Category: John Kasich

The Old Hollow Tree: All you need to know about School Choice

It is time to have a real conversation about what being an American is. Once it came to my knowledge late in the night of Sunday, March 20, 2011 that the Department of Justice had changed the colors of its website to black, gray and white colors, something eerily similar to the marketing of the European Union, added with the strange sort of collectivism being preached by public workers and the unions that represent them, that American’s must decide what it is they are.

Here Doc Thompson talks about Governor Kasich’s Ohio Budget and the further application of School Choice, which I support tremendously, because it creates competition in the education system. I am more convinced now than ever that the collectivism taught in schools by default has been devastating to our national economy, our political structure, and our personal identities and can be declared an epic failure. I have been open-minded about public education for the benefit of society. But now that I’ve seen the protests at the state level, and the way students have been conjured up to serve the needs of teachers unions in spite of whatever their parents might think, I am now prepared to openly speak against all the devices that are failing in American society so they can be identified and changed.

I came to similar points of view as Ayn Rand not by reading her. I came to her work late in life. But I traveled a path similar to her and arrived at similar conclusions. She, as I do, likes Nietzsche and understands without corruption what that philosopher was trying to say. She was an atheist where I’m not, but I understand her reluctance. I see spirituality in higher dimensional planes where she looked for reason in the observable world. But on matters of collectivism versus individualism I am with Ayn completely without pause.

She is on my mind because the film Atlas Shrugged is coming out soon and I have been waiting for that film for a long time. In that great book of the same name Ayn describes a tree that one of the characters enjoyed as a boy, that made him feel safe. The tree seemed unmovable in the world, a symbol of stability in a changing world. Until one night lightning struck the tree and it split in two. The boy sad, was able to look down inside the massive trunk now that the tree had split. What he found was that the tree had been rotten on the inside, eaten away by millions of parasites over a long period of time till all that was left was a hollow shell that showed its former strength, but was in fact barely able to hold itself up, and was easily destroyed in a big storm.

America is that tree. It has been eaten and parts of it killed from the inside by these insect-like collectivist. They in themselves are not bad or evil. But if you ever study a termite colony you see that their societies are very destructive to wherever they establish their residence. They are just doing what they do, but their life style is destructive to where they build their nests. Any group or organization in America that preaches collectivism, that’s labor unions, education establishments, clubs, country clubs, political organizations, Freemasons, fraternities, I’d even say the Boy Scouts of America is a form of collectivism.

Now that may seem extreme by let me tell you a brief story illuminating this fact. I have joined my share of groups, but I usually end up leaving them because of this whole collectivism issue. I hate it. Years ago I was a member, which I still distinctly support, but I was much more heavily active back then, called the Joseph Campbell Foundation. I spent my 20’s reading Campbell’s vast work and through him and his lectures, which I think I heard them all, I explored James Joyce’s work through the Skeleton Key and Ulysses, and much of Nietzsche’s work. But Campbell’s work put me on the path. Now Campbell was an intellectual individualist, much different from other intellectuals, so this is the reason he’s been successful on a level most only dream of regarding the field of comparative mythology and religion with sub categories in psychology, philosophy and art. Campbell was a maverick in many ways which is another way of saying he was an individualist. But, many of the people attracted to literature, and I run into this all the time, are liberal. So many of his fans were left-winged, so the moment he died, even to his warnings, they tried to turn Joseph Campbell into some collective savior, almost a religion.

I learned this on a literary meeting sponsored by the foundation. I figured it was a safe, and authentic event because at the time George Lucas of Star Wars was one of the board members, so I figured that the people in the foundation would reflect Campbell’s views. What I found were a group of left-winged people who had lost the message of Campbell. They memorized his work and could quote it on demand, but they didn’t “understand” it. They were victims of “collectivism.” The point of the meeting was only to be around similar personality types for some sort of reassured conformation of their appreciation of Campbell’s work. Ayn Rand has a similar kind of following with her own Ayn Rand Institute. I don’t mind such groups, but I personally don’t enjoy them because they get in the way of my own individuality. I’m currently in the same dilemma with the Tea Party. I stay in the distance, I support them very much, but not at the expense of my ability to act on my own.

Now American’s understand the balance between “team work,” and “collectivism.” We know how it’s supposed to work. We invented a game that reflects it.

American Football, the game itself, not the cheerleaders, the politics around it, the fans, the schools, but the game of football in its raw form is just the right mix of individualism and team work. In football individual talent through competition emerges on the field of play with the focal point being the ball itself. It’s a game of individual assignments that must be executed with an overall battle plan’s overall goal of moving the ball down the field of play 10 yards at a time. Football is a brutal game where only the best find their way on the field. There isn’t much sympathy for those that are “benchwarmers.” They are actually looked down upon in our society. That is the true heart of the masses, otherwise, football wouldn’t be as popular as it is. The public has accepted those rules because on a subconscious level, they understand the implications of not allowing the best to play the game. The team that attempts collective diversity would find itself at a serious competitive disadvantage and the game itself would be boring. The winners on the football field are those that can run faster, hit harder, throw further, and adapt to changing circumstances most rapidly.
American’s understand football, because it is the game of capitalism.

But when the rules get blurred in all the associated groups that we naturally are inclined to join, because there is security in the group, we find that the world appears to be more complicated. But it’s not. We make it so.

It’s not that I dislike the insect like collective minded. When I swim in a pool and a poor little bug falls in and struggles to get out, I scoop it out and attempt to save it. I always do, even though the insect is part of a collective society. But, when a hive of worms builds a nest in a tree, or a wasp nest evolves in my garage, or termites, or ants make their presence known near my home I kill them without regret, because I’m protecting my home, my property. Collectivism does not understand this concept because personal property is seen as for the greater good of society, which is just how insects few the world.

So my words here, and the resistance to further taxes in schools, and reform such as what we are exploring in School Choice as heard by Doc’s interview are for the good of that great tree that is America. I see the insects that are eating the inside of our beloved tree need to be removed so the tree doesn’t die or split at the first big storm. And I have no emotion about the lives of those insects. They should not have attempted to set up a colony in our tree.

In a less harsh way, look at school reform. The interview above is absolutely correct. Education will change because it’s too expensive and ineffective. That’s a fact of life. It will evolve rapidly in the coming years to something more individually based, and it will happen because that’s the way it works in the world at large.

We’ve been compassionate and we let the insects live in our tree, and they have maliciously attempted to hollow it out without regard for the strength of the tree. And that is the cause of their soon to be fate. It is not the heartlessness of me or others that seek continuation of the greater life form of our nation. It’s not about fairness, it’s about competition and getting the results of that competition that is an occurrence reflected in nature itself. It is in mankind’s arrogance that they attempt to alter nature into a collectivism that does not act as a parasite on the world around it, which is an impossible and naive dream by incompetent insect like minds only considering their small lives and hungers.

My advice, be an individual contributor to society, not an insect.

Rich Hoffman

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

Hurry! Get Your Contracts in Before S.B.5. Becomes Law!: The reason we can’t trust elected officials.

There is disturbing news coming out of Lebanon, Ohio that arrived to my ears late Thursday as I was trying to enjoy the first pleasant day of spring-like weather in 2011. The information isn’t surprising as I had been thinking along these lines all week. An aspect to that thinking is in leadership which Doc Thompson discusses in this broadcast.

I’ve mentioned in many words on these pages why some leaders are better than others, and exactly what makes a leader, “good.” For a clear definition of what makes something of quality, and why some people are “better” than others I refer your inquisitive mind to the great book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That book is one of the best, most thorough works of philosophy on quality and leadership done since the pre-Greek age. The capacity to be, “the best” is within all of us. But certain traits certainly jump out as contributory factors.

What brings all this up is the need for leadership in school systems, and the apparent lack thereof. The current system seems to be a nightmare scenario from an Ayn Rand novel and I say that without exaggeration.

I wondered how school boards were going to react to S.B.5 once it’s signed into law. After all, they are now empowered to negotiate on behalf of the community. I thought of the Lakota Levy when I’d go to school board meetings and see our elected officials all wearing Yes Lakota pins and actively promoting the passage of a school levy. Taken at face value, this seemed acceptable to me. But now, on the eve of a real management measure like S.B.5 that will give these school boards real teeth, I wondered if it was appropriate for school board members, who are elected by the community, to openly promote school levies.

That’s when the information arrived to me from an employee within the Lebanon School System that Mark North had been meeting with the union at Lebanon and informed them to have their contracts turned in by the conclusion of business March 17, to  avoid S.B.5 ramifications. The reason is that S.B.5 will honor all existing contracts, so any deals made prior to law will be recognized. Lebanon is planning to make the announcement to the press that the union has agreed to a “pay freeze” but the step increases will be held in place and kept under the radar.

This is disturbing news to me, and it’s not unique to Mr. North from the Lebanon School Board. No school board member should ever be on such cozy terms with any member of a union. They are a member of management and that requires them to be distant and impartial. If school boards were truly management on behalf of the tax payers that elected them they would not pass along information to unions informing them to get their contracts turned in before the passage of a new law. The school board should be looking to avoid a tax levy by using S.B.5 to bring their costs down. Such revelations are an enormous contributor to the current funding problems that all these school districts have.

School board members attempt to start off representing the community, however immediately in November they are sent to the OSBA Conference in Columbus. They do this once a year and the goal is to bring school board members in cohesion with the aims of the education unions that are really in control within the state. At these conferences the new board members “bond” with other board members and learn the ropes. Immediately school board members are eating out of the hand of the union. School board members that question this process are labeled “radical” and pushed out of the “group” mentality.

Now, before anyone says that I don’t know what I’m talking I know quite a few school board members all over the state, and this is how I learned about this story. It’s not a secret. Such ceremonies are no different from the “hazing” rituals in college fraternities. The intent is to unify everyone into a “collective team.”

