Category: Mystery

The Flip Flop of Steve Chabot: Who is the media?

There are so many things wrong with the Steve Chabot town hall meeting on Monday, August 22, 2011 where he had the police confiscate the cameras of citizens recording his speech.  Before I get into the details of this listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW cover the two videos he put on his blog site, both of them from Progress Ohio which shows the terrible act being committed.

After the whole issue blew up, and Doc was covering it on WLW, Chabot attempted to clarify that in the future, he would make the policy clear that only the media would be allowed to have cameras during a town hall meeting.  Well, that created so much of an uproar on 700 WLW that later in the day Chabot came out and said that there would not be any rules about cameras in the future.  The reason it created an uproar is that the media cannot always be trusted, and politicians for way too long have learned to manipulate the media to make themselves look better.   

One of the greatest benefits of this modern age is that everyday people can also be part of the media.  With all the video cameras out there, and cell phones, and blog sites like this one, politicians can no longer wine and dine members of the media to mold their public image.  People have to actually be what they say they are, and that’s a great aspect of our current age.  This is why schools can’t get away with ripping off the tax payers anymore with fluffy terminology, because it is no longer just newspapers and television that are covering the “feel good” stories that shape public opinion.  Because of the internet and YouTube specifically a political blunder can now be seen, and not pushed under the rug so bad behavior can continue.  Stories like the Stacy Schuler case in Mason can no longer be “controlled” by a public relations media personality, because there are other ways for the public to get at the truth, or at least remember the event.  So politicians like Steve Chabot who are aware that his enemies, Progress Ohio are in attendance at his town hall meeting have tried to control their public image just like the policy shown in the video, of police confiscating the public video cameras.   Progress Ohio clearly was looking to rattle Chabot and get video they could use against him in a future campaign. Chabot has to be a good enough of a politician to stay away from double-talk and not give those people any ammunition.  But no politician has a right to “censor” their public image in a public forum.  That just isn’t something that can be allowed to happen.

Now, here’s the worst aspect of this situation……..it’s the fact that without any knowledge of the law, the police on the whim of a politician, can instruct the police to do their bidding.  Those police officers had no right to confiscate one single video camera.  If Chabot wanted to enforce a video camera policy, it was up to his staff to provide that security.  The police department cannot be used as his personal enforcement service.  And as to the early comments that Chabot uttered about only the media would be allowed to film events, that brings up the question, who is the media?  Is it the media that only the politician likes?  Is it the media that represents the major television stations?  Is it just the media like newspapers who have reporters that are kind to the political entity, of course not.  The media are the people who chose to cover it, so in this day and age, every member of society is a member of the media, and that’s the way it has to be.  So no politician has a right to pick and chose who covers them if they are a public official. 

I’m happy that Steve did the right thing in the end.  I’m sure his intentions were good, because he knew the sharks were in the water.  But this is a perfect example of how good intentions can pave the path to hell, because police powers were abused, private rights were abused, and trust in the government was violated all because a politician wished to control his public image with censorship.  That is the path that has placed our current political system into such a shambles, it is decades and decades of this kind of “censorship” that is just now being challenged because it is only in the last decade that virtually every citizen in America has their own video camera and access to the internet in order to convey the truth as they see it.  So the dynamic has changed for the better, and politicians must adjust to that dynamic because the dishonesty of politics can no longer be shoved under the rug to hide which just mounts up to a hugely expensive government full of dishonest people who stay in office because they had control of the media.

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

Lakota gets a Good Grade: But didn’t they say the world would end without a levy?

Wow, I came home to a flood of email today from parents upset about the busing cuts, and even angrier at the school system for not dealing with the excessively high salaries before taking away busing to their children. It looks like many people are starting to see how this scam works, and that is good to see. I’ll deal with that in another article because I think the bigger story is the recent rating that Lakota received from the ODE. Remember the busing cuts are only around 3% of the total budget, and it is the labor costs that make up 80% of the school budget, so let’s keep that in context.

Before we get into the details have a look at the various interviews from me, and those of the Yes Lakota people prior to the election of 2010 from the clip above. Listen to what the Yes Lakota people say will happen if the levy isn’t passed, then compare that information to the results you will see below and decide for yourself what’s fact from fiction.

As Lakota received news that they received from the Ohio Department of Education an “excellent” rating for the 10th year in a row, I was actually surprised. I fully expected with all the cuts and controversy of the last year to see a lower rating, after all that’s what the pro levy people said would happen if we didn’t pass a levy last fall, and even the school board said as much. But the levy didn’t pass, the district made deep cuts, yet last year the rating was 104.9, but this year the rating went up to 105.9. How did that happen? Below is the article from the Pulse Journal by Steven Mathews. Have a look for yourself.

_______________________
Lakota’s top state ranking 
puts district in elite group
Excellent with Distinction honor draws praise from community, school board members.

By Steven Matthews, Staff Writer 10:16 AM Wednesday, August 24, 2011

LIBERTY TWP. — The Lakota Local School District’s Board of Education met on Monday night, and much of the session was centered around the big news that was announced last week — the Excellent with Distinction honor awarded by the state for the 2010-11 year.

The meeting, which included a PowerPoint presentation from Assistant Superintendent Lon Stettler and praise from community members, lasted about 90 minutes at the Lakota Central Office.

“Despite the challenges that we had last year and we continue to go through, the focus is where it needs to be — in the classroom,” board member Lynda O’Connor said.

Stettler emphasized in his presentation that Lakota — the seventh-largest district in Ohio — was the largest district to receive the state’s highest honor.

It’s the 10th straight year that Lakota has earned the highest possible honor, and its 105.9 performance index is an all-time district high.

“In the last 10 years, we’ve experienced changing demographics,” President Joan Powell said.
“It demonstrates that our staff has risen to the occasion.”

• New Superintendent Karen Mantia said that she has met with several focus groups, which consisted of residents, business leaders, government officials and parents. She also plans to meet with students once the school year gets underway.

“Here’s what I learned,” Mantia said. “It’s absolutely imperative that if we do nothing else, we make sure we maximize our children’s performance, and maximize the staff’s performance and expertise. … Across the board, they all understand the expectation of our staff is high.”

• The board approved a policy to either provide a cell phone or a cell phone stipend of $60 per month for certain district positions. Chris Passarge, the executive director of business operations, said most eligible employees chose the stipend.

• The board also approved the acceptance of a $2,000 eTech Ohio grant that has been awarded to the Lakota East Freshman School.

Tamera Terndrup, a Spanish teacher at the school, will use the grant to purchase four wireless laptops with microphone headsets.
___________________________

I think that’s excellent news about the rating, the rest of those issues I’ll cover in another article, but it proves what the No Lakota people have been saying all along, for the school to do more with less, and you’ll find better results when you’re lean and mean. Oddly enough, Lakota did not even have a superintendent during this rating increase, so what does that mean? Lakota made cuts to their deficit, eliminated positions, cut busing, sports programs and electives and they did all this without a superintendent, yet their rating went up, not down on the heels of a failed levy.

Even more baffling are the comments of Superintendent Mantia in that article where she says after her short time at Lakota, “Here’s what I learned, It’s absolutely imperative that if we do nothing else, we make sure we maximize our children’s performance, and maximize the staff’s performance and expertise…..across the board, they all understand the expectation of our staff is high.” WHAT??????????????????? What does any of that mean? Doesn’t Lakota always maximize its performance and understand that the expectations are high?

