Category: National Debt

Todd Minniear and the Liberty Township Trustees: Protecting a great area from bottom feeders and other social parasites

It was always a disaster in the planning to guide development to include apartment and attached single-family homes.  That was a ridiculous Agenda 21 sustainable living idea that does not stem from American needs, but rather from the United Nations, and it’s good to see that Todd Minniear, the great trustee of Liberty Township, is fighting back against this ridiculous trend.  Because it’s all about value and the quality of living, and even if it comes out sounding mean and not very equitable, those are not values that can build a good society.  You can’t put too many apartments into a community full of people who don’t own property and expect everything to go well.  The population density is one thing.  However, the kind of people who live in apartments is quite another matter.  When a township like Liberty puts together a comprehensive plan, as I have explained over the years, the kind of people who are hired to make those plans are trained in universities to make Agenda 21 and 2030 from the United Nations a priority, and within those constructs is the notion that the most sustainable living is to stack humans on top of each other and prevent them as much as possible from getting in their car and driving somewhere.  Because the goal is to lower the carbon footprint of people with all kinds of hippie thoughts about protecting the planet and taking away individual development in favor of collective surrender to the common good as defined by the parameters of communism, exported from Europe.  And it ends up in communities like Liberty through the comprehensive plans that their building planners implement.  It’s one of those things that often slips under the radar when elected trustees review their comprehensive development plans for approval, and the context of what’s in them isn’t well understood.  We tend to think that people who write comprehensive plans are smart, but what often happens is that they learn too late that they were trained to be radicalized liberals taught on a destructive, anti-American agenda.

Everyone wants to live in Liberty Township, and when the area Journal News newspaper reported what Todd Minniear and the other trustees had done, they picked up on the sentiment correctly by stating, “Liberty Twp. Is closing its borders to future developments that include apartments or attached single-family homes, as trustees approved changes in its 2020 comprehensive plan and future land use map – which guides development.”  Most of the time, trustees in their positions across the country think they are hiring good people with excellent college credentials when they bring in individuals to write their land-use plans.  And their lives have not prepared them for the shell game that comes with such land use planners.  But it’s an industry full of parasitic communists trained in their colleges to implement extreme liberal politics into everything their careers touch.  Remember, it’s not where people went to school, but the kind of garbage they learned there that’s so dangerous.  And in Liberty Twp’s case, the value comes from the type of property people can buy, and how it restricts many people without shared values, bringing them together unnaturally, which eventually lowers the area’s value.  The kind of people who end up living in apartments and attached single-family homes tend to be people who didn’t make very good decisions in life, and when you start stacking those kinds of people into dense property use, they vote that way at the ballot box and pretty soon you have all their bad decisions changing the politics of your community into something else, often destructive.  And not protecting property values because parasitic tendencies were allowed to permeate. 

Of course, the implication made by the Journal News is that Liberty Twp is moving toward exclusivity by closing its borders to outsiders, when the socialist trend is to make everything more equitable.  With Liberty Township being such a nice place to live, the goal of the trustees, as defined by radical leftist community planners who teach the values of Marxism in colleges, is to make valuable places to live more accessible to everyone.  Because everyone deserves to live somewhere nice.  And if you’ve looked around Liberty Township, you now see apartments going up everywhere.  And what goes into them are apartment-dwelling people who vote, and they vote with the kind of values that come with people who don’t have profound roots in property ownership.  I like the proposed type of living at the Liberty Center development, which combines mixed-use shopping and living, creating a big city environment that gives kids growing up in the area a reason not to move to New York City or Los Angeles to experience that kind of life in their post-college years.  However, the downside is that more apartments mean more voters, as opposed to the wealthy homeowner of a property worth more than $400,000 who wants to keep it that way.  All over the country, when you study why communities fail, it’s because they didn’t protect what made them valuable in the first place.  And once you start letting bottom feeders move into your area, you’ll run into them at gas stations and the grocery store, and they bring down a positive living experience everywhere they go.  And while that doesn’t sound fair or equitable, it’s the truth.  Values decline, whether they are property or social, when we fail to protect them. 