That whole process needs to stop. School boards are elected by the public and need to represent the public. S.B.5 puts school boards in management control, the way people always thought they were, but the reality is like what has been reported on the activity of Mark North of Lebanon. They will never publicly admit that they are more loyal to unions than the public that elected them, but their actions prove otherwise.

At a minimum, no school board member elected by the public should ever wear a pin or carry a sign lobbying the community for increases in taxes. Because in doing so they are publicly admitting that they do not have management control over the school system and are not able to do the job.

S.B.5 will change the rules and the weak managers in the system, (and there will be many) will have to be removed and strong managers put in their place that will not go to the OSBA Conference in Columbus every November, but will truly represent the people who elected them.

And a warning to Mr. North and all those like him. Be careful what you say to people. The difference now is that when a whistleblower says something to the paper, and it falls on deaf ears, there are now groups like this one and others that are emerging, that will carry the story. So hiding behavior under a rock or behind closed doors will no longer be a valid way to hide improprieties to the taxpayer. And there are plenty of leaks. Believe me.

Now, for further evidence that it’s not only schools that are in a rush to ratify their contracts before S.B.5 becomes law here is the news for the Butler County FOP contract that’s been bouncing around since February 2010 . And to get an idea how much these guys make see my article, Oh, What Big Teeth You Have. What this article means is that they knew just as Lebanon knew, to take what they could get before the governor signs the new bill. It’s not a coincidence that this contract mysteriously was agreed upon yesterday.

It’s always about money.

Butler County commission signs off on FOP contract
Butler County Sheriff’s Office deputies have new agreement.
By Michael D. Pitman, Staff Writer March 18, 2011

HAMILTON — Butler County Sheriff’s deputies and supervisors will get a raise, but they’ll have to wait until next year.
The Butler County Commission agreed Thursday to ratify the collective bargaining agreements for members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 101.

The contract, which expires Feb. 9, 2013, had to go to a conciliator in November for the six items on which the union and administration could not come to terms.

“This is how the process is supposed to work,” said Sheriff Richard K. Jones, an opponent of Ohio Senate Bill 5 that passed the Senate and is in the House for debate. “We couldn’t agree, so we went to arbitration.”

Sgt. Jeff Gebhart, a spokesman for the FOP, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

According to the new contract, union members will get a 2 percent raise next year; $1,000 cash payment in lieu of a uniform allowance; and new top step effective in February 2012 to be set 2 percent higher than the current top step while deleting the lowest step.

The union also wanted similar pay scales for court services deputies and road deputies; the ability for supervisors to bid on positions; and a uniform allowance in 2010. The conciliator did not grant these requests.

“We want our people to have the best they can negotiate for; it’s not a battle,” Maj. Norman Lewis said. “But in these economic times, with the way the budget has been slashed, it’s a process that had to take place.”

Lewis said the collective bargaining process started in February 2010, but the six items of disagreement needed a conciliation hearing.

The contracts with corrections officers, corrections supervisors, clerical and dispatch unions are being finalized and likely will go before the county commissioners in ensuing weeks, he said.

Jones said the collective bargaining process works for the administration and the unions, and has worked well for the 34 years he’s been involved in the negotiations.

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

So who is looking out for the taxpayer if all these elected officials are scrambling at the last-minute to get all the money they can before the gates to easy money close with the passage of S.B.5.?

This is proof that the money was flowing like water and nobody cared to turn it off at the facet, and access to that easy money is really what collective bargaining has always been about. It’s easy to spend other people’s money. It’s hard and takes real leadership to have discretion. And what we’re learning is that our political officials are greedy and lack leadership in every way we feared and suspected.

 

Rich Hoffman

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

These People Teach Our Kids: Protestors React to Kasich’s Budget

The protests on Fountain Square the day Governor Kasich released his budget were amazingly short-sighted considering many of the participants were educators. “We need to tax the rich, and save the middle-class,” were the chants. Really? I mean, really???????? These people really believe that there are other options that are less painful than the budget cuts Kasich placed on the table. They really believe that the wage levels are somehow separate from collapsing community budgets.

Much of the debate at the Lakota School Board meeting on Monday March 14th, 2011 centered on the loss of junior high sports. Many angry parents came out to protest the elimination of sports programs. I listen to the arguments and can only scratch my head why this is such a contentious issue. First, how did sports become so embedded in public education to begin with? Second, why would you eliminate programs that parents want when it is evident that the wage levels are directly contributing to the overhead cost  increases? A 30% reduction in the top wages would generate over $20 million and would solve a lot of problems that could be spent on “the kids.” But the teachers and administrators are the same type of people protesting on Fountain Square Monday. They aren’t about to make any sacrifices. They’ll let the kids suffer in a minute  because their priorities are all wrong. They’re not bad people, but their workplace culture is wrong. They only know to increase taxes to deal with the budget deficit caused by the very good compensation they receive from the taxpayer. When I hear these people complaining about concessions they’ve made up to this point, or sacrifices, it is quickly obvious that they don’t have a clue what’s going on in the private sector. And what goes on in the private sector is market driven. It’s not some rich conspiracy against the poor. The public sector is driven by a socialist utopia that is not possible. And that is not an inflammatory statement. It’s completely true!

Few of these public workers understand that Medicaid is almost a third of the state budget and only 4% of the people occupy 70% of the cost. That’s a major problem and one of the largest contributors of the budget deficit Ohio is experiencing. It’s certainly not that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes, or that industry is getting tax breaks. The people who say such things are incredibly selfish and not very wise on world affairs. They only look at their little piece of the world and could care less if everyone else suffer, which is what’s happening in Lakota and every other school district.

I’ve been very vocal about the whole wage issue because I don’t think many of those teachers are worth more than 70K a year. I would never think to pay any teacher that amount of money. The education they obtain for themselves is on their dime, not mine. If the state tells them they must have a Masters Degree to teach, they know that getting into the profession. But with that debate aside, they prove with these foolish protests and lack of understanding of statewide matters that they are not equipped to teach our children anything. I wouldn’t send my kid to a school that teaches such small-minded socialism, and that’s what taxing the rich and giving to the poor is.

The protestors were already prepared to protest Kasich no matter what he said in his budget. He could have said he was giving everyone a thousand dollars in the state of Ohio, and they would have still complained about what an evil guy he is.

I look at the things Kasich wants to do and it all sounds good to me. The protestors clearly just don’t want change because they benefit tremendously by keeping everything broken. They are ultimately a very selfish lot that lack the intellectual capacity to educate anyone in my opinion. To know that there were teachers from Lakota at this rally disgusts me. They represent the community very poorly.

Here is what they are protesting from Kasich’s budget plan.

• More oversight over Medicaid, although spending on the federal program will continue to grow by $1 billion annually. Medicaid comprises 30 percent of Ohio’s $60 billion budget in fiscal year 2013, including all federal matching dollars.

• Better coordination of mental health services.

• To offer the state’s health-care coverage to local governments to save money and ask union workers to pay more toward premiums.

• To sell liquor distribution rights to raise money for job-development programs,

• To honor pay increases contained in the third year of a union contract that ends next February. The extra pay offsets lost personal days and unpaid furloughs by state workers – concessions to balance Gov. Ted Strickland’s last budget.

• To double vouchers for school choice, eliminating a waiting list for parents who want to transfer their children from public to privately operated charter schools.

• Bonuses for teachers – $50 for each student who shows marked improvement.

• A closer look at adding slot machines to Ohio’s horse tracks or legalizing casinos operated by Native American tribes.

• Study the concept of semi-private “charter” universities to give now-public colleges more flexibility. That would eliminate the requirement that they hire multiple prime contractors and pay prevailing wage on construction projects, to keep tuition down. It also caps annual tuition growth at 3.5 percent.

Those are just a few of the highlights. The bottom line is that unions just want to keep everything as it is. They don’t want change because they like the way everything is. But they hardly represent the majority. Only 13.7% of the Ohio population belongs to a union. And it’s those 13.7% that are creating the policies that break the budgets of school districts so that kids in junior high won’t be able to play sports, or ride a bus. In the scheme of things the cost of busing, sports programs, and electives are a small part of the budget, its labor costs that are the enormous factor. And it was excessive labor costs that crippled the auto industry, ran the steel industry out of Pittsburg and seriously hampered innovation in companies that are under union control.

Recently I needed a part from a large manufacturer in Dallas, Texas, and the person on the other end of the phone said they could see the part through the window from where they were sitting. But they couldn’t send it to me. Why? Because the department on the other side of the window was controlled by the union and the guy in charge of moving that part was out on sick leave, and he was the only one able under the contract to move the part. So because of union rules the person I was speaking to could not simply open a door and pick up the part to ship back to me. It cost thousands of dollars in delivery penalties and seriously set back our manufacturing process. I was so mad at that process that I put my fist through my phone in frustration.

The same mentality is at play with these public sector unions. They are out of touch and protecting the serious imposition they have imposed on us all. And they could care less of some kids suffer because of their inflated opinions of themselves.

The proof is in what they say and do. Not in their very controlled bullet points designed to manipulate a busy voting population.

And that is the crime that should have serious penalties. And for those that participated in that rally, if you really care about “the kids” and the community you work in, take a pay cut, and don’t even think about asking those communities for more tax increases.

Rich Hoffman

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

The 53% Against the 47%: A Lesson in Leadership

Kasich’s approval rating is at 40 percent just two months into his tenure as governor of Ohio. Doc Thompson was critical of Kasich’s marketing of himself and the confusing messages coming from the governor’s office. Doc also discusses the West Chester Police and Fire Department wages from the article at this site. The overall consensus is that expectation among all federal workers, from the governor all the way to the desk worker expects too much compensation from the tax payer, and many are guilty of taking advantage of the bureaucracy in government to make very good jobs for themselves. Listen to broadcast here.