The answer is no. Until the No Lakota Levy group came along and started challenging everything that the school was doing in order to defeat the last two levies, the school district and its employees had been cruising along. Once the public in the form of No Lakota Levy came along, that anti-tax group had taken the role of “management” in the community, a role the school board had not been performing. It is because of No Lakota Levy breathing down the neck of all these officials that the costs of education at Lakota have come down, and the rating actually went up from this year compared with last year.

I’m not unnecessarily taking credit for the good work the administrators did in this endeavor. But they knew that they would be challenged so they have tip-toed around trying to be creative in their financing and still perform at a high level, which we all expect as a district. But it is the Lakota School Boards job to do what No Lakota Levy has been doing. I would personally prefer to do something else with my time, but since my elected officials have shown “no fight” in standing up to the organized labor forces that have embedded themselves in public education using tax increases to hide their terrible management of that labor, I am actually angered that myself along with a small army of businessman in the community have to actually do their job for them by showing them what kind of questions to ask, and understanding where that line is in our community of when too much is too much. The school board was supposed to be doing that all along, but they didn’t.

The reason for Mantia’s comments being what they are is now that she’s arrived here and got her feet wet, she is realizing that Lakota did really well without her, without a levy increase, and now she really can’t do anything but fail. She has come into a district at the top of its game and she really can’t expect to improve it. So here’s the question, and I’m sure this is bouncing around in her head also, why she should cost the district a quarter million dollars in costs just for her employment expenses? (To see a breakdown of what she costs the district CLICK HERE)

The school board hired Mantia because they are still stuck in an old formula of organized labor education philosophy which is based on the failed economic Keynesian economic models of Europe. But Lakota has proven that it can do more with less, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more savings to be gained if only the school board would “manage” its labor costs and if the community could free itself from the organized labor elements of the teaching profession. This can be done if the people in Ohio will simply vote YES to keep S.B.5 on Issue 2. That simple step would go a long way to allowing future school boards to drive down the cost of education even more than Lakota has, while still maintaining their excellence. (Click here to learn what S.B.5 does for you)

The rhetoric that schools utter when they proclaim that if they don’t get more money is the same old tired diatribes that all labor utters when they are asked to do more with less. The problem with organized labor is they threaten to strike if they don’t get what they want, and will walk off the job like infants who don’t get a pacifier and it is that element in this whole equation that has driven up these labor costs and dictated these levy requests, and that is the hidden message behind Mrs. Mantia’s comments. She has been hired to preserve that empire, not to drive down costs, because the real savings is in dismantling the empire of education so that the children of these schools actually see the money, and not political labor unions attempting to finance their enterprises with a straw into our wallets and purses as a lifeline of finance, as they empty us to only fill themselves.

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

Ronald Reagan was a Communist: Yes, the president was once a union leader

I received a video link from a big-time pro union fellow who thought somehow I would be devastated to learn that the Great Ronald Reagan had been president of the Screen Actors Guild, early in his career. He wrote to me, “Your hero used to be a union leader. The idol of the Republican Party was an actual leader of a union. Do you still hate unions?” Well, the answer to this guy is…………….YES! Here is that video: 

Click the link,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvGMPhBVSI&feature=channel_video_title

 

 

 

This guy exhibited all the reasons why I dislike unions so much in his statement. People like him are stuck in a fixated emotional level of social development, and they will always stay in a kind of stagnate existence because of it. This person believes that because at some point in Ronald Reagan’s life, when he was a young man still unwise to the ways of the world, the fact that he was a union leader would somehow erase all the good the man did as a “Great Communicator” at the end of his life, or that by somehow me finding out about it would invalidate my claims against unions because “my hero” once supported unions so because Ronald Reagan is my leader, I should support unions too.

Here’s the issue, and the big difference between a guy like me, and a guy like this union person, who is very similar to most of the type of people who join a union or even a political party……..I read. Most of them do not.

I did know about Ronald Reagan’s early life because I read about him in the great book Dutch, by Edmund Morris, the very controversial book about Reagan that many Reagan supporters despised because it took away many of the myths about the man and focused on his real talent, which was “communicating,” and I learned all about the communist phase of his life. Reagan when he was an actor in Hollywood wasn’t much different from someone like Matt Damon is now, a naive, idealistic guy who has a decent intellect, but became wealthy and popular at a young age and lacks truly hard work in his life. Reagan coming from the Midwest had plenty of common sense, but becoming an actor and hanging out with starlets and all the powerful people in Los Angeles did go to his head. Communism was migrating into the United States in the 20’s and 30’s and it was the new fad in Hollywood, much like it is today. And Ronald Reagan loved it; he even applied to join the Communist Party of the United States. Reagan’s friends were communists, and even though his wife Jane wasn’t very interested in politics, she did go with the flow of communism because that was what people talked about at dinner parties, so she was too.

And the unions that formed at the time were heavily infected with communists. Several of the entertainment unions took a page of activism directly from the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of 1917. At the Warner Brothers lot set designers had suddenly become aggressive mobs turning over cars and protesting over pay. Reagan was the reluctant leader of these mobs and was a sympathizer.

It was when Reagan had to go to England to film a movie at Elstree Studios that the impact of socialism, which leads to communism shocked him to his Midwestern core. Karl Marx had done much of his work while in London and it is also in London that Keynesian economics was being experimented with. The result was a landscape of culture that had an oppressive sameness to it, and was a dreary environment for the very imaginative young Ronald Reagan. It was during this film at Elstree Studios that Reagan decided that communism was the great evil of the world.

Reagan came back to his Hollywood friends a changed man; it was so noticeable that his wife lost interest in him leading to their eventual divorce. Reagan stayed on as the President of the Screen Actors Guild but had lost interest in the politics of communism. As Reagan’s acting career came to an end due to his age, he used his position within the guild to stay in the loop and carry him to the next phase of his life, politics.

Reagan had a very strong sense of right and wrong and he did name the communist sympathizers during the McCarthy hearings within his union, because he saw that communism was a serious threat to the United States and felt it was his obligation to the security of the country. That doesn’t make him a traitor; it makes him a person who had been sick and had healed through growing knowledge and understanding. By allowing his mind to expand with new information he grew as a person who eventually was able to go from a union president to a President who stood against the unions in the air traffic control controversy where he fired them for trying to strike.


 

The reason Reagan was so good was because he grew in intellect and political theory unlike this guy who sent me that video, as though “Union Brother Reagan” should always behave like a fool with limited perspective like the rest of his brothers and sisters stuck in a communist funk. The assumption was because Reagan turned against the union, he was somehow a trader.

This is another reason why unions always fail. They behave with this tribe-like behavior which limits personal growth. Since their focus is on group oriented, collective behavior they are doomed to fail as individuals and their thoughts will remain fixed on a period of their lives which had their last explosive development, and for many of them that will be high school. I know many adults who are 40 and 50 years old who are still as mentally immature as they were when they were 15, 16, and 17 years old. That is because they stopped growing as people and are “stuck” emotionally in that time period.

In my own life there isn’t a single human being on planet Earth that I’d consider my “leader.” There is no voice that could call to me and demand my time and attention for some task outside of my individual desires. This does not mean I can’t work with people toward a common goal, because I do in many ways, but that form of collaboration is completely foreign to the mind of the “union” type who is “stuck” in some archaic form of thought which belongs to the mentality of a child. Most of my friends are 20 and 30 years older than I am because I relate to those people more than most people my age, because through a life-time of living they have grown to understand what’s important and what’s not, and how to think for themselves instead of some collective group of fools stuck in some static thought pattern craving communism.

