Category: George Lang

Why I Support S.B. 178: Education needs reform, and the Department of Education is in the way

To answer the reasons I support the Ohio Senate Bill 178, the logic of supporting bigger government to get to smaller government has to be understood. What S.B. 178 proposed by the Ohio Senate will do is essentially remove many of the current Ohio Department of Education Board’s existing powers and put them in the hands of a new director-level cabinet position appointed directly by the governor. The point of the matter is that the current Ohio Board of Education is a worthless body of government that spends most of its time debating diversity and transexual issues and does not have a track record in providing proper education to the future kids of Ohio. And there is no prospect of solving that problem soon, or ever. By design, the Board of Education is a flawed concept that should never have been implemented in 1953. In my view, all the Departments of Education, from the state to the federal level, should be eradicated. Education needs leadership to reflect performance, and the most obvious way to do that is to attach the responsibility directly to governors, who are then better controlled by state legislatures. I see this Bill as a step toward removing power from bureaucratic Boards of Education and replacing them with leadership opportunities. What the Senate in Ohio wants to do is a great thing. I know some of the people involved and understand their intent. Granted, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions, and to many critics, this S.B. 178 can look like just another path to get to Hell. But I would say that public education is already in Hell, and at this point, any path made can only take it out or fail altogether. But an attempt at reform is better than not trying at all. And suppose Ohio is prosperous in this endeavor. In that case, it could pave the way for real education reform and the complete removal of all Departments of Education and replace it with more leadership-directed accountability. 

As many are aware, I am weary of giving the governor of Ohio any more power. The Director position of Health run by Amy Acton directly for Governor DeWine was an unmitigated disaster during the Covid nonsense. So putting that same level of attention into the field of education might look insane. But the way these Department of Education Boards run is far worse. Even during Covid, if I needed to get a hold of someone in the governor’s office, I could. I made my voice known and knew what doors to knock on. And that’s what I’m looking for with this S.B. 178 Bill; I want accountability and a door that I can knock on and get results. I don’t expect the door knocks to be friendly, actually quite contentious. A dispute-free world is not what I think S.B. 178 will do. But with the current Department of Education in Ohio, we have zero accountability. If you talk to one person, they will blame someone else. And when you speak to someone else, they will blame the original person you were talking to. Dealing with the Ohio Department of Education is an insane level of progressive nonsense in which I see no value. It certainly doesn’t help children; it has taken education and made an advanced mess of it. And there are so many problems with education; with the way the teacher unions ultimately control the Departments of Education all over the country, there is no desire for reform from their point of view because they have things set up the way they want them. 

I see S.B. 178 as an opportunity to give a strong governor a chance to make significant reforms in education. I wouldn’t say that Mike DeWine is a strong governor, but the example provided by Ohio could give great governors like DeSantis in Florida, or Noem in South Dakota, and other strong states a blueprint that would eventually pave the way for a new way of dealing with education needs in each state, and provide a competitive atmosphere that is desperately needed. For anything to improve in education, competition and high expectations have to be a priority, as the ability to survive the radical labor elements which will be against anything, and everything must be part of the plan. I come from a business background and understand that good leadership does not come from group consensus building. It comes from solitary leadership that is accountable for success and failure. Otherwise, failure, such as what we have seen in my home district of Lakota, will be absorbed into a culture of complacency. I have tried to reform the group consensus model in my home district by helping to get conservatives elected to the school board there, but the results have been that no matter what is done, the system itself protects itself from any reform, and failure is guaranteed from the outset. Nothing can save Boards of Education anywhere because they are designed to fail by the premise of their existence. I have been saying for a long time that the concept of public education has to be scrapped completely. But many aren’t ready for that conversation. So scrapping the way that decisions are made for education would be an obvious next best step. Many of the names who have spoken out for S.B. 178, which I have put here for the convenience of understanding, I like and think are sincere in their efforts.   I also am very supportive of the several names who have sponsored the 2000-page Bill, which at this point, I have read. It took me a while, there is a lot there, but the gist of it is an opportunity to replace a Department of Education with a door I can knock on and get results. And I’m all for that.

So for the small government critic who says that this S.B. 178 is just another big government solution that takes away voting accountability from the Department of Education, I would say that for many people, the reality is that most people don’t just jump into a swimming pool. They will dip their toes in the water and get in ever so slowly, getting mad at those who do jump in and splash them with water. S.B. 178 is like a handrail that those types of people can hang on to while they ease themselves into the water, the water being education reform. I would like to jump in and pull the plug draining the whole thing at once. Then, fill the pool with fresh water in which everyone hasn’t used the restroom in. Because from my point of view, there is no way to clear that water now that years of corruption and progressive intention have dirtied it up to the point of no return. But to pull the plug, you have to get in the water, and S.B. 178 provides those who still believe in a government solution to education something to hang on to. In this case, leadership is directly attached to the state governor.  Ohio looks to have opportunities beyond the next four years of DeWine to have strong, conservative governors, so I think there are better opportunities for S.B. 178, knowing some of these legislators personally, to have success than in just continuing to do what we have now, which is just a liberal extension of the Biden administration and their further destruction of children’s minds. I think we need action faster than later and more profound and bold rather than timid and safe because the clock is ticking. And at this point, I am willing to give a bold option a chance, not for the adults who are thriving off a corrupt system, but for the kids who need real leadership and an opportunity for a better tomorrow. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Making The Butler County Republican Party Great Again: People don’t want to think of Boss Hogg when they think of politics

At first, I thought of the complaints as leftovers from contentious issues that have divided the party, such as the Thomas Hall battle with Matt King and the obvious rift with Sheriff Jones and Roger Reynolds. I tend to view those kinds of things as family squabbles within a household. Usually, people get over things and move on, which was happening with that nice event for Thomas Hall. But when people who don’t usually deal with the Butler County Republican Party are complaining, they don’t know about the details, only their experience with it. And that experience has not lived up to the reputation of the past, where Butler County had a lot of volunteers, high engagement, and the kind of national reputation that made President Trump want to come and campaign in the area. But the reputation that was developing, because of all the rifts from leadership that was flowing out into state and federal politics, was not a good one. For a community of over 400,000 people, small-town politics was back in fashion where a few party leaders had turned the wonderful Butler County Republican Party into something that would make Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard blush. And that was embarrassing to hear. I had been hoping that after the 2022 election, many of those trends would level out and that much of the problem had been not having the unifying factor of Trump to rally behind. Without Trump, the party has reverted back to the differences that it had during the early 2000s. But now that Trump was running again, my hope was that the party would unite again behind him. However, this time there appeared to be a different kind of problem. Many older people in leadership now are in the way of younger and hungrier personalities, and those elements feel restricted in their ambitions, which is not a good thing for future growth.