I’m actually amazed that Kasich’s approval rating is as high as 40 percent considering how bold he has been on many of his policies. There is no question that Kasich’s budget is going to be painful for many people. I would have to say that if I were governor, I probably wouldn’t do things much different from Kasich is doing. I personally wouldn’t think too much on the pain of the moment, because what’s right is right. It’s not Kasich’s fault that so many people have become addicted to public money. It’s like taking the bottle away from an alcoholic while they are trying to get drunk. Of course the drunk will be upset, and they usually protest that they are not alcoholics. I’d probably hire people to serve under me at good business wages so I could get the best people and not the typical “kiss ass” political climbers, I’d probably want to control the video of my presentations so they couldn’t be used against me in the future, and I’d probably be caught numerous times calling police that pulled me over, “idiots” because it would make me angry. I’m a very aggressive guy and I keep my eyes on the end result, and I see in Kasich the same traits.

Now people aren’t used to that. They are used to wishy-washy politicians that spend their own political careers not displaying any real courage. They carefully watch the poll numbers and can be moved from a position within days of stating something, depending on the power of the lobbyist.

I would say that Kasich understands like many people who are in leadership positions that a vast majority of any given group will be lost no matter how much you try to explain it. And those types of people don’t like to waste time explaining their vision to people who won’t get it anyway.

Is that the best way to present material, of course not. But it is a symptom of real leadership. Kasich knows that approximately 53% of all people in America have some leadership ability or at least the ability to grapple with difficult issues. They can see where the headlights are pointed and what’s in the light of the headlights, and they get it. 46% of all Americans can’t even see the headlights without glasses. They need assistance, and these are the people who have a tendency to be attracted to public sector jobs, unions, and welfare. No matter what you do, they won’t understand until they can look at a problem in hind-sight.

It was reported that Kasich’s approval rating is below the levels enjoyed by the last three governors when they were in their start of their administrations. The Ohio Poll registered 68 percent approval for Democrat Ted Strickland in May 2007, 49 percent approval for Republican Bob Taft in March 1999 and 61 percent approval for Republican George Voinovich in February 1991. The reason for this is because those governors spent much of their time pandering to the 47% and therefore accomplished very little as leaders. They mistakenly assume that the 53% will always be there for them, which is unfair because the 53% get overlooked as they are the good citizens that work hard to support the nation. Unfortunately the squeaky wheel does get the grease, and those squeaky wheels are that 47%.

People aren’t used to a governor that has a reversed position and targets his governorship at the 53% that understand, even if they don’t agree. It appears that Kasich isn’t the only governor showing these tendencies. Scott Walker certainly appears to be the same way.

Now of that 53%, there is no doubt that those are the people who are usually on the fence on any given issue, and the number in Ohio appears to be about 13%, which are finding themselves affected by all the negative press surrounding S.B.5. That’s where the 40% comes from.

In the end, when the policies Kasich enacts solves many of the budget problems that Ohio finds itself in, it just might become the model that the greater nation will want to follow. But Kasich really doesn’t appear to be interested in opinion. You know the old adage, “opinions are like assholes, everyone has them.” A leader has to do what they know is right because they have the ability to see beyond the headlights flashing in the darkness. Their fault is that they don’t care to explain themselves to the 47%. Those people will never be happy anyway. But they will jump on the bandwagon when better times come along.

Kasich deserves an elevation of his man card if anything, for doing what many only talk about. He is doing what leaders do, they lead.

Rich Hoffman

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

School Boards Still Don’t Get It: S.B.5 Empowers them to Control Their Costs!

Doc Thompson covers how the “rich Hollywood types and politicians hide their money from tax collectors, gaming the system. These are the same people who proclaim that we should pay increased taxes in order to fund public sector jobs. Doc has an argument with a guy that claims he’s willing to send in a $20,000 check to pay his “fair share.” Also, Doc covers a UC administrator that received over $900,000 in severance upon being released from his contract. Have a listen:

Meanwhile, local school systems, are still asking for more money claiming to be broke when in fact they are already receiving generous tax dollars from the communities. Public union leaders are somehow oblivious to why there isn’t enough money to pay them. How they don’t connect the dots is amazing. They insist that we should cut salaries in the governor’s administration before we cut teachers salaries, which sounds foolish. It’s not so much the amount of money individuals make, as it is that way too many in public office make it. That is where the socialist tendency differs from the capitalist. The socialist wants the increases across the board, as they are in step increases. The capitalist pays based on merit. That means fewer will receive “top pay” instead of a majority regardless of job performance as the system is now.

On the eve of Governor Kasich’s budget revelation it is interesting that Lebanon City Schools and Fairfield City Schools are not looking at using S.B.5 to control their costs on a broad scale, but are still playing the same game of small cuts that have been the preferred method, such as busing cuts and other items that are inconvenient to parents in the district.

Taking into account that the contracts under S.B.5 will be grandfathered in, it would seem most responsible for these school districts to begin exploring how they can severely reduce their labor costs under the new law without staff reductions.

My guess however is that these current administrators won’t explore that option unfortunately, because they cannot think any other way, which is part of the problem.

Further attempts to place levies on a ballot are not needed because these school districts don’t need the money. They need to reduce their budget expectations. They need to understand how to manage the money they do have. S.B.5 will give them the tools to do so. There shouldn’t be another levy on a single ballot anywhere in Ohio during 2011 because of the passage of S.B.5. If there is, it’s because the school districts wish to continue to play games, and not make the “hard”cuts.

If school districts like these two continue to beat the same old drum, it is because they are completely inept in the skills of money management, and those administrators need to be removed so that people who are skilled at money management can help these schools operate with their excellent ratings, but at a reduced cost.

Before a single layoff is ever explored, wage reductions should be implemented. Realistic wage amounts need to be established, not the outrageous levels they currently are. Teachers of high school students and junior high students are not all worth 70K or more no matter how much schooling they have. Some may be, but not a majority. Few people are worth that much in labor and a college degree does not guarantee those wage levels, which is the assumption under the established step increases, and the fact that I even have to write it down so that administrators have to be told says they are out of touch completely with the community marketplace.

The money is not coming from the state. The money is not coming from the federal government. The money is coming from the community, and these districts and the teachers that teach in them must decide now if they want to bend a little to make the districts remain excellent and within the community budgets, or if they will continue to think selfishly and strap these communities financially. For those highly paid teachers that don’t want to work for less, there’s the door. Good luck finding a better job because every district in Ohio is going through this trouble, and they all must come to this realization sooner or later.

The longer these districts avoid the obvious, the more damage they’ll do. They now have the tools, but further tax increases are not an option.

Below are two notices, one asking people to attend the school board meeting in Lebanon. If you care about this issue at all, you should go and ask those people how they are planning to think “outside” the box to save the community money without a loss of services. Because they will no longer be able to blame the states unfunded mandates.

The other is from Arnie Engle from Fairfield who has been fighting this fight for a long time.

To one and all
FYI
The board will be voting to cut High School busing this Thursday
Are you willing to risk our children’s lives to save $300,000??
The next Board meeting is 3-17-11
6PM in the Community Room at the HS

The blackmail tactics are about to begin

 

Our community was divided over the 3 school levies the board jammed down the throats of the community in 2004. This board is knowingly driving our district into fiscal crisis and a repeat of the 2004 community divide. Why are they doing this? Because they refuse to place the community and our children before the staff with appropriate cost cutting measures.
Please attend and let your voice be heard

Please pass this on to everyone you know !

You must sign in to speak at the beginning of the meeting and you get 5 minutes.
There is also an additional chance to speak before the board votes on the cuts. 2 minutes.

On the agenda are 3 million in cuts to be voted on. The list can be viewed on the school web site. In the list is the elimination of high school busing to save $300,000.

Fact!
The schools own finance report, shows we spent 6.6 million on pupil transportation in 2010.
We are cutting 1/3 of our busing. Shouldn’t we expect a savings of 1/3 of $6,000,000????
You can view this report on the school web site.

CAFR
Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
(Page 105 schedule 6)

School busing is the safest way to transport school children. Putting our kids on the road to and from school is a disaster waiting to happen.

And for what??? $300,000???

Are you willing to risk our children’s lives to save $300,000??

I’m not!

The following is what I said about cutting busing back in 2004.
The same applies today.

From the 2004 CARE flier
WHY CUT SPORTS AND BUSING?

The recent cuts made by the Fairfield School Board do more than balance the budget. They actually punish our children and the community,

in an effort to force an unjust $9,000,000 school levy on the taxpayers of our fine city. This tax levy will definitely benefit the staff, but NOT our children.

Regarding Sports, local papers have reported that the Xenia School District “saved $183,000 by cutting extra-curriculars. However, more than 100 students left the school district and went to other schools to participate in sports. The decreased student enrollment ended up costing the school $340,000 in school funding from the state.” Our school board and administration are aware of this, but they cut our extra-curriculars anyway.

Regarding busing, our school officials say we will save $400,000 by cutting busing. According to Treasurer Scott Gooding, we have a $5,500,000 transportation budget. We are cutting more than one-third of our transportation by cutting busing for grades 9-12 and extra curricular activities. You would expect to see savings of one-third of $5,500,000 or at least $1,800,000. Also note that the state gives us $2,000,000 for transportation as reported in the ODE, SF3 report. If we loose one-third of this funding that amounts to $667,000, nullifying the $400,000 savings projected by our officials.
Therefore, it just doesn’t make good economic sense to cut busing and sports, unless it’s really an effort to punish our kids, parents, and community in order to pass the next school levy on August 3rd.

I have heard it time and time again that the district needs to move forward and forget about the past \history. The problem is that history is about to repeat itself! We can all expect that $600 pay to play and the elimination of all busing will soon follow.