Making it too easy for people who are not very good or wise to live in your area will only bring trouble.  People who make poor decisions in their lives are likely to reflect that in their voting behavior when we invite them to join our communities and live in an apartment, just to be fair to them.  They bring with them trashy kids, destructive lifestyles, and disastrous extensions of their families who visit them in a condition of dereliction.  And attacking that premise of value is baked into the background of all Agenda 21 and 2030 land use plans.  When you speak to these kinds of people, DEI policies, specifically equity and inclusion, are their primary concerns.  And builders end up following those ridiculous concepts in their architectural plans, and before you know it, you have a mother of five with three different fathers of those kids, all of whom visit her, coming and going, living next to a property worth more than a million dollars.  And they are all shopping at Kroger together and regretting it.  And when it comes time to vote, they disregard the million-dollar property owner vote because there are more of them, and because of the terrible decisions they have made in life, they are now voting for more government services, as they are never going to own a million-dollar property of their own.  And soon thereafter, you have a community in decline as people with value pick up and move away, where they don’t have to be around losers in life in their leisure time.  Thankfully, there are people like Todd Minniear who are finally standing up to this kind of nonsense.  Yes, suppose Liberty Township wants to maintain its value. In that case, just as the United States is learning to do, we must hold people accountable for earning their place in the community by working hard and making good decisions that live up to the high standards of value that make communities great.  However, when you make good things available to everyone, whether through comprehensive land use plans that stack property density on top of each other mindlessly, or through more government services that cost taxpayers a lot of money, social decline is not far behind.  When that value isn’t protected, of course, a community will move into decline.  And once that happens, nobody is happy.  This is a good position for the Liberty Township Trustees, as they are protecting a great community from the erosion of outside influences, which are certainly not in the best interest of the future.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Magnificant Army Parade: Smoking out the domestic enemies

I’m happy that my wife and I recently visited Washington, D.C., and saw all the key places along Constitution Avenue in front of the White House, where the great Army Parade took place on June 14th, 2025.  We had spent a lot of time in the precise location where the stage was set up for President Trump and others to view the celebration, so it was extra special for me, given the context of that visit.  It was a very patriotic event that we much needed, and it’s so good to see President Trump back in the White House.  This is the kind of thing many were unsure would ever happen again in America, especially after the 2020 election theft and the COVID-19 lockdowns.  It seemed at the time as if we would never see such celebrations in America again.  However, this one was the first of its kind, where Army sentiment was on full display with tanks and troops marching in full patriotic fanfare, which occurred very early in President Trump’s second term, and the world was watching.  And it couldn’t have come at a better time; the country certainly needed it.  With the world plunging toward war, with lots of hostile characters trying to create chaos in the background, whether it was the fights in Iran, the war in Ukraine, or China posturing to attack Taiwan, the many Marxist groups were gathering for No Kings marches all over the United States at the same time.  And without this epic Army parade, things would have looked pretty bleak.  However, it was so successful that it made it very clear who the world’s villains were, and they seemed rather foolish by comparison.  Something that would not have been so obvious if Trump had not thought of celebrating the 250th birthday of the creation of the Army before America was even born. 

For anybody to protest that parade was pretty foolish.  Trump has never sold himself as a king of any kind, so the desperate attempts to paint him as a tyrannical dictator only indicate just how much of a threat law and order are to the chaos of destruction that the political left intends for us all, which has been hidden carefully behind polite society.  However, when a majority of society views something like an Army parade and enjoys it under the common appreciation of our nation’s flag, radicals against it appear much worse than they typically do.  It’s hard to preach against something so positive, yet that was the position of the anti-American protestors who have been attacking ICE deportations, American support of Israel over the PLO, and now a resurrection of appreciation for military recruitment and career advancement.  The combined efforts of many hostile characters working in the background were aimed at eroding the idea of America and turning our country into a collective entity of the United Nations, thereby losing all sovereign control to foreign, centralized banking.  It was never more apparent just how bad the messaging is of these radical groups than by June of 2025, when they still haven’t figured out why Americans voted for President Trump again in the recent election.  The bottom line is that they don’t understand what makes people work, and believe that they are so stupid that they would just mindlessly follow the Marxists trying to stop America from existing.  Trump was never trying to position himself as a king; he was popularly elected to do a job.  And he is doing it very well. 

