal is. “Why is she so upset?” “What’s going on?” “So what, the guy left and burnt down his oil field. All conservatives are a bunch of greedy, oil loving bastards, serves them right!” Besides the fact that fuel costs were excessively high and Ellis was one of the only hopes in the United States for bringing the costs back down, why don’t people make the connection between oil and their own prosperity? Reardon asked the question in Atlas Shrugged, “What’s wrong with people?” Paul answered, “Why ask questions that have no answer?” He’s right, because the reason for those statements is because there are an alarming number of people in our society that no longer feel the pressure of a promise, because to care about a promise to a friend, wife or business partner, you have to care, and sadly, many people no longer care about things like a promise. So the lack of understanding directed at the confusion of Dagney’s motives in the film is more of a commentary on modern life, which is what Dagney is screaming at. She is afraid of becoming what we actually are. I would pay to see Atlas Shrugged 20 more times just to see that last scene. I thought it was vividly powerful. I loved how the camera pulled back to reveal the sign that Ellis left as his oil fields burned while she stood helpless to stop it. The reason for her “robotic” behavior is because she is determined to succeed no matter what the cost. My wife nailed Dagney’s performance by saying, “she reminds me of the terminator from Terminator 3.” And she’s right, Dagney will not be stopped. If she wants something, she will achieve it. And the scream represents that with all her ambition, with all her good will, all her energy, cleverness, and innovation, she could not stop Ellis from giving up. She saw the look in his eyes when Ellis was in her office chastising her for her brother’s incompetence and she thought if she did everything right, that she could keep Ellis from leaving wherever all the “men of the mind” were going.

I also read criticism of how the exposition was displayed with news broadcasts and this was somehow bad. I don’t agree. I think it was wonderfully done in this film. It reminded me of how the director Paul Verhoeven used newscasts from the film Robocop to propel the complicated aspects of the story along. Hollywood and critics in general have gotten used to the type of films produced in the 90’s and 2000’s that pamper to their every wish. This is something that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskal started. Those two reviewers created an industry of film critics and gave them much more power than they deserve. Movie reviewers have become breakers or makers of box office results, and that’s not necessarily healthy. Because the views of the reviewers become the editors of public opinion, and if those reviewers are progressive types, then studios will cater to those reviewers to get the “thumbs up.” I actually respect Roger Ebert quite a bit. He’s usually right on. But when he runs into something above his intellectual capacity, he gets stumped. You can see how Siskal and Ebert used to bounce off each other in this review of White Hunter Back Heart, which is one of my personal favorites films.

Ebert was fair from his perspective in his review. He knows Atlas Shrugged is loved by millions so he was careful in his comments. I think his mistake is he should have reviewed the film more the way he’d review an independent film like Koyannisquatsi. He like many people who go to see this film will mistakenly watch this film as a literal film, not as an atmosphere of images reflecting a philosophy. That’s the reason for the cityscape shots and the views of the mountains. Once all the films are completed, it will make sense. This first film is just an introduction. It’s also an experiment in filmmaking that I think is very healthy. It’s bold and deserves credit for that boldness alone. The merit of Atlas Shrugged will be felt down the road. It is the first step of bringing a new kind of entertainment to popular culture so it will suffer from opinion in the short run, but will stand the test of time over the long haul.

For the rest of us, those that don’t have to struggle to understand it, we can enjoy the treat of seeing on film the images we’ve painted in our minds while reading the book. Some of my favorite scenes were the opening with John Galt in the diner with the pouring rain outside, different from in the book, because Galt made an instant appearance in this film. I also liked that he was in Akston’s diner at the end. The appearance of Galt in the diners reminded me of the many day’s I’ve spent in such places at 3:30 and 4:30 am in the morning reading, writing and listening to the stories of the “night roamers,” those loners of society that everyone overlooks, but come out when everyone is asleep. It’s a subconscious understanding from people who understand John Galt and his motives, not an image intended for the masses looking for Batman. Subtle little changes to the book like that I thought were fun and artistic. But I’ll say that the bridge that Rearden built was magnificent to look at. Watching the train run down that track was fantastic.

