Category: Feminisim

Senator George Lang and SB 132: Ohio is open for business, and the marketplace will reflect value

I have been getting a lot of questions about Senator George Lang’s support of a bill moving around in Columbus, SB 132, which involves all the gender neutrality talk that is so prevalent in politics these days, and why I still support him because of it. While I have strong ideas about social responsibility and behavior, I have known George Lang for a long time and know his mind and family. And I know his politics. I reached out to talk to George about this controversial bill and understand where he’s at on it, which I can sympathize with. Because when you deal with a lot of people and are functioning from a broad base, you go into it knowing that there are lots of people from lots of different backgrounds and beliefs that you are going to work with, and you must be secure enough in your integrity not to become corrupted by the exchange. And to understand George Lang, and this is kind of a running joke in Columbus in a good way, George is all about business first. His second concern is business first. His third concern is business first, etc. I certainly understand that George Lang is primarily concerned about bringing more business opportunities to Ohio. Having an excellent economy allows us to have deeper conversations about political discourse. And to attract businesses, you must address all their concerns, which presently are formulated by BlackRock and many other progressive influences. And when you are dealing with businesspeople, you are dealing with Chamber of Commerce types.

Chamber of Commerce people are different than other people, and when you are working to bring business into Ohio, you will deal with them.  Most members of the Chamber are not the kind of people writing philosophy books; they have room in their lives for how they make a living and maybe two other things: raising their families and a hobby, like golf.  They do not have the time, mental capacity, or even a remote desire to deal with political philosophy.  They want employees, they want to be in legal compliance, and they are interested in checking all their BlackRock boxes.  That is George Lang’s interest in SB 132, to stay consistent with his Business First Caucus and address the concerns of the Chamber types.  The SB 132 Ohio Fairness Act aims to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes under Ohio’s anti-discrimination laws, which employers are concerned about.  If Ohio has restrictions along these lines, investing the money it takes to bring business into Ohio is not attractive since people who run companies come from all kinds of political backgrounds. 

This move has been met with mixed reactions from both sides of the political spectrum. Supporters argue that this is a necessary step towards equality and fairness for all Ohioans, while opponents claim that it infringes religious freedom and could lead to legal battles.  The Ohio Fairness Act would provide legal protections for these individuals in areas such as employment, housing, and public accommodations.

The bill has also been endorsed by several prominent organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Human Rights Campaign. These organizations argue that protecting LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination is a matter of fundamental human rights and dignity.

On the other hand, opponents of the bill have raised concerns about the potential impact on religious organizations and small businesses. They argue that these groups could be forced to violate their beliefs or face legal action.

However, the Ohio Fairness Act includes provisions that protect religious organizations and small businesses from being forced to violate their beliefs. The bill also has exemptions for religious schools and organizations, allowing them to continue operating according to their ideas.

I think the marketplace will determine the value of a product or service, such as Chick-fil-A, which maintains Christian values in its business model, such as not being open on Sunday.  People value those types of positions, and they tend to support businesses that reflect their values.  But it is up to the company to figure out its way; it is the government’s job, in this case, to remove the barriers so that the discussion can occur.  I’m certainly the type who would want the government to regulate sexually oriented businesses and businesses that embrace drug abuse.  I’d even support bans on alcohol because I see very little good that comes from a culture that seeks intoxication.  But some people like that, so I respect what people want to do within reason, so long as they don’t drag me into it.  Which is the balancing act on SB 132.  George is certainly a conservative, but as a legislator, he tells the world that Ohio is open for business.  And we may not like the kind of businesses wanting to come to Ohio.  Yet, we are opening the door to investment and the variety of projects people want to invest in while trusting that the marketplace will sort out the good from the bad.  I don’t want government to get into the business of deciding morality.  I like the government to remove barriers, even if walls might be desirable to my philosophy. 

Which is essentially what SB 132 does.  It will be the marketplace that determines the kind of culture we have.  If a potential business has employees or plans to hire employees from all sorts of diverse backgrounds, then that concern must be addressed at the point of investment, which is George’s interest in this bill.  Suppose a company is concerned about its ESG score, which those of us who are politically astute find objectionable and know that those ESG scores will not be in the future of American politics. In that case, most Chamber of Commerce people have already accepted that they will be a forever concern.  And if Ohio is not accommodating, they won’t get the opportunity to give a business ground to sink roots into.  And that’s the trick: how much compromise is appropriate in politics, a little, a lot?  And how do you not get lost in settlement to where you are just another political hack?  The George Lang I know stays out of those debates, even though people are concerned that he is losing his way, by staying focused on business first in Ohio and letting the morality of the marketplace determine success and failure, which I agree with.  We are free to debate the matter which will ultimately influence market share.  And to my eyes, and knowing enough about George to know his conservative feelings on these things in ways many people haven’t had the opportunity to, I can say that he hasn’t lost his way.  I would have much harder lines, but I also have the freedom to express my opinion more than he does, who needs to reach a broad base as a representative.  President Trump would have similar thoughts as George’s as a businessman.  You never want to create artificial limits for productive endeavors.  The philosophy and ethics will be worked out every time by the morality of the marketplace, which is where this discussion resides. 

Rich Hoffman

‘Irresistible Revolution’ by Matthew Lohmeier: Marxism is everywhere and people are just now willing to admit to it

I was having a perfect top-grade Kobe steak in Japan with a friend of mine, a retired colonel in the military when the next layer of discussions started to happen. Usually, in polite conversation, you talk about all the surface stuff from the time you order until the food arrives, between 15 to 20 minutes. And in those conversations, you talk about family, hobbies, and general interests that are usually neutrally driven, and non-political. I typically have many of those where the actual talk of anything never has time to hatch. Yet these days, more often, that polite conversation is not happening and people are discussing with me the heart of most matters, the actual survival of the human race in what appears to be the apocalypse as described by John in the Book of Revelation. Usually, among military people, people who work all their lives with ranks and procedures have typically kept their opinions to themselves. But growing among this group is a concern that they have had for a long time, accelerated by their observations of woke policies advancing into the military, they are not happy about it, and they want to do whatever they can to save it. My advice to them is to vote for Trump in the next election. But our dinner conversation went further than that, and a book recommendation came my way which I then read quickly once I returned to my room, and finished while on the plane back to the States. I was surprised by it because I usually get recommended these types of books, and I don’t learn much new. But the book Irresistible Revolution by Matthew Lohmeier was excellent and current. It’s only a few years old, but as I read it, I was surprised by the content because it went down the rabbit hole on Marxism in America in ways I had not seen before from what I would consider a mainstream, military personality.