This problem reminded me of the Cincinnati Bengals and how the Brown family just can’t get out of their own way for success. Sure, they have had some good players over the years, but they just have not been able to put together a successful string of seasons to show fabulous organizational presence. They went to the Super Bowl last year and had a pretty good season. They had the whole off-season to get better and improve on the previous year with essentially the same players. The Bengals invested in a new offensive line, but the results were not good. The quarterback, Joe Burrow, has been sacked more than any other NFL quarterback. So the Bengals didn’t get better because the problems with the Bengals were in their coaching and front office. Not the players on the field. So if leadership was always the problem, the Bengals didn’t help themselves by investing in an offensive line; if they didn’t have the kind of coaches who could take advantage of those improvements, then, of course, the problem would still present itself as a problem. Obviously, the Butler County Republican Party was having the same issues. Many new talents are coming into the party who can network and connect with the world. There are lots of MAGA Republicans across the state who are newly engaged in politics and are looking for jobs to do. But then, when they interact with Butler County, we have this Boss Hogg image that people have of our elderly leadership, and it turns them off, and it’s starting to show to the outside world. 

It was good to see a nice GOP event in Butler County dedicated to a victory celebration for Thomas Hall at the Majors Barn. It was a tough election season, and some hard feelings emerged during that race, which clearly split the Butler County Republican Party in half. But several people supported Matt King, who ran against Thomas for the 46th Representative Ohio seat. They were there to congratulate Thomas and to show leadership in coming together as a party now that the election was over. There were people there that I could speak with where things got pretty heated, and we had some nice conversations, and everyone made up. I know everyone couldn’t come, people were busy, but you could tell a lot about Republican Party leadership by who was there and who wasn’t. I can tell you someone, who was there, Roger Reynolds, was, and we had a nice conversation about the horrendous problem that was happening to him. I asked him if Sheriff Jones was going to pay for all his massive legal bills for the phony trial coming up for him in December of 2022, which to me looks like a complete political hit job. That is not the kind of thing that makes the Republican Party better, but something that has made it worse. Roger kind of smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. He’s one of the good guys, and his only focus was on getting that mess behind him so he could live his life again. And Thomas and I spoke about the new Speaker of the House and what an excellent relationship those two had together, which was encouraging. Good things were happening. But I also received reports from some of the state people and the federal people who deal with Republican parties all over the country. Their impression of the Butler County Republican Party was not a good one. There were a lot of complaints about engagement, phone calls, appreciation letters, and just basic organization, and while I kept up a happy face inside, I was pretty mad. I am proud of the Butler County Republican Party and don’t like hearing people say bad things about it. 

Hey, I get it; we all get older. You look in the mirror and what looks back is a person falling apart. Age can be cruel. And when the dog doesn’t respect you, and your wife is complaining about you leaving your socks in the corner by the bathroom, and nobody thinks you’re all that special, it can feel great to go to a Party meeting and have everyone worship you for all the things you have done in your life. It’s hard to be big enough to get out of the way and let younger people step in and show their ambitions.   That has always been the Bengals problem; the Brown family has always gotten in the way of its own success. And that is what is happening with the Butler County Republican Party. It’s not just from the direction of the police, but there are commissioners, trustees, and many others who are holding positions as placeholders, then getting mad at the youth for nipping at their heels. And my advice to them, the elders, is if you really love the Republican Party, you would want to do the right thing, and that is to get out of the way and let those with the most ambition and freshest eyes step into leadership positions. Sometimes being a great leader is in getting out of the way. And hanging on to the past and living off a reputation to hide the aging process from your own eyes isn’t love. It’s selfish, and the only result is that you become the latest Boss Hogg in the world and become known not for good deeds but for corruption and ill-advised political fights that ruin everything a lifetime took to build.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Abuse of Power in Butler County: And it’s not Roger Reynolds doing it

I’ve talked about it before; I sympathize with the Steve Bannon contempt of congress case that is happening at the end of July 2022 more than other cases because it’s personal for me. I don’t communicate with him a lot, be we occasionally do. He has shared some of my articles on social media, and we have exchanged text messages on occasion, so it’s more personal to me to see what is happening to him than it would be if I didn’t know something about the person himself. As I watch him go to federal court every day and the judge lecture the defense about not making a circus out of the case, it is bewildering to think that Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress in 2012, yet no punishment ever came his way. But because Bannon is a member of the Trump White House, he is being treated like a criminal, guilty before proven innocent, just by association. And all this has made me think of the case of George Lang several years ago, who was facing jail time just for knowing John Boehner, who was poised to be speaker of the house, and the Democrats wanted to sink him through his friends. George, of course, was found innocent, but it was scary for sure. We could all point to misconduct in court proceedings that were purely politically motivated and shake our heads. But we often don’t say much about it because we fear that injustice being turned in our own direction, so we just move along and try to ignore it. Yet, I see the same thing happening to Roger Reynolds in Butler County, where political rivals are accusing him of corruption in his office. And I just don’t see it in any of the indictments, for which a 6th came out just recently to add to the pile, intent on knocking him out of office. It’s an election year, some rivals want Roger out as a political character, and they’ll do what they must do to sink him. 

Believe me; I’d rather talk about a million other things than this case, which I’ve discussed in detail. I’d prefer to leave all this mess to the courts to decide but based on a ridiculous article by Jennifer Edwards Baker from Fox 19 about the details of the 6th indictment against Roger Reynolds, which now involves Lakota schools, the issue is so preposterous that we just can’t ignore it. Obviously, the prosecution in the case against Roger, much like the case against Steve Bannon, doesn’t have much to go on, so they are prosecuting the case in the court of public opinion through reporters who might sway public sentiment ahead of upcoming elections. And that is the entire goal of the proceedings. And we can’t ignore the case because it could be any of us falsely accused. It’s not that I love Roger Reynolds. I think he has been an excellent auditor. But he’s made political enemies over the years, which is all part of the blood sport of politics. I think he could handle many things better regarding social interactions, but I recognize that he’s an A-Type personality, as is Sheriff Jones, and a clash among those types of people is bound to happen. I see it as more of a human resource problem than a legal one. If those two people have problems, they should resolve them in some other way than in political tricks ahead of elections and wasting the time of courts for personal vendettas, which is clearly the case with this indictment against Roger involving Lakota schools.   

