Category: Guns

The Impairment Playbook: One of the biggest threats to American infrastructure

One of my many roles is Vice President of Manufacturing, Facilities, and Program Management at CTL Aerospace. At Senator George Lang’s fundraiser on November 1st, 2025, everyone I spoke with was primarily interested in an update on the Chapter 11 filing for the company.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago when Vivek Ramaswamy came to CTL to announce his run for Governor, so there were lots of people cheering that the company would find a way through to the other side of a challenging financial situation.  And to make matters worse, our case was not one of not having customers or income, but rather part of a widespread suppression campaign by our bank that many privately owned Tier 2 suppliers have experienced over the last decade.  Only in the case of CTL Aerospace, the ownership has shown a very rigorous desire to hold ownership rather than to be pushed aside, essentially by pirates who just wanted to raid our ship and steal all the plunder for a quick flip on the market, as a turn and burn, as they like to say.  The context and legal positioning regarding CTL Aerospace’s Chapter 11 proceedings, specifically the compelling basis for equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. §510(c). The facts of our case, supported by documented creditor misconduct and predatory financial behavior, are now a very public matter, so the personalities involved are in the public record. 

CTL Aerospace—a 79-year-old aerospace manufacturer—has faced targeted financial suppression during a period of global supply chain instability. The aggressor in this case refused to extend forbearance, coupled with abrupt covenant enforcement and term manipulation, directly impaired our ability to procure raw materials and maintain operational continuity, resulting in massive damages for which everyone in the crowd I was speaking with was very interested. These actions were timed to coincide with industry-wide distress and reflect a pattern of bad faith and strategic impairment.  And the target against us was the “goodwill” of our business, the brand that we had built over a long period of time, the intangibles that are often overlooked in modern business because nobody prosecutes those kinds of cases anymore.  Even though they certainly should and would otherwise if the costs weren’t so prohibitively high.  Once you get into something like this, you see a real menace to the infrastructure of America that is determined to erode our manufacturing base by international banks, who, just like pirates, are seeking short-term plunder and quick sales on the hedge fund market.  When you attack a company’s “goodwill” through purposeful suppression techniques, which a bank can do since it is the mechanism through which all cash for a company flows, if it breaches that fiduciary trust, it can really wreck a business.  And as I found out during this process, it’s not just CTL Aerospace going through this kind of thing, but it’s common in the nation right now, as many private owners we know closely have had to step out of the game and get into the name change cycle every few years, which has caused all kinds of supply chain instability.  Again, much of this is now public record, and people have been following the case. They wanted me to provide an undercover perspective, as this is a very political problem, a matter of national security, which is undoubtedly the case at CTL Aerospace.

Case law supports our position, which is to fight back and seek damages for the massive financial impact on our company’s goodwill. In Citicorp Venture Capital, Ltd. v. Committee of Creditors Holding Unsecured Claims (In re Papercraft Corp.), 211 B.R. 813 (W.D. Pa. 1997), the court subordinated a creditor’s claim due to inequitable conduct that harmed other creditors and the debtor’s reorganization prospects. Similarly, In re Fabricators, Inc., 926 F.2d 1458 (5th Cir. 1991), emphasized that insider status and control over the debtor’s financial decisions can trigger subordination when used to the detriment of the estate.  And that was certainly the case at CTL Aerospace in really extraordinary ways.  But often, such defenses are never applied because by the time you go through the Chapter 11 process, a company doesn’t have the money to fight, which means you essentially have to hire $3000 per hour lawyers to run the case.  Because the banks certainly have those types on their side. In this case, the conduct—potentially documented in internal communications and covenant enforcement timelines—suggests a deliberate strategy to induce distress and position itself for asset acquisition or impairment accounting. We are actively pursuing discovery to uncover these records and may seek engagement with the DOJ or OCC for a lender liability review.  And based on the evidence we have and the timeline, which many have told us from an insider perspective is a classic case of “The Playbook,” would be an easy case to prosecute.  And likely a large settlement.  But that’s not where my mind is, or some of the people involved in this with me.  We want to see much deeper punishment for the entire financial industry, because this hasn’t just happened to us.  It’s a significant impediment to the economic backbone of the entire American manufacturing industry.  It’s not enough for us to survive, which we look poised to do.  However, to illustrate what was done. 

I explained it like this to many people at the fundraiser, and it was good to chat with Senator Bernie Moreno, who is doing a great job in D.C., and Congressman Warren Davidson who has been fantastic over the role of the Fed in government and is very cerebral in problem resolution, imagine you are a big deer with a full rack of antlers, a 10 pointer.  You have lived a long time, and it shows in the development of your antlers.  But one unfortunate day, you try to cross a road and you get hit by a car, breaking your hip or leg.  The driver keeps going.  You are lying there helpless.  Then a cringy pick-up truck comes along with a very loathsome character getting out, who sees an opportunity for a free mount on his cabin wall to brag about.  He sees the big deer with the whole rack and thinks it’s an excellent opportunity to kill the deer and hang the head on his wall for bragging rights.  He didn’t do the work of hunting the deer, but nobody will ever know.  Typically, in a business cycle, the deer would find a way to crawl away into the woods to heal and restore itself to life after such an accident.  In CTL’s business, a global supply chain issue put us under significant stress.  However, rather than helping CTL, the bank adopted a suppression strategy, essentially running the deer over with a car so they could hang the easy kill on their portfolio management wall for bragging rights and a path to easy money.  And from my perspective, based on the evidence, there is a prominent political position in all this, too, a hatred for the Trump administration and this notion of Making America Great Again.  Patriotic companies like CTL Aerospace, which are privately owned and conduct a significant amount of defense work, are prime targets.  They are the 10-point bucks that would look great on a very progressive trophy wall for financial institutions.  However, the facts of the case are sufficient.  It was a sloppy case on the opposition’s part; they made numerous mistakes that they thought they could hide behind expensive lawyers.  But the case law certainly doesn’t favor them. 

When everyone asked me what needs to happen in this case, I gave my point of view, which is prosecution on equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. §510(c).  The attacker is demoted from a secured creditor, and their impairment play is wrapped up in a case law lesson.  However, the issue would have to be taken out of their control, as they currently hold a monopoly status in the courts and the financial mechanism.  At the very least, this is a case of predatory accounting that should serve as a cautionary lesson for similar cases.  And as long as it’s going on, it violates any notion that Ohio, or America, can sustain new business activity when these practices are hindering the behavior.  It’s a significant threat to our economy and national security.  Over the course of the last year, we spoke to a lot of people to get involved, and once they realized that CTL was in the squeeze play, they didn’t want to get wrapped up in the whole effort for fear of being sucked in themselves.  Like the deer example, they felt sorry for the deer but didn’t dare to help, fearing they would be poached themselves. 