But imagine what the rest of the world must have thought.  Again, I frequently get the chance to travel and talk to people from all over the world, so I have a perspective that isn’t confined to what people are doing in my own backyard.  And the world isn’t a very good or safe place.  Most governments are lacking because they are centralized and driven by administrative controls.  So people have come to accept deficiencies in expectation due to this collectivist nature.  Most places in the world have some degree of socialism, communism, or overall Marxism at the core of their society.  That has been tried in America and can easily be found on most school boards, corporate boardrooms, finance institutions, the medical industry, and all labor unions.  However, people themselves have rejected those traits and have been hungry for an alternative, which the free market in America has been able to nurture, and to significant effect.  And the reminder of why that is was on full display with the Army Parade.  Tyrannical ideas can’t take hold in America because of the Second Amendment, and because we have an all volunteer military that keeps bad guys out, leaving some of the most hostile forces in the world to fund radical demonstrations like what was seen by the No Kings protests, primarily financed by Marxist groups and figureheads like the billionaire Neville Singham.  We usually talk about people like Alex and George Soros for that kind of thing, but in truth, there are many handfuls of these Marxist types who use their money to pay for their own sort of army, the disenchanted youth, to be their ground troops of destruction.  And the poor kids are too stupid to understand how they are being used as a disguised military overthrow of our government by Marxist protestors.  And in the background, constantly, they have hidden themselves, because there weren’t better things happening in the world that exposed them.  This Army Parade was so positive and impressive that it made what they had been doing look insignificant by comparison, and the contrast is stark.

As a result, people are finding that they like the world President Trump is presenting, much better than the stringy-haired hippies of public education advocating for Marxism.  People like those in the military wanted to celebrate it with the President in such positive fanfare.  It was such a nice event.  As I mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed my recent trip to Washington, D.C., with my wife.  It was great to have Trump back in the White House.  But it was even better to take that area between the Washington Monument and the White House and have a military parade to show the world the miracles of capitalism, and a solid, well-funded Army with a deep, sustainable history, controlled by popular elections under self-rule.  Quite the opposite message from what the protests were trying to sell, that came out flat and jaded.  Unlike in the past, when people would give their opinions the time of day.  There is now a lot of history that people are ashamed of, so the communist playbook of protest and discontent isn’t registering.  However, a military parade in front of the White House was something the world could rally behind, demonstrating that Trump understands all too well how to project America’s values to the world in ways that no modern-day consultants could comprehend.  That display was pure Trump, and understanding the market value of freedom, and how it helps keep the world in check.  And it dwarfed all the rallies cheered on by the Marxist and socialist groups in cities all over America.  The Army parade dominated the news cycle and deflated the Marxist balloon, just in time, too.  And I think it started a new tradition, which is about time.  The first months of Trump’s second term have been great.  But I think we are just seeing the beginning of many great things to follow.

Rich Hoffman

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

Being Replaced by AI: If you have time to play on the internet all day, you are in a job that can easily be replaced by new technology

Let’s take the concerns about AI replacing jobs seriously for a minute.  Here’s a good measure that I use to determine the value of a job.  If you have time to play on the internet and are ordering your lunch at 9 AM, you are probably working a job that AI could replace. We don’t create jobs just for people to have.  You need to be doing something with that job.  So, if you have a lot of time to do other things while you’re at your job.  Or you are doing a job that people think can be done from home while you are in your pajamas, your job can be done by AI. I have explained that I don’t worry about AI taking away jobs from people. Instead, I think AI will expand our economy where it’s applied and make humans more efficient.  Our economy will grow proportionally.  And when we are talking about GDP growth of more than 3%, human jobs just aren’t going to get you there.  There are not enough people, and there are not enough births.  There aren’t enough people in the world to fill all the jobs that we currently have.  Measuring a country’s success in job creation is a thing of the past and has been for quite some time.  I understand the anxiety, but really, and you know who you are, if you aren’t very busy at your job, then you are doing a job that AI can replace, one that doesn’t show up late or call off.  Or bring in a doctor’s note looking for an excused absence.  AI works all night and doesn’t require overtime.  It doesn’t get out of focus on the topics being worked on.  It simply does work, and that is essentially what economic value is measured by: the amount of work required to drive economic activity. 

It is baffling to hear what people who are supposed to be smart think would happen with the new administrative state’s view of the world.  Even this past week, I have heard some ridiculous comments from people who are supposed to be experts on labor practices.  The notion that the world should stop because so-and-so has called off is a preposterous idea.  And the general idea is that work is something that should be regarded as valuable.  I continue to hear what I’ve listened to all my life about Mondays, when people say stupid things like, “can’t wait to Friday.”  Or, “TGIF,” associating sadness with Monday mornings, where people have to return from time off and report to jobs that they hate.  And they rebel against those jobs with frequent call-offs and expect their job to be there for them once they’ve done all their leisure activities, as if we are supposed to build our lives around being off work.  Hey, AI never complains.  It does work, and a lot of it, and is, in general, far better than humans doing those same jobs.  It is much more reliable.  So, are we supposed to avoid using AI and insist on using a human being who is much less efficient at a task, to preserve the feelings of some lazy slug who is on their third marriage and has kids by all different spouses, who call off work every time the sun is out?  Because that’s the reality of the labor market.  However, it’s not just the typical slugs we’re talking about.  It’s just as common for white-collar jobs.  And you can see it while visiting any city.