This is the triumph of Ronald Reagan, he made the journey from a small-town, clean-cut Midwestern kid, to a Hollywood movie star, a communist leaning union leader, then “learned” that communism was the path of decline and adjusted his thinking which cost him friends and a wife, and to a large extent his career as an actor. But Reagan took what he learned and rebuilt himself as an advocate of capitalism, becoming a spokesman for GE, then Governor of California, then the communist fighting President of the United States. It was the journey of a complete human being who halfway through realized that he was on the wrong path, so he made the corrections and became a great person who helped preserve the United States of America during a tough period of the cold war.

Great personalities aren’t necessarily born straight out of their mother’s womb. Such assumptions are the thoughts of fools hoping for a savior to rescue them from a mundane life because the fool is too lazy to save themselves. Great personalities are forged from the fires of life, through a lifetime of experience that learn which ideas of theirs are good, and which are bad to arrive at a place where it is wisdom that rules, not the diatribes of some mad politician fixated on a set of ideas created by the minds of infantile children.

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

Why Public Labor Unions Fail: The Science of Stagnation

It is one thing to say that communism, or labor unions do not work, that they are bad for American society, and history shows us that the typical result when these collective organizations have a majority rule are either a stagnate society or a declining one. The benefits of collective ideas when it comes to social construction are short-lived and only last a few generations. But the big question is why? What is the science behind this failure?

Well, there is a science to it, a predictable path that can be witnessed and predicted accurately as to why labor unions and other collective organizations are doomed to failure. For such a science I turn to the work of Robert Pirsig, which came to my mind while I was writing another article about the needs for voting YES on Issue 2. Click here to see that article:

Pirsig many years ago came up with a definition, a way of determining the “quality” of something that needs to be understood in reference to what I’m about to say. I created a chart which articulates this definition of quality into two types, Romantic and Classic. So click here to see that chart and learn a bit about these two types. But for the purpose of understanding why unions are doomed to fail understanding that there is a science behind determining the quality of something is important and can be obtained with mathematic certainty.

Once the quality of something is determined then that quality can be broken down into two types, Static Quality and Dynamic Quality. Static Quality tends to be all the rules of society, or the rules of your business. Static Quality is the rules that everything runs off of. One of the reasons that I like Robert Pirsig is that he has done the work of understanding the classic Greek thinkers, but where the classics fall short, because metaphysically, society has advanced, we now know of quantum physics and have an understanding of how the universe works that is based on much better data than the astronomical observations made with primitive telescopes. So our society has advanced, and the force that drives that expansion is Dynamic Quality. An example of Dynamic Quality would be Leonardo Da Vinci, or Bill Gates, people who brought radical changes in thought to the Static Quality of the rules society had previously lived by. Pirsig is the most recent philosopher to take into consideration this Dynamic Quality change with the new science discovered in the most recent century.

Dynamic Quality are the rebels of society, or even of a body. They are the cells of a body that fight off diseases and strengthen an immune system or they are the people who challenge conventional thought and force an expansion of human understanding. Between the two types of Quality, both types are needed. Without Static Quality everything would fly apart, and chaos would rule. Dynamic Quality needs Static Quality to keep some sense of order in existence. But Static Quality also needs Dynamic Quality to allow it to grow. In fact in organizations where Dynamic Quality is stifled Static Quality has shown to actually proceed in an evolutionary decline. Without the presence of a Dynamic Quality regression of an organism or an organization is the natural next process. This could be said to be the cause of aging in human beings, or the decline of cultures the human beings have built. This can also be seen in sports organizations that become complacent and do the same things over and over and why some teams are always competitive because they are always seeking to bring a “dynamic” quality to their teams. Maintaining a dynamic order to anything is the key to any measure of success. But you must do so while still maintaining a sense of order, otherwise known as Static Quality.

Labor unions fail because in order to preserve their Static Quality, which is the focus of all their endeavors, they destroy any chance of allowing Dynamic Quality into their organization to help challenge their beliefs and expand their culture. So instead, they are a culture on decline.

A decline in culture can be seen most evidently in inner cities where the problem is not one of race. It is of losing the aspects of their Dynamic Culture. When welfare and other government care is introduced to the culture and the parents of the children of that culture are no longer pushing young people to become “dynamic” then the individuals who have these tendencies will turn their efforts into a destructive behavior that leads to their premature deaths or they move away from the inner city leaving the Static Quality of the inner city belief system to rule, which leads to the decline that can seen by everyone.

This is also the reason why public education is failing, is because the dynamic individuals are punished by being different rather than celebrated or challenged for the health of confrontation. The dynamic elements are attacked like a cell in a body would attack a white blood cell in the body because the white blood cell is different from the common cell. This process leads to disease in the body the same as it does in society. The result is no different.

This explanation is but a fraction of what I could say on this topic. In fact, I could write volumes of books on the matter, but for the novice in this field, the person who normally doesn’t think about these kinds of things, this should at least suffice to demonstrate that there is an order to all this discussion about central organization from government, or labor unions and understanding why the work and products they produce always seem flat and unimportant. It is because by their very nature; they spend their energy as organizations fighting off their Dynamic Quality competitors in order to protect the Static Quality of their existence.

So the argument is not one of union busting, Republicans or Democrats, or young against old. It’s not the Middle Class against the “rich.” It is simply about the battle between Static Quality and Dynamic Quality being stifled which is the direct cause of decline in any culture, and that is the premier reason why labor unions and government will always fail.

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

RICH HOFFMAN NO LONGER RECOGNIZES THE AUTHORITY OF ANY PUBLIC UNION

There are few things that truly anger me, and this whole issue of the attempt to bargain with the unions over the repeal of Senate Bill 5 is one of them. Because, the comments of We Are Ohio, a union backed group articulates the entire problem when they said, “we view the repeal of Senate Bill 5 as only the beginning.” It is that attitude which has virtually bankrupted the State of Ohio in order to pay for the services public sector unions have manipulated for themselves. For the unions to even proclaim for a moment that they are somehow innocent of any wrong doing in the whole budget crises of the age, that they are victims in some warped universe, is the ultimate denial from a group of people fighting to cover-up over 50 years of political mistakes instigated by their little “clubs.”

It is in the type of fury that I feel right now that I feel compelled to do something similar to what one of my favorite writers Robert Pirsig has done, and that’s to buy a sail boat and retire traveling the world without a care, because as Pirsig believed in frustration when people had difficulty understanding his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. It was the same frustration that Ayn Rand experienced after Atlas Shrugged came out, when people were slow to understand the material. Those two writers are part of modern philosophy. The trouble with our society is that it is believed that philosophic growth ended with Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Voltaire, Marx and the several others from the “old days” of philosophy. They forget that modern philosophers like Pirsig and Rand are continuing along the traditions of thinking based on the evolution of society.

Well, I’m a person who understands the work of Pirsig without any difficulty. He matches my own thoughts which have been forged from a full life of experience. I can honestly say that I have seen every type of human deception, witnessed every type of scandal, and experienced the most brutal forms of violence first hand. I have to say that as a qualifier for what I will now say, because my feelings are harsh in regard to public unions.