Honestly, this is the talk of the world; people aren’t happy, normal, regular, everyday people. They ask me about the crazy politics in the United States and their first concern is “When will Trump be back,” because the world wants a strong dollar, and they want a political defender of it because most of the world sees what’s been happening now that the trouble has arrived at their front door by way of altered supply chains, the hidden tax of inflation, and the moral depravity of the current generation. And especially military people, once they achieve a high enough rank to express their opinions, they are concerned by what they see, which is the case of this author has a very respectable military career that migrated into the recent Space Force and has several advanced degrees. He’s not Alex Jones or Glenn Beck, who is known for conspiracy theories; he is a regular guy who has been among the best that the military produced, and I was surprised to hear other knowledgeable people beginning to talk about the cost of woke policy to American policy generally, and how destructive it has been. It was something that they wouldn’t have been caught doing before 2019, which was the last excellent year for America in most categories before Covid came along, and the unmasking of Marxism overtly showed itself to an unsuspecting public. What was unique about this particular book, Irresistible Revolution was that it was saying about Marxism much of what I have, but it was coming from another reliable source with a cutting critic that was very refreshing, and helpful to many people who are now clamoring for some sense of sanity, wondering what is wrong with the world.

It’s true, even though the Illuminati only lasted for just over a decade as a secret society political movement, before it was eradicated, dissolved under its own pressure, or went underground and stayed underground behind the Masonic activity disguised as something else, what political people would in the future call globalism, Marxism was a creation by them to perform precisely what we are seeing today, the overthrow of all the world’s governments so that a one world government ran by these secret society orders could then run everyone from the background. The culmination of all these plans over the last several centuries was in Covid, used as a bioweapon of terrorism to stun the world into global compliance. But the goal was always the spread of Marxism to every corner of the world to gain control of powerful countries’ governments in an international chess game meant to confiscate the world’s wealth into a centrally controlled power. Don’t forget Karl Marx and his friends at the time were Masons, and it was through that order that Marxism spread behind the many social masks they wore in public to advance the old aims of the Illuminati, which created the policies of Marxism and then spread them. How does anybody think that Vladimir Lenin was in exile and suddenly, by train, was sent to St Petersburg to overthrow Russia, and it did it on its own? That sounds pretty wild to regular people who don’t read many books and get their news from CNN or Fox News. But that is part of the mask that has hidden Marxism from everyone’s views because it was too wild of an idea even to be accurate. Yet, now we know it was all too real all along.

I have known these things about Marxism in our culture for the last three decades.  It has only been recently, though, that all the dots connected into how Marxism became the weapon of choice by the global insurgents and how they were able to spread their message, which was particularly appealing to low-level masonic initiates who thought they were studying the workings of Christ and not the ancient wisdom of Thoth and the seeding of the earth by an experiment of the gods contained in hidden history that isn’t so hidden these days.  The government of the world by these people using selected biblical passages to soft sell it to an unsuspecting public was Marxism, and we have it dripping wet all over American culture because nobody knew what they were dealing with.  The names were changed, and the motivations sold as wholesome and fair, until those masks have come off over the last few years to show what they were all along.  And in that crisis, we have very good people like the colonel I was talking about and military people like Matthew Lohmeier, who are heroically ringing the bell to alarm others to their discoveries.  I read Irresistible Revolution and thought it was about time for this level of conversation.  People just weren’t ready to admit to it before Trump came along and exposed this maniacal scheme.  But the truth is what it is, and Matthew Lohmeier hit the nail on the head.  And I can’t recommend enough to people his excellent book on Marxism.  But I would add, that it’s not just in the military, but in all levels of society, especially in corporate culture.  And Marxism will have to be destroyed everywhere in the world.  It’s the current world war.  It’s wrapped up in finance, entertainment, and politics; Secret societies spread it, not so secretly, and now the damage is apparent.  And before us for time to judge our reaction to it.  And with all that said, that Kobe steak was delicious, as was the conversation afterward.

Rich Hoffman

Yes, Alex Soros is a Degenerate: How new media is changing the impact the donor class has traditionally had

It’s a point of frustration that I have even noticed locally among the donor types, a shaken belief that always lingering in the background, they were in charge and had more control over our republic form of government than other people who just showed up and voted in elections.  Because they give political candidates thousands of dollars in local races or millions in national ones, there is an assumption that they are really in charge and that candidates win, lose, and do as they are told based on who gives them money.  In the past, this has hidden itself behind some other behavior, and so long as it wasn’t too noticeable, nobody asked too many questions.  That was the world that George Soros manipulated with his billions of dollars, and those like him, and essentially what has caused so much trouble in politics.  Again, I have watched this at the local level closely, and I know all the people involved, many of whom I like personally.  It’s a path paved to Hell with good intentions but always ends in disaster.  The media will lock itself to whoever has the money, and the political tide always flows to where the money is coming from, primarily left-wing causes.  The willingness to say to the world, I give more money to politics, so I’m much more in charge than everyone else, tends to fuel left-wing causes by default, even if the donors consider themselves Republicans.  Because such ways of thinking are authority-based, they align with Marxist sentiments, so all the money-class influencers tend to think the same way, that they are in charge, and everyone else needs to fall in line somewhere downstream.  That is the meaning behind the threat of Alex Soros, the young kid not yet 40 who inherited all his dad’s money for political activism to destroy the world according to what their money can buy with influence.  But times are different now, and Trump, the leading candidate for the next presidential election, called the kid a degenerate, and that is something new.  Something all those donor class types are going to have to get used to, especially young Alex.

The trend in the future of politics will not be toward more money invested; it will be in the creative use of marketing.  Of course, the machine wants to be oiled, and the entire political machine these days, as America formed, wants everyone to keep pouring money into it, including the whole Fox News business model.  The assumption is that influencers like Fox News or the New York Times could heavily influence the kind of politics that people voted for so that the more money spent, the better the results.  Of course, the people wanting that money to flow in their direction wish to maintain such a belief system.  But what is new is a collision of two things: the realization that playing such a game did not give us the results we wanted as a society.  And that with the decentralization of information, political candidates no longer needed the media to get their message out.  Trump is very much a creation of this new way of doing things, and the donor class moved to support DeSantis because they believed they had more control over the political process than they had, and they have been shocked by what they have witnessed in 2023.  No matter how much money or negative news coverage they created, it has not moved the needle away from Trump.  If anything, it has only solidified the base of those candidates more.  So what’s all that about?

