Category: Education

It’s the End of the Road: Budget problems for everyone!

We have arrived at the impasse, the point where life as we know it will change. The car is headed toward a massive financial cliff and the point of no return is near. We’re all packed into the car together, and the arrogant driver won’t heed the warnings that they are about to kill us all.

I’ve always been particularly good at directions. My reputation is that you could drop me anywhere on the face of this planet with a blindfold and I’d find my way home within a few days.

I once had a vicious argument with a former friend of mine over the movie, ALIVE, where a soccer team crashed in the Andes Mountains and resorted to cannibalism as a way to survive. It would have been far easier for those people to just send one or two people to walk down hill, and follow the water till they hit a village. There isn’t any place in this world where a village cannot be found within a three day walk, give or take the strength of the walker.

I had the same argument with another former friend over the film Castaway. Again, the main character knew he crashed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and was east of Hawaii. Grab a log, start swimming east. If a shark comes to eat you, kill it. Eat the shark and keep swimming. End of movie.  You don’t spend years of your life stuck on an island!

I had similar argument with a family member over the Blair Witch Project when I proclaimed that there was no way a group of teenagers could get lost in the woods of Maryland. There are no virgin forests that large, where they could walk all day and arrive back in the same spot.

All those people that argued with me had in common a blind trust in the social structure, and what the characters of these films shared with them, and apparently the common audience is a similar sense of helplessness. I on the other hand have learned to trust nothing resembling structure, because it’s prone to fail at some point.

Back in September 2010 I went on WLW radio and proclaimed that the course the Lakota School System was on was unsustainable. I received a lot of criticism for proclaiming the obvious. And to my critics I felt sorry for them. These were the same sad people that saw films like ALIVE, CASTAWAY and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and could relate with the plight of the protagonists. They would be the type of people that would freeze under duress and not be able to make a decision.

Instead of heeding my warning, and the warnings of people like Darryl Parks, and Scott Sloan both of WLW radio, the established thinking insisted on maintaining the finance model they had achieved through several generations of threats and coercion only to find out that there isn’t any money left. And they willingly held the children they are teaching as hostages, cutting busing at the first sign of trouble even though busing is only 2% of their costs. It is the same sad game.

I was doing some reading the other night about the history of union activity in the United States and how many union bosses were proclaimed communists and code word “progressives,” much of this literature coming from sources prior to Glenn Beck, much of it from the late 70’s to early 80’s. I read about how the entertainment unions of 1946 attacked Warner Brothers and turned over cars in radical behavior that predated Saul Alinsky. Alinsky the author of Rules for Radicals is actually endorsed reading by the NEA. These simpletons have been at this behavior for a long time, entrenching themselves into our government as public workers unions, teachers being one of the largest sectors of that unification.

Forward thinking people like me and several others have been saying that it’s coming to an end. The inflation rate in the United States, a weaken US dollar, and our debt to other countries such as China have tied our hands behind our backs. We couldn’t even go to war with North Korea to help South Korea if we wanted to, because China would slap us silly for even thinking about it. They own us now!

And these derelict thinkers of public unions cleaving to the edges of reality like desperate survivors craving to eat their own people instead of truly doing something productive like reconsidering their entire life style and benefits packages, because they are causing massive economic failures due exclusively to their extremely high expectations, are digging in to their beliefs.

They are the kind of people that would stay on a remote island eating coconuts and developing a relationship with a soccer ball called “WILSON” instead of getting on a raft and to start swimming, again I’m thinking of CATAWAY here. Or ALIVE, or THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Every time I see a scene for CASTAWAY I gag! I can’t believe Robert Zemeckis directed that film. What happened to him!

But everyone has been warned well in advance. For Lakota, they have a 160 million dollar budget. The time for the LEA to approach the school board about saving the district came in November. Instead, they dug in their heels and chose to play the same old game of cutting busing.

For the rest of Ohio, Kasich budget cuts are going to be deep, and painful. And 2011 will be very difficult for people that make a living off the public dollar.

Turning over cars, or holding massive strikes and work stoppages won’t help you. All that will happen is that we’ll realize how little you really do, and you’ll prove that you’re over-paid. But radical behavior is what caused this issue. The public paid you too much to shut you up. But now they don’t have it to give you without drowning themselves, so they will now tell you no. That’s the way of things.

You should have listened when we told you to re-think your situations. Now, you will suffer much greater than you needed to.

You will suffer because you trust in the social structure that you helped to create, and it’s failing under its own weight.

Below is Darryl Parks from WLW discussing many of these issues. Remember this when we get into the hard months of April, May, and June of 2011. It’s not like the information wasn’t out there for people to act upon.

Below is the 60 Minutes interview that Darryl was referring to. I think these two interviews are loud warnings that should be heeded while there is still time.

The cynic in me knows that most people will just plant their heels where they stand and grip blindly onto what they know best, even if what they know and trust is wrong.