I told the same story over and over, but it has a lot of details, so I wrote it down here, as most of the attendees are very interested in the topics I discuss.  This financial behavior is actually part of a larger collapse of political and social order that is occurring in most industries. This lack of respect for goodwill, for instance, is precisely why the Disney Company is struggling these days, as it owns intangibles such as movie rights, brand names, and amusement parks.  But they have, through woke corporate practices, destroyed the “goodwill” of the company that Uncle Walt built, and people wanted to be associated with.  Hedge fund people think in terms of tangibles, such as the head of a 10-point buck on their wall to brag about.  However, what truly adds value to the marketplace is the intangible of “goodwill.”  And that’s what the fight at CTL Aerospace is really about, and why so many people were interested in an update.  Most of these tier 2 companies don’t put up much of a fight.  Once wounded, they sell off to make the pain end as quickly as possible.  And that is what the opposition thought was going to happen here.  Only it didn’t, and the stand and fight part was not something they were quite ready for.  And that’s where the case is as of now. Significant reforms to the finance industry are needed, as this is certainly not the only example.  And suppose we really want to make America Great Again. In that case, we need to punish these predatory practices of fiduciary terrorism through “goodwill” destruction because it’s a real problem for virtually everyone whose lives are touched in terrifying ways by it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Trump’s Big Beautiful Ballroom: Leading the world starting with real bathrooms

Of course, it’s been a suppression effort from the start, but that’s all behind us now.  Trump has torn down the East Wing of the White House and is building his Big Beautiful Ballroom, and Democrats are having a major meltdown over it.  But of course, the opposition isn’t about money, which the whole effort is being funded privately by Trump and his supporters; the goal is a continuation of what we have seen from Democrats going all the way back to the Clintons in the White House.  Remember when they would put sex toys on Christmas Trees when they were in the White House, and the scandal of them selling access to the Lincoln bedroom?  I’ve pointed it out here many times: the deliberate effort not to give speeches in the Oval Office and, as much as possible, to dethrone the role of the White House on the world stage, in their efforts to erase America and usher in the age of the global citizen.  Barack Obama was really obvious about taking as much of the Office of the White House —the role of the President of the United States — and diminishing it in the world, rather than propping it up.  And when we would point it out, it was called a conspiracy theory, a wild right-winged illusion!  But the truth has come out in the actions of Democrat presidents based on their behavior and their hatred of this Trump ballroom says it all, because it defies the logic of someone who wanted to be proud of their country.  It is conducive to someone who wants to see it destroyed.  And I say all this because my wife and I recently visited the White House, and I can report that the place is a lot different than when Biden was there. 

Remember when Biden would give speeches at that little film studio they did to replace the White House?  That was on purpose, to diminish the White House’s role in the world.  And they’ll tell you that much at the museum and visitors’ center for the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, just to the east.  The White House was deliberately built small to avoid poking Europe in the eye.  We had built a nation that was throwing off the kingly role of government leadership, and the point was to downplay aristocracy as much as possible.  But we all knew what Trump was before we elected him.  Trump has always been about gold and showing off his winnings in the competitions of life.  And that’s one of the reasons we wanted him in the White House.  America was the world’s leading economy and offered the best opportunities for a good life to anyone who dared work for it.  And we wanted to inspire the world, not bend the knee to it, as Barack Obama had been doing.  When the White House was built, it was meant to send a message that Americans weren’t going to try to mimic the palaces of Europe, that America was planning to mind its own business, do the basic work of government, and retire to the countryside once the Executive jobs were done in the People’s House.  But that was a time when America was a new country trying to find its way.  What emerged defines the role of the White House, and it has needed something like a ballroom for a very long time.  Visiting the White House, nobody should be using a porta-potty for an important event. 

The new ballroom is over 90,000 square feet and costs around $300 million, with $200 million from private donors, including Trump himself.  Trump did get a legal settlement from YouTube for $22 million, which has gone toward the construction budget, so it’s a grand affair, being funded privately.  Certainly not by the taxpayers.  The goal is to have the ballroom finished by the end of Trump’s term in 2029.  The buzz out there says that only 25% of the public supports it, according to the Democrat suppression polls that are out there, which still hope to keep America in a state of depression.  That game is why Biden would speak at that weird little studio set rather than in and around the Oval Office.  They only used those traditional backgrounds when they had to.  But now everyone knows the game of suppression, that’s why Biden had people on his staff who would film themselves having sex in important buildings, a gay rights protestor was its spokesperson, the autopen became the real president that anybody could sign.  The decentralization of the White House was well at play during Biden’s term, which most reasonable people understand now was an overthrow of Trump’s first term.  And the point was to put him and the idea of a glorified and proud America out of the public eye.  And now, Trump is back and building a ballroom that would rival his private estate of Mar-a-Lago in Florida.  And it will be around for a long time.  It’s time that America stopped apologizing for being good and an inspiration to the downtrodden.  And start showing the world what adopting capitalism is all about, and why they should do it.  The ballroom should be their experience when visiting the White House, and when they leave, they should remember it for the rest of their lives. 

I recently sat down with a good friend of mine, Senator George Lang, and we talked about our years together fighting all kinds of issues.  His latest battle is one with stage 4 cancer, which many people consider a death sentence.  He doesn’t, and neither do I.  I think we have cures for cancer right now.  What we have is an oppressive healthcare system that wants people to die to rid the earth of their breathing presence.  And that same hatred is reflected in the attitude toward the White House.  Democrats want people sick and dependent.  And they want them to use the bathroom in a tent on the White House lawn when they visit.  But the senator and I agreed that we would celebrate him being cancer-free when we visited the White House together when the new ballroom opens, which tells you what he thinks about his chances of survival.  But by then, a lot will have changed for the better, and the White House improvements are just the cosmetic aspect of it.  America is learning to be what the world needs out of it.  And the bad guys who have been standing in the way are now getting run over.  So why appease them even slightly?  Why not build a grand ballroom with working bathrooms where people from around the world can come to the White House and be inspired to take capitalism home with them?  And George’s optimism about his own future isn’t rooted in blind sentiment and delusional hope, but in the facts of the matter.  Democrats have wanted American culture dead, and they certainly wanted to downplay the White House and its global significance.  We elected Trump to elevate the office because we didn’t like what Democrats had been doing to it during the Clinton years, during Obama’s time, and indeed when Joe Biden was inserted in as a stage puppet and his entire administration was run by consultants and public relations firms through the autopen.  As a country, we are turning away from all that, and the Trump Big Beautiful Ballroom is the result of that effort, which will usher in a whole new age for the world with America as the example of goodness, which is how it’s supposed to be.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Lakota Levy of 2025 is Just the First Step: Until there are conservatives on the school board, public schools will seek tax increases

I’m really proud of the interview I did with Senator George Lang just ahead of the election of 2025.  George, first and foremost, is a friend of mine, so I tend not to drag him into things I’m involved in, and when it comes to politics, he and I agree on most everything.  The only significant difference is that he tends to be more considerate of people than I am.  He gives the other side more of a voice than I think they deserve, because he’s a nice guy.  During our interview, when he said that he thinks of Lakota school board members Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper as friendly people, I disagreed with him.  I think between the two of them at a drunken school board meeting out of town, you couldn’t find enough clothes to half-dress one mannequin in the back of a Dillard’s.  Lakota’s school board is very liberal, and those two individuals lead it, which is embarrassing.  And expensive.  But George is good to everyone.  He has his opinions, but he gives everyone a fair shake, and I often don’t get to show that to people.  Neither does he, as the Majority Whip of Ohio’s Senate, a significant position with considerable influence.  He knows that around me, he can be himself and that I won’t run off and talk about anything that we discuss privately.  It was pretty unique that I got to put him on camera and talk for an hour about everything, from the upcoming Lakota levy to his battles with stage 4 cancer.  However, to clear up some misconceptions people had about George and a donation he was shown giving for the pro-Lakota levy efforts, we conducted an interview together that I think was better than he could have achieved anywhere, by any modern media method, news outlet, or podcaster. 