My review of the film is that I like it a lot. I think it will be better when viewed with the other two films. For the DVD release I hope they can lengthen the running time with more exposition that had to be cut to keep the film under two hours. (the reason is to squeeze more showings in a day, very important for recovering a films costs.) And I think the film needs to be watched in the context of an artistic piece, just to sit back and enjoy the sights and sounds without trying to follow every word. The film moves too fast to be watched once. Repeated viewings are essential.

So go see it not just once, but several times!

Rich Hoffman

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

Kasich’s Epic Clash with the Voice of the Common Man

It is rare that any state, locality, or federal entity runs into a politician that is competent and intelligent. It is rare to find a politician that is a self-made man not looking at politics as a stepping stone to career advancement. It is rare that a politician actually puts the honor of their office first, before anything else. It is rare to meet a politician that has the guts and fortitude to endure the criticism of special interest.

It also is rare to see a politician that will take on an old-time friend and conservative that prides himself as the conservative voice of the common man, and in the times when it really counts between those two old friends, it is obvious who meant what they said over the years and who was all talk.

That’s what the State of Ohio has in Governor John Kasich and it’s evident in this video shot at 700 WLW when Kasich was on the Bill Cunningham show for a fiery showdown of ideas over the casino issues, retirement and the controversial stance the governor has taken on “collective bargaining” specifically the S.B.5.

I’m not one that tosses praises around easily. So it is with great merit that I say that I can’t recall a politician in my lifetime that matches the passion of their mouth with actual action. John Kasich is a rare person that has greater ability in management than he does in his ability to speak, which is exceptionally good. I was deeply impressed with this exchange between Kasich and Bill Cunningham.

I suspect that Kasich is like many in Ohio and he doesn’t want casinos in the state. That would explain his behavior toward the casino deal that Cunningham is so against. I can remember when Cunningham in the mid 90’s was completely against the casinos so that would explain why Kasich is so surprised in Cunningham’s defense of a socially liberal concept, such as casinos are.

Kasich should be representing the position that all businesses have an equal opportunity even if he doesn’t like them. There is a Hustler of Hollywood store near my house that I can’t stand. I think it ruins the small town of Monroe, Ohio with its presence. But, every time I drive by it, it’s full of people looking for their pornography fix and all the tax collected through each sale is paying taxes. I don’t agree with the pornography, but I vote by not going, and I won’t be going to a casino in Cincinnati for many of the same reasons. If the business model fails, it fails. I’d be happy about it, but I won’t do anything to bring it about either, because it’s a business that has the right to attempt. If it finds a market, even if that market is evil, so be it. It’s not for me to decide what’s evil for someone else.

Kasich needs to have the same position on the casinos. You can’t expect to tax them out of existence like we attempt to do with cigarettes and alcohol. Those are all anti-business stances. But, that does not ruin the great banter that Kasich engaged in. It was refreshing to see such a person in the position of a governor.

This clash of ideas is something that will resonate for quite some time because of the truths revealed. And we are better for it.

Rich Hoffman

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

35deg 39’17.80″N 83deg 26’27.77″W—-My Little Secret: The Obama Budget Plan

There is so much wrong with President Obama’s speech on April 13, 2011 that I couldn’t possibly comment on them all without writing another book. The bottom line is that he’s a fundamental socialist. He used two examples of success, China and Brazil which are countries not tied down with much regulation, that was instrumental to those success stories.

Obama is a progressive. His mistake is that he believes like other progressives do, that money equals value, and it does not. He is completely lost, like the others of his kind. His America is not my America. My America is described below.

Speaking of progressives, they are all upset with the upcoming release of Atlas Shrugged. What is with all the Weiners that are part of the progressive movement? When I saw the sad little article from The Huffington Post about Atlas Shrugged, and the terrified attempts from a “Weiner” named Ellis Weiner to paint Atlas Shrugged as something bad and unsophisticated for mankind, I had mistaken him for the Congressman Weiner, thinking they were both the same Weiner. Read that article for yourself

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellis-weiner/on-atlas-shrugged-as-a-gu_b_157295.html

Both Weiner’s are extreme progressives that are characters straight out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged. In that book, those characters are villains, so I would conclude that those Wieners would not like the book.