It is astonishing to visit places like Washington, D.C., where traffic is heavy from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.  Everyone is going to work, and the parking garages fill up fast.  But by noon, those parking garages start to open up because people are not working full 8-hour days.  They are going home after just a few hours in the office, and in many cases, they are not working even five days a week.  We saw this mentality clearly during COVID, where medical professionals insisting on government-imposed lockdowns had no connection to the amount of work that needed to be done globally.  Labor being a measure of productivity, most of the COVID planners thought that the world could all stay home and only communicate with each other via Teams meetings.  And we’re talking about people we think of as brilliant.  They believed that the way to get to a zero-emission world was for all humans to stay home and not drive anywhere.  If you have ever attended one of these climate conferences, such as those held in Rio or Davos, you will hear these same types of people microplanning mass society with the belief that humans could all stay home and visit parks built in their backyards, rather than traveling across the nation to visit a place like Yellowstone.  The same people who are now complaining that AI is going to take away human jobs are the same people who have tried to keep human beings from leaving their houses. I say that, knowing a great deal about the Agenda 21 goals of sustainability and how those misguided ideas infiltrated community planning. 

I have a lot of political friends who have to deal with Agenda 21 fantasies straight from the messed-up minds of the United Nations.  These kids learn a variety of skills in school, then they get hired into a township planning office, where they bring with them designs to build parks, roundabouts, and bike paths.  I live in an area where all these things have happened in abundance, and I look at them in wonder.  Why should people have so much free time to spend in all these parks and have the time to ride a bike on a bike path?  Where do the people who frequently visit there work?  Even with online gaming, many kids are playing those games 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when they should be learning skills at the local McDonald’s drive-thru.  However, we have many people who have been running our society, teaching it all the wrong things about work.  So if you have time to walk on a bike path all the time, or sit around in a park looking at nature.  Or, you order lunch three hours early, and you have time to play on the internet all day at a white-collar job. You are working in a job that could and should be replaced by AI, which can do it better because it has no time for leisure.  When traveling through Europe, it’s always a source of amusement to observe their work ethic, which is characterized by very few hours per week, excessively long vacations, and an abundance of them.  When dealing with a large company these days, they often adopt a European view of work, which can be devastating to productivity.  I’d rather not waste my time trying to get someone to come to work and convince them to be productive while they’re there.  I’d rather replace their job with AI so that the things that need to be done can get done.  We don’t create jobs for people’s convenience.  We do it because we need work done, and people should work hard to do it, rather than complaining about it.  And we must admit to ourselves that most of the opinions people have had about work were incorrect.  And they led our society down the wrong path, introducing all the bad ideas about it.  To correct that behavior while expanding the economy, AI is a valuable asset, and I find it very useful because it is always available and never complains.  There are many things that I do that AI could never replace.  So I don’t look over my back at it, worried it will replace my value. Instead, I see it as helpful because it allows me to do the kinds of things that I’m good at, and to do more of them.  Rather than waste time on stupid stuff.  But if you are looking over your shoulder at AI replacing you.  Then that’s probably because you aren’t doing anything important enough to be replaced so easily.  And that is your problem. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Why The World Needs Tesla Semis: There is just too much regulation in the trucking industry

It was unfortunate that Elon Musk went sideways with President Trump, because there are enough problems in the world without something like a minor scuffle to derail what are otherwise fantastic opportunities.  Inflation is down, as predicted, and the economy is expected to boom.  And a lot of the debt we are currently incurring will easily be paid off with growth, if you can keep foreign and domestic terrorists from shutting the world down again with another COVID-type bioweapon.  The relationship Elon Musk has had with the White House has been positive so far in 2025, and there are many people who would like to see that optimism end.  And because of Elon Musk’s embrace of the MAGA movement and the great work he did with DOGE, I have been planning to get a Cybertruck.  I think it’s the best vehicle in the world being made right now.  I don’t mind that it’s electric.  I like traditional fossil fuel vehicles, but the power that these electric engines produce is an excellent example of fantastic engineering, so I am very interested in all Tesla products.  And I want them to continue to grow in market share.  But when Elon Musk got upset and supported an impeachment of President Trump, I dropped those plans for a Cybertruck faster than a New York second.  If Musk isn’t supporting MAGA, I’m not supporting Musk.  I might like him.  I might cheer him on as an innovator.  But I’m also not going to go out of my way to buy a Tesla if I can’t believe in the creator himself.  I only looked at Tesla vehicles because of Musk’s embrace of President Trump.  So we’ll see if any reconciliation lasts, or if it’s just a matter of personal survival.  Always judge people not by what they say, but by what they do.