Those of you that have been “gaming” the system for many years whether you’re a union leader or member, a real-estate agent, a developer, an investment manager, or just a measly politician, or any innumerable guilty parties, you know who you are, somebody had to pay eventually. Our current crises are because of your collective irresponsible actions, and that’s why our county is now suffering. So now it’s time to get off your ass and help out. Stop crying and start swimming, because you’re holding back the rest of the country that wants to survive.

One of the most frustrating things in life is knowing your going in the wrong direction but being unable to tell the arrogant people driving the car that they are about to drive you over a cliff, especially when you’re better at directions than the driver. And now we are at the point of turning around and going back where we came from, or we go over the cliff. And the point of no return sign comes when we hit the metaphorical year of 2011.

If the car doesn’t stop soon and turn around, I’m going to jump out. I don’t need a car, or a GPS, or even a road to find my way back. So I’ll let the car go right on over the cliff with all the arrogant idiots that don’t listen in it, because I won’t let them make a decision that ruins my life too.

And I won’t sit in the desert at the edge of the cliff waiting for someone to come and rescue me. I’ll start walking back within seconds, not wasting a moment of time.

Because I can.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Real Evil in the World

When the United States of America is called racist, unfair, evil, and other poor diatribes of foolishness, the audacity of such statements defies logic. I accept the reason for the nonsense, even if the popular current wishes to go down that swift stream full of undertows that dump out into a massive whirlpool of doom.

To let you know what I’m thinking, there is a massive river coming from Niagara Falls that runs down some swift rapids for several miles before making a sharp right turn toward Lake Ontario. Anyone that has seen that whirlpool would not want to swim in it. The current is so swift, that anything in it is sure to sink.

That’s where our country is right now, stuck in that current. And the other countries, those grand members of the United Nations, our so called friends, have pushed America off the cliff in hopes that we’ll sink. They fantasize that life without the United States in the world will allow them to prosper and have a chance at being the best for once.

What the world doesn’t appreciate is the United States protects it from bullies, which will always exist no matter what form of government the world chooses. Those bullies call us names from their home countries, and in many cases they call it names from within. It’s all part of the process of pushing America into the swift water hoping we’ll drown.
Then you see how the rest of the world functions, and reality comes into sharp focus.

I saw this woman from the Sudan being publicly punished, and the petty criticisms of the United States seem ridiculous.

American society is not perfect, but it is far superior to anything that has ever been attempted on the face of planet earth, and I am tired of the criticism and self-doubt leveled at American society. The United States is the greatest light of hope the world has.

The below pictures are other terrible instances of violence against women committed by the beliefs of “other” countries, outside of American influence.

And I won’t put the really bad ones up here. If you want to see much, much worse click here:
SEE WHAT THE FACE OF PURE EVIL CAN DO.

When you hear people say the United States isn’t a “fair” place, consider the motive of the accusation. For while we are busy being touchy, feely, sensitive creatures just trying to keep our heads about the swift water, the bullies are doing the real violence to poor innocent victims that need the valiant strength of the United States of America.

It’s time to sink or swim, and the world needs us to survive.

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

The Lie of Feminism: A Mountain of Work that has to be Undone.

Women have been ripped off!

It has been brought to my attention the ProLakota website on Facebook labeled me as a sexist during the campaign. I was made aware of it because I’m a pretty busy person and such things are trivial in the grand scheme of things. However, because the accusation is leveled in my direction, I need to address it.

Jake Greers is the young fellow that is running things for Pro Lakota. It is sad that he doesn’t understand how he’s being used, but that’s a topic for another article. He’s in much the same situation as this sad little boy in London.

As far as being a sexist, I find those types of accusations to be tripe. How can some kid of his age have any knowledge of what a sexist is? All he knows is what his environment, shaped by MTV, and organized labor through the mouths of the teachers around him, and his own experience, which is greatly lacking under the age of 18. In fact, he has a whole lifetime of learning to do before he even has the right to make statements like that. All he is doing is repeating what the adults around him, who have much to lose in the structures they’ve created at taxpayer expense, have been saying to protect themselves.

A sexist! Me? I have been married for a long time. I’ve raised two daughters. And I’ve watched over 40 years of feminist experimentation……………………I have my opinions on the matter. And my opinion is that the social experiment of feminism is a ridiculous failure now in the context of some historical test data.

The data for those test results are in. Women are collectively unhappy in the roll they’ve attempted to live up to. The promises given to them by the media, such as fashion commercials, their parents that swallowed the whole blue pill and the rest of society that just wanted to try something new were complete lies. The root of some of these beliefs can be seen in this old Enjoli commercial.


What happened was that while women proved to men that they weren’t needed and a woman could in fact survive on their own without a man, men have stopped being men. The destruction of the traditional roles perpetuated by the feminist movement has cheated women out of relationships with men that were truly nurturing.

Nobody is saying that it was always perfect. Men that took to drink and abused their wives and children are the extreme crises in the other direction. But feminism has not been the answer.