But Weiner crosses the line when he puts down the aim of the film, which will not be discovered in the part one portion of the film released. He reveals as anyone who is a fan of the book knows, that the “Men of the Mind” that have went on strike, have moved to the high mountains of Colorado to create a society of their own while the rest of the world perishes. It is obvious that Mr. Weiner just as in Congressman Weiner are a couple of people who have a limited intellectual capacity so they missed many of the deep subjects of the film. But Ellis Weiner seems to not understand that such places as mountaintop retreats of this kind exist, same as the mountain refuge mentioned in Atlas Shrugged.

Well……I’m going to give you a secret dear reader, so that you can know for yourself that fools like these Weiners live their whole lives seeing the world from the perspective of their city streets or their congressional districts. Their perspective is so warped and limited that they cannot see what is right in front of them and therefore cannot even conceive of the kind of world or ideas of a John Galt. I personally know of a place very similar to the mountain retreat from Atlas Shrugged. I will provide you with the coordinates, but shhhhhhhhh. It’s a secret. 35deg 39’17.80”N 83deg 26’27.77”W

I have spent some wonderful moments at that location. Here are some of the pictures from that place. It is one of the best kept secrets in the United States, but it is a real honest to god place and it exists for all the same reasons as in the book Atlas Shrugged.

If the world ended tomorrow, as we know it, if there were an economic collapse, that appears unavoidable at this point, and our political structure crumbles to the ground, the people who live and visit this spot on the earth will continue living and will not miss a beat. The people who know this place I’m speaking about will never miss President Obama. They’ll never care whether congress or the senate ever shows up for work again. Everything in the United States could end tomorrow and this place would still continue on.

From that place, the world is placed into its perspective. All the things that the “looters” like the aforementioned Weiner’s proclaim to be important will quickly be seen for what they truly are, just the cries of small-minded children.

When you are at that retreat it is evident, especially if you do like I do, where I download video, and radio programs onto my Ipod to watch and listen to in that remote location where power is not available, the voices of politicians sound meager in such a place. But literature, where a good book doesn’t require power, so I’ll never give them up for a Kindle, holds true from such a place. And Atlas Shrugged is meant to be read from a mountaintop and understood by the people who go to such places. It’s not intended for people like the Weiner’s.

The Huffington Post must spend hundreds of thousands of words to attempt to counter the truth which everyone knows deep down inside.

When Nietzsche proclaimed in “Beyond Good and Evil,” that GOD IS DEAD, he didn’t mean it literally so much as metaphorically. Nietzsche believed, as Ayn Rand did, and as I do that religion is used to hold mankind down. That doesn’t mean that one should not go to church or to find solace in religion on a Sunday morning. Religion is a personal thing that takes one to the thresholds of eternity. However, it was religion that ushered in progressive thought even though now progressives seek to move toward atheism and other non traditional religions. This is why the founders sought to separate church and state. They didn’t write it down that way, but it was warned against, so religion couldn’t be used to manipulate the masses through collectivism. We see that the Muslim faith is suffering from this very kind of social movement. Most of the intolerance and conflict in the middle-east is over religious topics, over who is correct and who is not. So it is concluded by thinking people that religion should be free to be practiced, but not related to government action.

The reason is that we don’t want a return to the type of foolishness that led the United States to our current position, where religious zealots of the left and right plagued our nation with progressivism, which led directly to prohibition, Social Security, Welfare, Medicare and all the other “cares,” all in the name righteousness.

In the either-or world of the small-minded, they cannot understand such a spiritual division. It is in human weakness that they feel they must impose upon others the merits of their home religion in order to eliminate from their own minds temptations which may lure them off a spiritual path. And the government do-gooder, who wishes to be the modern Robin Hood, who takes from the Rich and gives to the Poor, my allegiance is the same as the pirate from Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold who proclaimed in that book that his aim in life was to KILL Robin Hood! Of course this is figurative in its assessment, but the metaphor is one that intends to change the focus of value on those that take and loot, to one that creates and employees.