This board is, knowingly, running our district right into financial crisis. The solution to their madness was spelled out in my last letter to the editor. The boards blackmail tactics will never end as long as this board continues to places the staff ahead of the community and our children

BOARDS 1-13-11 RETREAT
Letter to the Editor
February 2011
BOARD INACTION WILL LEAD TO DISTRICT FAILURE

In regard to the Fairfield school districts budget retreat it was disappointing to hear the board was still considering a new tax levy. It would be a big mistake for the board to assume the community would support any type of levy. I would hope the board would anticipate this and enact the appropriate cuts to balance the budget. Failure to do so will send our district down the same road as Little Miami. The board needs to put the box of band aids away and get down to enacting a budget void of new levies. Time is running out.

Although there was an additional 4.6 million in cuts presented at the retreat there are still millions in possible cost cutting and revenue generating ideas presented by both me and the districts own hand picked finance committee. My suggestions and the finance committee’s suggestions should be reviewed, considered and enacted or rejected with reasoning shared with the public for any rejection, before there is any discussion of a new levy. The community is entitled to know, in detail, why the board refused to enact all cost saving ideas presented by anyone.

In my opinion there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the district does business. This would include but is not limited to the following suggestions.

Getting serious about contract negotiations.

Not relying on local property taxes to fund schools

The board must be honest with the public and follow through with their board actions.

The board should vote with an understanding of how their vote will effect the budget and leave their emotions at home
.
The board needs to start placing our children and the community first.

The board needs to review the business partner relationship it holds with it’s vendors and assure the public it is receiving the best possible price for the tax dollars spent.

The board needs to have a conservative outsider to review the way the district operates

The status quo of taxing and spending is not working in Fairfield or any government agency. If this philosophy can not be reigned in it will undoubtedly lead to the financial ruin of our district.

Let me leave you with a quote from the districts own finance committee “The current system is unsustainable without the fundamental changes we are suggesting — inaction will lead to district failure.” I have been warning the district of this for years. Time is running out.

Arnie Engel
Past member Fairfield Board of Education
CARE founder
829-7840
Please pass this on to everyone you know !
and please attend the
next Board meeting on 3-17-11.
Bring your neighbors, friends and family.

Rich Hoffman

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

Motorcycles Tell the Whole Story: The Socialist States of America

The crowds around Wisconsin on Saturday March 12, 2011 had a diseased quality about them that cannot be summed up without a philosophic journey of epic understanding. In short however, I can only offer that those poor souls marching to a socialist drum beat are lost to what it means to be an American. Without question, many of the marchers are veterans, police, firefighters and other traditional patriots, but to me they seem weak, and ill-informed, lost in a portrayal the media has given them without actually earning it. The America they want and desire is one for the soft, fragile specimens of human being that finds their life spans sickly, and always in need of assistance.

I’ve rode motorcycles for more than 20 years and always stayed away from the stereotype of what a biker is, I guess because the image has been associated with gangs and violence. It’s also associated with death. The perception is that if you ride a motorcycle, you will die. Maybe not right away, but eventually, the grim reaper is in close pursuit if you chose to ride a motorcycle.

So I’ve kept my motorcycle riding more of a private thing. I’ve always embraced a sense of freedom and a love of individuality and vehicles on two wheels were the closest thing to a horse that I could get living in a modern, suburban environment.

Cowboys to me have always been the symbol of what an American is. And cowboys rode horses when they settled the west. To modern America, highways have replaced trails, and motorcycles replaced horses. And to the motorcycle rider, the goals are the same as the cowboy.

The cowboy wanted to extend his mobility over vast distances, whether he was herding cattle or just searching for food. And where herding cattle may not be needed, and food is available at the closest McDonalds, the need to extend your reach is still needed for the hungry adventurer.

And that’s what you find in a motorcyclist, a love a freedom and a desire to extend their reach without the protection of any other vehicle. To be exposed to the road flying by below you, exposed to the elements rain, wind and heat, and to be one mistake away from death. It’s a choice millions of motorcyclist volunteer each year.
I started thinking about defining motorcyclist when I kept getting the same questions, why do you ride in the rain? And why do you ride when it’s cold?

For me, it’s about truth. Not the kind of truth that’s about right and wrong. But the kind of truth you find when you push yourself to the limit. The kind of truth mountain climbers understand, or endurance hikers. People that put comfort aside and find strength in themselves they didn’t know they had.

motorcyclist, whatever their various forms, have this yearning in common, even if they aren’t completely aware of it.

When my wife and I made a long ride to Key West I thought about these things a lot especially as we neared our destination over the inter-coastal highway US1 south of Miami in temperatures that hovered around 107 degrees Fahrenheit. I look at motorcycles the same way I look at World War II aircraft. When introduced, it was the first time in human history that an individual could extend their boundaries beyond their home territory. The automobile of course had come along but where the auto departs from the nature of flying machines is a pilot uses a stick and rudder to fly, so all parts of the human body are engaged. On a motorcycle the same holds true, one foot operates the rear brake, another shifts the gears, another operates the throttle and the right brake, and yet another operates the clutch, and all this without much protection of any kind.

Airplanes are deceptively fragile, with only a very thin skin between the pilot and the outside air. In order to operate them, a well-defined understanding of the dangers involved is needed.

It is no coincidence that motorcycles and airplanes are both associated with freedom. At first, because they tie up their operators with being fully involved in the process of flying or driving them, it is this very fact that lends to the feelings of liberation.

Make a long run on a motorcycle, and you will feel you earned every mile, and it is inescapable to feel complacent afterwards. Where the motorcycle is unique over any other mode of transportation, the cost to operate it per mile is very inexpensive. And that makes it one of the best machines around if you’re willing to trade a bit of safety and comfort for the reach a motorcycle gives you.

On our trip to Key West from Cincinnati we traveled over 3000 miles in just under 7 days and spent $167 in fuel.

Riding a motorcycle is a reliable excuse to be different, even if some of that ends up looking the same. You can dress in leather jackets in the heat of an August afternoon and it’s OK. It’s a reason to dress outrageously and proclaim your individuality. A motorcycle invites adventure to what would otherwise be just a simple trip down the road. In hard weather, it forces you to adapt taking you out of your comfort zone.

And that’s the appeal for me. Every time you get on a bike, there is an opportunity for adventure that you just don’t get in an automobile. It gives you unprecedented reach for traveling because you can do it much more economically than any other mode of transportation. And it allows you to cater your bike and riding apparel to your individual tastes.

In a car, you might just get in and start driving, and the ritual is rather short and uninvolved. On a bike, you have to dress for the ride which will probably include a jacket of some kind, gloves, boots, and durable pants. You have to keep your eye on the world around you not only the traffic and the dangers associated with that, but the weather too.

A storm can surge up in an instant. A heavy downpour on a highway at 70 MPH can cause you enormous amounts of pain if your skin is exposed. And you’ll notice when the breaks in the clouds are coming and see how the rain rolls in and drifts away as you move through it, where in a car, you may drive 20 to 50 miles and barely register what’s going on in the world around you, because inside the car, life goes on much like it would in your home.

Motorcycle riders understand pirates. The two life styles go together very well. The romance that many secretly feel toward the golden age of piracy is embodied in the fantasies of the motorcycle rider for many of the same reasons described in the long motorcycle journey. And to understand the magic of America, you have to understand one of the greatest pirates of all time, and a personal hero of mine, Captain Henry Morgan.

It is true that I have a particular fondness for the pirates that roamed the Caribbean during the golden age of piracy from 1660’s to the 1720’s. Not to imply that I honor the life of the thief. But I do credit those particular pirates as being the foundations of America, because in my view the nations of Europe were the true thieves.

Controversial, of course it is. But you have to remember what the world was at the time and why the pirates came to be. At the time that Spain claimed central and South America, they eradicated all the cultures existing at the time and stole the wealth of those cultures. Just because a nation is behind the robbery, does not make them any less a thief. And consider that at the time the English navy, would kidnap young men and employ them against their will to serve the might of their empire, and that England and France, always at war with one another, could not stand to allow the Spanish to reap all the benefits of its conquest of the Aztecs and their great capital city of Tenochtitlan.

“Tenochtitlan was a marvelous metropolis with complicated lakes that surrounded the place. The Spanish upon seeing it claimed it was so beautiful that it looked like a dream. Cortez conquered the city shortly, and had Montezuma stoned to death in front of his own people. The Aztecs had an army, but their only real focus had been to raid neighboring tribes for victims in human sacrifice to their insatiable gods, especially Quetzalcoatl. They were no match for the battle hardened Spanish and their firepower.

Cortez destroyed the city block by block and built a new city on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, a city that would become one of the largest cities in the world, Mexico City. Not only did this city go on to become one of the most dangerous places in the world, but any attempt to uncover the past of Tenochtitlan are long since destroyed. The great monument that resides in Mexico City now is the golden-winged Angel of Independence. A very strange statue for a people who were completely conquered by Spain and had their culture eradicated.

Anyway, Cortez sacked the city, destroyed the culture which was rich with gold, and proceeded to bring all that gold to Spain much to the concern of England and France. England, recruiting naval officers in the manner they had, and the rigors of their sea fairing discipline made it easy for rebellion at sea to cast off their nation and become a pirate.

Privateers were acts of piracy backed by countries, to prevent the Spanish from keeping too much gold of their newly conquered land. It didn’t take long for those privateers to cast away their nations and the burdens of their ownership in favor of freedom. So the exploits of L’Ollonais, Captain Morgan and Black Beard may have been violent and against the law, but the law makers had broken many laws as well. Those pirates wanted freedom from the heresy of nations. These very pirates were the first democracies in the world. Pirates had elections, and insurance, and were certainly the first organizations in the world to show a successful democracy and the ability of a small few to stand up to the tyranny of nations. Without question, the very popular book Buccaneers of American by Alexander O. Exquemelin which was published just shy of the 1700’s sat on the book shelves of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams who at their time collected thousands of books. It is no accident that the exploits of the pirates in that book paved the way for the bold words of the founding fathers, because the pirates had managed to wreak havoc against the mighty English. Using the same basic principles as the pirate code, The Declaration of Independence was written with a bit more education behind the quill that wrote it, but with equal sincerity. In fact, in the final battle against the English during the War of 1812, Jean Lafitte helped Andrew Jackson defeat the English in New Orleans by using the pirates that ran with Lafitte to break the English will. Pirates have played an important role in the foundations of America, and I love them for it! Their descendents find themselves riding motorcycles instead of sailing ships.