Human beings need to understand what their jobs are not only in a relationship, but also in society. All the blurred lines have only caused enormous amounts of confusion.

My experience with women, which as noted, is extensive, informs me that deep down inside, most every woman desires in her relationship with a man a role similar to the role she plays in sex. That is a passive, receiving role. Women who profess otherwise are neurologically off balance. Every woman I’ve ever known which argues the fact will fit in this description. Is it any coincidence that so many in this modern age are taking medication for depression and similar disorders?

I am aware that this is a controversial statement. And my position on this is clear under my Ten Rules to Live by. Respect for women is a paramount concern for me.

But being a man requires understanding what a woman expects. A man needs to know what the rules are. In all times in human history there are important rituals that inform the men and the women what society expects of them.


In order to satisfy the ideology of people like Margaret Sanger, politicians, and pharmaceutical companies as well as cosmetics proposed that a woman can be everything at all times.

Here is a Revlon commercial from 1979. Here the woman is doing just that, she’s everything to everyone.


Here’s another from 1973.


And here is Brooke Shields reading from a book to appear that she is studying. But the way she crawls on the floor it’s all about selling her assets.

Over the years, film has informed our society what is the correct behavior for women. It is inescapable that Hollywood has handed out Academy awards to women who do nude roles in their films. And a large amount of actresses have portrayed hookers, or otherwise loose women. How is this good for women’s self esteem? Isn’t this a contrary message from what feminism professes?

Yes!

The box office is the way society votes, and the bottom line is that society will only buy into feminist roles if the woman takes off her clothes. It’s that simple. It’s not the feminist ideas in the films that sell tickets. Its breasts and women naked in a bed, the bottom line is the mother goddess model will always sell a movie ticket.

Anne Hathaway has learned that.   I’m really dissapointed in Anne.  But she wants an Oscar.

For complete stats Click here:
In fact, since 1990, of the 20 actresses that won an Oscar for their roles in film, 19 of them took their clothes off for their roles.
http://www.suite101.com/content/nudity-in-movies-a146816

This is the result of feminism, the end result, the accomplished objective. This is what has been accomplished after almost a century of feminist pursuits. Note the woman at the end of this next video. She has been reduced to wearing Trojan stickers over her breasts. A young boy casually smacks her butt, without respect at all. This young girl will have to explain to her children someday why she did this video, and what was on her mind at the time. The tragedy is that what small child would ever look up to a mom with a past like this? The girl thinks it’s funny now, because all the boys are paying attention to her. But she won’t in a few years when she’s a used up piece of flesh that nobody will take serious.


If young girls make it easy for young boys to have sex with them, all the young boys are going to do is be done with the act of sex quicker, so they can go back and play XBox with their friends.

When feminism struck our nation like a disease, the pursuit of equality for women resulted in diminishing them to the level of man. Therefore, the man no longer has anything to live up to, because now the woman is at his level. That behavior is evident in the above video. The boys don’t respect that girl. They just want to have sex with her then move on to something else leaving to fill her to the role of basically a used up condom.

How does this improve society?

Margaret Sanger and the gang have failed miserably in their beliefs. The evidence is all around us. Her father Michael Higgins was a strong advocate of women’s suffrage and free education, sound familiar? Margaret was a frequent contributor to the socialist party paper called The Call. These are the types of people that shaped the opinions of our modern age, opinions that were not filtered with intellect, but with emotion.

It is not Margaret Sanger’s name that a woman cries out in climax when she is with a man. It is in the act of the man to penetrate the woman spiritually and physically that does the trick. Women that insist otherwise have rear ends the size of barns, and skin that looks like unkempt leather, and men do not chose to be with them, for obvious reasons. For there are plenty of sleazy women laying about on the beach willing to bare their breasts for free, thanks to feminism. And why would a man fight for an old used up woman that everyone has conquered when a young, relatively unused woman makes herself available to all.

Here is the hero of feminism.


So call me a sexist all those of you that don’t have a clue what it means. And you young people saving up your money for spring break and a chance to pluck young girls like coins off the beach, because MTV says it’s cool, I’ll stick to my way of doing things, because my way works.

Yours doesn’t.

The following may seem unsophisticated to the modern audience, but I will promise you one thing. Twenty years from now, nobody will care about 2 and a Half Men. But even thirty years later, people still love Little House on the Prairie. Because the idea of family, a mom, a dad, and kids that love their parents is an idea that people will always hunger for.


All the other ideas that we now have to undo in our society, ones created by feminism and atheists, and radical drug addicts have to be undone. The trouble is now we have an entire generation that is corrupted with the negative effects of marketing companies riding the wave of feminism and Marxism.

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

Where’s this Little Boy’s Mother? The truth behind the London Riots

Where is this little boy’s mother?

You can dig into more of this story at The Blaze.com.