Ironically, I had great clarity on this issue while traveling a lot lately, not just seeing different cultures around the world and how they do things but hanging out with my grandchildren while visiting Disney World.  Here, they had access to the best things that the media could buy with 100 years of being at the top of the pyramid, which is what Disney essentially is: a media empire that believes it is the ultimate donor-class investor.  And with people from roughly 30 to 70, Disney is all they know and the traditional news powerhouse for information.  But my grandkids could have cared less about any of those sentiments.  Disney hasn’t made any new great musicals for their generation, and they don’t care.  Instead, while we were in line for some magnificent rides, my grandkids were excited about the latest YouTube drop of Skibidi Toilet, a whole topic.  I was in line with them watching the video drop that jumped to 1 million views within 15 minutes of airing.  Disney can’t do that, as most media companies can’t even comprehend that level of engagement.  The future of politics will be who can best utilize new media, not throw money at the traditional form, which has been easy and gotten us all into so much trouble.  The Trump presidency is a new media endeavor that will change politics forever.  As they have classically thought of themselves, the donors are learning how little control they have over anything anymore.  And it’s painful for them.  But the world will not be the same for young Alex, the Marxist makeover of his dad George and their many billions invested to essentially buy whores in the media who will do anything and say anything for a little bit of easy money. 

With Trump calling Alex Soros a degenerate, he is essentially establishing his independence from the money machine which has traditionally ruined politics.  Alex thinks he inherited the ability to body-slam any political rival with sheer money from his dad.  But in this world of tomorrow, a person like Alex could spend billions of dollars in traditional media, and achieve nothing, not a move of the needle in the least.  And that isn’t just because it’s George Soros and his kid, but that’s the rule for everyone.  When people talk about how they want to drain the swamp, they also mean the money that flows into it, making the water as deep as it is.  People weren’t kidding; they are tired of not having representative government, and we are witnessing a reasonably peaceful rebellion against the donor class who have screwed up so much over a long period.  Alex Soros cannot do as his dad has because the media has lost its trust and power. Therefore, no amount of money can give them back their reputation.  There is no sucking up to Disney with millions of dollars in ad revenue because the next generation isn’t watching Disney; they are watching Skibidi Toilet episodes, which have replaced the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon programming.  And, for the first time in American history, political candidates are now free of the donor class, which is what Trump’s political investment has displayed with great fanfare.  He’s right to call Alex Soros a degenerate.  But so are a lot of them, and what they are learning entirely too late is that people are upset with how the donor class has tampered with their lives by simply outspending normal people to have more of a voice in politics than they should.  And it has been shocking, but is the state of the world of tomorrow and the politics that manage it.

 

Rich Hoffman

The Marxism in Our Finance Industry: Teaching people to smell their own bad breath

The answer to where all the dumb ideas come from is now quite obvious, the finance industry is dripping wet with Marxism and has now for many years.  It gets hidden behind polite conversation and golf games, but fundamentally, the entire industry is functioning from Marxist inspiration, from the works of Karl Marx and not the great work of Adam Smith from The Wealth of Nations.  So when you have the question, where do all these dumb ideas come from? Well, it’s relatively easy; it comes from what people are willing to do to get money from those who have it.  Personal politics are not so important to people until their financial needs are met.  Until then, they will sell just about anything to make a living, and the Marxist insurgents have figured this out over a long period.  Now, I know quite a few financial types: bankers, investors, and money movers.  As I’ve said many times, most people I know are very wealthy.  They don’t see themselves as Marxists and likely have never picked up a book on Karl Marx.  The grim reality for most is that people only have room for a few things: how they make money and what they spend it on.  Anything outside those parameters is considered useless, so we ended up with the philosophy of Marxism in our finance industry.  When most of the common talk is about golf scores and interest rates, there isn’t much room for a deeper discussion on the things that truly impact our culture, especially financially.  Most people who work in finance are like those who can’t smell their own bad breath; they don’t know they are Marxists.  They know the rules of the games they are playing.  They have no room for the question as to who made those rules up.  But the answer is global Marxists who purposely infiltrated the world’s money supply and have been the advocates for radical progressive politics across the globe, pushing people into outright communism as a result. 

They know that much; it’s easy enough to turn the ship back toward prosperity, just by understanding that more free-market ideas will inspire dramatic spikes in GDP.  However, removing the Marxists from finance is a bit trickier, and it will take several administrations of pro-capitalist growth to implement, well over a decade of work because the Marxism sickness that we see now is so embedded in our everyday lives that people can’t smell their own bad breath in regard to it.  They understand capitalist ideas when it comes to sports, talk about football games, and especially how to get a lower golf score.  But in the world of finance, they are lost to themselves to apply the same logic.  So until we have the same kind of discussions about Marxism and capitalism, people won’t see the problems they are creating in the flow of the money supply.  Most of our conversations have been about whether or not Marxism exists, while all these terrible things have been hidden in plain sight.  But the source of abuse of much power is in applying Marxism to what people will do to get access to money, instead of making it so that people will work harder and with more innovation in order to expand some market-driven necessity.   The tampering with that process by the financial industry has caused most of the damage we see today.

I was fortunate to have just about every kind of catastrophe in my life regarding finance, and at a tricky part of my life, a wealthy and influential figure in the Cincinnati economy gave me some great advice even though he was gloating at the time about his massive power and ability to crush anybody who stood against him.  He told me, “he who owns the gold rules,” as he was about to essentially destroy my life as much as he could because I was doing something that would cost his partners many millions of dollars at the time and put the politics of Cincinnati on its head.  But the lesson was worth more than any money I could have made at the time because I could put into practice ideas of capitalism and free myself of Marxism, which became quite clear to me in this experience.  He finished his advice to me by saying, “And you have no gold.  So you don’t rule.”  And that statement sent me on a path in life that has been very beneficial.  I have a bit of a temper, likely the worst anybody has ever encountered, but I have always learned not to show anybody the cards I’m playing with over time.  So to say the least, I took that conversation to heart and have spent the next thirty years fighting the things that made that guy have so much gold to rule over others because he was clearly a bad guy in the world.  But to hate money because of him was not the answer.  It was the way he thought and how the system was rigged to put money in his pocket to rule over others and not in the bank of people who otherwise deserved it, people of merit who had worked hard, done everything right, and made the world a much better place through capitalism.