Now among motorcycle riders, these modern pirates, there are two categories of which I am of the second. The first is the rider that brings out his motorcycle on the first warm day of the year and rides his bike when the sun shines. The second is the one that rides all year, rain, shine, hot or cold. I know many, many men that talk tough, but in reality are soft at heart. They may have large muscle mass, but that is usually to disguise the weakness behind their eyes.

Many of that first type is the union worker that buys a Harley because they have the expendable income, and of that group are thousands of police, firefighter and factory workers, the so-called middle class. They bring out their motorcycles when the sun shines and the weather is warm. And in the windows of their cars and trucks they place a sticker proclaiming, “Harley Davidson,” so as to let people know that they have a motorcycle at home in the garage.

This tendency says a lot about their character.

For a while, I was vice-president of the Suzuki Club of North America and I was on a long ride with them all across Ohio. My wife and I put 500 miles on our bike that day, but I had a dispute with the president because we hit rain and he wanted to stop under an overpass. He figured that because he was president of the organization that I should follow his lead, especially in front of the other members.

I quit the club that day and road in the rain alone with my wife clutched to my back. We all met at a dealership later that day for a membership drive, but that was the last day I ever spoke to those guys. The philosophic differences between us were too great.

You see, this is the fundamental trouble with our nation. America was founded on freedom and independence, bravery, valor, rugged individualism, endurance and a tendency toward isolationism. This new breed of American raised in the labor movement, which has its roots in European socialism attracts the weak, soft minds of those that are afraid to compete.

There is no question that through social legislation the life of the working poor can be improved, as is evidence in the modern union laborer. I’ve known many of those people all my life and their hearts are for the most part soft. They only have courage in groups. They rule through thuggish intimidation because alone they are weak souls that only ride their motorcycles on sunny days if at all. What they fail to understand, which is why socialism fails 100% of the time is that everyone’s success in this life or failure, is depended upon the “character” of the individual.

Collectivism lacks character, and that is why the same people walking around Wisconsin or Ohio with signs protesting the removal of collective bargaining legislation are terrified, because they don’t have the character to exist on their own actions, and they are un-American in my opinion. At least the America I understand.

Now to them, in the Socialist States of America they are American, and they’ll fly their flags proudly. I know them well. Because they lack character and individual strength they are easily mislead since they don’t know their own history, they have allowed others to rewrite it for their convenience.

This is why they believe collective bargaining is their “right.” They have allowed themselves to be soft, and psychologically weak. They only have strength in mass swarms which isn’t strength at all. They are a spreading cancer if anything that will trade freedom for security out of sheer lack of character.

A part of me feels sorry for those union protestors. 90,000 or even 100,000 fools can fill a stadium at a sport event, or even a rock concert. They don’t represent anything but a collective hive of insect minded creatures that can carry signs and attempt to hide their lack of character behind a mass. All they can do is make noise, scream and chant, or inflict vandalism on their opponents, because they don’t have the character to meet the majority equally in a war of ideas. I feel sorry for them because they lack the courage and character to truly be an American.

Our nation was founded by pirates, adventures, and intellectuals that dared to question the European socialism trends that Marx captured in his little pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. I know some real Americans. They are a patient group that is easily overlooked by the media because they are self-reliant. And compared to the socialist, soft-minded, left-winged, characterless, malcontents inspired to chant as a mob to achieve rights that they have no claim to are in for a sad and pathetic awakening, the real Americans will be there when everything collapses because they are always what held the nation together.

The public sector worker has always been a parasite that took far more than it gave, and received a pat on the head like a dog, by politicians just looking for a vote. Collective bargaining gave improper rights to those that didn’t deserve it, by taking from those Americans that worked hard, and taught their children to have character. Such people are what hold the nation together with the heart of those old pirates that were willing to do anything to leave behind the tyranny of Europe.Unions are European by design and that makes them disgusting and doomed to fail and here is the reason why, radicals place too much emphasis on the monotony of a day’s work. They identify themselves as a “laborer” and not person of character and that is why these people will fail at life no matter how much money we give them. They meditate on that which is depressing, those hours of the day that they sell to someone else in exchange for financial compensation. And they expect that for all time they can minimize the impact of that sale through collective bargaining. Their failure is that they lost their character and become their jobs, so thus they see nothing but that time they’ve sold away. They seek to fill that void with more financial compensation.

That’s why they are a broken people doomed to fail over and over in their lives. To hear them speak is like listening to the ghost of a depressed soul that doesn’t know that life has left it. All you can feel is pity for the poor creature.
Thugs, losers and mindless fools are bred because they traded character for socialism.

It is these characters that have turned our society into a Logothete of ineptitude, over regulated and uninventive.
And that is something that deserves to be despised.

Rich Hoffman

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

Hagan Uses Racist Slurs, Grayson Tries to Start a Fight: The Hypocrisy of Progressives

Bob Hagan, a Democrat from Youngstown recently participated in a disgraceful exchange on Facebook with Kevin Crowther during a debate over S.B.5. Hagan did what most Democrats and union supporters do when they are intellectually challenged by facts, they called their intellectual superiors names. Hagan called Kevin“Buckwheat” on Facebook for all to see.

Here is that exchange.

Kevin is a black man, a conservative that was making some great points that Hagan couldn’t answer. So like a child on the playground at wits end, Hagan retreated into a racial slur.

Isn’t that something? I thought Democrats were all about minority rights, equality for all, and looking out for the little guy. Yet here is Hagan calling a black man, “buckwheat!”

Here is Hagan’s contact information and bio.

http://www.house.state.oh.us/index.php?option=com_displaymembers&task=detail&district=60

If you have lived under a rock for the last century, “Buckwheat” was the little black boy on “Little Rascals.” After Hagan’s comments, many people went to the press and a few websites carried the story. I learned about it during a recent Tea Party meeting. If you read this article, you can see that Hagan is sorry he “got caught” I mean sorry he slipped with the racial slur.

http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/feb/27/hagan-falls-flat-on-face-8212-book-that-/

Why is he sorry? Well, apparently he wants to run for Mayor of Youngstown, and that will never happen if he can’t capture the black vote. So now that he has realized that arguing with people on Facebook is a pretty stupid idea considering that people can take screen shots, like the one you see on this page. Sorry Bob, but you revealed your true thoughts and it won’t be forgotten with double talk. Why does Hagan seem to have problems with black people? The event with Kevin took place on February 19th. It’s not a conservative conspiracy to take his seat, because a year prior to this “buckwheat” incident Hagan was in the way of another man trying to view belly dancers on a stage and Bob wouldn’t get out-of-the-way. The two men had some words, and Bob was knocked out cold, the man who punched Hagan in the face caused a gash in his chin needing 11 stitches. The man who struck Hagan was a black man. However, according to Hagan, all these things that keep happening to him are the fault of some conservatives from Southern Ohio.

Now, you’d think that this would be a big national story. But it’s not. For the most part, the papers and TV stations have given Hagan a pass. After all, he’s one of them, he’s a progressive, so his answers that he didn’t mean “buckwheat” in a racial way, is accepted.

Now here is another one of those liberals that just doesn’t seem to connect the dots in his mind, listen to Alan Grayson talking about the “hate” and “racism” from Republicans.

But this is the same Alan Grayson that sent this letter to a friend of mine. Have a read and see of those two people match up.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX:

On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, the public rallied peacefully in support of 40,000 workers in Chicago who had gone on strike, to win the right to organize. The police attacked, and eight died.

On July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 3800 workers went on strike, to win the right to organize. Three hundred hired and armed goons attacked them. Five people died.

On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, 1200 coal miners went on strike, to win the right to organize. The Colorado National Guard attacked their shantytown, and burned it to the ground. Nineteen people died. Two women and 11 children were asphyxiated, and they burned to death.

Here and around the world, many people have fought and died, so that you and I would have the right to organize.
And so that 250,000 public workers in Wisconsin would have that right, too.

This is not exactly a new idea. Six months after the Ludlow Massacre, President Wilson signed the Clayton Act, prohibiting the prosecution of union members under Antitrust Law. That was almost a century ago.

Two decades later, during the Franklin Roosevelt’s first term as President, he signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. It protects the right to organize. That was over 75 years ago.

The right to organize also is a fundamental principle of international law. Over 150 countries have ratified the “Right to Organize” Convention, an international treaty. It was adopted in 1949, over 60 years ago.
So why are we even talking about this, 11 years into the 21st Century?

Because the teabaggers want to “take back America.” They want to take it back, all right – take it all the way back to the 19th century. When there was no right to organize. When people worked for a dollar a day. When grown men competed against children for jobs. When women were barred from most jobs entirely. When you worked until you died.
Not to mention slavery.

I want to see an America that is healthy and wealthy.

They want an America that provides cheap labor to our corporate overlords. An America where the middle class is chained by debt.

We didn’t ask for this fight. But we have no choice except to fight back. For the survival of the middle class in America. For us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. And so that the victims in Haymarket, in Homestead and in Ludlow did not die in vain.

As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, “it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny.”
I’m ready to fight for what’s right. What about you?

Courage,
Alan Grayson

______________________________________________________________________

Here Alan is calling Tea Party supporters “teabaggers” and calling for a fight. Also, included in his email is this emblem of a “fist.” Isn’t that kind of violent?