But here’s the core of the issue, these are children. They don’t know anything about the world yet. These kids are too young and naive to understand that they are being used by the real corruption of large institutions, and leftist mentalities to do their dirty work. There aren’t any guarantees that college will even give a young person a chance at success. Mass college participation is a fairly new idea. The world hasn’t seen the results yet. So far the results aren’t very promising. It’s usually schools that are involved in radical behavior. That’s how it was in the United States during the 60’s, and that’s where this radical behavior in London is coming from.

That leaves the question as to whether or not society should even endorse the current form of higher education, if all it can produce are radicals like these students, who don’t have basic understanding of economics, and young people with extremely high social expectations.

Again, the belief from all these people is that money just grows on trees. What good is protesting if the money isn’t there? It’s not the government’s responsibility to provide an education!!!!!!!

It is up to you! If you can’t afford it, work and earn it! Don’t be a bunch of spoiled brats looking for a hand out. And don’t be a pawn to socialist professors that are looking to use student protests to protect their very LUCRITIVE wages.

It’s all about money. Education is a service and if that service out prices itself that is the fault of the institution. Don’t look to government to solve the problem of excessive perceptions.

And that kid needs a spanking from his mommy. He certainly doesn’t belong on world wide news!

Rich Hoffman

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

When School House Rock, Rocked! A Time Capsule into the Past

If you want to see just how far the Progressive Movement has penetrated our culture all you have to do is look at School House Rock, from the 1970’s.

When I was a kid, I watched Saturday morning cartoons religiously; Hong Kong Phooey, Captain Caveman, and Land of the Lost were among my favorites.

Back then, sometime around 1974 to 1980 it was almost a guaranteed expectation that one of the below School House Rock video’s would air during commercial breaks.



These were useful and entertaining and helped a growing generation to understand their role in the country they lived in. You won’t find these types of cartoons produced today however. Instead, you get the Tides Foundation’s Story of Stuff, which is now shown in schools with public tax dollars supporting the progressive agenda.

When modern day educators and parents that are using public education as a convenient day care facility, or a chance for their child to get a scholarship using sports supplied by the school as a platform to exhibit their skills to colleges in hopes of getting a scholarship which will save that family some costs of higher education, keep in mind that this mind-set is only one generation old. School House Rock is a time capsule into a period before the effects of Progressivism had gained a firm footing in our country. The signs were emerging, but in our arrogance, we did not pay attention.

But now we’re awake.

It only takes a generation to destroy everything. It can take decades to rebuild.

Do you’re friends and neighbors a favor, send this to them so they can become aware of how quick and radically things changed in just one generation.

Rich Hoffman

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

A Street Car of No Desire

The streetcar slated to be built-in Cincinnati is receiving a $35 million dollar grant from the federal government. The reason this is a problem is because once you take the money, you are obligated to fulfill the requirements of taking that money, much like the issue regarding the high-speed rail where the Federal government dangled $400 million in grants at Ohio to commit us to build the rail system. It is important for Ohio, and for Cincinnati not to take federal money when it can avoid it.

Why?

Because there is a small item in the Constitution called the 10th Amendment. When a city or state takes federal money, it is expanding the growth of government at the federal level in exchange for the small return on the investment. In the case of these streetcars and trains, who is really going to use them? I won’t. And nobody I know will. I’d use a car or a motorcycle to get where I want to go. If I lived downtown, I’d ride a bicycle. I would never ride a streetcar. Relatively speaking, it is a very small percent of the population that will ride these transportation devices.

But……when the money is taken, suddenly the federal government has a right to dictate mandates. This is how congress has exercised many power grabs over the last century. So when you ask the question how we arrived at this point in time, where the government is out of control and growing rapidly, and local politicians look at us glass-eyed like zombies and proceed against our best interest, it’s because they sold our rights away for the prospect of free money.

I put together this video to explain the process. Watch it here:

When the federal government does this, it’s no different from when a credit card company sends you a new credit card offer. Politicians are always looking for something to attach their names to so their legacies will live on in history, and free money helps them build such monuments to themselves. And they sell us all out in the process, and leave us obligated to a giant centralized government for years there-after.

All in the name of power.

The trains have nothing to do with convenience, and everything to do with reducing the effectiveness of the 10th Amendment. Just be sure you understand that as the news proceeds forward from a mayor that has been to China twice in 6 months during 2010, and a former governor that has been in the hip pocket of President Obama, who is in the hip pocket of powerful unions, SEIU to be specific.

The State of Ohio needs to get in the habit of living off its own revenue. Once that happens, we can tell congress where to put their power grabs, and we will be free to regulate our own interests locally, the way the Constitution of the United States intended it.

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

Waltz of the Emo’s

Why call it a waltz, those patrons in our society that use emotion to justify the use of public money for their private needs? Because when the hard facts are put on the table, the emo’s dance around the issues, call names and attempt to side step the primary issues.

There was a wonderful disagreement on the Big One between Doc Thompson and Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Enquire over public education dollars being spent on special needs children.