The Fox 19 article says many things that could easily be misconstrued, leaving out all the relevant factors, such as all the axes to grind among public employees, especially those who handle money. The indictment indicates that Lakota schools were due to get back $750,000 from the auditor’s office. Roger suggested to the treasurer Jenni Logan that they spend that money on the Four Bridges Golf Course in a partnership. A whole series of emails between Jenni and the school attorney show an interest in Roger’s proposal. Ultimately, they decided it probably wasn’t a good idea, so the concept was rejected. That was back in 2017, a long time ago. So why is this story coming out now? Jenni is retiring on August 1st, 2022, and this is something for the road that fits into the motivations of Sheriff Jones and his political needs regarding putting someone else in the seat of the Butler County Auditor. So, they completely made up the word “coercion” in the indictment and tried to build a case that forced Roger to prove he wasn’t guilty of it due to pressure from public opinion, rather than proving that Roger actually used coercion in any way during the proposed spending of the money. When people see $750,000, they might think that’s a lot of money, but in reality, within the budget of Lakota, it’s much less than 1% of their expenditures and is actually about 11 or 12 teachers. Teachers make a lot of money, despite what the unions say about compensation. I can easily see how Roger would suggest that Jenni spend the money on something more useful, like an elevated lifestyle for the students of Lakota, rather than just blowing it on more activist teachers. Jenni must have thought the idea a good one because she pursued it through emails which are part of the case. But she did so voluntarily. That is not coercion; it’s a discussion among professional adults. 

All this doesn’t change my opinion of Roger Reynolds. As I indicated, I could tell stories all day long about court cases that were purely intended to destroy a political rival and had nothing to do with actual justice. I mentioned a few here based on personal experience. But it’s quite common as a practice. I’m all for law and order, but justice should be blind. What is going on with Roger Reynolds is that laws are being applied against a political rival instead of uniformly applied. It’s an abuse of authority, but it’s not Roger doing the abuse. It’s the accusers, not the recipient. I’ll still be voting for Roger Reynolds in the upcoming election. All the people participating in the investigation against him should be trying to work with Roger instead of getting rid of him over their personal problems they might have. Destroying people’s lives is not the way to solve a problem. It might be common, but it’s certainly not right.

The courts are not private playgrounds to bully people into fight resolution that might have been settled on a playground when everyone was kids. As adults, judges, attorneys, and media bottom feeders are not replacements for fists to the face. When the courts are abused, as they are clearly being abused in this Roger Reynolds case and the case of Steve Bannon, that gives politics and our justice system a bad name, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, as far as I’m concerned, all six of these indictments against Roger Reynolds are political witch hunts. If I had been Roger, I would have handled things differently, where there was no question as to blurred lines. But social mistakes aren’t against the law. Intent to commit a crime is, and to assume intent where there clearly isn’t any evidence, just for the political theater of altering an election is despicable at best and gross abuse of authority at the very least. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

What Makes George Lang So Good: Leadership and one of the reasons Butler County is Debt Free

George Lang, whenever he gives a public speech, especially in Butler County, Ohio, where he is the Senator of the 4th District, will quickly remind everyone that Butler County is the only county in Ohio operating debt-free. It is one of the best-run counties in the entire nation, fiscally speaking, and that is to the credit of Nancy Nix and many others who work as the treasurer and support staff. It’s also a credit to the Republican Party of Butler County, and you will always find George Lang somewhere near someone who has been successful behind many of the success stories. George Lang is the kind of person who builds people up wherever he goes, and his best work is often in the background. He’s not very ostentatious about letting everyone know about the good work he does, but given the trend of pointing out every flaw people in politics have that there are, I thought it was an excellent idea to let people know of one of the best examples of what a good politician is that I know, and point out some of the traits that make him that way. While it’s true, I consider George a friend, I’ve known him since the early Tea Party days, and I like his family quite a lot. But I’ll also say that we don’t always agree on everything or support the same kind of people in every situation. Yet, as I always say, there is only one correct answer, and I can say that in the context of our relationship, George is a tireless advocate for whatever that right answer is, and he pursues it aggressively. And if new information comes up along the way that might change his view on the right answer, he doesn’t let anything get in the way of modifying his thought process to accommodate it. And that might be his best trait and why he is so successful, not just in the things he does, but in how he builds people up around him toward the ultimate correct answer. 

I was at a few events recently and heard the same kind of stories, that George Lang is an establishment Republican and that he is part of the problem, not a solution. In the context of those sentiments, I can say that they are common among anybody who has had success and are not rooted in reality. One of the reasons I’ve been able to be friends with George Lang for so long is because he is a high-quality person who can handle the heat in the kitchen well. So, if he were anything less than great, I wouldn’t have maintained a friendship with him all this time. Usually, when we talk, it’s not about politics ironically, but the big things, like ancient civilizations and what lessons we could learn from them that could improve the legislative agenda of America as a republic. We never get hung up on the small stuff, the whims of political tides that come and go like an ocean current.   From my perspective in knowing how George is every day, I know the things some people say about him are because he’s been successful. All successful people get hen-pecked behind their backs. The critics are primarily built on jealousy or to hide their own ineffectiveness in the world and would rather blame a corrupt system that never listens to their own failures. George is the kind of person who can sit down with anyone under any type of contentious condition and work with them. And he stays honest during it all and can go home to his family with a clean mind because everything he does is done with good sentiment on his part. I’ve watched many people attempt this in life, and they usually get beaten down into an unrecognizable person within a few years. But George has managed to keep himself great for many years, working as a trustee, then a State Representative, until this most recent position as a State Senator.   George could do anything politically that he wanted, which would always draw criticism from the fans in the stands. Yet when it comes to wins, George is always nearby those victories even if he isn’t the one who takes the heroic shot in the end but was the person who set all the success up behind the scenes. 

This came to my mind because I have been getting asked many questions about what might happen in the fourth quarter, during the next election in America, if the Democrats try to use another version of Covid to implement shutdowns and change voting rules as they did in 2020. In Ohio, DeWine was terrible with Covid, and it cost the state a lot. Well, George all along worked behind the scenes to ensure that what happened in 2020 would never happen again in Ohio. George has a business-first political platform that understands that if there is no business in Ohio, then there aren’t jobs and things to do with a good economy. So George puts his political efforts into ensuring that the economy of Ohio is outstanding so that all other good things will follow. And over the last several years, George has passed legislation that greatly limited what a governor can do under emergency conditions. For instance, if there were another pandemic, a governor would be unable to shut down small businesses while keeping the large ones open. Everyone would have to follow the same safety protocols, but the government would not pick winners and losers as they did during Covid 2020. Also, the Senate led an effort with George among the leaders to drive the issue that would keep any governor from overreacting and taking authority control over the entire state. So those days are gone forever, and George Lang is the one to thank for it. 