Let me give Mr. Grayson a history lesson: Slavery was ended by a Republican, Abraham Lincoln. That’s the really tall guy who had a beard for you MTV viewers. He was a conservative.

The labor movement was started by another Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who fought during the first decade of the 20th century to break down anti-trusts and corporate power in machine politics. And you know what, I agree with what Teddy was trying to do. But………after his presidency, Roosevelt went on a grand safari hunt in Africa for an entire year, and every country he visited touted him as a king. Somewhere out there in the Serengeti Teddy became a bleeding heart progressive. Maybe it was his age, maybe it was a form of madness, who knows, but if Teddy had a fault it was that he craved power, and suddenly he didn’t have any power after the presidency. Before returning home, he toured all the nations of Europe dining with kings, queens, princes and Emperors. Everyone wanted to eat from his hand, and it went to his head.

The final blow came when Teddy came back to the United States and saw that his good friend President Taft had allowed machine politics to retake the Republican Party so Teddy decided to run for a third term of president. But the Republicans wouldn’t let him run on their tickets because Teddy had become, too progressive and had lost touch with his conservative principles. So they pushed him out of the party hoping he’d just retire.

All it did was make Teddy angry, because deep down inside, Roosevelt wanted power back so he formed his opinions around the new emerging “progressive” party being formed by “rich” Republicans seeking a utopia type era in America. So while the Republicans divided over progressivism and split the vote during the 1912 election, Woodrow Wilson won under a softer form of progressivism on the Democratic ticket.

Wilson adopted many of Roosevelt’s progressive reforms, especially after his wife died early in his presidency. So Roosevelt’s progressive platform filled the intellectual void of Wilson in his grief. But Wilson was an ideological academic and was not as sensible as Roosevelt and progressivism spun out of control. Wilson was a racist to the extreme, but Democrats seem to overlook that, just like they do with their current golden boy, Bob Hagan in Youngstown. Does anybody think Jessie Jackson will come to Youngstown and speak out against Hagan. Or will the Democrats denounce their affiliation with Wilson? You already know the answer.

Alan Grayson attempted to give a history of the labor movement as if to validate the union movement. The fact is, if Roosevelt had not fought hard for the worker rights against the corporate greed, they’d still be going on to this day. It took a president to provide that kind of leadership. The union movement only rode on Teddy’s coat tails and a friendly Woodrow Wilson administration that was so lost it was easy for the unions to take credit. When F.D.R came to the presidency, which was Teddy’s younger cousin, Franklin also suffered the Roosevelt tendency to elitism that came from their New York high society roots. Franklin came to power in government as a state senator when Teddy was most progressive and it seemed to have a serious influence on Franklin.

Franklin had another problem aside from being a progressive leaning young man……..he couldn’t keep his pants on, and had multiple affairs while married to Eleanor.

Eleanor forgave these imperfections, but she lost interest in sex with Franklin and buried her time into social and political causes. She wasn’t doing all that social work because she wanted to fix the world. She was trying to fix the world because she could fix her marriage.

These were psychologically messed up people, these progressives. Does Eleanor remind you of anyone? Listen to her here.

Now progressives might listen to that and think, “oh, she’s speaking my heart.” I hear something different. I hear a woman that desperately wants sex. She was well aware that her husband was sneaking his long time mistress, nicknamed Mrs. Johnson into the White House during 1941. It wasn’t revealed to the public until the 1960s. It left Eleanor drowning in jealous betrayal and a yearning for what every woman wants, and F.D.R wouldn’t give it to her. She was suffering from the same dilemma that thousands of women suffer from, an attempt to find redemption in a career of some kind only to find out much later that nothing can fix a broken heart. Such imperfections should not be followed, as they appear to be. They are to be avoided. Broken minds do not make the type of people anyone should attempt to emulate.
And here is a fan of Eleanor, they have a lot in common.

How about that deficit control and all that job creation?

It’s quite obvious what the facts are, and the days of pushing this stuff under the rug are over. Progressives are a broken people, and the labor movement is teaming with progressive influence. The name calling from Democrats and the hypocritical, divisive politics won’t fly any more. These are people who can’t even fix themselves so how can they fix anything in government.

Progressives are all about remaking the world. They don’t care how they do it. They’ll attempt to pound people out of their way if they have to, because these progressives are trying to outrun their own form of insanity.

I can speak for myself. I don’t want anything to do with progressive thought. I do want to take the nation to a period before progressive philosophy took over the American consciousness like a sickness. I would be the first to fight for worker rights against corporate greed, and I don’t need a labor union of power hungry progressives to tell me that it’s right to treat people fairly.

And I don’t want anything to do with a group of politicians that speak out of both sides of their mouths. Bob Hagan got caught using a racist slur. Alan Grayson is trying to incite violence among the union rank and file. I would suggest any financial damage caused by union radicals should be sent to Mr. Grayson for his incendiary comments and blind rhetoric, spewing half-baked historical facts to the masses that look to him for the truth, which he fails to offer. Instead he panders to the mob providing viability to his progressive philosophy, which has set America on a path of the pathetic as Republicans spend half their time defending themselves for far less impositions than what these Democrats have committed, recently.

If we follow the progressive path, we will continue to fail. If we continue to listen to the double talk of people like Hagan, Grayson, Clinton and many others, that are lost in their own personal problems and attempt to fix the world where they fail to fix themselves. We don’t need a world made in their broken images. Government is not their playground for experimental progressive politics which sends us all on a path to be second-rate in the world market place.

And unions are not a right given by government. They should absolutely be illegal. They have no place in public funding, and what Grayson fails to point out in his child like grasp of history is that his beloved F.D.R also said that no public union should ever enter the mind of any politician. But he won’t tell the mushy minded followers of his rhetoric that. He is able to mislead his flocks of sheep because it’s worked in the past, and the plan is for it to work in the future.

Rich Hoffman

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

“Oh What Big Teeth You Have”: How much do police and firefighters cost in West Chester?

I wondered why when the film Red Riding Hood was announced to be released, film producers were re-telling that old child hood story. Can’t they come up with anything else? Then I watched all the “collective bargaining” debates over the last couple of weeks and realized that people needed to relearn how the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood, so the timing of the film seemed suddenly appropriate. In that story The Wolf disguised itself as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, so to take the poor little girl by surprise trying to appear as something she trusted.

I have held on to information regarding the amount that Police and Fire Departments cost their communities for several months now. When I first came across this information it was way back in October of 2010. The West Chester Police Department was putting up a levy, and many of the people who were against the Lakota Levy were of course against the police levy. I assured many of those people there was no way people would pass the Police Levy, not as strapped as the community was, and the cops were crazy for asking. After all, weren’t they already very well compensated? I had seen the numbers, where some of them were making well over 90K per year. Some people in the community had no idea that the police and fire departments made so much. Many, myself included thought that police and fire fighters should be well paid, because we ask them to do a lot in the community, and figured that a good wage was somewhere around 55K to 65K per year. 100K per year seems outrageous, but that’s what the numbers told me was going on.

Below I include that list of all police and fire department staff in West Chester, Ohio where a levy was just approved in November that are currently making over 60K per year. This is public information because they are public employees. They report to the public! Not the other way around. They chose to work for the public, so should not be upset that this information is available. The reason it’s available is so that the community can understand how their tax money is spent. In this case, when we are discussing the problems with collective bargaining it has been the police and firefighters that have been complaining that they should somehow be exempt from the debate, because as they put it, “when society runs away from danger, they run to it.”

For the convenience of protecting society, I would say they are worth something like I described above. But anything over 65K I’d be against. The median household income in West Chester, Ohio is just a bit above 90K. Some of those homes are from single income families, but vast majorities are dual income homes, or homes where two married people and a child are working, which stacks up the numbers. So the misconception that residents in the wealthy area of West Chester are all rich is just that, a misconception. Divide the median income by two and that gives you the average wage in West Chester of around 50K per year. Yet through collective bargaining, the police and firefighter unions, just like the teachers unions, have driven up the cost of their service to extraordinary levels. The levy in November had to be implemented for one primary reason and that was to deal with the “step increases” scheduled for the upcoming years. That means that many of the people on the list you’ll see below are scheduled for an increase just because of their tenure. It doesn’t matter if they are already at a wage level that the rest of society deems reasonable. The collective bargaining agreements don’t care about common sense. The union mentality is that they don’t care where the money comes from. They have become extraordinarily arrogant over the years and many Republicans have been soft and non-combative, and have not meant them equally on the field of battle in the arena of ideas. Republicans have routinely caved under union pressure. This left Democrats to ram through State Revised Code and collective bargaining negotiations that are quite insane if looked upon with financial eyes.

Yet this is the cause of the current financial crises being felt all across this country. And in a few locations, like Ohio and Wisconsin a new type of conservative is being put into political positions by people who are sick of the game. These conservatives, driven by the Tea Party are expected to actually do the job, not cut deals with machine politics. And that’s part of what everyone is confused by. The United States is a Republic, not a democracy. If you don’t like what the representatives in government do, dump them on the next election. But what these Republicans are doing, they aren’t doing it for the Koch brothers, or any other corporate interest. They are doing it because it has been noticed, first by the Tea Party people all across the nation, that we need government to operate more like a business, in order to achieve a smaller government with more fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, public sector jobs, like fireman, police officers and teachers who have used emotion to negotiate great wages are going to be the first to endure this scrutiny, which must happen.

Those three public sector unions, teachers, firemen, and police have used emotion for a long time to pass tax increases that their union leaders clearly understand must happen in order to sustain the contracts they’ve negotiated with school boards, trustees and city councils. In the case of West Chester, which is no different from any place else, signs went up all over our community in November reminding us how important police are to our safety, and we must pass a levy to keep our families safe.

We hear the same thing from firemen when they need to increase their funding, and we all know that’s what happens in schools. It’s all about the kids, right!