Listen here:

This initial argument reminded me so closely to the disagreements taking place in virtually every school system across Ohio. For me, in the Lakota district when I put myself in the line of fire against the recent proposed school levy, it was stunning how similar the reaction people had towards me. The impulsive reaction of the otherwise cerebral Paul Daugherty and his literal intellectual attack on Doc Thompson, stating, “you could not write my article,” and “do you want to be quiet while I educate you or not,” speaks of the mentality behind such statements. 

Doc Thompson is understandably ruffling the feathers of established thinking and that is a very good and healthy thing. His position on this particular issue is one of questioning the validity of the costs in public education that are proving unsustainable. The comments Doc is making are the first honest examination of an avalanche which is about to fall upon us in programs created by government in recent history, that were well-intentioned, and are now accepted by the population in general, such as Paul Daugherty, and believe are “rights.”

When Paul attacked Doc, the motive was clearly one of intimidation, which is a normal strategy from parents that have become dependent on the services schools have been offering. Special needs children certainly bring about that reaction, but so do the children that want to participate in sports, or band. The standard defense reaction from people wanting those services from public money is to attack anyone that even brings up the question. In this case Paul came on the air, basically told Doc he was “wrong,” and that Doc lacked the intellect to write a column for the Enquire and that he needed to be educated. The unspoken desire is to impress upon Doc that if he speaks about something that is sensitive then maybe he’ll shut up next time and not ask the question.

I went through the same process during the Lakota Levy. “You couldn’t teach a class of students.” “If you have all the answers, why don’t you run for the school board,” were just a few of the comments. Anyone close to the story will note that during the Lakota Campaign, angry parents and teachers actually threatened WLW with very similar inflammatory comments because I had went on the air and revealed the real budget buster, that the wages of the top 30% exceeded 65K a year, and that was the reason the district didn’t have proper funding.

In 1990 a well-intentioned Congress passed the ADA act which is described below.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990[1][2] (ADA) is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, and later amended with changes effective January 1, 2009.[3]

 
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[4] which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. Disability is defined by the ADA as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.”

Quote by George Bush, “I know there may have been concerns that the ADA may be too vague or too costly, or may lead endlessly to litigation. But I want to reassure you right now that my administration and the United States Congress have carefully crafted this Act. We’ve all been determined to ensure that it gives flexibility, particularly in terms of the timetable of implementation; and we’ve been committed to containing the costs that may be incurred…. Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”

People now have forgotten what life was like before the ADA was enacted. And because it’s such an emotional issue, taken individually, the feel good stories are used to sell it. But now in hindsight, can we not say that the ADA has had a devastating effect on our expanding economy. Our competing nations don’t regulate themselves in such a way. People also assume that the Department of Education has always been in place, when in reality it’s only been implemented since 1979. Has the Department of Education made our students more successful? Or has the Department of Education only increased the cost of education? Is legislation like the ADA the government’s solution to fairness, if the cost is at the expense of our nation? And in sports, how did we arrive at a place where sports are considered an entitlement? Should public schools offer sports so children can have a crack at a scholarship? Is that the requirement of public education, so resident parents have the opportunity to have their children pursue a scholarship to higher education? Or preparing a child for college with electives offered by the district, is it the public’s responsibility to help a child accomplish their college goals once they’ve graduated? Who benefits, the community, or the parents of the community that save the extra education costs because pubic education assisted the cost of post-graduate prep? These are the emotional issues that instigate the type of character assassinations that are eerily similar to the exchange between Doc Thompson and Paul Daugherty.

Traditionally, it was churches, friends and family that cared for members of society that couldn’t care for themselves. When government injected itself into the situation, they have created a culture of entitlement, which we can not afford, and now the remnants of good intentions are crippling the very foundations that our society is built upon.

The only way to understand those foundations is to strip away all the things built upon it, and re-examine the condition. Again, I’d have to point out in the case of special needs issues; the total cost is but a fraction of staff wages that are excessively high across the entire school system payrolls. In Cincinnati the average per family income is $58,000 per home. At Lakota, it’s $62,000 per teacher. That is the bulk of cost, and no union member has yet to step forward and suggest restructuring their contracts. Instead, for weeks the Cincinnati Public School system negotiated with their teachers union over the cost of health care. So dealing with wages is a long way off. And the reason nobody asks the hard questions are because of what Doc went through on WLW on December 9, 2010 when a fellow member of the media took him to task on the air in an attempt to silence him.

And that is a waltz few sane individuals want to dance to. But let’s all be thankful that Doc can dance with the best of them.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.NoLakotaLevy.com

The Nature of Government

On the morning of December 8, 2010, I went to work as I normally do, only the temperature was hovering just above 10 degrees with a wind chill shaping up to a goose egg. I was riding my motorcycle, as I do all year, rain, snow or tornados, and the explanation for our governmental troubles came to me in the beauty of simplicity.