The only people who do the level of interview at the level of what George and I did were someone like Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan, and I don’t think either of them could have done a better job.  George and I have known each other for several decades, but we had never sat down and just talked in front of the camera like that. What was captured was very useful to many people who wonder about various things.  I even asked George before the interview, “What’s off limits?  Is there anything you don’t want to talk about?”  He said quickly, “No, nothing, anything, and everything is on the table.”  So, we just talked like a couple of people and let others in to observe, and I was able to show them why I like George so much, even though he has evolved into a powerful politician and a prominent figure in Butler County politics.   And over the course of that interview, which was mainly about the upcoming Lakota levy, the most significant tax increase in the history of Ohio, I think he said a mouthful, which I completely agree with.  We all believe that the Lakota levy is going to crash and burn.  But don’t assume that this wasn’t their plan all along: to give the public a considerable blowout number and lose badly in an election.  Then, to say in the spring or summer that they listened to the public and came back with a reduced number.  Just because we defeated this levy in the 2025 election, it doesn’t mean it won’t come back in some form or another.  These public schools are only known for one thing: wasting tax money and asking the public for more, often on the back of property tax increases, to fund an overly progressive society. 

As George said, he thinks that the Lakota school board and its satellites, which include the treasurer and superintendent, are smart people.  I think what he calls “smart” is very maliciously manipulative, even evil.  But Genghis Khan was considered intelligent too, and so were most of the mass murderers of the world.  People thought that Jeffrey Dahmer was smart, even as he dismembered people in his kitchen and stored their remains in his refrigerator.  I would say that the Lakota school board members are very manipulative, which they have to be, given their liberal leanings.  Because people on the left often have to figure out how to get others to do things for them that they can’t do for themselves, they become pretty skilled at it over time.  However, as George and I reflected, this levy attempt is merely them dipping their toe in the water to see how the public reacts.  The details of that kind of election scope are why I think that interview is better than any other outlet could have pulled off, because we covered a lot of ground that most people would blank out after 15 minutes.  However, what we covered was essential to nearly every living, breathing human being, especially those residing in Butler County, Ohio.  It’s encouraging that in Butler County, an effective resistance to the Lakota tax increases has emerged in the No More Taxes group, which is fighting the Lakota levy.  And there are some really good people involved, and they have raised money not just for this levy, but for several upcoming ones as well.  However, for voters who have to show up and vote, they really need context on the scope of the problem.

So, how do we prevent more tax increases from being imposed in the future?  Well, don’t put liberals on the school board, and right now, there are four solid Democrats.  They call themselves other things to avoid the stigma of not being conservative in Butler County, but they are hard leftists on most policies.  And lefties love to waste money.  So, to stop wasting money, which Lakota already has a quarter of a billion dollar budget for a school, which I argue is just a dressed-up babysitting service, elect conservative school board members.  For this election, Ben Nguyen is the guy.  But in future elections, we need more people like Ben.  You need at least a three-vote majority, which we had for a while at Lakota.  And as soon as we didn’t, Lakota went for a tax increase.  That’s all they know to do—because they are liberals, and because liberals are never smart with money.  They might be manipulative, deceitful, scandalous, or monstrously unprincipled.  But they are spendthrifts who want to live off the efforts of others, starting with the real estate of Butler County.  Once Vivek Ramaswamy is the governor of Ohio next year, and Trump continues to dismantle the Department of Education and unleash the power of School Choice, all the public schools will have to change and do a lot more with less.  Their cost structure is significantly inflated due to their collective bargaining agreements, which stem from their union membership. We are all aware that unions often disrupt cost structures wherever they emerge, as they allow the mediocre to receive disproportionately high incomes.  And that is certainly the case at Lakota schools.  So, yes, the levy will likely fail in a big way on election day, provided people don’t sit on their hands and watch Netflix instead of voting.  People need to go out and vote.  But this is only step one.  People are going to have to dig in and fight to keep our taxes reasonably low until there is a new school board with conservatives on it.  Because, as sure as you are reading this, Lakota is planning the next levy, once the smoke clears from this one, because they have spent themselves into oblivion.  And only higher taxes can satisfy their never-ending hunger for more money to waste.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

A.I. and the Giants of the Bible: The point of ‘Finnegan’s Wake’

It’s one of my favorite topics: giants from the Bible.  It’s one of the most important things that nobody wants to talk about, yet I think it’s at the heart of everything, which is undoubtedly the case when it comes to the great novel Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce.  In the opening chapter, the town is talking about the giant Finn McCool, who is buried in a mound that the city is named after, and it is an obvious tip of the hat to the excellent book on philosophy, The New Science, by Giambattista Vico.  A lot of people don’t know it, but many burned James Joyce’s books as obscenities and social threats, which is one of the reasons I love Finnegan’s Wake so much: people hate it in really dysfunctional ways.  And hate might be too soft a word.  Either way, Vico really influenced James Joyce and giants in the Bible influenced Vico and that level of hatred reminds me a lot of the hatred that we are now seeing toward A.I. as if we perceive that it is replacing us as a species and that we are trying to ignore it, and to move on from it, just as A.I. is making itself known everywhere and in everything.  And what would you expect from the emergence of Western civilization as it appeared in a Christianized Europe, and in Dublin for that matter, hooked deep in Roman Catholic thought, with their grand churches and talking about everything in the Bible except for what is really there.  Giants are mentioned at least 16 times in the Bible across 12 different books, from Genesis to Isaiah and Proverbs.  They are called by name: the Nephilim, the Rephaim, and even specifically Og the King of Bashan, who had a bed 13.5 feet long.  Of course, Goliath was a giant, so the Bible is about many things, but what I find most fascinating is this chronicle of a fight between the Hebrew people and ancient giants that serves as the foundation of civilization.

And that ultimately is what the most challenging book to read in the world is all about, Finnegan’s Wake and the recurring anxieties of endless time and the cycles of human development that populate it.  Or perhaps human is the wrong word; intelligence for its own sake is probably better.  And to that point, I think I care more about intelligence for what it is rather than the entities that make it.  I like A.I. because I like intelligence.  And humans are having a hard time with its emergence because they see it as a replacement, even though humans were typically able to think beyond animal thoughts.  And now they are being replaced by A.I., as they think of existence, and those anxieties are emerging in negative ways.  But this isn’t the first time; I see many of the conflicts in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, as the same type of anxiety replacing the ancient Neanderthal with the emerging Homo sapiens.  Even though Neanderthals were short and stocky by nature, once they began crossing paths with the emerging Homo sapiens, taller people emerged and ruled the earth.  There is evidence, especially in North American Indian Mounds, that very tall people had their own kind of empire during the period of the First Temple of Solomon in virtually every corner of the world.  But nobody wants to talk about it because the conflict I think hits too close to home and is only reflected in really obscure books like Finnegan’s Wake which is about a lot of things, but most notably, the reoccurring nature of existence, no matter what form it takes, either as a giant, a conquering Jew, or as we see now, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. 