But speaking of Elon Musk, self-driving vehicles, especially the Tesla semi trucks, and MAGA, there is a lot of fear that the self-driving aspect of these modern vehicles is just another way to steal jobs away from Americans.  But I don’t see it that way at all.  I’ve pointed out before that electric semi-trucks don’t have the range to replace full-time, diesel over-the-road trucks.  The concern is that self-driving trucks will replace the jobs of professional truck drivers.  However, I believe it will only benefit them, as the transportation industry is overly regulated. Therefore, when asked, “Why the Tesla semi?” the answer is a solution to overregulation that makes being a truck driver a challenging occupation. And that if you could change the nature of the over-road part of it, then we might find more drivers who would want to enter that field.  The problem with shipping products from the West Coast to the East, for instance, is that drivers are forced to be on the road too long.   They have to stop every 11 hours within a 14-hour on-duty window after 10 consecutive hours off, and all of this has to be recorded in a logbook. It’s just a pain in the neck for the driver.  It forces them to be on the road longer and away from their families needlessly.  The regulators will say that it prevents accidents from driver fatigue.  I know a lot of truck drivers, I’ve dealt with thousands of them over the years and for them there is nothing worse than driving all across the country with all the regulations involved only to get to their destination and have to sit in the parking lot waiting for a manufacturing plant to open, to unload them, further wasting their time.  Transportation times across the country are ridiculously long due to excessive regulations and a lackadaisical approach to labor hours in manufacturing these days. 

Where the Tesla semi trucks come in is that they can drive automatically across the boring states, such as Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, and drop their loads off at designated drop lots outside major cities.  And from there, a live driver can get up and work an 8-hour day picking up that trailer and taking it the rest of the way to the destination.  I think it would create more truck driving jobs to use the self-driving trucks to haul loads over the vast distances where there isn’t much traffic.  Self-driving trucks could operate outside of that 11-hour window, significantly reducing delivery times and making the live driver’s time much more productive.  However, to impose all those restrictions on a live driver and force them to stay on the road for over a week due to regulatory burdens is unreasonable.  It is no wonder, then, that there is a shortage of drivers.  It’s fun to be on the road for short spurts, but day after day, year after year, it wears out families and makes life challenging.  We should be making the profession easier, not harder.  The Tesla semi would work well with a drop lot system, which would make more commerce available by removing the capacity ceiling.  With capacity being determined by the regulatory burdens.  The safest thing to do to a truck driver is to keep them from driving.  However, we want drivers to drive more and haul more product from one place to another, and that limit should not be confined to human driving hours. 

One of the most attractive aspects of Tesla vehicles to me is that they are self-driving.  I enjoy driving cars probably more than most people.  But I can think of a million things to do with my time than driving when I am just trying to get from one place to another.  And I could use that extra half hour in those drives around town to do other things if the car is driving itself.  I could improve my efficiency significantly if the car drove itself.  And I see that being the significant benefit to the Tesla line of products.  They enhance time management, which will undoubtedly benefit the trucking industry.  I always feel sorry for truck drivers at rest stops, forced to wait out their 11-hour driving window when they are still 2,000 miles from home, heading in the opposite direction.  If I were them, I’d want to drive for 16 hours straight and cut down my time on the road, so I could either spend more time with my family or have the opportunity to make more money with additional routes. However, as things stand, a significant amount of trucking capacity remains underutilized due to drivers being constrained by excessive regulation.  The Tesla Semi would help make those long routes much more manageable, making it more achievable to give drivers a regular 8-hour workday and the ability to get home to their families each night.  And to let the Tesla Semi handle the long over-the-road hauls, driving way past the 11-hour maximum.  I see an expansion of the trucking industry, making it more attractive for human drivers to become truck drivers, as the automated Tesla semis could handle the heavy lifting that is currently discouraging market entry.  And that part of making America Great Again is in making truck driving great, maybe for the first time.  Tesla’s innovation in self-driving vehicles can give human beings a great gift, greatly expanding economic opportunities in the future.  And that has more value than money, most of the time.