We tend to incorrectly identify all wealthy people as greedy capitalists, which is part of the scam.  Most people who are very rich arrived with that wealth through Marxism and controlling markets for that philosophy, not through the free market associations of capitalism.  So, we never see the truth because we start with all the wrong definitions for what we are dealing with.  And without understanding what things are, people are easily seduced into some faulty philosophy that is essential Marxism hidden behind a veil of free market capitalism.  But in actuality, the truth of our economy is very far from what we thought it was.  And these radical leftists who have become very wealthy with this scam of brokering power to government in ways they could never otherwise dream of have put them into a position to force all of society to dance to their whims, to get their fingers on enough money to live on.  Few people are willing to stand for moral righteousness without cash in a bank account.  They tend to be bolder when they have full bank accounts, but often won’t do much publicly that might jeopardize that status, so the Marxists who now control most of finance have no incentive to change their ways because this system has worked for them.  Of course, in my personal story, I was able to get that guy back, and I profited quite a lot from that revenge.  But that’s another story all its own.  The purpose of this discussion is that I found it easy to destroy Marxists once you call them what they are by name and don’t allow them to hide in the background any longer.  President Trump has also figured that out over the years and is setting up a second term to do just that.  And in so doing, it will have quite an impact, for the better, on the finance industry.  So, there is plenty to be hopeful about.  It’s certainly not a done deal that global communism will ruin the world through finance, as it appears now.  There are a lot of changes coming.  But that is how we arrived here, and the lessons learned for America are pretty explicit.  And we can Make America Great Again. But first, we must remove Marxism from our finance industry as a top priority, which starts by admitting that the problem is far worse than we thought. 

Rich Hoffman

Communists and Democrats are the Same Thing: Yes, there will be punishments, what did they think was going happen?

To answer a question honestly that came up recently between Sebastian Gorka and Hugh Hewitt regarding a likely second Trump term, the answer is yes to the punishment of communists.  It became obvious to Hugh while talking on a podcast that the inevitability of punishment for all that has been done is going to happen and is that how we really want to see ourselves, as the punishers of injustice instead of forgiving our enemies and moving on.  I would argue to Christian-minded people that God needs warriors who will fight for what’s right, against the impediments of the Divine Council as stated clearly in Psalm 82 and many other places in the Bible.  This idea of turning the other cheek and being weak and meek socially is an interpretation of history as given to the human race by those who wish to conquer it.  And now that evil has had its way against us all for far too long, it is time for a payback, so yes, this is going to be something that conservatives are going to have to deal with, and as it is measured what the moral position is, punishment of evil as it has worked its way into our world through the vile tentacles of communism has to be engaged and defeated.  And that starts by calling it what it is, and not just letting outright Marxism hide behind the name change of the Democrat Party in America.  We have fought many wars over communism, specifically in America, yet we have allowed it into our culture directly behind the Democrat Party, which does a disservice to all who have lost their lives in that fight.  It’s time to stop playing around and to call the communists what they indeed are in America.  They are Democrats.

As people like Hugh figure it out, it’s OK to punish the bad guys, all those who call themselves “anti-capitalists” We have to correct something that has been broken for a long time, which goes back to the McCarthy Hearings from several decades ago when the communist scare coming straight out of the FDR administration of the 1930s had found its way into the blacklists of Hollywood, and people were being accused of such scandalous, and subversive behavior.  Democrats cried about the name-calling and coaxed society, a very conservative society, to stop calling everyone communists and to adhere to some made-up rules of controlled speech that allowed this hidden menace to percolate behind the polite orthodox of mainstream society.  But the failure of that approach is all too obvious now, many decades later in our current woke culture.  Why is the World Economic Forum and its quest for global, corporate communism using woke rules to use in their battle cry?  Because it has worked.  They watched it happen in the McCarthy Hearings in America and have taken that message to a much larger, global scale.  So, to answer the question that a lot are asking because President Trump is using the term communism to describe his political opponents, and the political left is apocalyptic about it, and so are the RINOs.  They thought they knew the rules of “free speech,” and they were not able to deal with this sudden, “correct terminology.”  So, for clarity, anybody who follows the philosophy of Karl Marx, which is what Democrats do, they are rejecting Adam Smith and embracing Marx, then you are some form of communist. 

Communism is a political philosophy that spawns from under the umbrella of Marxism, which comes from the works of Karl Marx, books like Das Kapital, and The Communist Manifesto. There has been a long push by liberals and all left-leaning advocates worldwide for socialism and communism as defined by Karl Marx.  So, anybody supporting those positions is a functioning communist, and that is essentially a state-owned means of production and a rejection of free market ideas, which is precisely what Democrats advocate for.  To hide their intrusion, they use terms like “equity inclusion” to essentially take away value and merit from society so that the state would then be forced to be the arbiter of justice, “social justice,” and take over all means of production.  And they have been heading in that direction since before the McCarthy Hearings.  And people are tired of watching their country fall to these Marxist insurgents, hiding behind controlled speech guided by Marxist-leaning institutions and turning to populism for satisfaction.  This is how we ended up with Trump in the White House and this push for another term to drain the swamp.  The hair we find in the drain of that drained swamp is the swamp creatures of various breeds of Marxism that have been residing under the surface just beyond our site.  You might see their ripples on the water’s surface, but their contents have remained hidden by a veil of polite society controlled by a lack of free speech.  But when you see political affiliates concerned about the terminology of discourse, such as racism, sexism, or even anti-semitism, you know a monster under the water of the swamp born of communism is lurking.  And in a very modern context, the politics of 2023, Democrats and Communists are precisely the same thing.  When people say, “You don’t even know what communists are?”  Just have them read the works of Karl Marx, and you will discover the truth for yourself. 

So, of course, there will be punishment, and it will be harsh.  These insurgents have misrepresented themselves in our culture and overtly lied to us.  And now, we must pick up the pieces and deal with the reality of that vast destruction.  For all that has been thrown at Trump and his supporters and the many lies over the years about the Democrat Party’s commitment to outright communism, of course, there will be hell to pay, and the best advice I can give everyone is to pay it and stop trying to conceal it.  Deal with it, take the lick, and see if you have a place in society in the aftermath. What these people have done to our country is far worse than any effects of a war in some far-off land.  This was in our backyard, restaurants, zoning, and jobs.  Communists have embedded themselves into every aspect of our American culture, and it’s time to end it.  More and more people are recognizing that the only way to do that is to elect Trump as a true representative in the White House and rip globalism from its influence over our country.  It’s interesting; I do get to travel around the world and see other cultures, and when you consider how tiny Japan is, it’s the number two economy in the world behind only the United States, what does that tell you about how Marxism has limited the rest of the world’s GDP?  (China is not a real economy; globalists prop it up through financial institutions committed to a change in the communist economy.  And you can’t believe anything they report in the media.)  This has been a real fight, and it’s time to stop playing games with the terms and call Democrats what they are: communists.  And to defeat them with all the vigor we have fought them in many wars.  Yes, it will be painful for them, but they should have thought about that before doing all they have done.   They have it coming and deserve all they get and if they have any honor in them, they won’t cry about it.  They’ll pay and be thankful for at least that opportunity.