A lot of the best legislation that gets done in Columbus isn’t very sexy. It doesn’t make great splashes on the nightly news. Few likely know about S.B. 246, which allows for small businesses to utilize similar tax advantages that large companies have access to, which might not sound like a big thing, but if you are a business of any size, tax burdens are one of the most significant concerns that there is. With George’s bill, it will attract investment to Ohio which is desperately needed. Ohio has been suffering from a depopulation crisis for a long time. It’s been so bad that it only has 15 congressional representatives due to that condition. As jobs have fled the state due to previous bad government policy, there wasn’t anywhere for the kids of previous generations to work, so they left for places that looked more attractive.   George is working to rebuild that business base of Ohio and is looking to turn that all around, and so far, he’s been very successful. Like the example George gives about the great Butler County treasurer Nancy Nix and how it is operating as the only county that is debt free, it takes a lot of leadership behind the scenes to manage everything correctly, and it also takes a willingness not always to be the point person where a single point failure can significantly limit what good leadership can do. But to build up others in ways that the public never sees. And if someone didn’t point out that good work every now and then, nobody would ever know. And that is why I value George Lang so much and think despite the negative news stories that we hear every day on the news, there are some great politicians out there doing outstanding work. And George Lang is one of them for sure. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Liberty Township Trustees Pass Resolution NO 2022-062: Taking leadership to preserve constitutional guidance based on what we learned from Covid

It’s good to talk about positive stories and the excellent work by the Liberty Township Trustees, Tom Ferrell, Steve Schramm, and Todd Minniear, to pass Resolution NO. 2022-062 (the Reaffirming Our Commitment to Constitutional Principles) on June 7th, 2022. It was something unique and memorable. It was good to see government on the local level taking proactive action that was meaningful. And as I pointed out in speaking in favor of it, after Covid and the many government failures in reaction to it, the investment world needed something to reassure everyone that should something as disastrous as Covid ever happen again, there was a plan to deal with it. We, at this point, have to plan for some form of that eventuality in the political world we live in, that at the very least, local government will work on behalf of the people of their community to at least ask constitutionally based questions on the merits and legality. It was a horrible circumstance that all our laws and regulations were turned away from our systems of elections and were turned entirely over to health officials in Ohio and Butler County, which were unconstitutional in many tragic ways. So it took a considerable amount of leadership from the Liberty Township Trustees to take a proactive measure to reassure the public that local government was still in charge and would be in the future.

https://gettr.com/vision/p1dcmfd6b99

At first, when this idea of talking about making Liberty Township something of a Constitutional Zone it sounded to me like a redundant message. After all, all public officials take an oath to the Constitution, both federal and state, so by saying that they were a Constitutional Township was like saying the sun was out on a sunny day at the beach. That is until I went to Liberty Center to have lunch and noticed that the playground there was still shut down after two years of Covid protocols. Many of those protocols look ridiculous in hindsight. Still, when the playground was shut down, there had been movies about pandemics and various zombie apocalypses that had satisfactorily terrified the public, which health officials exploited for global gains of political power, which is a subject that we could write books on. Those books are emerging to tell those stories of deceit and corruption. But as to kids and the playground at Liberty Center, it’s a nice place in what I consider one of the best shopping destinations in America. Parents have enjoyed taking their kids there to let them play indoors and in air conditioning. The food court is right there, so it is a nice place for the community to come and interact with each other. But after two years of Covid, it was still shut down, even as most of the rest of society had gone back to normal. As I ate my food, the lights were mostly out, many of the upstairs portions of the mall were vacant of store activity, and it looked like a pretty sad situation. 

So I called up Todd Minniear, who is one of the newest Liberty Township Trustees, and asked him what was going on with the mall. Were Covid protocols still keeping these guys from opening up their play area? As it turned out, mall management wasn’t sure how to proceed. They were waiting on someone from the government to come and tell them that it was alright to reopen. But of course, nobody was ever going to come from the government to do so, so the poor playground was left in limbo, leaving that whole upstairs portion of the mall to have very little social activity.   I couldn’t help but add up in my head how many potential investors who might want to open a store in the mall saw this sad sight and moved on. If they had seen kids playing and parents enjoying talking and eating from the food court, they might have made a few million dollars of investment into a new store at Liberty Center, which it needs. Brick and mortar stores are a challenge under great economic conditions. So under a Biden economy, that only gets trickier. After some telephone tag that went on for a few weeks, Liberty Center found it was able to reopen its play area to the public, so it’s open now. Shortly before attending the Constitutional Resolution for the next Liberty Township meeting, I had lunch there again. This time it looked like I remembered it: kids playing, parents enjoying watching them, and having a nice place to sit and have some food. The lights were on, and things looked alive again. There was some exciting new construction on the second floor, somebody had made some investments, so it was a good story. One that should have never been bad in the first place, but it would be good to see something good happening that people could now enjoy. 

For many, it is a terrifying prospect to have to go through something like Covid again. I have several copies of the state and federal constitutions that I refer to often, and by reading them, there is no reason to be concerned. I felt that way during the entire Covid shutdowns in Ohio and across the nation; every case that was put before the courts challenging the health directives was losing. We should never have done half the things that were done in reaction to Covid. The real science shows that there were medicines available at the time that could have easily contained it as a public menace. The problem was in the new way that we allowed health experts to gain control through an emergency, the management of our country. We had never seen something like that happen before, and it certainly wasn’t the fault of Liberty Center in following the orders that flowed down to them from the state.   But in the aftermath, no leadership from those same experts came out in public and said, “it’s safe again.” Or, “sorry, there was never really a danger; we overreacted. Sorry if we destroyed lives and cost everyone billions of dollars, trillions of dollars nationally. We’re sorry.” No, they just stayed in their offices and left everything to the rest of the world to figure out. So Liberty Center was in limbo until Todd Minniear started making phone calls and asking questions. From the mall management side of things, they would expect someone from leadership in the community to ask those questions and get the answers, which is how the playground reopened. And the story ended up being a good one. 

Resolution No. 2022-062 passed with a surprisingly large crowd clapping, and all the Trustees seemed to enjoy a positive thing for a change. After the meeting, I was able to talk to Steve Schramm and Tom Farrell, who were eager to tell me about all the things that go on behind the scenes where they fight for the Constitution and the protection of Liberty Township all the time. The trouble is that the public doesn’t see all those phone calls and questions. All they know is that Covid shut down the world once, and they needed to know that someone who represented them would be able to ask questions and challenge health directives in the future should something like that happen again. Because without that guidance, those investment dollars might just stay someplace safe and not flow into some new project. As we saw with Covid, the uncertainty of medical tyranny might just return. Only this time, the Trustees had proclaimed that they were there to help and would ensure that the rules of the Constitution would prevail in Liberty Township. Which, for many people, was a reassurance they desperately sought from somebody offering leadership after two years of scary indecision and protocols that were abruptly un-American.