I am not a supporter of unions of any kind. In private industry, we have seen unions drive up the cost of a product, and if the demand for that product can support it, then fine. Having a union should be an option to people who want them. To date, unions for entertainment and sports are the strongest surviving unions, because people have shown they will pay the extra money for a ticket, or sports memorabilia to support sports unions, and buy movie tickets for all the entertainment unions. But in manufacturing, once NAFTA was signed into law in the early 90’s, jobs have fled the United States because the labor is simply too expensive. Only large manufacturing jobs who rely on government contracts have truly survived. It is unions that have killed manufacturing jobs in the United States and I resent them for it.

But the public sector union has absolutely no place in modern society. I personally don’t even recognize their right to exist. A union is simply a club of like-minded people, just like any club. It’s no more complicated than that. However, the make-up of this club tends to be, unless compelled by law to join, the very weak. They are the type of people who fear sticking up for their own rights to an employer. They are the type who prefers to cower behind a group of friends where courage only comes to them in mass. Unions have achieved what they have through violence, extortion, intimidation and other methods which lack personal valor. Unions allow the complacent and average to be equal to the best and that is a crime against society.

It is in the pursuit of being the best that makes one the best. One cannot be the best just by being paid wages that are high. The short-term sense of fairness and antagonistic relationship these types of employees have with their employers is culturally deficient and socially destructive. Unions kill culture the same as deforestation and drought killed Mayan, Aztec and Native American Cultures, just as war and territory wars have held back European society. Unions have their roots in Europe and are products of the Dark Ages. They should be despised in American culture like cancer is despised in the human body.

Public Unions should be illegal. They are not the back bones of the middle-class as they are sold by the complacent, the small-minded, and intellectually deficient. Unions are a short-term solution to the jealousy of those who lack ability, or ambition. To those who are too lazy to push themselves to reach beyond their limits to earn a sense of pride in their self-reliance. Unions, as a club of such lazy types have attracted the masses, because it is true that many people are born with a natural inclination to follow, but should look with eagerness at those around them who are strong and strive to be strong too. Unions kill this process. It forces the strong to be average and the weak rule in mass, so whatever enterprise is created under this arrangement is less than it otherwise would be.

Unions are a fix for the human sense of insecurity to have and maintain a sense of extended family. It is common for union members to refer to each other as a “brother” or “sister” as though their unity is bound by flesh and DNA. The only unity of such types is one of poor mental evolution. These people share in common a sense of basic functioning from the food that goes into their bellies, and the sex they can achieve with their reproductive organs. They are what the Kundalini Yoga refers to as the beings of the lowers states, those of Chakra 2, maybe 3 at the highest. Their only concern for existence is what goes into their bellies or comes out of their penises. They lack any sense of history but what occurs in their lifetimes, and they care not for what the waste of their lives produces in the future.

Unions are the inventions of fools, miscreants, socialists, the weak-minded, the violent, the power-hungry, and the empire builder. They are the mechanisms of fantasy for the social reformer, the corrupt magpie wishing to undermine society with a smile but a hand on the knife concealed under their clothing, (metaphorically speaking).

The gains public unions have made over the years they achieved through either the threat of violence or the threat of work stoppage, not the merit of their arguments. Not on the strength of their ideas. They gained respect through fear and are no different from a street gang fighting over turf in a city, or a drug cartel leader establishing a trade route over a rival cartel. They are no different from the organized crime habits perfected by Al Capone, and evolving to this current day in various enterprises where a baseball bat and a threatened loved one halts any intrusion into their business practices.

If I were the governor of Ohio, this is what I’d be thinking when a group of public unions struggling to maintain their business monopoly on the tax payers of Ohio wanted to meet. And when the Governor refused to meet with these people he spoke as my representative, because I did not want to even give those people the merit of an audience. They should be illegal, not legitimized with even an acknowledgement. By sitting down with those union leaders the governor gives them a strength they do not deserve, that was taken in the first place by violence and manipulation, and represent the kind of America that Karl Marx envisioned, not the one of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, or John Locke conceived.

But don’t mind my opinion dear reader. My view of America is that the Federalist Papers were too imperialistic, if I lived in the time of the founding fathers I would without a doubt be an Anti-Federalist! But today I shake my head at the lost souls around me who have such a shallow understanding of history to actually believe they have a “right” to special privileges because they are a member of a club funded by the tax payer. My anger becomes paramount in my personal philosophy. The anger is from the kind of frustration one might feel toward a child who you are trying to teach to read, yet can’t even read the first word in a sentence.

These people against Issue 2, these union leaders, and blind followers have been taught all their lives all the wrong things. It is those wrongly taught things that are the sources of wrecked lives, health problems, broken marriages, and children who dislike their parents, because looted money from the tax payer cannot fix the mind that drives the bodies of these union people. They are on a path of personal destruction and do not have the eyes to see that it is their fault the foundations of modern society is failing. They fail to understand because they are stuck on the fixed idea of fairness created by philosophers long dead, and refuse to accept the new data which is arriving to our minds in great abundance in this very modern age that indicates mankind is doing all the wrong things for the sustenance of the human race.

A destructive class of people have the right to be stupid. But they do not have the right to dictate to a governor a seat at the table of power, a power they stole from the tax payer and did not earn with their personal merit of strength and intelligence. By sitting down with a simple club which is what a union is, the governor and his staff will only appease a mob hell-bent on personal destruction and have no interest in negotiation of any kind unless that negotiation involves the sacrifice of someone else. History has taught us this, and if we have not learned by now, then hope for intelligence to rule ever, appears unrealistic.

I understand now why Pirsig sails the oceans of the world on his boat, because the masses do not understand his words, because they waste their time in groups like these unions, reducing their minds with false philosophy and sit with their mouths open for society to feed them like some little bird in a nest waiting for a mother to drop food into it’s mouth. The more I think of it, the more Pirsig’s solution to society’s foolish behavior seems rational and actually evolutionary preservative. Because it is only on the open sea void of politics and the rules of mankind that the nature of existence makes sense. Thus the source of my anger is not at myself for choosing not to join Pirsig on the open waters, but it is in my belief that people are worth the fight, to help them become better than they show an inclination to become themselves. Such a task at this point seems pointless in the wake of a deal with the labor unions over repealing Senate Bill 5.

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

The Truth about Issue 2: Meet Shannon Jones in her own words

As I wrote this article there has been talk of a deal on Friday with the labor unions to back off their repeal. If such a thing is true, it is extremely unfortunate, and weak-kneed. It would represent everything that is wrong in politics, which would not be surprising. But lets see what happens.

Shannon Jones came to the West Chester Tea Party to speak about the merits of Senate Bill 5, now known as Issue 2 for the November ballot. The video below is the complete version of her presentation, including the Q & A session where a union president confronted her. The video is long, understandably, but well worth a viewing so that the contents of that meeting can be shared with every Ohioan, because it is worth every single tax payer’s time to understand just what Senate Bill 5 does for them.

Issue 2 (Senate Bill 5) does a lot of things that are very, very good for the average tax payer. Without it and this is not fear mongering, Ohio will struggle to pay its bills for the foreseeable future. In fact, every day that Issue 2 is prevented from being a law is equivalent to running up your personal credit card debt.

Issue 2 does not get rid of unions, or collective bargaining. It allows those things to continue. It does not cut salaries or hurt police officers and firefighters with unsafe work practices. What Issue 2 does do however is make it a choice for public employees to join a union. It does prevent public employees from being able to go on strike to extort higher wages and bring to a halt the services those public sector employees are expected to perform. And it does base compensation on performance rather than seniority. To me, and most everyone who can breathe air, those are very needed and common sense necessities that should be obvious to everyone.