Rich Hoffman

Yes, We Have to Impeach Joe Biden: Give Democrats worse for all the trouble they have caused

Wait, you know they are bluffing, right?  The Democrats don’t want Republicans to impeach their puppet president, Joe Biden.  Senators like Fetterman and his little hoodie are talking tough as if seeking the impeachment of the criminal Joe Biden would boost his public support and ensure he will be in the White House for another term.  They know better.  They count on you being so much of a sucker that you won’t figure it out.  But they don’t want you to know that.  What they fear most is that you’ll figure out the truth, that they are all paper tigers of Marxism intent to bluff their way into an overthrow of America.  And they want you to think they are daring you to conduct your own destruction.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Democrats know they can’t win elections unless they can rig them, like Brazil’s elections have been going on in Russia, China, and Venezuela.  The Marxists are trying the same thing in America, and so far, gullible Americans have let them have their way, and we are supposed to believe that we are a 50/50 country right down the middle.  But that’s not at all true, either.  That is how the uniparty of globalists wants you to believe things to be.  That is not the actuality.  Democrats have only gained power by bluffing their way to it, and Republicans have been played as suckers for most of the last two centuries.  And until they fight back, Democrats will continue to steal power through nefarious means and laugh about how they keep getting away with it.  Democrats will never wake up one day and apologize for what they’ve done.  They intend to destroy our country and us with it and they don’t care about your feelings.  They are ruthless.  Never forget that they are what John Fetterman, the goofy senator from Pennsylvania represents. 

The first reason we must impeach Joe Biden is because he deserves it.  He has been caught lying to everyone and selling his office to foreign and domestic enemies for much of his life.  He’s certainly not the only one, and yes, many politicians on all sides are guilty of precisely what Joe Biden has done.  But he’s president of our highest office in America, and we must protect its sanctity for our preservation.  That means Joe has to go through the wringer, and it has to be embarrassing.  We have to do it because it’s the right thing to do, not some political calculation where we worry it might hand him the next election.  First of all, it won’t.  But if it did, it wouldn’t matter.  When anybody does something wrong, they should be punished for it.  And the more powerful they are, the more public their embarrassment should be so that others might learn a lesson and not do as Joe did in the future.  History needs to remember Joe Biden in a salacious and horrendously corrupt way, because in America, we must continuously pursue justice, no matter where it takes us.  Our fear, because so many other people are also dishonest, keeps Joe Biden from being prosecuted, which should have happened long ago.  But now we’ve caught him and we can’t turn away.  Patriotism does nothing if we have loved ones die in foreign wars, but we can’t even secure an election, keep corruption out of public offices, and allow ourselves to be suckered by government gangs like the one Joe Biden has been running for decades. 

But secondly, look what they did to Trump, a rightly elected Republican president.  They impeached him, and who thinks we will move on in our country without revenge?  Democrats have it coming.  Forget all this stupid turn-the-other-cheek stuff.  Joe Biden and the government thugs running in his crowd must be punished severely.  They took the shot at our politicians, so they have it coming back at them.  They did not worry about going after Trump, even trying to jail him, because they were playing hardball.  All this taking the higher ground stuff is nonsense.  When political opponents come after you and your team members, you take them out.  You give them back everything they’ve given you and more.  And for what they did to Trump, they all deserve a good beating, everyone from Chuck Schumer to Fetterman.  They are disgraceful, and they don’t care even to be caught.  They have lied to our faces, jailed our supporters, and deliberately tried to take out our representative in the Executive Branch.  They are fair game for the worst we can do to them because they’ll do it again if we don’t.  It’s not like we are waiting for them to punch us in the mouth.  They already have done it.  They wanted a fight, they picked it.  And their aggression has been what it was because they think Republicans won’t fight back.  They believe Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals tells them so based on his history of studying mob behavior.  This is a government mob, and there is only one form of expression they understand: force.  Force for the sake of power to eradicate our political enemies.  In the end, there should be so little left of them that they won’t even exist well enough to have a Netflix account. 

So don’t cry for them. They did all this to themselves.  They chose to live the way they do and to break all the many crimes they have committed.  Republicans can’t just talk tough; they have to be tough.  And they have to earn respect.  Democrats need to fear Republicans, starting with a history of follow-through.  Democrats don’t respect Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy, who is just being friends with people like Marjorie Taylor Green so that she can be controlled within the Freedom Movement.  McCarthy wouldn’t even speak to people like Margorie if not for that.  These are professional con artists, many of them who are drawn to government work because it’s a target-rich environment.  There is only one political calculation to consider regarding impeachment: the cost of not doing it when it’s so apparent that Joe Biden should be impeached.  We get criminals like Joe Biden because too many people in the past let him bully them into submission.  And he has brought a disgrace to our senate and Executive Branch.  Why do you think they want to drop the dress code in the Senate? Because they are trying to destroy it.  Not sustain it.  And do you think they care about integrity?  They are inspired to break the law because they want to overwhelm the law and destroy it and the country with it.  It’s too late to save them or to work with them in a bipartisan way.  Democrats declared war on America long ago, but people have been too slow to recognize it.  And that has empowered these domestic enemies to do their worst, and they have.  These are all the reasons and more that we must not only impeach Joe Biden but all those like him who have abused their offices at the expense of the public.  And to make it very painful in the process. 

Rich Hoffman

What to Know About the Ken Paxton Impeachment Trial: The old power of party politics wants to be in charge again, but it never will

What anybody needs to know about the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in Texas is that he’s a MAGA supporter who has been very influential.  At the outset of the 2020 election, as the Attorney General of Texas Paxton established one of the best cases for election fraud proof, which upset all those RINOs who wanted a clean break with Trump.  So, the old Bush power in Texas put a target on Paxton’s back right away.  And recently, Paxton was going after Google over privacy issues.  So, this trial in Texas, where the House has already impeached him from his position and now the Senate is going through the process of hearing the evidence cast against him, is an old game by the old forces who are clinging to their power from MAGA challenges to their established order.  It reminds me of a case in my county within the Republican Party, where legal warfare is regularly employed to destroy political rivals.  The core of the dispute is to resist the apparent changes that are part of the MAGA movement and the hope that if those challenges are destroyed, everything will snap back into the controls of the old days.  Where the Bush family was in charge, alliances with big companies like Google could occur under the radar, and election fraud could be conducted in the open, and nobody would question it.  It is interesting to watch, especially as RINO Republicans have attempted to shame Paxton with references to an affair he had that was well settled before any of these current issues emerged, which are being used to attack his character.  People see through it that it’s essentially the same type of case thrown at President Trump, and the results will be the same.