Many people wonder why I do things like riding motorcycles in sub-zero temperatures, and the explanation I could give them isn’t something they typically would understand from their perspective. I do it for what comes to my mind in the pain and endurance of the exercise. Often, being in such a predicament, which takes a person out of their comfort zones, will clarify thoughts. Since I do a lot of thinking, there are a lot of thoughts to clarify, so driving to work in extremely cold temperatures helps.

On this particular morning, I looked at the cars around me. At a stop light the woman next to me had her heat turned all the way up and she had on a hood, windows rolled up firmly. She looked at me like I was nuts. At the next light was a man in a pick-up truck. He looked like a man that fancy’s himself as a rough and tumble individual, had mud flaps with the silhouette of naked women on them. He refused to make eye contact. I could see his hair blowing in the warmth of his cockpit from the turned up heat, again windows rolled up tight.

I thought this morning of all the books I had read about Native American culture, of Tecumseh, Blue Jacket, the great Shawnee nation, the Five Nations of the Iroquois. I thought of Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa’s eating the heart of his enemies like they were just apples, many times while the victims were still alive. I thought of Chief Seattle and his great speech. And as I thought of those men, and the nature they revered, I thought of President Obama and his famous speech to the Fort Hood victims, “I want to put a shout out to the Native American’s,” or something to that ridiculous effect. It was another car that pulled up next to me at yet another light, with the exhaust from his vehicle dancing around his car and whipping around me in the swirling frozen wind. This guy was a typical suburbanite, well-shaven, clean cut, and looking straight ahead at the road ahead. Again, he didn’t make eye contact, and he reminded me of Obama, just going through the motions of living keeping his eyes on the road ahead, but not willing to look at things to the side of him that didn’t fit his learned behavior. For all I know the guy could live in my neighborhood.

On the rest of my journey to work, I thought of the train trolley down in Cincinnati, Strickland’s letter to Kasich on the high speed rail deal, Obama agreeing to the Bush Tax cuts, I thought of the TSA situation, and I thought about the Lakota Levy that is sure to come again, especially once the unions discover that they will not be able to maintain the level of income they’ve negotiated for themselves when Governor Kasich cuts education even more to get Ohio back on a balanced budget track.

Who is to say that riding a motorcycle in the extreme cold is wrong? Only in relation to the rest of orthodox society is it looked down on. To me, it makes perfect sense. It clears my head, like I discussed, and it saves a ton of fuel. With fuel climbing up over $3 bucks a gallon, I don’t want to pay more for fuel, so I’ll buy less. I have a perfectly nice car in the driveway, but I don’t like to use it for all the reasons described.

Big government types have associated themselves with the green initiative to save the planet from human impact. These are the same individuals that roll their windows up tight to protect their skin from the cold weather. They are not what in my opinion an environmentalist is.

Nature is not a fragile organism. Nature lives in the extreme cold, and the excessive heat and it sends hurricanes to destroy entire cities that humans build for themselves. Yet if you consider what the modern progressive minded person asserts with their big government ideas, you would at first think these people have mankind’s best interest at the front of their minds. But when you look at their actions from the perspective of a motorcycle in the brutal cold of a sunless morning, you see how infantile these people are.

Which is more beautiful, the nature that can be seen from the Appalachian Trail atop Mount LeConte or the nature in someone’s back year where all the bushes and trees are trimmed nicely, and the grass is cut, and every rock placed in the yard was put there by the owner of the property.

The degree to which human beings attempt to alter nature is called government. If you look to the forest, where mankind has not put their feet, nature thrives. Trees grow, animals eat each other, and water flows in the path of least resistance. Trees in the forest compete for light, the smaller ones get pushed aside by the bigger ones, and survival of the fittest is the general rule. In the forest, the will to survive is so great that a tree will sink roots into rock in order to get what it needs. The nature of human beings is not different from the organism of a tree.

In the back yard garden, trees are pruned and sculpted to fit the contours of homes, or other trees. Plants are mulched to assist them to grow, and shrubbery is trimmed and controlled. The grass is cut to a desired level, and in some cases watered to ensure its survival.

Our government is simply a garden of which we all have different ideas of where the plants should go, or what flowers we need to plant and where. But the understanding of it all is that it is purely cosmetic. All the rules of mankind are simply made up in the minds of the human being. In the global neighborhood, what is happening in America, is pruning, where the branches are being cut away so that the other trees in the neighborhood can grow, because the big tree of America sucks up all the water, at least according to these green thumbed gardeners called politicians.

The fertilizer and various chemicals we use on our lawns are simply equitable to the stimulus money government has issued to grow the economy.