Rich Hoffman

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

Rich Hoffman Derangement Syndrome: Solving problems people don’t want solved

This has arisen recently due to the fallout between Elon Musk and President Trump, during which he discussed Trump Derangement Syndrome.  However, I understand why people dislike President Trump.  And here’s the deal: it’s not his job to change the opinion of those who hate him.  I know that hate all too well because it’s a personality thing.  There are a lot of people who hate me; they have Rich Hoffman Derangement Syndrome for sure.  And I know why people have it.  So I get Trump, and I understand why Elon Musk self-sabotaged his relationship with the President.  I see it all the time, every single day.  And there isn’t anything anybody can do to change that status.  People are going to feel what they are going to feel, and that’s just the way it works.  In Trump’s case, there are many people, including Elon Musk, who fall out of favor with the President due to the factors that contribute to the development of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  And the burden for change is on the people who hate, knowing that people like Trump set a bar too high for weak people to live up to, and they hate the person who sets that high bar because they are too lazy to live up to it.  That is the start of the hatred, but of course, it runs deeper than that.  But for some dumb reason, people have been taught that society owes them some unearned merit, to make them feel less bad about themselves, and when people don’t give them that, they grow to hate the targets of their anxiety.  And that relationship often descends into hatred.  One of the reasons President Trump has been as successful as he has in life is that he developed the ability to not care about changing his status against him, but to embrace it and live with it.  And once that happens, a certain freedom is experienced which allows for exemplary leadership and personal virtue. 

The Rich Hoffman Derangement Syndrome, which is a very real thing, is completely unprovoked by me.  I am about as friendly to people as anybody could be.  Yet I have a list of people who hate me for a reason.  And I understand it all too well, and I can therefore see it in other people with the same ease, such as in President Trump.  I don’t go out of my way to harm people at all, yet there is no shortage of people every day, at a different level than President Trump, of course, who lose their minds just by hearing my name.  And to maintain your level of happiness, you have to develop the ability not to care what people think of you.  President Trump has certainly created that over the years, which is why he can be such a good President.  But the same could be said of the head of any company or a family.  If someone had to pinpoint the most essential ingredient in any successful enterprise, I would say that it resides in Trump Derangement Syndrome, and how he deals with that derangement as a person.  Most human beings have an innate desire to be liked.  So they find themselves going out of their way to appease those around them, which gives people who don’t deserve it unearned merit, more power than they deserve to have, because they get to decide whether or not they like you.  And if you want to be liked, then you give people who don’t deserve that power, power over you, because you want something from them. 

It’s a psychological problem from people who have significant, destructive personality traits that they desire to hide from the world through this little game of popularity.  One thing that people, for the most part, do is introduce problems into the world so they can hide their insecurities behind them.  It’s a deep psychological problem that most people have in their lives to some extent.  So, when you bring someone into their life who likes to solve problems, and they solve those problems easily, of course, for those with the problems, that’s the worst thing in the world.  Because they want to hide behind problems with no prospect of ever being solved, those types of people dislike individuals who solve problems, as they want the problems to persist so they can conceal deeper issues within themselves that they seek to hide from the world.  That is why there is, and always will be, Rich Hoffman Derangement Syndrome.  Solving problems comes very naturally to me, and I do it everywhere I go.  I see through people to who they are, and when I see problems, I solve them.  And people hate me for it.  And since I don’t give them unearned merit just for breathing, as they have been taught, society should not be structured that way. As a result, they have no barrier to reality to insulate themselves from the truth. So they hate me.  And they hate anybody who shows an inclination to solve their problem because they want the problems to exist so they can hide behind them.  We’re talking about the kind of people who create problems in the world so they can hide their insecurities behind them, protecting themselves from needed reforms, and putting pressure on them to be good people.  To avoid that fate, they create problems as a barrier to the pressures of judgment.