Rich Hoffman

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Mike DeWine Ruined Kings Island’s 2020 Season: The danger of an out-of-control government ran by losers like the current Ohio governor

As if anybody needed a reminder about just how terrible Mike DeWine has been as governor. Apparently, there are people out there with the memory of a goldfish, so they need the reminder. Just remember on election day of May 3rd, 2022, that Kings Island, one of the greatest amusement parks in the country, in the world for that matter, is currently under a big lawsuit from season pass holders from the 2020 season who wanted a refund, and are now taking the Cincinnati treasure to court over how the parent company, Cedar Fair Amusements handled the government imposed business shutdowns during the fake Covid pandemic. Now for those who aren’t regular readers, you probably know people who were sick over Covid, who may have died. Remember about Covid, which Governor DeWine was one of the first in the country to be suckered into the Bill Gates power grab for which Covid was created. Covid-19 was made in a lab in Wuhan, China. Dr. Fauci knew about it. He and Bill Gates knew some medicines could have stopped the virus, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Still, they deliberately suppressed that information from the public with donations made by Bill Gates to manipulate the media coverage and steer the public toward government-mandated vaccines, a multi-decade project that Bill Gates personally has funded so to usher the world toward a one-world government run by the United Nations steered by the Desecrators of Davos party. The same minds have now brought us the crises in Ukraine. And regarding Covid, the government reaction to the virus caused trillions of dollars of damage, ruined many lives, destroyed jobs, and broke the laws of our constitutions in gross ways that many thought was impossible before 2020. Kings Island in northern Cincinnati is an example of how government can ruin lives when it is unchecked and has too much power, for which Governor DeWine is guilty. 

I was on several conference calls with Ceder Fair Amusements and Governor DeWine during the spring of 2020 when the entertainment giant was making its plea to get some visibility to schedule when they could reopen operations. At that time, it was May. Being a seasonal company operating two very large amusement parks in Ohio, which Mike DeWine had prevented from opening by abusing his emergency powers as governor, Cedar Fair Amusements needed answers from the government-created travesty. They had no idea when they could open Kings Island or Cedar Point, and being a seasonal company, they were already hurt in acquiring employees for the season. On that conference call, Mike DeWine was strutting his authority under emergency powers, and it was apparent that he never planned to give up those powers. Now two years later, we still have the pandemic going. The Democrats want desperately to use Covid emergencies to shield them from election results they don’t like. That was certainly the case in 2020 when they wanted Donald Trump out of office. And it’s the case now in 2022, with midterms shaping up to be really devastating for Democrats and the terrible job they have done at the national level possessing all three houses of government, Blue state governors are still looking for Covid to shield them from poor performances. And out of all the governors in the country, Mike DeWine has governed as a blue state governor, certainly not a Republican. And on that phone call, he could not tell Cedar Fair Amusements when they could open or the plan for them ever to do so. DeWine was utterly unsympathetic to the business community’s needs and showed everyone just how dangerous government could be when it was out of control. 

That year Kings Island finally was able to open with horrendous restrictions to the public by July, after half the season was over. That year also, Kings Island had to shut down their Halloween Haunt weekend schedule and their Winterfest activities. So Kings Island was open from July 4th essentially to Labor Day. And before DeWine would let them do that, they had to agree to all kinds of unscientific social distancing rules and mask mandates after having to scramble to find enough employees even to open the park, let alone to give the customers the amusement park experience that they were craving. Kings Island was trying to open one of their big multi-million dollar Giga coasters, and the steam of the whole event was completely destroyed by what DeWine himself had done. Under emergency powers, he cut out the legislature. He took complete command of Ohio’s economy, which he didn’t have the right to do. He took hundreds of millions of dollars from Kings Island in opportunity cost. For Cedar Fair Amusements, it was a devastating summer, just as it was for many hundreds of thousands of other companies, large and small, who struggled to survive the ominous behavior of government exerting powers it didn’t have for the destruction of the people they were supposed to serve. If Covid was a virus that was built by our own Defense Department, funded by Dr. Fauci, and released by China as a bioweapon, and it robbed us of our taste buds, our health, and happiness, the government reaction to it with all the rules and regulations was far more dangerous. People might say that Cedar Fair Amusements is a wealthy company with all the money to absorb the costs. Those would be people who have no idea how much money it takes to run an amusement park. 

I thought what Kings Island did that year was good; they essentially gave all season pass holders for the 2020 season a free renewal of the 2021 pass. Even that following year, Covid was still a problem, and DeWine had just reopened the state against his will. The Senate passed a bill to take those emergency powers away from DeWine, and it finally went into effect in June of 2021, and then and only then did DeWine step away from the lockdowns. The government had spent over a year terrifying people over Covid, which certainly hurt Kings Island’s business model. It will likely take them a decade to recover what was lost in just that one year. The current lawsuit is over how Cedar Fair Amusements managed Covid, which was entirely out of their control. Some people wanted a refund of their 2020 passes because they couldn’t use them. My wife and I went one time to ride the new Orian ride but didn’t go the rest of the year because the mask mandate was impossible to deal with in the hot summer sun, and it wasn’t worth it to us. We thought it was nice that Kings Island honored our passes for the following year. In 2021 we went often but noticed that many of the normal crowd had not returned. Some people were still worried about Covid, and they might never feel comfortable going out in public again. Those are the people suing Kings Island because they wanted a complete refund of their passes for 2020. The government had so terrified those people that they were permanently damaged. So now, with the summer of 2022 coming, Mike DeWine is running for a second term. And Kings Island is in court trying to defend itself from actions that Governor DeWine caused by his horrible mismanagement of Covid in the summer of 2020. Anybody who votes for him after that terrible performance is an idiot and an enabler of abuse.   

Rich Hoffman

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Don Jr. Campaigns in West Chester, Ohio for J.D. Vance: We are seeing extraordinary things happening

The beer is always good at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester. When they have political events that are conducive to country music and Republican Party politics, it tastes even better. And as I sipped on a beer with my wife at the bar watching J.D. Vance and Don Jr take pictures with a supportive crowd, several people asked me the same question, what effect will Trump’s endorsement of Vance for the hotly contested Ohio Senate seat have on the race as a whole. At present, the election is really between Josh Mandel, who I have been supportive of during the whole race, primarily because of his willingness to fight anybody anywhere, and his open talk about 2020 election fraud, and J.D. Vance, the former Never Trumper. He was now being personally put on a platform by the Trump family. All the other candidates, Jane Timken, Gibbons, and Dolin, are fighting for the traditional Rob Portman RINO types, the same people who currently support DeWine for governor. The present fear is that the Trump voters will be split between J.D. and Mandel, letting the squishier Republicans slide into the lead on May 3rd, 2022. Also, Jim Renacci and Mike DeWine are running pretty much tied, according to long-time Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, as recently as a few days ago. So, what does all this mean, which is what people were asking me? So, I sipped my beer and answered……………….