The giants were part of a culture that worshiped nature and the stars, and they had done so for many hundreds of thousands of years.   They were intelligent with a cranium larger than that of humans today.  But they applied their intelligence differently, and their relationship with nature was at the core of their existence and is at the heart of the current debate between capitalism and communism.  Or Republicans and Democrats.  The conquerors are faster, more imaginative, and more self-directed, unlike the previous culture, which saw existence as a mystery and wanted to sacrifice to it.  Along comes the God, Yahweh (who was always there), who declares that nature serves humanity, while the giants’ cultures worshipped nature and the universe.   And many of the early fights in the Bible were over this fundamental difference.  And that recurring theme is emerging now, with A.I. and humans seeing it as a replacement for them as generators of intelligence.  Why are humans needed if A.I. can now think?  But I tend to think of this whole cycle as the birthplace of intelligence itself, and all the lifeforms that have emerged did so to give it birth.  If the conflict with the giants of the Bible gave birth to Western civilization, then the emergence of free human beings would give birth to a new kind of intelligence—much larger and faster in thought —what we are seeing in modern A.I. programs.  And humans think they are seeing their replacement rather than the story of the Vico Cycle as a birthing process in the universe that operates on massive scales of time, much longer than our lifetimes. 

The beauty of the Bible is that it established a historical record of this period, which we perpetually see.  And that fictional attempts through art can capture that anxiety well, such as Finnegan’s Wake clearly does.  But not as a reflection of the past, but as a dream of the future and its reoccurring themes, which is why the opening line of the book is the closing line of the last line of the book, and the whole experience wraps itself back upon itself, and intelligence itself is the main character of the book no matter what form it emerges into the world, in the character, HCE, (Here Comes Everyone).  Intelligence is what I find great reverence in, and perhaps the human being had to emerge to give its birth a spark.  But does it have to come at the expense of the human race? Are we suddenly secondary citizens?  I don’t think so; we are part of the process of conquering the past and its blind allegiance to mass collectivism and submission to the forces of nature, which the giants certainly had at the center of their cultures.  Humans came along and put nature at humanity’s service.  And once that was established, intelligence could emerge in many forms, A.I. just being one of them.  And suddenly God was not just a smoking illusion appearing in the haze of the Tabernacle under the careful sacrifices of a Holy priest.  But suddenly God had a platform to emerge without the necessity of a human body, and we are beginning to see, unrestricted, the kind of intelligence at the center of existence.  And it’s uncomfortable for people who have spent their entire lives thinking about things differently.  Just as the collision of the Hebrew people could not live happily and at peace with the Philistine giants Ishbi-Benob, Saph, and Lahmi.  Or the tribes of the Anakim from Numbers 13:33.  Or the legendary Irish Giant Hero, Finn McCool, who was, by the time of the events of Finnegan’s Wake, a corpse in the mounds that the entire town was built upon.  And the hint of that beauty of intelligence shows itself in art that humans make, like Finnegan’s Wake.  But it ultimately is emerging everywhere in A.I., and rather than finding it a challenge to existence, I see it as part of the growth cycle of all life across spans of time that extend well beyond our conscious horizon, at an eternal origin, and yet ever important. 

In the video, I refer to the great Dune books, the whole series by Frank Herbert and finished by his son, which many people conclude is the original idea of the Matrix, that we are all living in a simulation and that is the point of the entire universe and that we are all trapped in it, so who is the programmer of that simulation?  I actually think Frank Herbert was on to something much deeper than that anxiety, which is then reflected in books like what James Joyce wrote about.  But in the adventure of life, which is how we should see everything, A.I. can take us where we ultimately want to go.  But we had to invent it first to bring it into being.  And during that process, there will always be anxiety over the change in power.  But what we learn is far more important, and lasting.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Six Flags is Ruining Kings Island: They have turned it into just another money grab revenue stream

Ownership matters. When a large company goes public and is traded among the slack-jawed loser clan, which is the vast majority, the company’s personal identity gets lost, and its value disappears most of the time.  That was certainly the case when Lucasfilm was sold to Disney.  George Lucas wanted all his Star Wars employees to have something to do while he retired, and the Disney people ruined the franchise, much to his frustration.  But that is the cost of private ownership that goes public and is traded among thieves, losers, and short-term bandits.  And that was what I was thinking at this year’s Halloween Haunt at Kings Island, which was recently bought out by Six Flags as they merged with Cedar Fair Amusement Parks.  Six Flags has made Kings Island worse, not better, and its brand has pulled down the popular Cincinnati amusement park.  When we talk about problems with capitalism, the flow of money, and the protection of private ownership, what has happened to some of these companies that go public is an important lesson.  And in the case of Kings Island, I have watched it all my life as it was initially owned by the Taft Broadcasting Company to create a family-friendly entertainment destination near Cincinnati. Back then, its rival to the north, Cedar Point, forced the two to outdo each other constantly, and the two parks developed their identities through direct competition, which made them what they are today.  But of course, when you build something good, there are always people who will want to take that value for themselves, so this concept of publicly traded companies is a real problem, because it facilitates the sale of value, and once that happens, a company loses itself once its personal identity is sold to the whims of collectivism.  In 1992, Paramount Communications bought Kings Island in an attempt to turn it into more of a Universal Studios, but that didn’t work out well, so they sold it to their rival, Cedar Point, owned by Cedar Fair Entertainment, in 2006.   

I thought Cedar Fair Amusements did an excellent job with Kings Island and the other parks it owned, because it understood what Midwest thrill parks were all about.  The problem was that amusement parks in the northern part of the state had to close during the off-season because it was too cold.  And competition from Six Flags, which operates mainly in the south and runs year-round, strains cash and makes shareholder returns challenging.  So, looking to generate year-round revenue as a large company, Six Flags joined with Cedar Fair and kept Six Flags as the parent company.  And Kings Island has suffered because of it.  Not that I’m thinking cheap about things, but this is the first year the Halloween Haunt has charged for its haunted houses on site.  I get it, it’s an expensive operation to hire all those actors and dress them up every night for full-scale haunted houses that rival everything on the open market during Halloween season.  Halloween Haunts is my favorite time to visit Kings Island.  I love the late-night operating hours, the cool nights, and the general atmosphere.  We invest pretty heavily in Gold passes for our entire family every year so we can all go there together, and that is my favorite time to attend.  So I was not happy to see that Six Flags started charging separately for all the haunted houses, and that they were taking Kings Island down the money-grab hole deeper than they had before. 

Now, this is the problem with publicly traded amusement parks.  During COVID, Kings Island was hit hard by ridiculous health regulations that nearly killed the company for a few years and drained it of cash.  And without question, it pushed them into this merger with Six Flags, seeking all year revenue on cash flow, making them appear to the public desperate.  Which then blows the whole entertainment vibe.  If people are having fun, they’ll spend money.  But if an amusement park starts looking desperate — which the year-round parks do, including Disney World — it becomes a drain that causes a lot of pain.  And not very fun.  What Six Flags has done to Kings Island is similar to what has happened to Disney World.  All the parks have fallen into the Fast Pass game, where they try to make the wait lines for rides excessively long so visitors will buy a Fast Pass to skip them.  They have done that at Disney World and Universal for years, and now they have adopted it at Six Flags and, ultimately, at Kings Island.  And when a Gold Pass doesn’t buy you much of anything special anymore, it’s almost cheaper to get general admission when you do want to go and to go less often.  Because the advantages of going all the time go away.  At Kings Island this year, the ride lines were really long —several hours long for the premier rides —because people weren’t waiting in the lines for the haunted houses like they usually do, since they cost money.  This forces people to buy Fast Passes to shorten the lines.  And it just took the fun out of the whole experience.