But when you understand that at some point someone in the union leadership should have recognized that they were maxing out their wage levels, someone should have put on the wage brakes, but nobody did. They seem to really think that wages can continue to climb at a proportional rate regardless of productivity or actual job skills.

One of the questions I asked of several public officials is who regulates how much overtime firemen and police apply to their jobs? Who decides if it’s needed or not, because what’s happening is many of the senior officers are logging more OT hours closer to their retirement so they can have a greater retirement payout. But why? Who is protecting the tax payer from such cost overruns? Because that job isn’t being done.

I can say that in companies that I’ve worked for; overtime is something that we always watched carefully. We look at labor hours each week and determine what any OT gave us in relation to product output. Who’s doing that for the public sector, because the costs according to the list below appear to be extremely high! If such payrolls as listed below were submitted in the private sector to a careful business owner, heads would roll in a major way at such obvious waste. But in the public sector, such costs over runs are just part of the way business is done. This is why these organizations are afraid of S.B.5. They know in their hearts they’ve been gaming the system for a long time, and they are being exposed. The manipulative marketing techniques are losing their appeal, especially when America has the opportunity to see these public sector workers in action during these protests.

Many of these public workers have buried themselves in debt, and their lifestyle dictates such high levels of income, even though it’s always been unsustainable. Nobody told them that though. Their union leaders just encouraged them to continue buying luxuries without question so long as their union dues were paid on time.

Now they are worried because they see the public anger headed in their direction. The old tricks aren’t working, so now their union leaders are resorting to violence and the kind of threats that got us into all this trouble to begin with.

You see, the reason I don’t want to support unions is because of the radicals behind the movement. It’s nothing against the members themselves, but I despise bullies and there have been a lot of bullies emerging lately. I have two examples below.

These public workers have not been so well compensated because of their incredible value. They’ve been so well compensated because of the strong-armed tactics of the unions, and the weakness of our public officials we put into office that did not stand up to them over the years. This allowed for the incredible budget problems we have today. There is not an infinite amount of money being held at the end of a rainbow by some rich leprechaun, like the Koch brothers or anybody else, that if released would save everyone. Those types of fantasies are the rhetoric of the economic illiterate. The rich will always be rich. If you go after them, they’ll just move to another country and take their jobs with them. In fact, that’s exactly what’s happened. Where are the jobs? Mexico, India, China, Europe, and why? They don’t want to deal with union thugs. So what’s the response from SEIU? “We have to become global.” Good luck with that in China. Such a thought shows the vast ignorance of union leadership and their understanding of economics.

One such extreme example of this union mentality is the below letter sent to the senate in Wisconsin just after they voted to strip away collective bargaining. This isn’t a new strategy by the union radicals. This went on in the 60’s and 70’s to great effect. I see them no different from an organized crime element. The sole purpose of this letter is to strike fear in the minds of these politicians and discourage any courageous union reforms in the future. This letter is complete as written minus the senders email address; misspellings are left as they were written. The source of this letter is 620 WTMJ Wisconsin News Radio. They are pushing for a police investigation which appears to be not happening, which in itself should be shocking! This letter was signed. I would expect to see this on the front page of every newspaper and this person should be immediately taken into custody for his terrorist’s threat. But I can find no place where this has happened as of this writing.

http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/117726263.html?blog=y

____________________________________________________________________________________________

From: XXXX
Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM
To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen
Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!
Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes
will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain
to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it
will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit
that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.
WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in
the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me
have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that
support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing
with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand
for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.
We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a
nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave
it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the
message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are
now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a
demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed
in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.
This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t
tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are
not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided
to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s
necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making
them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families
and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please
understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked
everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel
that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives
of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and
say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

____________________________________________________________________________________________

The second event occurred at the Liberty Twp Tea Party meeting on Monday March 7, 2011. That meeting focused on excessive costs and red tape that business must endure to do business. Much of that discussion centered on the effects of the “CAT Tax,” prevailing wages, unemployment rate increases, and problems centering on the 1099 forms. Roger Reynolds spoke about the ridiculous regulations in the government building in Hamilton where if mail is delivered to the wrong floor, the mail cannot be just walked up to the next floor, but must be resent through the post office, which defies common sense. The gist of the discussion was that most of the regulations in place were simply to preserve jobs, which has a noble intent, but has directly contributed to the budget problems all across the State of Ohio, and the nation of the United States.

Things became exciting as the meeting was closing. A teacher and a fireman, crashed our Tea Party to protest S.B.5. Being good Tea Party people, there was no anger at this imposition, but a lively discussion erupted as the two public workers stood before the crowd of approximately 250 people and pleaded to us not to support the S.B.5 Bill. The argument centered on the usual stuff, “S.B.5 will put us out of work. It’s not fair to ask us to work for less. Who’s going to pay our pension fund?”

They spoke for about 15 minutes then started repeating themselves. The Tea Party people had been very patient asking hard questions, but never getting divisive. Since the building we were renting had it’s time expire some of us starting folding up the chairs to put them away and let the two public workers know that the meeting was over, as politely as possible. Before they left, I approached the two workers and asked them, “So what do you propose to do? How do we pay for you? Raise taxes even more?”

We shook hands and parted disagreeing, but not hateful to each other. They didn’t have an answer on how to pay for their work. Especially when you realize how much we are spending on public workers. For those workers, I found out the teacher was only making 52K and he had a Master’s Degree. That didn’t seem unreasonable, but I know of many more public workers out there that have allowed “collective bargaining” to give them wages that would be unheard of in the private sector. Many of these so-called middle-class jobs that police, firefighters, and teachers are engaging in are at the top of the pay scale for any job, and when they argue that they are just simple middle-class citizens that are sacrificing themselves for the good of our nation and our future, it leaves you scratching your head when you find out how much they make, because in a lot of house holds, their income makes them considerably wealthy compared to the other 83% of the state that is not a part of “collective bargaining.”

I thought about the Tea Party crashers for a good part of the week and considered their audacity of coming to that group uninvited to make a personal emotional plea. They felt empowered to do so. Their action demonstrates their mentality which truly believes they are entitled to the benefits they’ve become accustom to.

Because of these two actions I decided to put the information I had been holding for so long onto these pages for others to see, because if we’re ever going to fix these problems, we all need to understand what we’re dealing with. So here is that list I mentioned of the police and fire officers and support staff of West Chester Twp. It’s not to put a specific light on them, because the problem is statewide, even nationwide. But because they just passed a levy a few months ago and are in my community, so I already had these numbers. They make a good example of how much these services cost. It becomes clear when looking over this list that the police and fire department unions are trying to protect this very lucrative compensation that collective bargaining has yielded them. This is why they are protesting S.B.5 so furiously, and this is why they are already planning to put the issue on a referendum for the November ballot, hoping to return to the “good ol’ days” that they are currently enjoying once S.B.5 becomes law by the end of March.

From a management side, it is also clear why our taxes are so out of control. The reason for S.B.5 is to put local communities back in control of these types of costs, which of course the unions don’t want. They want chaos so they can continue to push up the costs of their members. To give you an idea how much the union is relied upon among the people listed above I can report that there are two police captains on that list that are not in the union, because their positions are a bit like a superintendent of a school system. They currently have appeals filed where a judge struck down their attempts to re-join the union on grounds that they would not be impartial to negotiate contracts if they were a part of the union. This says everything about where those captains’ loyalties are. A judge’s opinion wasn’t good enough so the appeals were filed. This is the game we’re playing and what they are protecting.

And who could blame them? These people are being paid “extremely” well, and they know it. What is disappointing is that they aren’t putting the good of the community in their thoughts. Further taxation among a public that is making 30% to 45% less in most cases is the only option they are interested in exploring.

My mind on this issue is open because danger doesn’t impress me. Many are not comfortable looking at firefighters and police officers, or even teachers with scrutiny because there is an inner guilt that is built into all of us not to question these professions. It’s considered un-patriotic. For many, many years the media has pandered to these groups in order to get their support in exchange for stories. Talk show hosts claiming to wrap themselves in the American flag hang themselves to police and firefighters particularly after 911 in order to associate their image with justice. And for year’s police, judges, lawyers and many others in the legal profession have formed a brotherhood of nepotism that cannot be ignored as they share in the defense of that thin blue line. But worst of all has been politicians looking for the FOP vote. Those politicians are just as guilty of pandering to bloc voting with police and fireman as those accused of doing the same with immigrants and other minorities.

As I look at the wage rate numbers and watch the protests on TV about collective bargaining, I now understand how, Little Red Riding Hood ended up in the stomach of the wolf. “Oh Grandma, what big eyes you have.”

“The better to see you with.”

The enemy that seeks to eat us comes to us as a trusted representative in order to lure us close enough to eat. It’s a classic story that we teach our young to avoid these very types of pitfalls. Is the wolf evil for wanting to eat Little Red Riding Hood? No. It’s just a wolf. It eats to fill its belly. That’s all it understands.

The dark side to the pandering of police officers and fire departments by politicians for such a long time is the same as the reason many people appease a bully. Nobody wants to be on the bad side of the police, because there are plenty of stories of retaliation from “the brotherhood.” Massaging the ego of someone more powerful is the most effective way to avoid trouble, and politicians and other media personalities are very guilty of doing just that. The cost of that pandering can be seen in the wages which are in my opinion way out of control. In organized crime they might call it a “paying for protection.” In our communities, we call it a “tax increase.”

Now that S.B.5 has been put on the table, I’m sure it’s shocking to many of these unions to see that a great number of people see through the game they’ve been playing for such a long time. I’m sure many of them are hurt, because most of the employees in the public sector believe in what they are doing. Like most people they put on blinders to the negatives around them. We all know of trouble in our work places, improprieties that we choose to overlook because that’s how we get up and go to work every day. Most of the public workers are no different, and aren’t openly plotting to bankrupt the communities they work in. They see themselves as heroes, because they’ve been told that by so many over the years. It is difficult for them to suddenly see themselves as the “big bad wolf.” But the reality is that’s how people really feel deep down inside. Appeasement is confused with respect.