Such thoughts are preposterous to progressives like the Weiner’s of the world. They do not have the intellectual capacity to even understand the basics of self-reliance, and the merit of individualism. Because that is the salvation of mankind, it’s in an evolution to a man of self-reliance that pushes away all forms of collectivism and takes care of their own sector of existence. By becoming good at a trade, that individual has something to trade with others and that is the limit of the collectivism. But the Weiner’s and their kind are part of the old plague driven world of medieval Europe. Shakespeare knew that the old world of Europe was full of deception and corruption. I’ve read Titus Andronicus from a mountaintop and it reads differently there than from a library or classroom.

So now you know a secret of mine. I fear no breakdown of society because of that place. I know what the world could look like if you took away all government, because there isn’t a government at that place. It is beyond the reach of people like President Obama, George Soros and his silly Huffington Post and all the Weiner’s he likes so much. Those people are the representatives of the lead-foot travelers that are either too scared or too unhealthy to move on their own. And they do not represent the direction of the human race.

All things should evolve into improvements, not in decline, and Atlas Shrugged besides the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the first serious work that explores that evolution. And it is understandable that those who are close to that transition themselves would be attracted to the message. That message will be missed by the Weiner’s and those like them. Because of their limited perspective, they will cleave like fools to the world of their understanding, and will always fear the perspective of a mountaintop hideaway. The revelations that would fall upon them will shatter their reality in ways that they aren’t prepared to deal with.

I heard the Tea Party movement identified by people like those Weiner’s as being of the “extreme” hard right. They are mistaken. The Tea Party is of those types that are reaching for that next step. It has nothing to do with the current order of things. It has nothing to do with right or left. It’s about right and wrong, and passing between those dualistic principles to a place of human evolution. And that is what critics of Atlas Shrugged fear with all the essence of their being.

The world of President Obama is based on old technology of an emerging third world county, such as where the United States is headed under the Obama types.

As I’ve seen from the mountaintop the future of America can and should be this:

The future of medicine, forget Social Security and Medicare. Invest in this.

The future of transportation will be this sooner or later. Sooner if we have the guts, later if we allow another country to beat us to it.

The future of food. There is no reason to  under use our land, as we currently are.

And the future of education is not the traditional way.

This is an age of two America’s. The progressive one that will take us toward Europe. And the innovative one that accomplished those railroads across the nation like Obama took credit for, back in a day when the government hadn’t let learned to suck the life out of industry with regulation. It’s up to us all which America will win, because they both can’t co-exist any longer.

Rich Hoffman

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

Put Back a Few Cookies: Lakota Teachers took too many and didn’t leave enough for others

When you were a kid did your mother ever make cookies and put them in a cookie jar, only to have her catch you taking too many? “Now don’t eat all those cookies,” she would have said. “I made those for you, your brothers and sisters and all your friends. If you eat them all there won’t be any for the rest of them.” Well, at Lakota that’s what the teachers have done, they’ve taken too many cookies for themselves, and they’ve told the community through the teachers union that if you want to make us all happy, then you’ll just make more cookies. Problem solved. But the problem isn’t solved, because while we’re making all these cookies, we’re not being productive in other ways, when the reality is that all we need to do is exercise some common sense and fairness.

It is encouraging, yet there is still plenty of room to be skeptical, that the Lakota School Board appears to be looking for some room to gain much ground by voiding the second year of their contract with the teachers union.

The contract was voided because of the following clause: This contract shall become effective on the 1st day of July, 2010 and shall expire on the 30th day of June 2012. Contingent upon the District’s legal ability for the Board President, Treasurer, and Superintendent to sign the R.C. 5705.412 certificate. In the event that the Board Representatives are unable to sign the R.C. 5704.412 certificate the second year of this Agreement then agreed to between the parties related to the second year shall be considered null and void.”