The Ken Paxton trial in Texas is an ongoing legal battle that has captured the attention of many across the United States. The problem centers around allegations of securities fraud against the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton. The case has been controversial, with many questioning the motives behind the investigation and subsequent charges. At the heart of the matter is the accusation that Ken Paxton committed securities fraud by encouraging investors to buy stock in a technology company without disclosing that he was receiving compensation for the recommendation. The case has been mired in legal battles and delays, with Paxton’s lawyers arguing that the charges should be dismissed due to a lack of evidence. As it is going, the case against Paxton has been weak at best, with the best parts of it involving going to the FBI with no evidence, just accusations. And if there were any merit to the case, the Biden DOJ would have picked it up because they want to take down Paxton for his election case against the federal handling of the 2020 election. But there was nothing there, leaving the entire issue to the flimsy holdovers of the Bush legacy control over Texas. So everything is coming out petty instead of having any good legal standing. As bad as it all is to attempt to impeach an attorney general by his party, over essentially, nothing but to get rid of a member of MAGA in the power politics of Texas, the attempt says far more than any of the evidence does that has been established against Paxton. We have uncovered a monster that we always knew was there but has emerged in the wake of Trump in the White House and the distinct fear that he will return, with people like Paxton gaining power.

I see these fights all over the country, and they are happening in just about every county.  As I have said about my county of Butler County, this is the number one issue challenging everyone.  Many supported Trump during his first term because he was in power then, but they held their nose and couldn’t wait for him to be removed from office, which they cheered for when they thought nobody was looking.  In the wake of one of the most massive crimes in world history, which was the stolen election of 2020, and the Covid release of a bioweapon against the public to allow for cheating to occur, no matter who was harmed in the process, you could see clearly where people were politically.  Many put on masks and surrendered everything to the health administrators, hoping that a superior power, more significant than Trump, would knock him out of office.  These are the same people who, just months before, would gut their mothers for a chance to get a VIP pass to a Trump event and stand next to him for a picture.  I watched all this action with curiosity.  And over the last three years, it has been obvious what they were up to all along: they wanted to go back to the regional powers, such as what the Bush family has over Texas.  And there is always some family like that all over the nation, and they were pleased to snap back into that control in the wake of Trump.  They wanted their power back, so anybody expressing Trump-like opinions now that Biden was in the White House were a target, and everyone expected Trump to be gone forever, in favor of some controlled asset like Ron DeSantis, they bet everything on that future.  And that isn’t what’s happening.

I tried to explain this to many people at our Lincoln Day dinner in Butler County, Ohio, after Ron DeSantis had just come and spoken to everyone.  Many were hoping that DeSantis was going to be the Trump killer.  I told them that Ron was going nowhere, which is precisely what has happened.  I found it surprising that nobody wanted to talk about Trump.  And those who did, and we saw this same kind of radicalism on the Lakota school board, where the former Trump supporters were quick to adjust to this new Biden world as if the former Republican president had never happened.  It was as if some great eraser would come along and put all the people who wanted power back in charge forever.  It was a bizarre exchange.  On that school board, the Lynda O’Conner’s of the world wanted to destroy the Darbi Boddys over essential political philosophy, establishment against MAGA.  And now there is panic in those groups because they have bet everything on the old forces destroying these new rivals.  All the political hits have not beaten their enemies; it has only made them stronger, just like what is happening with Trump.  And, of course, what is happening to Ken Paxton.  The frustration is that Paxton will emerge from this impeachment process with more political power, which is the case with all these traditional attacks.  The old games no longer work; people don’t like the kind of society that we have had with them in charge, such as the Bush family or the DeWine clan in Ohio.  People want better political parties to represent them, not those who make deals with Google to ruin our country, destroy our Constitution, and tell us that we’ll all be better after the compromises.  That them selling us out to foreign interests was to our advantage somehow.  But many have realized that the political parties, especially RINO Republicans, have not been good for us, and we want real change.  And we’re not going to accept sell-outs.  We’ve given them a chance in the past, and we are now forever against their further attempts.  And that they can get rid of Trump, Ken Paxton, or even regionally, Darbi Boddy or Roger Reynolds, and people will still be upset with the lackluster RINOs.  They will never regain their old power, and in the future, they will only be more and more resented.  That is the future of politics; we want more like Ken Paxton and fewer Jeb Bushes.  We want people who represent us, not some ruling-class aristocracy.  And those needs will only increase in the future; we will never go back to the old days that caused all these problems in the first place. 

Rich Hoffman

Meet Russ Loges for Lakota School Board: A great guy to help with some looming challenges

I liked Russ Loges the first time he ran for the Lakota school board.  I came to know of him during the last election as my focus was on the Republican-endorsed candidates in the previous election.  Russ wanted to remain independent as he was getting involved in the school board business then.  However, without any name recognition and much support outside of his efforts, he had an excellent showing, gaining several thousand votes with a noticeably conservative position.  I have since met Russ at a few events here and there, and each time, I found that I liked him quite a lot.  He’s a very likable person who has an excellent temperament.  And now that we are in September with the November election coming up quickly, one that will have a lot of Democrats voting because abortion and marijuana will be on the ballot, so there will be unusually high voter engagement during an off-year election, it’s time to get endorsements.  And Russ has already received an approval from some Central Committees around Butler County.  One of the two that are specific to Lakota schools.  So, he came to a meet the candidate night with the Liberty Township Central Committee to present himself with some questions and answers, which are shown here for those interested.  I’ve been to quite a lot of these over the years, and this one was unique.  I liked Russ Loges before the event, but after, I found my opinion of him had inflated quite a lot.  He answered many tough questions very well and cared a lot about what’s going on in Lakota and the specific challenges that are on the horizon.  Russ Loges is precisely the kind of person that the community would benefit from putting on the school board during the upcoming election, and he will win the support of many more Republicans for a party endorsement due to his excellent conservative positions. 