So if you are a problem solver who sees easily through these smokescreens of issues, you will be hated.  Just as a child wants to hide under the covers to avoid the monsters that they think are in their closet, they will hate the person who rips away the covers and forces them to see what is hidden in their room.  And when you show them that there is no monster, they will not be happy, but sad, because they liked to hide under the covers, as it simulated a primal desire they have to be back in the womb of their mother, all cozy and warm, and cared for.  Because life is tough, and they aren’t adamant, or smart, and they fear most of all the world knowing that about them.  And with me, I see everything, I know everything, I can read a person just walking down the sidewalk and tell you just about everything you need to know about them.  Solving problems comes naturally to me.  And when I do, some people want the issues to remain, for their own needs of concealment.  And over time, if you want to be successful with such a talent, you learn not to care what other people think.  Because you don’t give those people the unearned merit to leverage friendship for compliance, people who don’t deserve it don’t get to use their control over relationships to keep problems intact as an extortion strategy.  And when that doesn’t work, as seen with Elon Musk maintaining a relationship with President Trump to gain leverage over a NASA administrator, or some EV mandate in the new Big Beautiful Bill, you find out real fast who your real friends are and what they want out of a relationship with you.  And when you couldn’t care less what they think, of course, they will develop a hatred for you and will suffer from a Derangement Syndrome.  And there is nothing you can do to help them.  I have certainly learned not to get pulled into other people’s problems.  But to solve them, regardless of their feelings about it.  And when they learn they can’t use friendship to retain their problems.  Of course, they will hate you for it, so if you want to be a successful person, you need to solve problems.  You have to learn not to care when people develop a hatred for you. Instead, you learn to accept and even embrace that hatred.  There is nothing I can do about Rich Hoffman Derangement Syndrome.  Except learn not to solve the problems people want to hide behind.  And we all know that’s not going to happen. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Treason and Sedition Carry With Them the Death Penalty: And that is clearly what is happening in the riots against ICE Agents

This isn’t hard, guys.  Anybody who funds the purposeful destruction of our country is committing treason, and advocating for the destruction of our country is sedition.  People can and should be executed for such an offense.  We’re not talking about a free speech argument in relation to what is happening in Los Angeles and other cities around America.  For legal definitions, treason is the crime of betraying one’s country, typically involving acts such as waging war against it or aiding its enemies.  In the U.S., it’s defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution as levying war against the U.S., adhering to its enemies, or giving them aid and comfort, requiring two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court for conviction.  For anybody hiring protestors to block traffic and fight against the police, National Guard, or ICE Agents, all employees of the federal government who report to our elected representation in the White House, which defines the American government, are committing acts of treason.  Sedition is conduct or speech inciting rebellion or resistance against a government’s authority, often just short of treason.  It typically involves actions or words that promote disorder or overthrow lawful authority, such as organizing or encouraging riots against the state, as seen in Los Angeles.  Whoever writes a check advocating for the riots of Los Angeles could be prosecuted, and even executed with the death penalty, for their contributions.  And it would be perfectly fine to apply that standard to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have worked to organize these riots.  The only thing that is a little ambiguous in these cases is how an enemy is defined.  We traditionally look at enemies as foreign governments.  However, to avoid the wrath of the United States and its superior firepower, enemies have disguised their true intentions behind political movements, such as socialism, communism, and Marxism, to conceal their true nature, hoping to shield their actions under the First Amendment’s Free Speech clause.  

Treason, as defined under 18 U.S.C. § 2381, carries the punishment of death, or imprisonment for not less than five years, and a fine of not less than $10,000.  And a convicted person is incapable of holding any office under the United States.  Sedition is addressed under 18 U.S.C. § 2384.  If convicted, a person faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine, or both.  More than enough reports are tying the treasonous and seditions acts of the mob planners to communist China, a known and declared enemy to the United States of America, so that pretty much sums it up.  The riots against ICE agents are not free speech protests, and all the politicians who have been cheering them on, like Maxine Waters, could easily be charged and removed from office for their actions.  This is not ambiguous; it’s clearly stated and aligns with border policy.  There is no room for alternative opinions on the matter.  Any contrary belief system is part of this open border movement that hides their criminal acts behind what is generally believed to be a right to protest and petition a government.  The only reason they think this behavior can be hidden is due to the lack of intelligence or conviction that people now possess, as our education systems have helped facilitate such watered-down opinions.  And this is the same mode of operation that we have seen recently in Paris.  Foreign immigrants and their supporters carrying signs of Marxism, swinging around foreign flags, and burning the flag of their domestic country in protest are purposely seeking to end any border distinction around the world.  And that strategy is treasonous.  And suppose the influence comes from outside the country of origin. In that case, they and their partners are behaving in a seditious manner and can be prosecuted as perpetrators of war against the host country. 