From the cold morning of December 8, 2010 it became excessively clear to me that the same people tucked away in their warm cars are the same people that buy flowers for their gardens in the spring, and cut their grass on Saturday afternoons in the heat of a summer day. And they’ll plant a tree in this location or that location hoping that one day the tree will provide some shade. And these people take this same mentality to their business, whether they directly work for government, or if they simply vote in the grand idea of a republic, and the politicians they elect do all those things and more to their lawns. And they believe with all their hearts and souls that the work they’re doing is important, and that they must trim trees, and cut grass or use fertilizer in order to make our world grow.

What they fail to understand is that nature doesn’t need human assistance at all. We are simply guests that have arrived like a pimple on the face of geologic time. Our duration on the plant will come and go without the earth hardly noticing. Global warming and every related issue are only musings from human beings that have an unhealthy belief of their universal importance.

For all the gardens those humans build for themselves will be wiped away in time by the true brutality of nature and its selection of what is beautiful or not, what lives what dies, and what is strong and what is weak.

It never made sense to me why so many atheists and others without some sort of faith to ground their terrestrial selves seemed prone to migrate to the conservation movement so embraced by the left, and why so many young people seem attracted to those mentalities. It’s because their undeveloped minds have not yet worked out their place in the universe. This is why so many senior citizens tend to vote conservative, while the young tend to vote liberal. The young still cleave to the ego based notion that they are all there is. The old know better and have learned after a lifetime of living. This is the difference. The silly, small minded politicians think they can actually improve nature with their juvenile influence. But all they really end up doing in the scheme of things is move some rocks around and plant some trees, most of which are quickly uprooted as soon as a major storm comes.

All the policies of mankind fall under this description. So is this a proclamation of anarchy? No. When I go to the forest, I walk the trail, which is not natural, but created by man. I build a fire with the wood that falls from the trees. And I leave the campsite looking the same as it did before I arrived. If I build a home with what the forest provides, I do it understanding that within 100,000 years everything I create will return to nature including every item a human ever created.

Notions like Social Security, Wiki Leaks, Communism, teacher contracts, health care, all laws, all government and every roadway built will be swallowed by nature in a relatively short time geologically speaking.

If the human race wanted to truly survive, it would copy nature. Not try to corrupt nature with their undeveloped ego desire to build a better garden. America was modeled after nature, as envisioned by John Locke in the late 1600’s. But during the growth of government periods, particularly in the 20th century, America has become a land of gardeners instead of the natural element.

Our society needs to ask how much we want to spend in taxes to supply a garden that is purely cosmetic to begin with. Because that’s all any of it is. It’s just gardening by gardeners that have the audacity to believe they can do it better than nature.

I ran into a community once that reflected some of what I’m talking about. It was a little neighborhood on top of Mt LeConte that serves tourists wishing to climb that mountain. I’ve been to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge many times and Mt LeConte is the big mountain approximately 10 miles from downtown Gatlinburg which looms over the town. It is the highest peak visible from Pigeon Forge and is an unmistakable monster of a mountain. From the ground you’d never know that speckled across the top is a community of cabins, with some residents that work up there, and guests renting cabins to stay for the night. There’s a mess hall and a couple of rest rooms to facilitate everyone’s needs.

From the top of the mountain, in that little village, all the great monuments of Pigeon Forge are almost completely invisible. The community resides over 6000 feet which doesn’t sound like much compared to mountains in the west, or in the Himalayas but the top of Mt LeConte has its own weather patterns. Its peaks are often submerged in a cloud layer and take the full brunt of weather patterns migrating across Tennessee and Kentucky from the west. But at such a height all the monuments of tourism are just little specs. Nothing looks too complicated from that vantage point.

From atop that mountain, the world makes sense. The people you meet up there say hello and are generally happy to see you. What everyone shares that arrive at the distant land is they had to work hard to get there. There’s only three ways that will get you to the top. You have to walk and climb, you can take a llama, or you can be dropped off with a helicopter, which brings supplies to the top of the mountain. It’s as primitive, yet as civilized of a place as anywhere I’ve ever been. On that mountain perspective is easy, just like in the harsh cold on a motorcycle in mid December. That rugged paradise is virtually a stones throw from downtown Gatlinburg with all the tourist spots, yet the two worlds are diametrically opposed.

That’s when it is easy to see the only difference between the two is the inventions of man, which are transitory at best. In Gatlinburg you run into thousands of people and say hello to nobody. On top of the mountain you say hello to everyone because everyone respects each other because everyone worked hard to get there.

Nature requires one thing and that’s respect. Respect for yourself. Respect for the power of nature. And respect that each moment could be your last.

In the politics of mankind, their laws mean nothing because politicians cannot create respect. And no amount of tax money or social program will give someone respect for anything. They can make a garden look nice, but nobody truly respects the garden because it’s contrived and manipulated by the gardener, and artificially watered and fertilized.

Nature is the only true gardener.

Rich Hoffman

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

www.overmanwarrior.com

Ted Strickland and the Passenger Train of Doom

Below is a letter from Ted Strickland pleading for John Kasich to reconsider stopping the passenger Train of Doom idea that has been in the works for a number of years, and is a progressive project embraced by that philosophy.  There is more to the letter than just words.  What Strickland and progressives in Ohio are doing is setting the stage of creating doubt as Kasich works on the 2011 budget. 