Yet what Russ Loges is not is a person trapped in ideology.  He’s a very even, measured person getting into the school board business from parental concerns.  We have seen over the years that, typically, the best school board candidates who become board members are passionate parents who want to make things better for everyone.  It’s a generally thankless job that doesn’t pay back any real fiscal compensation, but to play in that game, you must raise a substantial amount of money to become impactful in an election, especially in the Lakota school district, which has around 100,000 people within it.  When Russ ran before, he did it as a concerned parent who wanted to help.  This time, he has a broader approach that makes him well-positioned for much more support.  And given the crowd reaction at the Liberty Township Central Committee event, many more will become very eager to support his run for the Lakota school board.  Based on his answers, Russ is more than prepared for some of the complex challenges that are coming quickly on the horizon, and to deal with those challenges, Lakota will need people who care which was clearly expressed during the questions asked by Matt King during the event.  Russ has kids in the district and a wife who is a teacher.  Currently, he is a nurse and his bedside manner is instantly noticeable.  He’s personable, cares, and wants to help his community, so all those traits were very encouraging and made it easy for everyone who met him to get excited about it. 

On those times that I had met him, I wasn’t sure if he was the real deal.  So often, when it comes to political events and the people filling specific seats, you get images of people but not much knowledge of the person.  When I learned Russ Loges was a nurse, I instantly thought of a smart car driving, COVID mask-wearing big government type.  But I was able to meet Russ outside this event, getting out of a big truck, and he’s a good fit for the conservative base of Butler County, Ohio.  He’s outdoors-oriented and robustly presents himself.  He reminded me of many of my friends in the fast draw community, even down to the jokes.  Good, sincere people who love the American flag and the many who revere it with the pledge of allegiance.  He’s certainly not a political radical but more of an even-balanced family man who is proud of his country and wants to help it improve.  He’s a big guy with a warm personality who comes across as sincere without many pretenses.  As he shook my hand, he seemed ready to go fishing, or hunting more than anything.  He has a very natural leadership ability that is instantly noticeable.  So, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that he has already sat down with the Lakota superintendent to talk about improving test scores for the students and building a successful team that can tackle some of the challenges looming.  You could tell that he wasn’t just a nurse as an occupation, but that he was a leader as well.  He is used to managing other people because he has a balanced approach to communication that has been well-tested by experience. 

There are a lot of challenges on the horizon for Lakota and it will take outstanding leadership to meet them.  There is a teacher’s contract coming up that could be very contentious.  There is a facilities plan also emerging that will require a small fortune.  There are indications that the current school board is planning to seek a tax increase even as property value rate assessments will increase sharply due to state challenges.  So passing a levy will be even more challenging, especially in an environment where school choice will increasingly become the reality of tomorrow, regarding education.  It would be easy to sit on the sidelines and turn away from some of these community problems, especially for those who have grown kids.  But Russ and his wife plan to be in Lakota for a while.  He mentioned that he wanted Lakota to be good for his grandkids, so he’s planning to keep deep roots in the community, so this isn’t a fly-by-night endeavor for him.  He wants to help, and after meeting him, I am sure he is just the kind of person we need to work on some of these very difficult problems that are on the horizon, storm clouds coming in fast that will be painful.  Yet, those problems are manageable with the right kind of people to deal with them, and Russ Loges was very encouraging.  He could have easily won if more people had known him during the last race.  More people will know him this time so he should be able to get votes in the required numbers just by letting people get to know him.  I will certainly be voting for him, and I’ll be excited to do it.  Things don’t always go how you want them to in politics, but sometimes you get to meet good people, and if not for this school board race, I wouldn’t know Russ Loges any other way.  And after meeting him, I’m happy I did. 

Rich Hoffman

How to Make a Good Team in Sports and Politics: The point of everything is to give voters options

It will continue to be one of the universe’s great mysteries why people can look at sports teams and have opinions about what they should be doing, but they can’t apply those same methods to their lives.  This is a prominent issue every year in pre-season football with the mini camps as teams figure out which players they will cut and which will make their final roster.  Good teams figure out the right players and get them all pointed in the right direction for the success or failure of a season.  If the players are allowed to pick their fellow players, teams tend not to do so well.  It takes good leadership to figure it out and put people together who likely wouldn’t figure it out for themselves.  Good teams tend to have players playing together who wouldn’t otherwise be friends.  One of the mysterious qualities of leadership is to see things of value beyond the choice of friendships, and when it comes to sports, most people get it.  They understand what makes success and have many opinions about it.  But they can’t do it when it comes time to utilize those same skills in their lives.  That is certainly the situation in business.  And it is undoubtedly the case in politics.  The goal of all these endeavors is to figure out what success looks like, whether it be winning a Super Bowl, having a great business quarter, or providing a great political party to the voting public; once success is understood, then leadership needs to do what it must to give that result.  It’s not complicated.  Yet, it remains one of the least utilized factors in human interaction. 

There is only one correct measure to winning in politics; it is in a political party providing the voting public with good people they can vote for.  Any other action is missing the point.  If a political party is not focused on those attributes, then they aren’t trying to be a good political party.  I would say this is a problem all over America, in every aspect of county politics, no matter where we talk about it.  And that is certainly the case with the Butler County Republican Party in Ohio, where I live.  I can say that I know many people at that party, and I personally liked them all in some way or another.  If you sit down and talk to people, I can usually find something I like about just about anybody.  But the problem is, do they make an excellent political party just because you want them?  And in most cases, that is not the reality.  Politics should only aim to provide voters and taxpayers with good people to represent them best.  When political parties lose sight of that strategy, things go wrong.  And that is how RINOs in the Republican Party come to be.  Most people get into politics for ideological reasons.  However, the concessions they make to get along with other people become detrimental to their representation of the voter base, which is the value of the party brand.  If people have good representation in politics, then the brand of the party could be said to be good.  If voters don’t, they start to lose faith in the system, voter engagement lowers, and the direction of victory in politics changes dramatically.  When voters feel that the people they elect don’t represent them, we could say that politics has failed.

It’s just like the comparison with the sports team that desires to put a winning team on the field so people come to the games and feel good about the chances for a victory, so they buy beer and overpriced hot dogs at the concessions, which is really how the team makes their money, how they measure their value to the customer base.  If the team isn’t winning, there are fewer fans to buy hot dogs, to put it simply.  The same holds in politics.  I know many people who want to run for office within the Butler County Republican Party.  But, they do not feel they can remain people of integrity because of the restrictions of party politics.  So, we end up with the wrong people running for office while much better candidates that the public would love to have representing them are sitting on the sidelines.  This is a case where the players on the field pick people they like and are comfortable with, not the leadership of the voting public deciding how that team would shape out.  Too often, and this year of 2023 is undoubtedly a good example, many good people are not participating in the political process because they have learned that they aren’t in the cool kids club and will never be invited.  Because the party is picking the members, not the voters.  And instead of letting the voters shape the party, the players are forming the team; then they wonder why many fans are not supporting their losing effort.