The 412 certificate (see link: http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/5705.412 ) basically says that the District has to declare that it has sufficient revenues to meet its planned expenditures. This is Lakota’s press release: http://www.lakotaonline.com/news.cfm?story=2754

According to the Pulse Journal the move allows the board to void its contract with its teachers’ union, while at the same time, giving it flexibility to create a more sustainable long-term plan for the district, board President Joan Powell said.
“In the past three weeks as this information started coming to us from Columbus, it has become apparent that to maintain the future viability of this district, we need to look deeper than just the proposed budget reductions,” she said.
“Some fundamental changes to the contract are needed, and we have a window of opportunity to do so,” Powell said. “In light of the negative impact of this proposed state budget, we must take that opportunity. Our financial reality today is different than it was last November or last August when we executed this contract.”

Lakota Education Association President Sharon Mays said the union will continue to work cooperatively with the board to find the best solution for students and teachers, but the process now will take longer.

“I’m anxious to see the forecast, because we have not been able to look at it,” she said. “We feel as though we’ve been cooperating and collaborating, and have given up a lot of things in those memorandums of understanding. And to change direction this late in the game — now everything is slowed down.”

Treasurer Jenni Logan said deficit spending next year is expected to be $22 million, up from $13.9 million in 2011.
A $28 million negative cash balance is expected in 2013.

The stress to the budget, Logan said, is coming from three areas: the state is reducing tangible personal property taxes starting next year, Lakota is expecting less money locally, and federal stimulus dollars have gone away.

The $22 million deficit is something that has been a concern for a long time, and it is driven by one primary factor, wages. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here to see the type of wages we’re talking about. It is my sincere hope that the Lakota School Board will take this opportunity to drive those wages down. No other measure will be acceptable because no other budget cutting device will bring costs in line properly taking into account that federal money will not be there and the reductions in the personal property taxes. The days are gone where the teachers union could just blindly demand the incredibly high wages that put us in this trouble to start with.

During this next round of negotiations I proclaim that I will stand behind the school board fully if they’ll not allow the union to dictate terms to our community. I don’t want to hear any threats of any strikes from the teachers union. I don’t want to hear any threats at all. If the teachers of that union truly want to be a part of this community, they’ll dig deep and consider themselves lucky to work in such a nice district. We’re not asking teachers to work for free. But an average wage of over $62K per year is not acceptable. They asked for too much, broke the back of the community in the process, and now it’s time for them to come to the table and give back enough for Lakota to balance its budget. No other measure is acceptable.

For those that just want money, go to another district. Because soon that district will be going through the same problems Lakota is going through. So run from district to district like a thief in the night and collect your money. But for those teachers that want to work for Lakota, and want to be a part of our great community, work with us and we’ll work with you. But don’t even think of a strike or any other public relations stunt. There are people this time that will be there to expose you for what you truly are.

With all this encouragement, I hope that there isn’t some phantom intention to place another levy on the ballot in August or November, because the money isn’t there and such a thing would be incredibly arrogant. Higher taxes in our community in any capacity would be economically devastating in light of the increase in fuel costs, rise and in food costs which is directly influenced from increases in transportation costs. The amount of income that is required to purchase a $250,000 dollar home, which is what most homes cost in the Lakota School District along with the dollar shrinking in value and facing tax increases on their property is prohibitive. The only room for meeting the budget needs comes in reducing the impact of the wage costs of the employees.

The teachers took too many cookies and the community is done making cookies. The teachers need to put some of those cookies back so there’s some left for all the other teachers. Our budget is just under 160 million dollars, not a small amount. So there should be plenty of cookies for everyone. The only reason there’s not is because some teachers took too many cookies, which is robbing others from having a cookie. So do the responsible thing and put the extra cookies back in the cookie jar and play nice teachers union. Don’t be greedy. Don’t be vain. And don’t throw a fit of rage like some child that didn’t get their way. Help our school board balance their budget and do your part to make sure everyone gets along. But more (cookies) taxes, are not the solution.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Cannibals of the United States: Sacrifice the RICH!!!! Save the needy!!

On my way home today I was riding my motorcycle in the pouring rain and listening to the soundtrack to the film Apocalypto on my Ipod. It was a surreal kind of experience that I enjoy a great deal, and the simplicity of a complicated problem made itself known to me through that cryptic music as the rain tried desperately to penetrate the confines of my helmet.