To me, a hero is someone who acts out of sacrifice. Running into danger when the rest of society runs away is what the tax payers pay those people for, so they do it for money, which is fine, but don’t pretend that doing a job that’s dangerous makes someone heroic with danger being the qualifier of heroism. The real heroes are those that do good deeds without any compensation, not even a pat on the back, because it’s the right thing to do. Paying over 90K for police and firefighters doesn’t qualify as heroism. It qualifies as an expensive employee for the community.

When the threats and intimidation strategies come into play we see what these people we thought were heroes are really about. A hero would admit that they have been taking too much from the community and would come to the table and put themselves in line with the rest of the community because they are public servants. They wouldn’t seek to send threatening letters to senators, call people names, or crash local Tea Parties to plead to the emotions of the good public just trying to do the right thing and afford our tax burdens.

The Big Bad Wolf only thinks of filling its belly even if it means eating the innocent.

Rich Hoffman

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

Jim Tressel, John Kasich Speak From the Fires of Columbus

The nation’s eyes were on Columbus, Ohio March 8th, 2011 for more than one reason, but shared a common sickness.Here is a clip from Governor Kasich’s State of the State speech and the reaction from those that don’t agree with S.B.5. Of note is the teacher upset that she is about to lose her retirement.

One thing that we must wonder is where did those people riding the system with such wonderful benefits think the money was coming from? With all their education didn’t they do the math? Did they think the system could grow and grow and grow without the revenue running out at some point?

The answer is, no, they didn’t. Because such realities are ugly truths that school administrations and other tax payer funded organizations seek at every opportunity not to consider.

For Police and Firefighters, they use a perceived “danger” to justify their extraordinary costs. “We run to danger when others run away.” It takes an argument away from logic and places it in emotion, so the people who fund the whole business don’t think about the reality, because most people want to run away from danger and will gladly throw any amount of money at a situation to “feel” safe.

But in schools, the way they disguise their perils is through sports. Sports are a wonderful unifying factor that virtually everyone can sympathize with and it keeps people entertained and from prying too deeply into the secrets that are pushed under the carpet.

This is why when it was discovered that Jim Tressel, head coach of the OSU Football Program had covered up improprieties at Ohio State University that many on the inside were well aware of, or had plausible deniability, but on the outside Ohio State is marketed as a beacon of academic and athletic excellence. So to appease the growing anger at having been caught attempting to cover up improper behavior from players on the football team, the school imposed a two game suspension and fined Tressel $250,000 of his $3.5 million annual salary.

For details of those improprieties listen to this exchange between Bill Cunningham and Lance McAlister of 700 WLW.

Ohio State hopes that the NCAA will be appeased and not implement further punishment to the football program. After all, Ohio State is one of the largest universities in the country. Its football team is nationally recognized and in the end, this is wonderful advertisement for the school that sells a tremendous amount of merchandise to former alumni and potential students. It’s big business.

To understand that business a bit I refer to the great film, The Program staring James Caan which came out in 1993. Caan reminds me a lot of Jim Tressel in that film so if you want to understand the situation of college football, and how it is used to sell the university system to millions of fans, have a look at this clip.

Improprieties are routinely overlooked because it’s a competitive world especially in sports, and the difference between winning and losing for a university is millions of dollars. But why? Because if the public perception can be built around a “program” and the public feels their money is going to produce a winner, people have shown time and time again that they are willing to look the other way to have victory.

Much of the film The Program, James Caan’s character is putting out fires from his players that are constantly getting in trouble. But as Caan said in a review board considering suspension of the star quarterback, “70,000 people don’t come out on a Saturday to see other students do math! They come out to see a star!”

Ohio State and it’s fans will seek quickly to put this whole issue behind them, and on opening day it will be forgotten, except for Tressel’s absence and the suspension of the other suspended players, because everyone wants to look the other way, because the fans, students, administration, even the sports world want to discuss a winner.

How does all this apply to John Kasich’s speech, which occurred just hours before the Tressel press conference? Well, because tax payers are finally out of money to throw at police and firefighters that run into danger while the rest of us run away. Many of us, me included, are saying “I’ll be happy to run into danger if it will save me some money.” Danger doesn’t impress me as something to avoid.

And the whole teaching profession has hidden carefully behind the marketing machine of sports. Even small schools have sports programs that communities will seek to attend on an autumn Friday evening. The dirty little secret is that when people look back on their education days, they usually remember the things they did, the games they played and the events they did with their friends as opposed to what they learned on a Thursday in February during history class. Most of the teachers in student’s lives come and go as a montage of faces. Occasionally a teacher here and there jumps out as exceptional, but for the most part the education process is viewed as something to be endured, not embraced and because of that little fact, the education finance system has placed band-aid after band-aid on the situation. Administrators attempt to whisk improper sex cases and other improprieties between students and teachers under the carpet behind public relations consultants and friendly newspapers in the trade-off for sports information. After all, sports pages occupy whole sections of newspapers and reporters need content to fill those pages. And for some households, the sports page offers entertainment that their own child may actually be a part of, and that’s exciting.

Discussion of the blurred lines between education and sports must occur in order to discuss the revenue needs of those institutions. This is something that will come under increasing scrutiny, especially when it comes to School Choice as a spotlight on academics will become the focus with less attention applied to sports programs.

The battles that our society normally regulated to football players on a football field are now migrating into finance and politics, because the real fight has been discovered to be there, not in an entertainment venue between the hash marks. The world is changing because of that shift and those that cling to the old model will find their eyes filled with tears because in this game there will be winners and losers, just like in football. And we can no longer hide those tears with the cheers of football, and the sins that are committed all in the name of winning, because that ethical approach has bankrupted us both financially and morally.

Just look at Jim Tressel, the poster boy of both finance and ethics at Ohio State University to understand what Kasich is trying to protect Ohio from.

Rich Hoffman

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

Chris Littleton’s Message: Stand Behind S.B.5 Now!

The minority can no longer rule us. Yet hearing these chants, you could easily forget that they only represent 13.7 percent of the Ohio population. But here are the union protestors chanting to keep the over-reaching promises given to them by years of corrupt politics.

In such times there are people who rise up to bring people’s minds together to defend against a threat, or attempted threat. Below is a message from Chris Littleton, Co-Founder of The Liberty Council. It’s a call to action for S.B.5 that I gladly pass along on these pages. The radical union element is hard at work to undermine S.B.5. So we have to counter that energy with our own effort.
Here is Chris being interviewed on 700 WLW by Bill Cunningham.

I wanted to pass along this message from The Ohio Liberty Council

__________________________________________________________________

I am the Silent Majority!

Dear Fellow Citizens and Taxpayers,

The fight to reduce government spending continues as a bill to end monopoly bargaining rights for public employee moves from the Ohio Senate to the Ohio House of Representatives.

The Bill

You’ve probably read or heard about the public sector labor union protests down at the Statehouse in Columbus over the last two weeks. The union-funded protests have received a lot of media coverage. The labor unions are protesting Senate Bill 5 (SB5), which is a bill that would allow your township/village/city/school district/county/state to control the out-of-control compensation, health care, and gold-plated pension costs of their government employees.

Because many of those local government entities are hitting deficits and compensation package costs are the single largest piece of local government budgets, without more control over spending, they will be forced to raise your already high taxes (Ohio: 7th highest state and local tax burden in US).

The bill will attempt to do things like moving health benefit contributions for public employees more in line with the private sector, taking those public employees from what is sometimes 0%-5% contributions to at least a 15% contribution of their healthcare premiums. You know how out of line that system is since you are used to paying 15%-30% of your own healthcare premiums, or even 100% if you are self-employed.

And, that’s the goal – moving public sector employees in line with economic realities of the 88% of the America’s work force who aren’t in unions. That’s right – the vast majority of Ohioans and all American workers do not enjoy tax payer funded benefit plans, so don’t let them steal the terms of “middle class” and “working class.” I work. You work. We are the silent majority.

The Action Item

To show legislators and Governor John Kasich that there is a silent majority of Ohioans who would prefer government compensation cost cuts over large tax hikes, we are working with multiple groups
for a:

“I am the Silent Majority Virtual Rally” on Thursday, March 17 from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm.

You may be wondering what a “virtual rally” is. Well, because I know you are too busy working, taking care of your kids, and trying to get ahead, you don’t have time to drive to Columbus for a big rally. So, to make participating in this important event as easy and quick as possible for you, the “virtual rally” will consist of one roughly thirty second task during lunch.

Simply Send an E-mail, steps below:

(1) Place these three addresses for House Speaker William Batchelder, Governor Kasich, and the email used to make sure we get an accurate count of how many Ohioans participate (district69@ohr.state.oh.us; John@kasichforohio.com; imthesilentmajority@gmail.com) in the “To:” line,

(2) type “I am the Silent Majority” in the “Subject:” line,

(3) type “I support SB5” in the body of the email, and

(4) send the email anytime between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm on Thursday, March 17.

That is it. Thirty seconds, 8 words, 3 addresses, 1 email, and the inbox ping of thousands of Ohioans making their voices heard. Freedom at its best!

If you really want to make our voices heard, please take a minute or so RIGHT NOW to forward this email to family members, friends, and business colleagues who you think might want to participate in America’s first-of-its-kind virtual rally. If you don’t speak up now, the labor unions and their push to raise taxes will be the only thing our elected officials hear. The time to act is now!

Follow us on Twitter @OLCPAC

Sincerely,

Chris Littleton
Co-Founder, Ohio Liberty Council

________________________________________________________________________

Rich Hoffman

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