I had no idea prior to David Little being hired to come after me for the Lakota School levy, that there was even a Progress Ohio group. I discovered it while looking over Little’s resume.

Sure enough, Progress Ohio is a progressive group dedicated to progressive ideas; another aspect to our government that I hadn’t known was a major legislative influence working diligently within the State of Ohio toward goals the electorate is not aware of.

When considering how to simplify and reduce the size of government, or to reform education, groups like Progress Ohio place themselves as a barrier to that goal.

So it is with no surprise that Progress Ohio was one of the first to publish the letter from current Governor Strickland to Governor-Elect Kasich written on December 7, 2010 about all the reasons in the world why the 3C&D passenger rail service should not be cancelled. The letter was hand delivered to Kasich, but was posted in digital form on the Progress Ohio website within hours. That is how the game board is set up.

You can read that letter here before my comments below.

The trouble with these progressive groups and politicians, just like the trouble with organized labor, is that they are eternally focused on what was, and their measuring sticks are in the past. They need conflicts like racism, and the traditional labor strikes to advance their position.

The passenger rail is one of those items, built by a long string of progressive minded politicians, and yes, Bob Taft, a republican is one of them, passenger rail is part of a dying culture. The world is growing away from regional things like rails, and even highways and buildings, and moving toward more electronic, home based applications. Yet Progressives have entrenched themselves around such concepts and they stand firmly in the way of true progress which can only be explored in innovation and much, much smaller government.

Virtually everything mentioned in the letter from Strickland is an echo from the past where the true intentions are control and restriction, not options.

Ohio’s youth won’t stay in Ohio because there is a train. They’ll stay here if there are jobs, if there are opportunities, and if they can have a good quality of life. None of those things government can provide truly. Only private industry and individual innovation will solve our problems.

Such letters as the former governor sent only serve to cloud the issue with contrived facts and distorted opinion rooted in a lack of intellect.

I hope Kasich does for Ohio what Chris Christie has done for New Jersey. 

Letters like this dribble from Mr. Strickland show what is wrong, and Progress Ohio is the foundation people like Strickland stand on.  And Progress Ohio is what is standing in the way of real progress by holding on to the past.

Forget about trains!

Remember, Strickland was governor when Glenn Beck covered this issue on his radio show last summer.

Getting things under control will be painful, but if we do it now, we can fix it. If we wait too long, the damage will be too great.

Rich Hoffman

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

www.overmanwarrior.com

Utopia

A book I liked quite a bit is Plato’s Republic. Anyone wanting to understand the problems of our current age should read it.  Because the political left, and especially the radical left, get many of their elementary ideas from Republic and it’s theory of Utopia later explored more deeply in the Sir Thomas More book of the same title. 

To those that think it is a radical idea I propose that communism is making a push to take over the American way of life, and that there is real danger of that movement from within our borders, check out this article. Tear Down the Empire. 

Below is the definitions of Utopia from Wikipedia, which expresses the universal themes.

Utopia (pronounced /juːˈtoʊpiə/) is a name for an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system.[1] The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia.
The word comes from the Greek: οὐ, “not”, and τόπος, “place”. The English homophone Eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ, “good” or “well”, and τόπος, “place”, signifies a double meaning.

Utopia is largely based on Plato’s Republic.[2] It is a perfect version of Republic wherein the beauties of society reign (e.g.: equality and a general pacifist attitude), although its citizens are all ready to fight if need be. The evils of society, e.g.: poverty and misery, are all removed. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, but hires mercenaries from among its war-prone neighbors (these mercenaries were deliberately sent into dangerous situations in the hope that the more warlike populations of all surrounding countries will be weeded out, leaving peaceful peoples). The society encourages tolerance of all religions. Some readers, including utopian socialists, have chosen to accept this imaginary society as the realistic blueprint for a working nation, while others have postulated that More intended nothing of the sort. Some[who?] maintain the position that More’s Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, a work intended to reveal more about the England of his time than about an idealistic society. This interpretation is bolstered by the title of the book and nation, and its apparent confusion between the Greek for “no place” and “good place”: “utopia” is a compound of the syllable ou-, meaning “no”, and topos, meaning place. But the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning “good,” also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly “good place” is really “no place.”
Another version of this concept is found in the Panchaea island, of the “Sacred History” book of Euhemerus, a writer from the 3rd century BC.

Plato’s Republic will never work. We know that now. It’s been tried in governments since the book was written around 380 BC. I think it’s time we reject the theory all together and instruct the intellectuals that work for us off public money, to put a sock it.  Utopia and Republic are both works of fiction and have just as much social value as Star Wars in the scheme of things.  To build political movements off such ideas are foolish yet that is what has happened. 

Rich Hoffman

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

www.overmanwarrior.com