If you’ve studied other cultures, their rise and fall, there are common themes. Visit any ruin of an ancient civilization and you will see that all those societies bankrupted themselves. They either ran out of water, food, or their currency. Visit Ankor Watt, Chitzen Itza, or any city in Egypt and you’ll see it. Study the past to see your future.

In Mel Gibson’s brilliant film, Apocalypto Gibson showed wonderfully the height of the Mayan Empire and displayed the problems they were having. The Mayans built huge cities, depleted their food supply and built a corrupt hierarchy of politics that sought human sacrifice to appease the mob, and to keep the masses believing that the ruling class held some sort of power with the “gods,” so that society could continue for just a bit longer hoping by some miracle that if they cut off just one more head, or paint their faces just a few more colors so the gods would take mercy on their lives and save them all. In this case the god is Kukulcan. For those of you that don’t know much about history, the main street in Cancun that all the nightclubs are on, is named after that god.

The civilization of Cahokia, just outside of St. Louis, did much the same thing. They had sacrifices which were buried in Mound 72. It is highly likely that this culture along the Mississippi River was trading with the Mayans across the Gulf of Mexico and they had cultural influences on one another. The cultures were remarkably similar resembling the type of societies found in Mesopotamia during the pre-Christian era.
During excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monk’s Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s who was probably an important Cahokian ruler. The man was buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon,[16] with the bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. The falcon warrior or “birdman” is a common motif in Mississippian culture. This burial clearly had powerful iconographic significance. In addition, a cache of sophisticated, finely worked arrowheads in a variety of different styles and materials was found near the grave of this important man. Separated into four types, each from a different geographical region, the arrowheads demonstrated Cahokia’s extensive trade links in North America.
Archeologists recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62 percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution, method of burial, and other factors. The skeletons include:
• Four young males, missing their hands and skulls.
• A mass grave of more than 50 women around 21 years old, with the bodies arranged in two layers separated by matting.

• A mass burial containing 40 men and women who appear to have been violently killed. The suggestion has been made that some of these were buried alive: “From the vertical position of some of the fingers, which appear to have been digging in the sand, it is apparent that not all of the victims were dead when they were interred – that some had been trying to pull themselves out of the mass of bodies.”
The relationship of these burials to the central burial is unclear. It is unlikely that they were all deposited at the same time. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to between 950 and 1000 CE. Check out more about this from this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

Many people don’t even know that Cahokia is even there in the middle of the United States. It’s the giant hill alongside the highway on the way into St. Louis. You can see the arch of St. Louis easily from the ruins of Cahokia, yet people don’t know much about the ancient city. In fact, Cahokia wasn’t even discovered until developers tried to build a neighborhood over it. I wrote a screenplay about the place for some financial people a few years ago and we had an actress and a director, but the whole thing fell apart in pre-production. But here was the conception teaser for it. The history that I speak about is real. The modern aspect of it is fiction.

So why am I talking about cultures declining and human sacrifice? Well, listen to Porter Stansberry talk to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. We’re doing the same thing now as those collapsing civilizations did then. We are in a state of decline. The mob you saw in the Apocalypto clip is the poor, the welfare recipients, the union workers in the modern-day. The chants are the same. If you go back and watch the clip from Apocalypto you’ll see their union ancestors chanting at the bottom of the pyramid where the high priest is basically saying the same thing that President Obama is saying now. And who is being sacrificed…..who are getting their heads cut off. The people who produce.

In a culture like the United States it is the producers that are being sacrificed through regulation, taxes, Federal red tape. New inventions are being restricted out of fairness. New medical technology is being held back so government can pursue Obama Care.

Education reform is being held back by the corrupt unions that are only trying to protect the jobs of the teachers, forget about the effectiveness on the children. It is new ideas and the producers who create them that are lined up on the great pyramid steps waiting to have their heads cut off to appease a mob of fools.