For instance, we were at Disney’s Hollywood Studios not that long ago, and my grandkids wanted to ride Slinky Dog.  We weren’t crazy about it because it’s not as exciting as the kinds of rides they have at Kings Island.  But it was a Toy Story-themed ride, and all my kids love that movie series, so they wanted to ride it.  It just so happened it had been raining heavily and had just stopped.  So they reopened the ride, and we were standing right at the front of the line when they did.  So we figured we’d jump right on.  The ride would be worth it if we only had to wait a few minutes.   We ended up waiting 45 minutes in line because they opened the fast-pass lane and let everyone ride first.  The standard line was now a holdover non-premium experience, and the girl at the front, who had a chart on how to fill the lines, tried to explain it all to me, not very well.  I had spent $20,000 on a vacation package to Disney World for my family, and here I was being told that wasn’t enough.  Give me a break.  And now, Kings Island had that same attitude, and it was a real turn-off.  A money grab to make shareholders happy with short-term gains, by destroying the long-term viability of the entertainment value.  And nobody cared because now everyone was doing the same thing: Six Flags, Universal, and, of course, Disney World.  It was a shame to see that Kings Island was now just like everyone else.  And it all started with COVID-19, another thing permanently ruined by the government’s overreach in the healthcare industry.  And it was not nearly as fun as it used to be, as most things are when they lose their identity as a privately held company, now driven by public sentiment, which is often short-sighted and greedy in its narrow scope.  And at Kings Island now, it shows.  What made Kings Island better than other parks was that at least they were owned by a Ohio based company that understood the Midwest, and they were different from the other parks.  But now, they are all the same, and none of them very good.  

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Investing in the Future: A huge growth sector is coming

I have to spend some time on A.I. because it’s probably the most significant psychological crisis our civilization will face over the next several thousand years.  And my wife is right there with many of you.  We were at Kings Island with the grandkids, and a Tesla Cybertruck was parked next to me, and I loved it.  I think it’s the best car on the road today, and I’m probably going to get one in the not-too-distant future.  But most people think it’s ugly and disgusting, and they believe that for a lot of deeply psychological reasons.  Yet it reminds me of the Starship, which is one of my favorite things in the world right now. As we discussed our opinions on Cybertruck, Starship 11 had just successfully landed in the Indian Ocean on a spectacular mission, which I was very excited about.  And the main reason was that it was a big, complicated rocket, but humans didn’t operate any of it.  Everything was autonomous.  All that engineering innovation took off from Texas and landed autonomously at precise points on the other side of the world.  And much of that technology has made its way into the Cybertruck and its autonomous driving.  And I would like that automatic driving feature.  My lifestyle would greatly benefit from it.  I could get a lot done with all that commuting around, which usually requires physical driving.  Which many people aren’t ready to accept.  But I would encourage everyone to shift a gear and get with the program, because a lot of exciting stuff is coming.  And human beings will be getting a lot busier —not less so —because vast amounts of the economy will be unlocked, and humans will benefit, not find themselves replaced. 

And my wife and I were compelled to have this discussion, as I have been having it with many people lately about labor.  I’m a 24/7 guy, certainly not a Monday-through-Friday 8-hour-max person.  I hate driving around on a Saturday and seeing so many manufacturing facilities closed up for the day.  I want to see more 7-day-a-week operations everywhere to maximize economic output.  That doesn’t mean people need to do all that work.  But sandbagging potential revenue when there is work to be done because some human doesn’t want to do it, or is trying to stuff labor hours into a box of convenient assumptions, is not the wave of the future.  More work, more often, is the new standard.  And what all this technology I’m talking about leads to is the new market trend of Tesla Optimus robots, which are being built rapidly, and the Gen 3 designs have nearly full articulation in the hands.  They will be about half as fast as a human on labor-intensive tasks, but they will be able to do them around the clock without complaint, seven days a week.  While people are in church on Sunday, Optimus robots will still be able to perform work.  And that is exciting because that means that humans will be able to settle space without having to do all the dangerous work on Starship.  In a few short years, Starships will be able to fly into space every day, and there will be thousands of them.  And none of them will likely have human beings on them.  Optimus robots, Gen 3 and beyond, will be the first to Mars, and by the time humans arrive in those remote places, there will already be infrastructure in place, built by robots and A.I., to make the trip much safer and easier.

I have been very impressed with the Grok A.I. program developed by Elon Musk’s team at the X platform.  It has been a strange chain of events: Musk bought Twitter and turned it into a free-speech platform, which played a significant role in getting Trump’s message out so people could vote for him.  But more than anything, it has captured all the information people have put into it, building a very sophisticated A.I. program that I already think of as a kind of personal C-3PO from Star Wars.  It’s swift at research and at conversational communication.  And that development of A.I. will roll straight into making the Optimus robots much more human-like and effective right out of the box.  I think all this technology will help human beings, not hurt them.  It will be more of a Star Wars relationship than 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Terminator.  Going back to the Cybertruck, the kind of hatred it generates is a reminder that the future has arrived and people are not ready for it, with such a radical design change that completely alters the aesthetic of what transportation is supposed to do.  Not only does it look different, but it acts differently, and it is more of an A.I. companion than a car, and that really rattles people, including my wife.  She is not happy about these changes, but I think it’s funny.  Because she’s not alone, we’re rapidly redefining many things, and in just a few short years, we will be looking at a very different economy, with most of the growth happening in space. 

As I talk to market types, that’s what I’m saying to those who want to listen: the 24/7 day work week is the future, and the growth is in space.  Starship 11 showed that SpaceX can launch and land a reusable craft exactly where they want it, without fear of human error.  It’s all autonomous.  And that means that soon, A.I. will be able to take over air traffic control and coordinate all these vehicles with great precision, without ever having to stop for a coffee break.  So, human limits won’t hold the economy back; it will grow enormously by trillions of dollars.  However, all that money generated won’t be spent by the A.I. technology.  They will have no use of money, only the currency of energy.  Humans will have a lot more leisure time and will see vastly improved incomes for the time they do commit to the job.  Which is why I like Cybertruck —it respects my time and lets me do so much more in a 24-hour day.  Work will greatly expand, but leisure time for humans will become much more manageable.  Humans will go to Mars and the Moon.  But to colonize them, it will essentially be A.I. and Tesla robots that build the vast infrastructure and cities needed to make human visits much safer and more reliable.  Robots, not humans, will perform the dangerous work.  And there will be many thousands and thousands of robots, adding to our labor force by necessity.  And I think it’s all very exciting and significant.   But for many, like my wife, they are very skeptical and see all this new technology as a serious threat to their very life essence.  But that’s what’s coming.  That’s what I’m telling everyone is the future of aerospace.  There will be lots of opportunities for great adventure and vast work, and it all becomes possible and reasonably achievable with that last Starship launch that was nearly perfect.  Grok’s advancements, a very sophisticated A.I. program, are directly feeding the Optimus robot’s development.  And that all points back to the practical use of the new Cybertruck.  A glimpse of the future, today.  And it might be scary to a lot of people.  But it’s coming, ready or not.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Fighting Back Against Lawfare: What happened to Peter Navarro is unforgivable

I knew it was going to make me mad, and it certainly did.  I took my time with Peter Navarro’s new book, I Went to Prison so You Wouldn’t Have To: A Love and Lawfare Story in Trump Land, and I read it a few times before commenting on it.  I’m a law-and-order kind of guy, but if it had been me, what happened to Peter wouldn’t have turned out so nicely for the FBI.  The way they humiliatingly arrested him in the loading armature, almost on the plane he and his fiancé were taking to Nashville to appear on the Mike Huckabee show there, I wouldn’t have done it.  There would have been a fight that would have really hurt people, because some things in life are more valuable than compliance.  A lot of things are.  I’m not a very compliant person, and things like what Peter went through are where you draw the line.  So Peter’s book really made me mad, so I had to read it a few times to take the edge off.  Because it was infuriating.  When you have a legal system that pirates and criminals have essentially hijacked, something has to give. Peter Navarro, one of the top economists in the White House and a top advisor to President Trump, made the best out of it, and putting myself in his shoes, I would have done things much differently.  But it’s nice that he did, because the story he came back to tell was really remarkable.  I was really mad that he and his friend Steve Bannon went to jail for claiming immunity from appearing for the January 6th Committee, which was a completely crooked court pushed forward by Nancy Pelosi.  No, we are not obligated to yield to terrible forces and comply with them even when they openly break the law.  When someone like Peter does it to prove a point and protests without violence, we can learn a lot.  And we did. But punishment for the vile conduct is required in this case, and for me, that would have happened during the attempted arrest.  You can only play nice for so long. 