So why are the public unions against it? Well, it takes away the monopoly status that unions currently hold over public employees. Think about it this way. If you are a teacher and you want to teach in the State of Ohio, you must join a teachers union to be employed. The unions know that if they can lobby to create more teaching jobs, then they are guaranteed a fixed amount of union dues that they can budget around. If it is questioned just how important union dues are to a public sector union, just study the actions of Diana Frey, who was considered extremely legitimate until she was accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. Union dues are how unions buy and wield power, so those dues are very, very important to them. But not all employees want to be a part of that type of thing, and should never be compelled by law to be in a union. It should be a choice, and if the unions truly have something valuable to offer, then membership in a union would be lucrative and a choice.

Unions are terrified of Issue 2 and have spent a lot of time and money trying very hard to pull every emotional string they can to hide their true intentions. This is the source of all the misinformation coming from the unions, and the reason they are attempting to hide behind police and firefighters, as a way to appeal to the public and hide the scandalous nature of their desires. And scandalous is the correct word.

The State House and Senate acted quickly with Senate Bill 5 for one primary reason, it wasn’t to bust unions, or hurt union workers; it was to stop the bleeding that is primarily going on in schools all across the state of not being able to control their costs. Unions have nobody to blame but themselves, they have successfully through legislation prevent elected management, (school boards, trustees, and city councils) from being able to regulate their costs with the radical extortion methods like strikes and manipulative work practices in binding arbitration. Years and years of this behavior has completely eliminated any management of tax funds which have driven up the costs and expectation of education and every person who pays taxes should be furious about it! It is solely because of this union monopoly problem that tax levies on Ohio property owners seems to come every couple of years with no end in sight. Issue 2 was created quickly to get the problems exacerbated under 8 years of governorship by Bob Taft and 4 years of complacency by Ted Strickland under control. It’s true that the financial meltdown did not occur over night, it took 12 years. But starting a couple of years ago, the costs of public employees started to spiral out of control which brings us to the current crises where schools are out of money, cities are going bankrupt, and the only fix anybody can come up with is to raise taxes on taxpayers who are already taxed too high.

Anyone who votes NO on Issue 2 is responsible for hurting our school systems, bankrupting our cities, and allowing practices that are highly corrosive to the lives of every resident of Ohio. Anyone who votes NO is guilty of putting off a problem that is already out of control and needs to be dealt with immediately.

When Issue 2 finally becomes law, police will still be on the streets. Fire fighters will still be there to put out fires and help provide emergency medical treatment. Teachers will still be teaching kids. The only thing that will change is those employees will have to adjust their lives just a bit, but elected officials that tax payers put into office to manage their tax dollars will actually be able to do the job they are supposed to be doing, which is something that must happen.

A YES vote on Issue 2 is the only responsible thing to do in order to ensure a positive future. If you have any doubts, just watch the video from the author of Senate Bill 5 herself. At over an hour of real information from a true source, the truth cannot be missed unless the viewer is one of those who want to maintain the monopoly of public union rule.

The control is in the hands of you, the voter. You cannot say this time that your vote does not matter, because with this issue, it matters more than it ever has and the implications will resonate though the scholarship of history.

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

The Worth of Warren Buffett’s Opinion: Looters demand more taxes!

About a decade ago, I was in a wedding party for my brother and we were dining at the Grand Finale in Glendale when he gave me my gift for being in the wedding party. It was a book by Warren Buffett, a man my brother greatly admired, so while the conversation of the evening drifted from tales of marriage and hardship, I read the book at the table.

My thoughts about Buffett were that he was “lucky” to have become rich as an investor. Like many of his type, he became wealthy not by creating, but by a manner of deception, playing on the behavior patterns of the timid and foolish. This isn’t illegal and is a natural part of capitalism, where predators take advantage of those not as ruthless, cunning, or even greedy. The threat of these predators encourages the very good to become better in order to compete, and this is where ideas are born.

But people like Warren Buffett and George Soros did not gain wisdom from the creation of something new. They gained wisdom by dealing with fools and this is the net result of books like what Buffett has put out, and Soros. They gained their wealth by being bottom feeders. They did not earn their wealth the valid way, like a Bill Gates, by creating something from nothing. They simply capitalized on the mistakes of others in a quest for wealth pursuits. So if the goal is simply to “get rich” no matter the method, then the works of these types of “investors” is commendable.

Their wealth however does not make them experts in all things involved in money and value however. Buffett and Soros are not experts on the art of living, and advice from them must be taken in context. If one wishes to become rich by climbing over the backs of others with a sense of ruthlessness and cold-hearted rancor, then their advice should help the hungry investor. But if an advice seeker wishes to know more about the complexities of existence, then these characters will leave that seeker very hungry for more, because they do not understand themselves the nature of society.

When Buffett says that more taxes are needed, he is making the statement of a progressive, not a traditional American. So it is only natural that Buffett would want to continue to fund the social programs created by his fellow “progressives.” The feeding of taxes with the money of the people in American society is a reckless enterprise that if the goal of that society is to have a smaller government that is less intrusive, then of course fewer taxes will be needed to maintain that infrastructure.

If the goal however is to have a larger government well then of course more taxes are needed, so when Buffett and Obama speak about raising taxes, and that people of wealth like them are willing to pay, it must be considered what kind of men they truly are. They value money based exclusively on the merit of the dollar value in relation to other things. These progressive types mistakenly believe that their money has equal value to those who actually create something, and this is the reason they tend to dislike actual producers, like oil tycoons, and “big business” owners. They exhibit a jealousy toward their fellow wealth peers hoping that they can be seen as “equal” to those producers because deep in their hearts they know that their wealth was created by a measure of looting, where they took advantage of someone not quite smart enough to hang on to their money, and not by the benefit of invention.

This is why these types of people do not understand the value of what they are asking. Buffett might understand the value of stock prices, but he does not understand the value of the merit behind the company which holds the stock. He understands the nature of speculating the behavior of ownership and the way the public will perceive the actions of a company, but he does not understand the value of creation, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t say such naïve concepts as blindly tossing tax money into the tax monster that is government.

Much of the corruption in government is due to the money that flows in it. The reason politicians will do anything, say whatever, and make any promise to get into public office is because they want to be in control of the money that comes to them in the form of taxes. Public union’s exist for one reason, and that is to gain control of the money which comes to the public worker. It is money which corrupts government and it is money that ruins the attempts of any country to maintain a reasonable, trustworthy republic. So when a progressive makes the statement that they support higher taxes, what they really are saying is that they wish to maintain the structure of corruption from which they have enriched themselves. For people like Warren Buffett, this is perfectly acceptable. But for people who want to see government become more trustworthy and for politicians to become more representative, cutting the amount of money that is tossed into that black hole of government consumption will make public office much less attractive to the thieves and miscreants who are currently attracted to public office.

To improve the quality of government, society must take away the incentive of those bottom feeders to migrate into public service, and the only way to do that is to take away the waste from which they flock to.

I closed the book at The Grand Finale and kept my opinion about Buffett to myself because the men at our table were all gushing over themselves regarding the achievements of Warren Buffett. The nature of Buffett and those like him are elusive to their minds, because in society, we are trained that the value of something is contained within a fixed dollar amount. So we are trained to believe that Buffett’s wealth gives him immediate value as a person of the mind, after all, he was smart enough to amass massive amounts of wealth, so he must know something important, and the men at my diner table were hungry to unveil that knowledge so that they too might achieve some measure of success, and take care of their own families with some wealth of their own.