We are told that the dollar is fine, because Obama and his gang of union thugs are running Washington. Who believes that? Our government can’t even agree on what to cut out of our federal budget, because we as a civilization are paying for everything, Planned Parenthood, which should be for profit, NPR, which should have always been for profit, Social Security which should work more like a 401K and be privatized, Medicare that has more corruption than most countries can endure just on that issue alone, and needs a major overhaul.

All cultures that failed went through these steps. In fact, at Cahokia they had a thing called Woodhenge, which was a bunch of logs stuck in the ground in a circle just to the west of Monks Mound, on the East St. Louis side of the ruin. The only function of that artifact was to convince the mob that the high priests could predict the sun rise, the spring and winter equinox, and other astrological observations. The intent was to prove that they “the ruling class” had mastery over the “heavens.” All they really did was make observations, and that’s all our current ruling class of fools is doing, making observations that they sell to us as mastery over economics.

On the other hand there are people like Porter Standsberry out there that are “really” looking at the real problems coming to our culture, and people like Porter are the kind of people our government wants to cut their head off in human sacrifice, figuratively speaking of course.

All cultures that believe in sacrifice, and most agriculturally based societies do to some extent or another is limited in their vision, and leaders of those cultures should be removed immediately. Because in the world of productivity, there is no limit, only in the capacity of machinery, or manpower, but demand can be infinite. Sacrifice to the “gods” whether literal or to economic gods is foolish and short-sighted.

I saw a sign over the weekend from a woman protesting the government cuts saying “don’t cut down the economic recovery.” It is amazing that people like that are out there, that they believe there is enough money, that the recovery we are having is somehow created by government and not business owners that have decided that now that there are Republicans running a branch of government, they are investing back in business again. The woman holding that sign is no different from that mob of Mayans chanting for more blood at the foot of a giant pyramid. And the high priest will be all too happy to appease the mob so long as there are sacrificial bodies. The same type of signs are being held by people protesting S.B.5. “Keep collective bargaining.” There’s that word……collective. That is one of the most evil words in the English language, disguised as an angel, but doing the work of the devil.

For society to thrive, the rich should be encouraged and not penalized. Those less fortunate should be pushed to work not just given a check.

A few years ago I walked the streets of Washington D.C. and was about to head into a McDonalds to get a bite to eat. A beggar asked me for some change. He was sitting outside of McDonalds right next to a “Help Wanted” sign. I asked him if he had applied for a job. He ignored me and asked a woman who walked by, which she gave freely with a polite smile. The man had lost his pride and allowed himself to be a beggar. There was a job opportunity right behind him, but he’d rather plead to the high priest for the blood of another, which the priest will always be willing to oblige. There’s no shortage of those types of people, power-hungry and craving to stand on the top of a pyramid and cut off the head of sacrificial victims.

Taxes are a form of sacrifice, property taken from those that have, and given to those that have not. It’s not the head of the sacrificial victim, but it is still their property. Estate Taxes are along the same lines, when a person dies, their property, “part of their living essence and history on earth” is taken by government and handed out to the vicious mob.

Sacrifice is the kind of behavior that will only take us in one direction. And it won’t be the way of success. Clinging to old, sacrificial activity, like high taxation, cumbersome education methods, and a stifling environment that fears competition from new technology will destroy our civilization and leave us all as just one more ruin in the history of the world. That is, unless we can take our civilization back from the looters, the high priests, and other derelicts that act as a cancer upon it.

What a bunch of idiots………..

Oh, and while some may say that Mel Gibson is crazy, hey, Mel has done crazy things with women for years. He cheated on his wife, drank heavily, and was generally a wreck of a person for many years, and the media covered it up just like they do George Clooney and Robert Downey Jr. But, Mel’s a great artist and a great director. It was after he made The Passion of Christ, then Apocalypto that Hollywood turned against him. If he hadn’t made The Passion, Hollywood and the press that feeds it would still be making excuses for his behavior. That’s the world we’re living in people. The high priests with all their fancy headdresses want the mob to believe they are gods! God forbid someone like Gibson comes along and shows the truth of something. Is that acceptable to you?

It’s not to me.

Rich Hoffman

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