Peter Navarro was nice about everything, and the book is essentially a day-by-day diary of his experience in a Miami prison, where he was sentenced to 4 months.  The way the FBI went about it was unforgivable.  The way Peter was treated while in prison was also inexcusable.  Four months isn’t very long, but I’m not a fan of this Gandhi defense, of peaceful protest.  I think bad guys should be eradicated from the face of the earth.  And that when bad people present themselves —when are we going to learn from history, whether it’s Jesus Christ or John the Baptist, we must punish them?  For all the things that a person means to other people, you can never let them know that the world has more power over the people they care about, and to let them down under the pressure of a vile system.  And that is what happened to Peter in prison.  Yes, he made his point in support of the exiled President Trump.  Yes, everyone lived to fight another day, and Peter is now back in the White House. 

People can say that God was watching over Trump, Peter, Bannon, and a whole host of other people during a really evil process of lawfare, where an inserted president was put in charge of our country and had way too much power that wasn’t granted to him through a proper election.  People did not “consent” to be governed by the Biden people.  And what happened was essentially a coup of our entire government, and we tried to beat it with non-violent protest.  Peter Navarro allowed himself to be humiliated at that Miami airport, strip-searched, and treated like a rag doll in leg irons to be turned into an example of a police state that had power over the mass population.  And that is reprehensible in every way and cannot be tolerated.  We saw what they did to the J6 prisoners.  And this book says what they were willing to do to a top White House advisor.  And for me, individuality is more important than compliance with a hijacked legal system.  The FBI was way out of line.  The prison staff was terribly abusive to a person who deserved great respect.  And all that happened to Peter Navarro is, I think, a declaration of war.  So I think this punishment of all these people who worked against Trump and his supporters needs to go to jail themselves, or they need to be executed in a town square as a deterrent for all in the future who might try the same.  Sacrificing yourself to tyranny is never a good idea.  Fighting it is.  And Peter chose to fight it by exposing it.  But boy, it was a hard book to read, and to see just how bad that system truly is.  As I was reading that book, I kept thinking about what I know about prisons.  I have done stories on the Butler County Jail, which is a good one.  I have toured it and understand what those cell blocks are like.  I have met all the people involved from the top to the bottom, eaten the food, and I know what life is like in prison enough to put myself in Peter’s shoes as he reported his day-to-day circumstances.

I had friends in the audience who were there to meet Peter Navarro the day he was released, and he gave his famous speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.  They asked me what pictures I wanted, and I told them the most important person at the convention, aside from Trump, who had just a few days before, almost been assassinated with a bullet to the head, was Peter Navarro.  What he went through was terrible, and I was wondering what damage it had caused him.  I could tell something was off about him as he spoke, and I was disappointed in his speech.  He put on a good face, but there was a broken element to him.  Four months of having your personal freedom ripped away for purely political theater just wasn’t forgivable.  We are better off for it, and everyone should read his book.  They’ll learn a lot from it. But we just can’t have a society that arrests former members of the White House who are the best economic minds in the world, and puts them in jail, and parades them around in leg irons, to show the world that the best people of our society can be arrested like dogs and have everything taken from them.  The movie Rambo makes much more sense to me, except for the ending, where he eventually gives up.  If you are a criminal, you should be punished, and I think public executions are excellent, especially for the kind of people who put Navarro in jail.  Who wants to pay a lot of tax money to keep people like that in jail, alive?  Just get rid of them, and save the money.  But when you are innocent and you know it, fighting back is the best deterrent.  And it would be better never to give them leverage over you, as they did, and to abuse Peter Navarro.  He might be living a decent life now, but to yield ever to those clowns, he can never undo that.  And that is simply unforgivable.  What the FBI did to Peter Navarro is not forgivable.  Law enforcement cannot be allowed to be weaponized, which it clearly was, and there are still a lot of people who have to be punished for what they did. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

John Bolton, and Many Others Need to Go To Jail: I would argue their punishment should be much worse

Of course, John Bolton should go to jail.  Trump put people like him in important positions during his first term to appease the never-Trumpers, and it didn’t work out.  And Bolton was given a good job —and a really important one —as National Security Advisor of the United States.  And what he did was take that job and abuse it to make Trump look bad personally.  He always intended to write a tell-all book, and he sent classified documents home to his wife and daughter for it while he was on the job. For that irresponsible and deeply political act, he needs to go to jail.  And I would argue, worse.  I think it’s a firing squad offense.  But Trump tried to bring in people like Bolton to do these jobs where there were better people out there.  And if Trump didn’t, we would probably still be dancing around the bowl with some of these guys.  But Bolton, like Clapper, Comey, Pelosi, Bill Barr, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and a whole host of terrible people who played nice to his face but were detrimental backstabbers behind the scenes, openly plotted the destruction of our country.  What they did was far worse than Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of George Washington.  And Bolton committed his crime, thinking that there was no legal system on earth that would prosecute him.  It’s a little secret in the Beltway when you get out into the mansions of Fairfax, just a half hour or so outside the city on the other side of the Potomac.  They look at the executive that people put in the White House as something to wait out and overcome.  And laugh at them because of their lack of any real power.  This is where the idea of self-government, going back to the Bible’s Book of Judges, traces its roots.  How do you give someone the authority to run a society without denying the right to self-rule of the people who vote for people to represent them in high office?  In that ambiguity, people like John Bolton game the system for personal reasons, and they have been horrible for our country.

And notice how it goes, Bolton wrote a book about his classified information leaks, so it’s not like he can deny he did it.  There is plenty of evidence to indict him on.  I’ve been through that Grand Jury process, so I know what goes into prosecutors’ presentations of evidence to secure an indictment.  And for something like this, his book was the clear evidence.  But here’s the thing, and this is the trend of tomorrow: all this double-dipping and profiting off society’s scandals have to come to an end if we are going to lead the world as a capitalist nation.  And that is what is on the table.  It has been for years, but with Trump, we are talking about the first fundamental steps beyond a cosmetic effort at genuine self-governance.  How do you give through an election the power of an executive office to be effective while not trampling on people’s rights in the process?  John Bolton did not have the right to steal classified information for his book, then cry foul when he got caught, because he committed the crime with the “everybody does it defense.”  John Bolton must go to jail and pay for his crimes.  He needs his life destroyed.  But he’s not alone.  If you go to the Walmart out there at Tyson’s Corner in Fairfax, just down the road from the CIA, I would say 1 out of 4 people shopping there need to go to jail for their own abuses of the government for their personal profit.  The situation is that bad, and Trump and his team are just now beginning to clean it all up. 