If we take traditional primary voters, there would be many reasons to worry about all those mentioned concerns. But this isn’t a standard primary. Biden has taken the country to terrible, new places, and Don Jr. was just a few feet away, helping J.D. Vance overcome his past as a Never Trumper. President Trump had just held a major rally with tens of thousands of people in Delaware, Ohio. Marjorie Tayler Green was coming to West Chester in a few days to help Vance out and many other top-tier Republicans. This was no ordinary race, and voter engagement looked like it would be very high. That would help Renacci, even without a formal Trump endorsement. Because of the high voter engagement, Vance and Mandel voters would naturally also vote for Renacci. It doesn’t help Renacci that Blystone and others have stayed in the race to help DeWine by splitting the vote essentially. But with high voter turnout, things were looking good for Renacci to knock off DeWine. But in a hungry Ohio primary season where everyone wants a Trump endorsement, the J.D. Vance endorsement and personal work that Don Jr was willing to do himself would likely tip the scales in favor of J.D. Vance. 

Prior to the beer, J.D. and Don Jr. spoke to an eager crowd about why the senate candidate was a born-again Trump supporter, no longer a Never Trumper. And they made some excellent points that were worth mentioning. J.D. is undoubtedly not planning to be a war hawk like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been. He doesn’t want to be in the war in Ukraine and has a very Trump-like position regarding global affairs. America First, and let everyone else fight their own battles. Drop the globalism and bring home all the jobs. That’s a good thing. The other thing that Don Jr. brought up, which was shown in the really great video of Don Jr.’s 25-minute speech, was that he asked the audience how many senators they actually liked that would fight for MAGA. He wondered if anybody could name five. Well, nobody could name more than three, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Josh Hawley. Beyond that, all we had out of the remaining 100 were squishy politicians who cared more about being liked by the media and could care less about the people they were supposed to represent. Many of them, like Mitch McConnell, had sold out America to foreign powers long ago, and they hid their guilt behind a kind of political game that most of them were playing, except for those three names mentioned. Some members of the audience mentioned Marjorie Tayler Green and Jim Jordan. But Don Jr. explained to those people that those were members of the House. They weren’t senators. 

So, to answer the question to everyone who didn’t get to ask me that same set of questions, I think the Trump endorsement will put J.D. Vance over the top. I think voter engagement will stave off the more establishment types. And that same voter engagement should help Renacci over DeWine. Of course, anything can happen, but as I sipped on the wonderful beer and enjoyed the good company there at the bar, that’s how things looked to me. Regardless of what happened on election day, the speech by Donald Trump Jr. was an amazing one, something that not even the craziest comedy sketches from 2015 would have dared to entertain. The kind of critical opinion expressed in the open at that event was very new and honest. It was the kind of stuff that people only talked about in private. They never talked about those things out loud. So we were in unique territory here, where the son of a billionaire who might otherwise just live life in a previous decade being a playboy and living on the golf course was flying around the country trying to get MAGA politicians elected to help his father have options in the Oval Office by the year 2024. This wasn’t politics as usual. These guys weren’t doing these things for money or power. J.D. Vance himself could be making a seven-figure income in a number of fields, but he wanted to be a senator. He wanted to help save Middletown, his hometown, from the victimization of globalism that had killed it over the last half-century. These were people who were defying logic as it was traditionally known. They loved their country, and the attackers of America never planned for that. We saw something extraordinary happening. 

And more than any other political prediction, I see something more special happening. Voters are engaged in a way they have never been previously. They are taking more time out of their lives to be involved in these kinds of political events. As I watched the people in line trying to get a picture with J.D. and Don Jr., I couldn’t help but think how proud people were to be near them. Not so much for the celebrity of the event, but because they recognized what Don Jr. was trying to do to save America. He was giving up a lot to be at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, Ohio, to give his father a chance to have a beneficial senator in place by the time 2024 came around. Someone who would stand up to China and support the future Trump trade policies, especially regarding China, who owes us all a lot of money for what they did with Covid in 2020. And the public appreciated that kind of fight, and they wanted to be near people who were fighting on the front line. We’ll see how that pans out on election day, May 3rd. But from my viewpoint, remarkable things are lining up that we have never witnessed before. And that is an exciting prospect.  

Rich Hoffman

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The John Gray Pediphillia Case: Why decentralized citizen journalism is our only protection

You could say I know or knew John Gray very well, going back several decades now. When he was running for school board in Goshen, I helped him write positioning statements for his campaign. A long time ago. It’s been a few years, but watching his video, I see the same guy, a person I would call “honest.” I think he was so honest that when PCI: Predator Catchers Indianapolis and Predator Catchers Muncie caught him buying snacks for an upcoming sexual liaison with an 11-year-old girl, he rattled on and on for an hour, incriminating himself more by the minute because he knew they had caught him, and that he felt guilty about it. The guy I have known would have shaken his head at something like this two decades ago. But here he was, a respected community member, the school board president in Goshen with grown kids, a long marriage, and grandchildren who want to look up to him, standing in the middle of Indiana, caught on video trying to do the unthinkable. When I think of John Gray, I think of a church-going family man and respected community leader. But the guy I saw on the remarkable video, and the testimony he gave was John Gray too, a side of people that many don’t even know themselves. And even as he was speaking, and knowing his life was over in every way you can imagine it, he seemed aware of it and wanted to confess to getting it off his shoulders. It’s an amazing examination into what pedophiles are and how even they may not see themselves that way until they are well down the rabbit hole, as he obviously was. 

What is significant about this case is it shows just how much you might not know someone. I am a pretty good judge of character, and I would never have thought of John Gray as a pedophile. He’s someone who would have been very critical and morally outraged about such activity. But there he was trying to get an 11-year-old down to her underwear for a massage, and he was at the Dollar Store to buy snacks for her beforehand. And he didn’t deny it, so I said he was honest. At first, he lied about being on the school board when they called him on it during the tape. He lied to the camera. But the honest person I know couldn’t wait to get it out, he couldn’t hold it in, and eventually, he said everything. That was the worst testimony I can think of on record. Typically, people don’t say this much, especially out in front of a store by strangers who confronted him. Typically, they’d clam up and get in their car to drive off and hope to disappear. But the honest part of him wanted to tell on himself, and he sure did. After the video was done, the crowd seemed disappointed that he wasn’t taken to jail and had charges pressed at that time. But honestly, the worst thing that could have happened to him was that tape. His life was as a respected public servant and trusted business advisor. And that brand has now been completely destroyed just for the chance to touch in a sexual way a girl just going into puberty. Life as he knows it is over, and he knew it as they put the handcuffs on him. But he also seemed relieved to get it out in the open. It was a bizarre set of contradictions. 