As I sipped the remaining contents of my wine that night I knew that the real genius is not in the indulgence of a fool and the advantage taken from them, but it is in the restraint. For the way to truly build society is not always to indulge and roll about like pigs in a mud pit, but to refrain from the impulse to indulge with an eye on the greater good, even when that good appears to be bad to the pig wishing to roll in the urine and feces of it’s own kind to accumulate merit earned by decadence.

And that’s what I think of the opinions by Warren Buffett.

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

Public Unions Should be Illegal: They are simply too expensive and too demanding

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN ARTICLE I WROTE CALLED PAYING FOR PROTECTION: THE ORGANIZED CRIME OF TEACHERS UNIONS FOR MATERIAL SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW.

Leslie Ghiz of Cincinnati City Council goes ballistic on 700 WLW while talking to Doc Thompson about the lack of interest in dealing with the Diana Frey case, the public union president accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. The source of the complacency she is upset about is the very reason why public positions simply cost too much money to the tax payer. Click here to listen to that broadcast:

There is a disconnect between the reality of the public union leader and the rest of the world. Doc Thompson recently did another show where the average tax payer would have a lot of difficulty coming up with $1000 if they needed to without going into debt. Yet the public union expectation when their contracts demand more money is just to raise taxes to fund their demands, and they don’t care at all that they are draining the communities of their wealth, who simply don’t have the money. You can listen to that broadcast here:

The public sector unions have shown no restraint, no sense of economic understanding, no compassion for their employers, which are the tax payers. They have been excessively greedy, corrupt (Diana Frey and she’s not the only one), manipulative, and perfectly willing to walk off the job if management doesn’t see things their way. Their behavior has driven up the cost of their employment simply to the point of being very unattractive as a labor option.

When the public union representing the teachers at Lakota in 2008 went on strike, and a deal was made to appease them, to keep the teachers from walking off the job, I decided that I would not support another school levy until the public sector union was out of the equation. They simply drive up the cost of education too much. The unions make it impossible to have an intelligent conversation about cost controls, because the direction of the negotiations always migrates back to the welfare of the employee, and not the product they create.

I have noticed that the television stations lately are focused on the catastrophe of public funding and are resorting to the feel-good stories of emotion, which plays straight into the kind of manipulation the unions have used to extort massive sums of money, (tax money) for themselves. It is never asked by the established media why all these public employee jobs are going bankrupt, because the answer is simply too painful. Public employees, particularly teachers are too expensive. They cost too much money to employee, and they did that to themselves with extreme labor practices such as threatening to walk of the job with strikes.

The legislators who made it law that a teacher should have a master’s degree to keep their teaching certificate helped perpetuate the situation with legislation. They did as they always do; they created laws without considering the cost of compliance. That is the problem with electing small-minded people into positions to create laws, because they are unable to take in the whole picture. Since they too are public employees and not responsible for creating the funding, they don’t make the connection but simply take money from the public in the form of taxes, so they bare no responsibility.

Public employees do not exist for the benefit of job creation. They are not there for the convenience of the employee. But that is the expectation. The tax payer is expected to jump through hoops to figure out how to appease the high expectations of these out-of-touch employees.

If I were the superintendent of a school, which I could never be because there are actually laws to keep people like me from being hired by a district, the unions have covered their tracks in every direction, I would simply let the teachers walk the next time they attempted a strike, and I’d hire cheaper labor. It is the cost of labor that is the problem and is creating the demand for more taxes in every sector of government service. Government in no capacity should ever be paid more than the average wage of the public, because it creates an incentive for people to attempt to become a government worker that will do anything to become employed by the government because it’s simply too lucrative.

Teachers should be paid fairly, and if they want to make a lot of money, they should work for a private institution that will pay them according to their expectations. If the United States were the best in the world, I might buy into the union argument that we need to pay for the best to have the best, but the United States education system is not the best. It’s average and that’s being generous, and I think it fails in entirely too many ways. It certainly isn’t worth the amount of money we are pouring into it.

Politicians and news organizations looking to simplify their stories focus only on dollars spent equals’ value to the child, but that simply is not true. We could pour all the money the United States produces into education and the result would still be a flat line. Education is an elusive quality that comes from the strength of a family and the mentors that surround a child. Children just do not learn on an assembly line and making the factory more expensive won’t improve the results.

I’m not against public education. I think it’s a good thing for people who come from broken homes, or poor families. In those conditions, it is possible for a teacher to have a major influence on a child, because the teacher can fill the role that the parent is neglecting. But in families that are strong where there are two parents, grandpa’s and grandma’s and the family has a middle to upper income, there isn’t much a public school has to offer in the development of a child but a baby sitting service. I know that hurts the feelings of many “sensitive” guidance councilors and teachers, but those are the facts. As a tax payer, I’m happy to employee some of those people in my district for some of the underprivileged, but having hundreds and hundreds employees all making extremely lucrative incomes is simply not good business.

But it is the unions who have high-jacked the entire process, allowed no management control on a run-away train that just goes faster and faster requiring more and more money to fuel. To me, they are not worth the money. They are guilty of being too greedy and out-of-touch. To be honest, I have never seen a system so screwed up, as wrong as you find when you lift up the rocks of public sector unions. The entire situation is terribly out of control which directly affects the overall cost. I believe the teachers for the most part believe they are in the profession for the kids they teach. But the union leaders are clearly out for the greed of the position and have shown no restraint on their demands. And the teachers who have voted to keep those types of leaders in place are all guilty of putting themselves over their job to the children and the more I learn, the angrier I become.

Being foolish is not against the law. If the union leaders wish to be so foolish as to be out-of-touch with the rest of the world, that’s their prerogative. But when they ask me to fund their foolishness, that is passing the fool baton to me, and I’m not going to carry it. They make it my business when they ask me for more money to support their folly, and I know better. Therefore, I will not support public sector unions with any more additional taxes until they remove themselves from the process. They are getting in the way of proper management of public employees and should be outlawed. We have tried that little public employee union experiment started by President Kennedy and it has failed, and needs to be abolished as a practice.

The unions will call it union busting. I call it practical. I do not recognize the authority of any union to take my money out of my pocket and do what they please with it. Such a practice is simple robbery. It’s nothing else and needs to be outlawed at every level in government. Until that happens, there will never be any management of government costs which is just plain foolishness when money is the primary concern.

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

Rich Hoffman and Doc Thompson Fix the World: In spite of the hauntings from the past

As we are bombarded incessantly for further impositions into our personal income with the demand for higher taxes the irretrievable implication is that there isn’t a plan for taxes to ever be reduced, only to grow forever, until society completely collapses. This is the case of all government these days and has been since President Kennedy signed into law with executive action, the legalization of public unions, which Lyndon Johnston then expanded to build a voter base. (CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW IT ALL BEGAN) The incredible lack of wisdom and complete selfishness of the Democratic political party in those critical years of the 60’s have taken us all down this current path which ends at a collapsed bridge with steep cliffs on all sides and nowhere to go but back. Standing at the end of that road on a Saturday afternoon, being the first to arrive there, Doc Thompson of 700 WLW and I have a serious talk laced with humor and frustration about all the reasons why the school funding models are failing, and how ridiculous it is that school boards have no other option but to request higher taxes in an out-of-control system bent on self-destruction. If you have any doubts, questions, or fears about why taxes for your school keep going up, then listen to this broadcast. After my interview, there was a parade of callers all deeply frustrated who shed further light into this diabolical modern-day catastrophe that has become public education.