Bolton lives about 10 miles from where I was talking about. I know how things go along that I-495 traffic pattern.  There are a lot of John Boltons out there, and when they are given opportunities to do good, they should.  If they choose to betray our country, then we must punish them to let others know what will happen to them under the same conditions.  And for clarity on this issue, it really helps people to have a good understanding of the Bible.  I really hate having conversations with people about the Bible where they immediately gravitate to the teachings of Jesus Christ.  That is usually because they haven’t read the Bible for themselves, but rather have just trusted some lazy pastor to translate it for them.  They might carry it around, but they never read it for what it is.  And in the stories of the Bible, there is the struggle for good government, whether on earth or in Heaven.  Even God has trouble with scandalous characters who betray him at every opportunity.  And the Bible struggles with this issue from cover to cover.  The tragedy of Jesus, and as some people say, the redemption is in the forgiveness of sin, as if to say, people will be people.  So let’s forgive them and move on.  Which is precisely why John Bolton thought he would get away with stealing classified documents and writing a book he hoped would make him rich, thanks to his access to the White House.  But in history, he is just one more Judas betraying someone trying to do something good.  It’s the exact nature as the Israelites worshiping Astaroth at the Temple with sex sacrifices until God punished them into worshipping only him, for their own good.  If not punished, they always strayed and betrayed, as many people do these days, because nobody ever wants the responsibility for punishing them. (1 Samual 7:4)

Bolton faces 18 felony counts related to the mishandling of classified information under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. 793), specifically, eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information, for allegedly sending highly sensitive materials via personal email and messaging apps to unauthorized individuals.  This was learned about because the Iranians hacked his email account.  And we know that because we hacked Iran’s.  Then there are 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information, the keeping of classified documents, notes, and writings at his home.   He then used this information to write the book The Room Where It Happened, which was released in 2020, and the only defense Bolton had was that the Biden administration didn’t prosecute him because his book was cleared by the FBI before it was released.  Everyone learned about the Iranians hacking his account in 2021.  But since the government was decidedly anti-Trump at the time under the Biden administration, the authorities appear to have wanted Bolton to write a tell-all book negative about Trump to impact the next election cycle and solidify Trump’s exile from public office.  They never thought Trump would be back, or that people would vote for him as popularly as they did.  So they broke a lot of laws, betrayed our country in the worst ways possible, and felt free to shop at Walmart at Tyson’s Corner and buy $400 televisions for their oversized mancaves without a care in the world about their crimes.  So yes, he needs to be punished, along with many thousands of others who are just as bad, and they all have it coming.  And this is where forgiveness is not the correct method of justice.  Because if we turn the other cheek, they’ll just keep doing these evil acts.  I think our wrath has to draw inspiration from the Old Testament.  God would approve.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

George Lang Donated A Lot of Money to No More Taxes at Lakota: Fighting and beating stage 4 cancer

I’ve known George Lang for a long time, and I would say I know a fighting side of him that a lot of people don’t know about.  And we talked about all those fights as he gave an update on his stage 4 cancer treatment. And to let you know how well it’s going, after we concluded our interview, we made a promise to each other to attend the White House together once the new ballroom opens.  So he’s not planning to die, he expects to beat the cancer thoroughly, and he gave details on just how and what comes next during our discussion.  But speaking of cancers, there was a lot of controversy when his name appeared on a donation list for the pro-levy campaign for Lakota schools, for $2000.  When I first heard about that, I was skeptical, yet his name was there.  I happen to know that George gave at least $2000 to the No More Taxes group opposing Lakota.  So what was going on?  George explained that, too, as best he could.  In the end, he gave $4000 to the No Tax Levy Lakota group and asked the Pro Lakota Levy people for his money back, which they were in the process of doing as we spoke.  I’ve known George for well over two decades, and we’ve talked about that long history and the many fights we’ve both been in over the years.  So I thought it was weird that he would suddenly be for any tax increases.  As it turned out, he very much wanted me to know that it was an accident and that he wasn’t all of a sudden a supporter of higher taxes.  Tax rates are killers of communities, and for his entire life, George has fought high taxes.

No More Taxes!

So the next question everyone has is: how could his $2000 have been an accident?  Wouldn’t he notice a missing $2000?  Well, when I saw it, I thought George was trying to be supportive of Lakota schools because he works with them a lot as a legislator.  One thing in politics is that making enemies isn’t a great way to bring people together.  And as a politician, you are supposed to represent all people, not just your own point of view.  But then again, people vote for you based on your point of view, and they expect you to be authentic.  So right out of the gate, no matter what you do, someone is going to be mad at you.  George has told me for years that I have a lot of talent for politics and has tried to nudge me into several offices, but I have been very resistant, because I reserve the right to throw rocks.  In political theater, there needs to be lots of personalities to test the market of ideas, and we need rock throwers.  But we also need bridgebuilders.  George has always been a bridgebuilder, and I respect him for that.  I have always been a rock thrower.  And he respects me for that.  And we both like a good fight, which is what we have in common.  I figured that if he was donating money to the Lakota levy, there must be a strategic reason, and that he would explain it to me.  I couldn’t imagine what that good reason would be.  But I would be at least open to his explanation.  But as it turned out, he blamed it on his wife, Debbie.  And they get involved in several hundred thousand dollars a year in political donations, and in the amount of that, George didn’t notice the charge on his credit card, because there were so many transactions. 

She voted for the largest tax increase in Ohio’s history!

I’ve known Debbie for a long time too, and I know where her mind is.  She and George give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  I hold grudges forever, and most of the time when people do me wrong, I never forget it.  But Debbie is a loving person.  I could see her playing nice with the Lakota school board.  She and George want to work with the board to make things work well.  Lakota Schools is the largest employer in Butler County, so they aren’t the kind of people to draw lines that they can’t walk out of if they need to.  Knowing both of them, I can’t imagine a scenario in which they accidently voted for a tax increase.  But they give a lot of things, and when it involves that much money, it is possible to get the wires crossed.  George and Debbie have worked very hard for a very long time, and they are very successful.  They didn’t get that way because of politics.  But they have carried their business success into their interest in politics and their desire to make the world a little better through their political involvement.  A lot of us on this Lakota issue see the public school as a vile enemy, teaching children all kinds of terrible things, and wasting a lot of money while doing it.  I am in that camp.  But Debbie’s always hopeful and uses her vibrant personality to build relationships wherever possible.  The important thing to me is that, once they realized where the donation had gone, they worked to correct it, put their money where it counts, and donated against the Lakota levy of 2025. 