So how many John Grays are out there in the world? Can we really trust anybody? I would say no. We can’t. You think you know people; you think you can trust that crazy uncle or that family friend. Or that school board president. But people have all kinds of things going on, and you really can’t trust anything. As I always say, don’t trust what people say; judge them on what they do. I would never think John Gray would have done anything like this, and I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t come out of his own mouth. But because of citizen journalism, this story was dug out of the dirt and exposed for all to see. And I’m glad it was. Not because I want to see John Gray hurt, but because we need that level of protection in a society where institutionalism can’t hide the dark side of people like him. When people get very good at maintaining a public persona, but in the dark recesses of their personality, they crave sexual contact with children, we need a mechanism in society that can uncover such things. If people can’t control themselves, which he obviously couldn’t, then the fear of that public persona being destroyed is all we have to keep bad behavior from manifesting into outright evil. When we wonder about Pizza Gate in Washington and the client list of Jeffery Epstein, keep John Gray in mind. Think of all those friendly people who might shake your hand and smile to your face who are craving sex with your daughters and grandchildren. Think of the groomer talk of Disney World and the executives who are trying to hide their own demons with mass sexualized activity that makes their miserable lives seem more normal. Think twice about that strange guy walking in your neighborhood or looking at you in the grocery store. We can come up with rules and regulations until we fill libraries with laws that nobody ever reads. All that really keeps bad behavior from happening is accountability. And in this case, a pedophile citizen journalism group created that accountability. The police weren’t going to do the work. The FBI is too busy trying to keep Republicans from winning in the next election.

The CIA is pushing drugs across the border as they always have. Nobody is looking out for our kids. Rather, I would say there is an army of John Grays out there who all want to do the same thing he did. And if you have a daughter or granddaughter, you can bet there is someone in her life looking to groom her for a naked back rub at the cost of a bag of chips purchased at the Dollar Store. If John Gray could participate in pedophilia, anybody could. And his confession comes at a valuable time. People have been wondering how and why pedophilia could occur, and many don’t want to think about it. So, they don’t. But from his own mouth, you can hear why John Gray did it and why he was willing to risk it all for an activity that is beyond sinful. And maybe this video done by these great citizen journalists will wake people up to this terrible evil in our world. Perhaps we’ll find more people willing to fight for children and to help them have an opportunity for a good life. How many people like John Gray didn’t get caught on Saturday, and who function in society as respected people? I think it’s in the many millions. And what kind of people do these abused kids grow up to become? Well, the answer is obvious, and if we want to live in a good society, it starts with each and every one of us. If you see something and think something and don’t stop the evil from happening, well, you’re complicit. So don’t be, and take this lesson for what it is. And when respected people tell you they could never do something so terrible, judge them on what they do, not what they say.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Unrestricted Warfare’: What’s really going on and how America’s destruction is the goal of the world

One thing we have to admit to ourselves, as Americans, is that our government does not represent us and is acting as a rogue agent in the world, creating hostilities for a New World Order, which is not in our best interest. The role our military has in the world and how our diplomatic relations have transpired are not American, as much as they serve the Desecrators of Davos. The proof is seeing America the way other countries do, specifically the Chinese. By reading the book by the People’s Liberation Army Documents titled ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ published in 1999 and based on the world at that time, it’s clear that China is at war with America. Its also clear that other countries such as Russia, Iran, and many South American and Central American countries are also at war with the United States. But they are not stupid; they all acknowledge that America is the king in technological warfare. They dare not to attack us in conventional ways and likely never will in the future. Instead, they acknowledge different methods of war that they are aggressively applying against us to eradicate us, all of which are discussed in that book. It was an assessment essentially of American performance after the Gulf War when it was written. America led a coalition of nations to fight Saddam Hussain over his aggressions in Kuwait over the protection of oil flow worldwide. Knowing what we do know about Ukraine and Russia, along with the strategic aims to create a kind of sequel to the United Nations approach to global warfare, for which the United States leads and funds, the game is obvious. It’s just too painful to admit to ourselves that we have a separation between the intentions of our government and the needs of the people of our country who desire a much different future. We are not one nation under God. We are a nation split between the Constitution of our tradition and the Desecrators of Davos who control our government against our will.

What’s worse, especially in reading Unrestricted Warfare, is that the people of America conceptually understand what needs to be done. We elected Donald Trump twice to deal with the war that is applied to us and pull back from the mob-like attitude of world-building. We get all the blame only to run cover for the globalists who want a one-world government at the expense of American sovereignty. When we tried to elect Trump again in 2020, they simply took the vote away from us. That’s the real power of a media culture with six companies who control 90% of everything we see, read and hear. In 1983 just a few years ahead of the Gulf War that was the subject of study in Unrestricted Warfare, 50 media companies dominated the media landscape. Today, only six control everything, Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Sony, Fox, and Paramount Global (formally known as ViacomCBS). We have witnessed over the last few years how much those companies are controlled by the prominent money management firms, such as BlackRock, Blackstone, State Street, and Vanguard, and are using the Desecrators of Davos measures of ESG scores to change politics completely, without any voters, or choice in the matter in how the world behaves. Of course, behind this aggression is the American military that those globalist types have used to impose their will on the world and pave the way for this massive takeover of every sovereign country. America used to be the bad cop that the Desecrators of Davos used for their global takeover. Now, because crushing the dollar is very much a modern strategic objective and the military might of the United States is no longer needed for the kind of wars we fight these days, China is the new bad guy on the world stage propped up by those same money management firms, and America is being kicked to the curb. 

The world knew not to attack America directly, but they have not been shy about their intentions to destroy us. It’s all spelled out quite clearly from the turn of the century mindset of the Chinese in Unrestricted Warfare. I picked it up to read because Steve Bannon from the WarRoom podcast spoke highly of it, and for a good reason. We tend not to get the perspective of how other countries see us because, over the last few decades, trillions of dollars in consolidations narrowed all those 1983 options down to just the six we have today. The kiss of death started in 1996 when Bill Clinton opened the door with his Telecommunications Act, which allowed large corporations already dominating the media market to further expand their control through acquisitions and mergers. By 2017 the FCC reversed a regulation that opened the floodgates on those consolidations even further. That is the warfare being applied to America, which the Chinese were quite aware of all along. Because Americans see the war through technology and might, the war that has been used against the United States has been to expose our vulnerability and attack us through our leisure, through open borders and the illegal drug trade and the absolute poisoning of our culture by any means necessary. A couple of things that really jumped out at me in Unrestricted Warfare was their identification of George Soros as a threat to the world through financial warfare, which is something to say two decades ago. Why he has been allowed to conduct his personal war against the world’s nations for all this time is astonishing. And we’ve allowed him to run his warlike affairs unmolested within the United States, which is an obvious problem. The other thing that the Chinese acknowledged was happening but has been a serious conspiracy theory in the United States has been the use of climate weapons, such as DARPA is rumored to have, where the weather can be manipulated, earthquakes created. Hurricanes stirred up to bring havoc and chaos to targets worldwide ripe for government overthrow in the aftermath. 