I’m not just blaming the Democrats in this folly. All politicians are to blame, because they didn’t address the problems, fearing political fallout. I personally have no desire to ever be a politician. From my experience too many politicians celebrate their wins as though they won the lottery, not as a sacrifice. Politicians know that there will be opportunities to enrich themselves, that there are unions and other special interests out there that will give them money to do as they say and they can become wealthy in the process, and that’s what’s been happening. (CLICK HERE TO SEE JUST HOW BAD THE SITUATION TRULY IS) My desire is to write, read, and continue to climb mountains with my wife on weekend adventures. Public office or political gain of any kind is unattractive to me. Fixing the problems of politics however is, because I don’t want to spend money on aspects of culture that isn’t needed because it lowers the quality of the culture I wish to enjoy.

I had lunch with my daughter after the radio interview and she showed me a new phone application on her smart phone that she downloaded for free. It’s a language translation program where she can speak into her phone, then the phone will translate the phrase into any language she wishes, and it will vocalize it as well. This will be helpful if she is in Romania on a photo shoot, but she doesn’t know the local language, and she needs to ask someone a question, she can simply speak into her phone, and then play the translation for the person she’s asking. The phone has become an instant translator.

My wife and I stopped by Best Buy on the way home to check on buying new computers for a new video game called The Old Republic by Bioware. I’ve been looking forward to that massive online game for years, and the release date is nearing, so my wife and I plan to buy a couple of new computers just to play that game, one for her and one for me, so we can spend time with all our nieces and nephews and other friends who are scattered all over the face of the planet. I was shocked that virtually every young person I spoke to from my daughters friends to the employees at Best Buy are all on a waiting list for that game. I joked to my wife on the way home that when The Old Republic is released, the economy may tank, because nobody will want to do anything but play that game. People my age and younger are eager to jump into that extremely immersive world.

But what does that say about our current society? Many of these people wanting to play The Old Republic currently play World of Warcraft and will spend countless hours learning everything there is to know about a fictional world with absolutely no implication to their actual lives. It’s all a fantasy. But why the powerful desire……escape?

Many people have given up on American culture, and public unions have capitalized on that apathy. The technology of online gaming and my daughters smart phone should be incorporated instantly into our education system because that is the way young people are learning now. They are wasting their time in modern education. It makes the parents feel good about themselves, but the kids really aren’t learning anything other than social boundaries which makes public education a complete failure in my book.

I can speak for myself; I understand why so many people are drawn to online gaming. Because there are no restrictions in those environments, the internet is the freest way of life ever conceived by human minds, and online gaming whether it is for Maddan Football, or World of Warcraft allows the human mind to venture beyond the social restrictions of our current culture, and that is the tragedy of our age.

Public education has been captured by public sector unions and molded into a boring, stale, environment that kids are simply not interested in, and is preparing them for a world that will change tomorrow. Public education is way behind the curve; they are in the back of the train as I’ve discussed using Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a prime example. (If you haven’t read Pirsig it’s in the philosophy section of your local bookstore.) Click here to see what I say about it.

I have taught those close to me many things, one of them is a phrase I’ve used for more than 30 years and its “Advice is only as good as the person who gives it.” If the quality of the person giving advice, teaching ideas, or even coming up with a social model of ideas that are deemed important, if the minds “advising” are not quality minds, then the advice is worthless. When my wife was younger she had a parade of people who were always telling her she should be a fashion model, she should go to school to become a great scientist, that she should do a bunch of things because she is a very intelligent woman who is also very attractive, attributes that many around her secretly resented. So I’d say to her, “Where are the lives of the people telling you these things? Are they what you’d consider successful people? Even the people who are wealthy, do they look happy to you? If not, then why would you even consider their advice even a little? Their advice has not led their own lives to prosperity and happiness, so how can they be expected to tell you what to do.”

Yet in traditional education, we send a child to school to be taught by a complete stranger advice which the child is supposed to carry deep into their lives. I understand that many parents are not equipped to live by the mentality I provided my wife with, but in sectors of the internet, gaming community, and social networks like Facebook the true desires for human development are there for everyone to see. And the reason new ideas are not being explored in education is exclusively because public sector unions are resistant to the rapid changes happening in the world around them. They are like a boat going downstream in a swift river filled with rapids only to toss out an anchor into the water to stop all movement because they are “scared” of the changes. But in doing so they have limited the maneuverability of the boat to navigate in the water and the swift current is actually beating on the boat threatening to sink the vessel by sheer force.

I am convinced that no adjustments to public education are even possible as long as public sector unions exist. They are a cancer in the body of thought. And they are in denial of their corrosive nature.

Their leaders are fools intent to hang on to some archaic education practice long outdated, and is increasingly just too expensive. The teachers unions have priced themselves out of relevance because not only are they teaching in an outdated model that they force upon society with their fear of change, but they charge too much to do it. It’s that simple. They’ve high-jacked all administrative control, political persuasion, and social latitude to arrive at a place where the world is marching on without them and they are still holding their stupid signs from the 60’s, “better jobs for teachers.” Who cares? The kids can’t wait to leave the classroom of the teacher to get home and get on their computer and play World of Warcraft with their friends, or The Old Republic. If education was smart, it would be teaching in that realm so that kids could learn perhaps three times as much in a shorter period of time than what is currently experienced.

When a Smartphone can do with a free download what it takes two years of foreign language studies to achieve, society has reached an impasse, and the public sector unions like what the teaches have, are still walking around with the dinosaurs. They sadly believe they are more relevant than they really are, and society up till now has just thrown money at them so they don’t have to feel bad about all the years of college they have, the massive debt they’ve accumulated, and the social fulfillment they were promised when they entered the profession. They have become extinct, because society, like that swift river, is moving too fast for their timid minds to navigate.

And more taxes won’t fix that void left in the broken heart of the disillusioned soul who discovers that the impact they believe they have on social development is easily out-done by a video game character in a virtual world who can level up by initiative, without needless restriction. It is the teacher who belonged to a union and used that collective influence to make themselves extinct, like ghosts haunting a house who do not know they are dead, and insist on living by sheer force even though they are just reflections of the past.

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

The Cincinnati Bengals, School Levies, and Health Care: Why they all suck!

As I was watching football, my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was on one channel, and the Cincinnati Bengals were on the other, I received several emails from some of my valuable contacts who supply me with a stream of information daily. One was about the Health Care Freedom Amendment. Another was about Sycamore Schools and their thoughts about going to the tax payers for more money, both of those I’ll include here to share with this audience, and retain their value for future reference.
The Tampa Bucs led by Raheem Morris looked fantastic. The Cincinnati Bengals looked absolutely pathetic. Actually, terrible was more like it. Considering how much the tax payers of Cincinnati are paying for the stadium that the Bengals play in, it was a slap in the face to see such a pathetic display of complacency taking place on the field in what the Bengals showed. As I watched the Bengals stumble around during the game I could not help but think that they are the perfect example of why throwing money at a political problem does not work.
Also, yesterday morning it was revealed that even with all the court challenges by Progress Ohio, the Health Care Freedom Amendment, which will allow the State of Ohio to challenge Obama Care under the rights of state sovereignty. Getting the issue on the ballot in November is the huge first step to knocking back the intrusive hands of government bureaucrats who are aggressively advocating the rapid expansion of government with even more far-reaching impositions. Read all about it below:

——————————————————————————

August 12, 2011 9:51 AM Ohio high court: Healthcare signatures valid COLUMBUS, Ohio — Opponents of a federal health care overhaul scored a key legal victory on Friday that should clear a proposed ballot measure for a fall vote.