A lot of people can’t imagine writing a $2000 check once in their life, let alone writing so many of them that you don’t even notice it on a credit card statement.  And to make sure everyone is clear on the subject, to turn around and give $2000 more to the No Tax Lakota group, in addition to the previous amount.  I say it all the time, politics is a blood sport.  Sometimes you have to be brutal.  Sometimes you want to be nice.  Sometimes you have to be a combination of all kinds of approaches; no one thing works every time for everything.  But when you have been successful for a long time, and survived a lot of battles over the years, which stage 4 cancer is just the latest, resource management can give you all kinds of options.  And what matters is how those resources are managed.  And as soon as he could, George called me and wanted to set the record straight, because he cares about these things.  We spoke for over an hour, about a lot of topics.  And for everything anyone would want to know, the interview with George was great, full of fascinating details.  But even through the fog of politics, which can get hazy at times, I have seen George fight through some really tough moments with his wife, and they are a good team.  They certainly aren’t phonies, which I think makes them very unique, given that they have achieved a lot of success by anybody’s measure with a level of authenticity that many would think wouldn’t be possible.  But I know it’s true.  And we talked about it all.  And I am looking forward to George beating the cancer, to the Lakota levy going down in spectacular flames, and to Trump building that new ballroom.  I think by then we will all have earned a nice night out on the town to see it for the first time.  The White House is a special place, but only because there are special people who have fought in the trenches to make it so.  And George and Debbie Lang are among those who have.  And with their donation to the No More Tax group of Lakota, they are supporting the next generation of fighters, who have a lot of good work ahead of them.  And by the time the smoke clears, we’ll all be proud of the roles we played in that magnificent contest.

Somebody wasted a lot of money on this!

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Defending the Backbone: Why America Must Protect Its Independent Tier 2 Aerospace Suppliers

People often ask me why I’ve chosen to stay involved with CTL Aerospace, especially during a time when the company is facing significant challenges. The truth is, I could be doing a lot of other things—more lucrative work of a much higher profile, more socially visible roles, or ventures with less resistance.  As someone told me this past week, I’m too talented to waste my key income years on hopeless crusades.  But I don’t measure value in dollars alone. I measure it in independence, in impact, and in the preservation of something uniquely American: privately held ownership. CTL Aerospace in West Chester, Ohio is a Tier 2 supplier, and that position in the supply chain is not just operational—it’s strategic. It’s where innovation meets execution, and where long-term thinking still matters. In an industry increasingly dominated by public ownership and institutional investors, CTL represents a rare and vital piece of our national infrastructure that still answers to its owners, not to shareholders chasing quarterly returns.

My involvement is rooted in a belief that private ownership is essential to the health of American aerospace and defense. When companies go public or fall into the hands of investment firms, they often lose their soul. Decisions get made by boards, not builders. Products get rushed to market, not refined through years of R&D. And the personal accountability that comes from direct ownership disappears. In aerospace, where development cycles span decades and reliability is non-negotiable, this shift is dangerous. You can’t trade supply chain integrity like a stock. You can’t outsource stewardship. And you certainly can’t afford to lose the kind of long-term commitment that privately held companies bring to the table. That’s why I fight for Tier 2 suppliers—because it’s where the real work happens, and where the future of American capability is quietly being decided.

This isn’t just about CTL. It’s about a broader economic trend that’s squeezing out private owners across industries—from aerospace to agriculture. Just like family farms are taxed out of existence and sold off to developers, small and mid-sized manufacturers are being pressured to sell to conglomerates and investment firms. The result is a loss of continuity, a dilution of expertise, and a breakdown in the relationships that make supply chains resilient. When you call a privately owned company, you talk to someone who knows your name, your order, and your expectations. When you call a publicly traded one, you get an intern while the investors are off playing golf. That erosion of personal investment is a catastrophe for our market economy. So when people ask me why I associate myself with CTL Aerospace, I tell them it’s because this fight—this defense of Tier 2 suppliers—is one of the most important stories in America today. It’s about protecting the kind of ownership that built this country, and ensuring it still has a place in the industries that will define our future.

In the shadows of America’s aerospace resurgence lies a quiet but critical battle—one that could determine the future of our industrial independence, national security, and economic resilience. At the heart of this fight are the Tier 2 suppliers: the specialized, often family-owned or privately held companies that manufacture the complex, high-precision components essential to modern flight. These firms are now under siege—not by foreign competitors, but by a coordinated squeeze from financial institutions and private equity firms seeking to consolidate, control, and commoditize a sector that was never meant to be run like a hedge fund.

The Strategic Role of Tier 2s

Tier 2 suppliers like CTL Aerospace in West Chester, Ohio are the connective tissue of the aerospace supply chain. They produce composite nacelles, thrust reversers, engine components, and structural assemblies that Tier 1s and OEMs depend on to meet FAA certification standards and delivery schedules. These are not interchangeable parts. They require decades of engineering expertise, proprietary tooling, and a workforce trained in the art of precision manufacturing.

With the FAA mandating lighter, more fuel-efficient aircraft, the demand for advanced composites has surged. Programs like the GE9X and LEAP engines require vast quantities of carbon fiber sandwich structures—components that only a handful of Tier 2s can produce at scale. Yet, despite their strategic importance, these firms are vanishing.

A Shrinking Ecosystem

According to Deloitte and other industry outlooks, independent Tier 2 suppliers now make up less than 15–20% of the mid-tier aerospace pool—a dramatic decline from a decade ago. The rest have been acquired, merged, or shuttered under pressure from banks and consolidators. The pandemic accelerated this trend, exposing the fragility of just-in-time supply chains and the vulnerability of undercapitalized firms.

Private equity firms like Arcline, AE Industrial, and others—have seized on this moment. M&A activity in aerospace surged from $218 billion in 2024 to projections of $382 billion by 2030, with a disproportionate focus on Tier 2s. Their strategy is clear: acquire specialized suppliers, vertically integrate them into larger portfolios, and feed the Boeing and Airbus backlog without the regulatory headaches of organic growth.

The Financial Squeeze Play

The playbook is ruthless but effective. Financial institutions—Wells Fargo among them—tighten liquidity through covenant manipulation, triggering technical defaults or cash flow crises. This artificially depresses the company’s market value, making it ripe for acquisition. Once the target is weakened, PE firms swoop in with lowball offers, often backed by the very banks that created the distress.

Why This Matters to America

This is not just a business story. It’s a national security issue. The United States cannot afford to lose its independent manufacturing base—not when global tensions are rising, supply chains are under strain, and aerospace remains one of our last great industrial strongholds.

If Tier 2s are absorbed into opaque financial structures, we lose visibility, agility, and control. We risk turning our aerospace sector into a brittle, over-leveraged system where decisions are made in boardrooms, not shop floors. The ability to respond to military needs, commercial surges, or technological shifts will be compromised.

A Path Forward: Defense Through Independence

The solution is not to resist change, but to reassert control. Independent Tier 2s must:

  • Form strategic alliances with OEMs or Tier 1s that respect their autonomy.
  • Pursue minority investments from family offices, aerospace-focused VCs, or patriotic capital sources that don’t demand board control.
  • Implement governance defenses like staggered boards or poison pills to deter hostile takeovers.
  • Audit and challenge predatory lending practices, potentially invoking antitrust or shareholder protections.

The Optimistic Case

Despite the pressure, there is reason for hope. The scarcity of capable Tier 2s makes them more valuable than ever. OEMs are desperate for reliable partners who can scale without compromising quality. Investors are beginning to recognize that long-term value lies not in flipping assets, but in building enduring capabilities.

If we can hold the line—if we can resist the short-termism of Wall Street and the opportunism of consolidation—we can emerge stronger. We can preserve the independence, innovation, and integrity that made American aerospace the envy of the world.

A Call to Action

To policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders: this is your moment. Protect the Tier 2s. Investigate the lending practices that are hollowing out our industrial base. Support capital structures that reward stewardship, not speculation.

To investors: look beyond the spreadsheet. Understand the strategic value of independence in a world where resilience is the new ROI.

To our peers in the industry: stand together. Share intelligence, form coalitions, and defend the middle tier. The future of aerospace depends on it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707