The main thing you learn from Unrestricted Warfare is the illusion of peace that America has been lured into believing. Hence, they continue to play along, fund all these global projects, and walk themselves to the slaughterhouse that the Desecrators of Davos have built just for them once they are done with the measly 300 million people who live in America. War in full-scale world domination has been at play for many years, and America has been used and abused in the process. We mindlessly salute our military based on wars won long ago. But our head of the snake has been captured by investments and motives from outside our country, who hide behind finance, and are working the world at war with each other, whether it be Iran, Russia, Ukraine, or China, so they can do as they have been doing to American media companies and corporations, to unite them all under just a few primary companies that were easily controlled by the liberal money management firms backdooring American politics with the strategic goals of an enemy that doesn’t even have a nation to call their own. Through the new kind of war that we are seeing right now, they are intent on our destruction in America, and we see it playing out on every front. All was not well, and when we tried to correct that situation, we were punished. They stole Trump; they put us all on vaccine mandates by using a virus they manufactured as a bioweapon of war, killing many people in the process and causing at least a million vaccine injuries to which the pharma companies have no liability to rectify. And we have been acting like all was OK in the world, that the worst thing was to accidentally call a woman a man who suddenly woke up one day and wanted to play in a woman’s sport because they couldn’t compete in the men’s category. When you read Unrestricted Warfare by two military minds of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, you get an idea of the war that we have been fighting all along and the intention for our destruction the world wishes upon us with every effort that they can muster. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Lincoln Day Dinner of 2022: Battles coming, going, and brewing

It’s always good to talk about nice things, and the Lincoln Day Dinner for 2022 for the Butler County Republican Party was undoubtedly something good to talk about. Like I say all the time, politics is a blood sport. People aren’t always supposed to get along. So it’s not the function of a prominent Republican gathering at the Savanah Center in West Chester to just have everyone get along, even though they did. The goal of politics is to get the best people into public offices that can be obtained. Often the best management of any resource involves pressure applied to individual vision to draw it out for the public’s benefit. In Butler County, with Todd Hall as the party’s Chairman, it has undoubtedly been a success story. Butler County is a large, wealthy county in Ohio; it has over 400,000 people and a major national university. And every officeholder position in the county is held by a Republican. That is something to say and provides a good indication of what the people of Butler County are really like. But it’s not easy to manage all the ‘A type” personalities who get into politics for their communities. The people who run for office don’t tend to be the shy types, so managing all those personalities, especially when they sometimes get cross with each other, is quite a challenge, and Todd Hall does the job well, which culminated in the evening at that dinner which was nothing short of magnificent. 

Mike Pompeo came in to speak at this Lincoln Day event, along with the nationally bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy, who managed to find time between Fox News media appearances to give a rousing speech to a hungry room of freedom fighters. Warren Davidson, of course, was there and was instrumental in bringing Mike Pompeo in, fresh from the Trump administration, where we all had the feeling of reloading for the next round of political battles that were coming next. I had a chance to talk to Jim Renacci a lot as he came down from his campaign for governor of Ohio, which is going well. There were many people from all over the state of Ohio who came to this Butler County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner, which filled the Savannah Center into every crevasse. It was great to see so many friends in one place simultaneously. The battles that everyone fights for are worth it, especially on evenings like that one. During primary season, like the one we have this year where there are so many contentious races, such as the governor race where Mike DeWine is running for re-election, and Jim Renacci was challenging him, it would be easy to have factions of discontent which wouldn’t even be able to shake hands. But the event’s mood, led by Todd Hall and guided by the diligent hands of hundreds of volunteers who worked behind the scenes for the party’s best interests, provided an atmosphere that felt more like Mar-a-Lago from Trump’s Florida home than just another political gathering. Every last touch had behind it a love of country and an intention to do good in the world. Different people, of course, have different ideas about what good is, but the pursuit of it was apparent for all to see. 

It’s not like the Butler County Republican Party was playing things easy; they recently endorsed Jim Renacci for governor over the incumbent. In the audience was Justice Pat DeWine, the son of the governor.  Jane Timken was in the audience, and Mike Gibbons, who are both running for the hotly contested Senate seat soon to be vacated by Rob Portman. There were literally hundreds of contentious side stories that could fill novels that interacted in the halls of that grand event, but what impressed me was the candor with which it was all presented. Todd Hall’s management style with all these unique personalities allows for hotly contested debate and personal battles that still celebrates the achievement voters get in the end, and that is something special. Politics is tricky under the best of circumstances, but routinely pulling off successes like what Butler County enjoys is quite an accomplishment. Of course, behind the scenes come the unifying elements of Ann Becker, whom I’ve known for many years now, going back to the Cincinnati Tea Party, which she led. Debbie Lang who always brings energy to everything she’s around. Joe Statzer and Mark Murphy work on all the details. There is a long list of people behind the scenes who make the Republican Party of Butler County, such a great organization. I single out Todd Hall because it takes a unique person to give all these diverse personalities autonomy and to trust that people will find common ground and build from that position rather than break out in fistfights from the many different perspectives that so many officeholders have. Guided by a less skilled hand, everything could turn out to be a disaster rather than the success story that it continues to be. 

Ultimately, the Lincoln Day event is a good team builder, and they are always nice to go to when the people putting them on so much love what they do. But what the public gets is a strong party that represents them where it matters most. Contention in politics is good; it forces the best people and best ideas to the surface to manage on behalf of the voters, and Butler County is an example of how it should be done everywhere in the country. The Butler County Republican Party is the example that everyone should be following, especially in the newly Trump-led Republican party. The management style it takes to unify so many diverse personalities is the stuff success seminars are built on. To have an evening in the height of election season just to take a breath of fresh air is nice. But the reminder of why so many people get into public office and how an army of volunteers behind the scenes contribute their time and energy without ever thinking about pay tells a story that is worth recognizing. If not for them and the tireless hours of work that go on behind the scenes, there would not be a great Republican Party of Butler County. There would not be a Republican in every Butler County political office. The strength of the party is because of all the effort that countless people put into it, and by the leadership of Todd Hall to have just enough guiding force to keep people together just enough but not to impose on them any dictates which might threaten their unique gifts for which voters could then select as representatives. The whole evening was just as impressive as the Butler County Republican Party is itself. It reflected many thousands of hours of hard work and an ambitious eye toward tomorrow; whereas bad as things look on the national horizon, in Butler County, Ohio, all is great and getting better. If such a formula could project itself nationwide under the next Trump presidency, there is a lot to be excited about in the years to come. Because ultimately, politics is there to serve the Republic for which we all fight to make a stand, and the voters are in charge and respected by the guiding light of hard-working people who genuinely understand how to do it right.

Rich Hoffman

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