The chance for voters to reject portions of insurance changes championed by President Barack Obama will appear Nov. 8, alongside a ballot issue seeking to repeal a contentious re-write of Ohio’s collective bargaining law. One is expected to bring out Republican-leaning voters and the other is expected to bring out Democrats in a state closely divided along political lines.

In a unanimous decision Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a liberal policy group’s lawsuit challenging certification of the so-called Health Care Freedom Amendment on the grounds petitions carrying 69,000 signatures were flawed.

ProgressOhio executive director Brian Rothenberg argued that Secretary of State Jon Husted counted signatures on petitions that contained technical errors, including the way paid circulators listed their employment.

Husted, a Republican, argued the challenge revolved around petitions carrying extra information, a practice government should not discourage.

Justices said the secretary of state is “entitled to deference.”

They found that Rothenberg’s charges lacked legal merit, noting “even if his challenge had substantive validity, Rothenberg’s evidence is insufficient to establish that the part-petitions do not have enough signatures.”

Husted announced July 27 that the coalition of tea party organizations and other groups behind the measure that submitted 427,000 valid signatures, well over the roughly 385,000 needed to get the amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The proposed amendment to Ohio’s Constitution would keep people from being required to buy health insurance or face penalties. The federal mandate would go into effect in 2014, when new competitive insurance exchanges are scheduled to open.

Opponents say the federal government is overreaching by requiring individuals to purchase a product. The Obama administration counters that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce squares the constitutionality of the mandate.

——————————————————————————-

The Bengals are such a terrible as a team for all the reasons the government screws up everything it touches, whether it’s education, or health care. The ownership of the Bengals believes as government does, that money spent equals value on the field, and that clearly is not the case. Carson Palmer gave up over 40 million dollars to leave the organization because he was so embarrassed to be a part of the Bengal organization, because at least he wants to retain his soul moving forward. But many in government have given up their souls long ago in trade for financial security.
These soulless creatures of bureaucracy are why government believes that “they” have the right to force us to buy their health care plan, and of course why public education simply doesn’t understand that they will have to learn to decline their revenue streams to match the declining wages, declining property values, and less money coming from outside community sources because the education bubble has burst. They believe they have a service so valuable to society that they should be exempt from any decreases in value.
This next article displays the extreme arrogance of the Sycamore School District, which is similar to what has been going on at Lakota where almost the same terminology was used to justify a 4.75 mill levy they voted on early this past week. It is not by accident that all the districts seem to be saying the same kind of thing. It is the Ohio School Board Association, a centralized organization in Ohio who helps provide the guidance to these school boards in times of crises, and it is this OSBA that is seeking to fulfill the type of education agenda that Progress Ohio, (the same group against the Health Care Freedom Amendment) wish to implement, at the tax payer cost. Check it out:

—————————————————————————–

Update five-year forecast

Regarding the July 13, 2011 article “Sycamore schools: Some light at the end of fiscal tunnel.” In order for the taxpayers and board members to understand the significance of the lost state revenue, the district’s May, 2011 Five Year Forecast must be updated now.

The lost state revenue needs to be looked at in the context of the five-year plan. The five-year plan would show the new revenue, planned expenditures and new cash balance for each year.

The development of a revised plan should not wait until the next state mandated October forecast. This revised forecast will provide the school and community four more months to consider the consequences of these changes.

Twice in the article, Diane Adamec, board president referred to a planned tax levy in 2012. The school has promised not to approach the community for more money until at least 2012.

She said, “What the regular citizen will not see is a request for an additional tax levy sooner than planned.”Later she adds, “By holding expense growth to an average of 1.5 percent annually, this district will maintain its promise not to go back to the community until at least 2012 for new taxes for operations – an eight-year span.”

Based on what I read and hear about the worldwide fiscal crisis, the possible U.S. financial default and constant deficit spending, there is no “light at the end of the fiscal tunnel.”

All government entities at the Federal, state, local levels including public schools, and citizens are facing a huge challenge ahead. Thinking that we might see some light ahead may be a comforting thought, but it is more akin to burying one’s head-in-the-sand.

————————————————————————————

I like that article because that is precisely what these schools are doing; they are burying their heads in the sand. They are pretending to “sacrifice” and maintain a lower rate of growth, in this case only 1.5%. They pretend that they are doing it “for the community” and at a great sacrifice to themselves. Preposterous!

I heard multiple times last week in regard to Lakota Schools that it’s been since 2005 that Lakota has had a revenue increase! It was only two years after that increase that the teachers union mounted a strike against the school which drove up costs 10.1% over the next two years, so some of us have learned that putting more money in the basket doesn’t get better results, or even maintain the old ones, because the union once they see the money, will threaten to walk off the job anyway in order to get at the extra money the community has supplied. It is in these modern times, where all the inflated costs are contracting, and education falls under that category, that plans must be made along that contraction. It is only natural that revenue should be less than the 2005 numbers because the financial supply, (which was inflated) is contracting, so it is not growth that should be expected, but decline, and their budgets should reflect that.
Yet with all the discussion Sycamore Schools articulates the dilemma wonderfully. They think it appropriate to present to the public that they only expect a 1.5% increase in revenue per year, like they are doing everyone a favor, by not going to voters for more money more often!
The value of something cannot be measured in some transitory monetary figure. Teachers have overpriced themselves and with the absence of elusive state and federal money, it is obvious now. Arrogant academics like these superintendents who think the voting public to be fools, just like the academic oriented president who has tried to force the nation to buy into his Health Care Policy, in order to fulfill the political whims of progressive groups like Progress Ohio, are simply out-of-touch and living their lives buried in the sand while their bodies are visible, but their heads are not. And if anyone doubts that there are people in the world who are just so heartless and outrageous by their actions yet friendly and conciliatory in their public presentation, (just like school systems are) just have a look at the ownership of the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Bengal organization threatened to move to a different city, just like teachers threaten to strike to get their money. The city voted to give The Bengals a new stadium, which is now bankrupting the city for a game that is played 8 times a year in a stadium that is average at best compared to other NFL homes. And the product the Brown family puts on the field is terrible…….absolutely terrible with no sign of getting better…….ever! I look at that team as proof that money spent does not acquire the desired results, it just fills the pockets of those who care for nothing else but money.
The city is under contract, and obligated to fulfill that contract. And the schools are under contract too, with their unions who have extorted enormous sums of tax payer money into their pockets out of sheer greed…….and they talk down to the public like they are children! This election of November 2011 will have a lot to deal with, but more than anything it will say what kind of society we are to become. Because in voting for these school levies, allowing President Obama to mandate that citizens must “purchase” something from the womb to the tomb, and that unions should continue to have the right to drive up costs even when market factors show their expectations should be declining, are all at play, and depending on the outcome of that vote, our society will be shaped accordingly. This is not one where people can sit back and let somebody else make the decisions. Ultimately, that is why the Bengals are such a bad team, because the contract was forged from the blood of the community and it lacks accountably, or even reality and that has infected the leadership, which infects the players, and ultimately infects the fans. The same happens in a school, and it always will until the public puts a stop to it. Until then, everyone is guilty just a little.

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