Not everyone gets into politics for the same reasons.  I understand that some feel that getting into politics protects their business interests from a corrosive government and provides a barrier to their efforts to keep their businesses healthy.  These are not ideological people but practical ones who see government as dangerous to their interests in business, so they get involved in politics to protect their efforts.  And those people are trying to play nice in the sandbox with ideologically based people who enter politics for reasons of genuine philosophy.  And those kinds of people are scary to those looking for political stability.  I get it.  Just like a wide receiver on a football team being upset that a new tight end is playing the slot receiver role, the wide receiver might feel like the coaching staff is trampling on their turf.  But so what? Maybe that is the best way to become a winning team.  That doesn’t mean that the tight end should be run off the team to make the wide receiver feel like they have job security and aren’t threatened by challengers.  Challenges make the team better.  But then better for whom?  For the players or the fans?  That is what must be decided, and what I have seen from the GOP in general, especially since Trump has been out of office, is a party for the players, not for the voters.  It’s the players making the teams they want to play with.  They are not trying to give the voting public the best representatives they can get.  And if a political party isn’t doing that, they aren’t trying to be the best they can be for their communities.  While such a concept may not be complicated, it remains the biggest stumbling block to any successful venture within human endeavor.   And that is certainly the case in politics.  Some great people want to participate, but they have been told in so many words or less that politics is about maintaining friendships and that everyone needs to stay in their lane and behave.  But that is not what voters want, and until political parties listen, the public will continue to be let down by the result.

Rich Hoffman

The West Chester Tea Party Does Not Endorse Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board: And neither do I

For clarity, the West Chester Tea Party has not, and will not endorse Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board.  There has been some rattling around from several people that they would, but they have told me personally that those rumors were untrue and they do not support her.  And neither do I.  We all have long friendships with Lynda and other candidates who these days call themselves Republicans but have drifted way to the political left.  But friendships or past relationships don’t make a good candidate.  Whether or not they represent our values to earn a vote is the issue at hand.  Too often, endorsements are given out because of friendships, not actual performance.  Lynda O’Conner has been the school board president for a while now, and she has attended Tea Party meetings in West Chester for over a decade and has formed relationships with many of us over the years.  However, based on her performance and what she did to Darbi Boddy as she begged us all to give her a conservative school board, the moment she had it, she essentially turned into the progressive governor that Ohio had, John Kasich, and betrayed us openly, even recklessly.  I tend to move on when I experience people like that.  I’ll give them a chance once, and once they show who they are, I don’t get too kinked up about it.  It’s always worth a try to give someone a chance.  Then, once they show who they are, you make decisions and move on.  Knowing she has betrayed many people in the Liberty movement within the Lakota school district and is running again, she is seeking endorsements for the upcoming election.  I had some reason to believe the rumors that the West Chester Tea Party might endorse Lynda, but quickly, they set the record straight and wanted to make sure they screamed from the mountaintops that they would not support Lynda O’Connor for the Lakota School Board and based on what they have learned about her, they never would. 

I wouldn’t usually talk about something that happened that was confidential, but looking back on it as I have, those privileges are meant within the context of friendly trust.  Yet after what happened with the previous Lakota school superintendent and the behavior against free speech that Lynda led against the incoming school board member Darbi Boddy, it’s clear what was going on, and I’m still insulted that she thought so little of me to try it.  I mean, she should have known better.  I spent hours and hours with Lynda O’Conner on the phone, meeting her in person, trying to help her.  But from her side, all she was doing was consensus-building in the classic sense against someone she had targeted as a political rival in the community.  And that didn’t become clear until the days after a specific meeting in the basement of some of our mutual Tea Party friends in May of 2022.  I should know what she was up to because I have covered these modern versions of The Delphi Technique for years.  It’s one of the most corrosive tools used in all public schools.  After a contentious school board meeting where I spoke in favor of Darbi Boddy, it was clear Lynda was trying to run her off the school board over minor issues.  Lynda had recruited Darbi to give her a majority on the board, along with Isaac Adi, and I did what I could to smooth out the edges and give credibility from the freedom movement side of things.  If I were on board with the effort, it would help the conservative base. 

I didn’t see a need to be overly cautious with this relationship with Lynda.  She had just spent the previous decade trying to win my trust, so I figured getting a functional, conservative school board in charge of Lakota schools was worth a shot.  Even that day I met with her and several other people, it became pretty clear what she was doing; I still wanted to give the effort a chance at working.  But she was looking for compliance out of Darbi Boddy to some liberal view of authority that was shocking to many of us, especially the West Chester Tea Party.  We all found ourselves in the basement of one of the leading members, with Isaac Adi and some school board mentor of his from Monroe schools pushing a sheet of paper in front of me, asking me what I wanted out of Lakota schools, which made me angry because of the amateur effort.  It was an apparent consensus-building exercise, much like the Lakota community conversations had been trying to win over opposition to school policy for a while.  And Lynda sat across from me with a smile, thinking all this was acceptable.  She had surrounded me with people I had trusted, especially in the Tea Party, and she felt that the peer pressure might win me over and away from the continued support of Darbi Boddy.  After all the years and everything I had written over all the time we had known each other, she thought I was that stupid. 

The meeting didn’t go well.  My wife and I left that day, never to speak to any of them personally again, because, within a few months, we had all the drama over the school superintendent.  Everything got worse after much further erosion in the community led by Lynda’s tampering with everyone’s political sentiments and wanting to pull everyone to the left, and lawsuits became a significant issue.  I had to explain to the attorney for the superintendent that if he had just apologized to Darbi Boddy for his role in trying to do what Lynda wanted, which was to remove her from the school board after many of us had spent the previous year trying to get her elected, then a lot of the trouble he found himself in wouldn’t have been such an issue.  But now that people knew and learned how much Lynda knew about it all along, those were self-inflicted problems that ultimately cost a lot of money in the district.  Through it all, I hadn’t talked to any of them in that basement meeting, so when I heard that the West Chester Tea Party was thinking of endorsing Lynda, it wouldn’t have surprised me after all the other people who had fallen off the wagon over the last year.  But if there is anything good that did happen, as a result, they did let me know that they felt the same way about Lynda as I did and that they would not support her or any of the other candidates who have gone over to the dark side of politics.  That’s certainly the case with Ann Becker, who is running for another term as trustee in West Chester.  She used to be president of the Tea Party for both West Chester and Cincinnati, but she has moved well away from those good old days now, more toward the political left.  Watching that kind of thing is painful, but it always happens.  And when it does, you always must wonder what people believe.  But happily, it is good to see that the West Chester Tea Party has not waivered, as others have, and they will not be endorsing Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board.  And neither will I.

Rich Hoffman