When someone says that there is no evidence, or that there is no proof that so and so has ever been charged with a crime of treason or sedition, what they are saying is that the people who collect evidence didn’t collect it.  And that the proof is everywhere, but law enforcement was afraid to apply it.  Or that a person hasn’t been charged, because the law enforcement was too lazy to file a charge for the crime.  And they would do that for many reasons.  We have learned that through the Bar Associations, sentiments in favor of social justice are often influenced by Marxist ideas, and that we have placed too much trust in lawyers who share these views.  It’s fair to say that all collectivist-based associations, even homeowner associations these days, are filled with Marxist propaganda so that the value judgment against overthrowing a country has been watered down to the point where they are paralyzed in social judgments, which is in and of itself seditious behavior against a host country.  The assumption is that we are all now global citizens and that the borders of a nation are no longer relevant.  Therefore, attempting to have the courts punish treason and sedition is pointless, so anyone trying to protect their career would be reluctant to present such evidence, fearing they would lose in court and fall out of favor in the promotion loops controlled by those same individuals.  Evidence is never brought forward, charges are never filed, because prosecutors do not think that judges will rule in their favor.  And we have seen why they fear this, because many judges are openly trying to use the law to stop the Trump administration, as they see it, from being the established representative of the American people. 

So, a lack of will, or to accept that many of our institutions have been poisoned with Marxism and elements hostile to the American way of life, does not change the definition of treason and sedition.  What has been happening in the L.A. riots is both.  Any person who raises a fist to sworn officers of our government is openly declaring war against the state and can, and should be, charged as such.  Call it fascism.  Call it tyranny.  Call it whatever you want.  But what it is is treason and sedition.  We elect our representatives through honest elections, who then make up the state.  So we are the “state.”  And the best protest against a government is to work to elect new people into office.  However, overthrowing the system itself is a death penalty kind of crime.  This is not the same as the January 6th prisoners when Biden was inserted into the government.  Because that government was put into power through election fraud, and in that case, the established government was overthrown by the same methods as the riots in L.A. have been advanced.  And the money trail connects the guilty parties to the crimes.  These are not rights protected by the First Amendment.  These are hostile perpetrators of violence and anti-American activities.  And that if Trump’s administration puts to death all the organizers, as under the law they have a right and obligation to do, the American people will stand behind their elected representatives.  And they would even reward that political party with a greater majority in the upcoming midterms.  People do not want to see Marxist rioters in their streets causing harm, social disruption, and inconvenience.  They do not want to see their police harassed or ICE agents being prevented from carrying out their duties.  It’s time to get tough, real tough.  And stop playing games with people who want to destroy our country.  Especially those funding these riots.  Put them down, arrest them, charge them, and push for convictions for the death penalty.  And stop playing games.  The law is quite clear on this, and it’s time to enforce it the way it deserves. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Trump’s Executive Orders for Sky Cars and Supersonic Flight: The future of America’s economy

I told everyone they were coming, and those who listened will profit from the information; those who didn’t, well, they’ll be trying to catch up with the rest of the world.  But on Friday, June 6, 2025, Trump did what I had been talking about for many years prior: he signed the Executive Order on Advanced Electric Air Taxis and Advanced Drone Operations, along with others involving U.S. Airspace Security Against Drone Threats, and lifting the ban on Supersonic Flights.  However, it was the air taxi order that was the most important and the quickest to market benefit.  As I have been saying, Joby Aviation, up the road from my house in Cincinnati, is building electric sky cars that were going to arrive on the market in 2025.  They are already being placed into the Abu Dhabi market and in China.  Japan will have them soon, as will Toyota, which is in a partnership with Joby, so I’ve been warning that America will be left behind.  And I also said that Trump would make it a priority, because America doesn’t want to be last in anything.  With this order from President Trump, the development of electric air taxis is promoted and commercial drone operations are expanded, which these air taxis essentially are – big, fancy drones.  The order directs the FAA to allow commercial users and public safety officials to fly drones beyond their line of sight, easing current restrictions.  It also supports a program to test vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, which could enhance cargo transport, medical response times, and access to rural areas.  Additionally, it encourages federal agencies to prioritize the purchase of U.S.-made drones and directs the Secretary of Commerce to promote the export of American drones to other markets.  This is a significant step into a Jetsons-like world, and as I said, the technology was already there.  All that was needed was a regulatory environment to allow for that technology to be applied to society in general. It’s a big step in the right direction.

However, regarding the supersonic flight ban that has been in place over the United States for commercial aircraft, it has been frustrating to deal with such an artificial limit.  If you’ve ever had to fly across the Pacific Ocean on a 13-14 hour flight, no matter how long you spend in first class, it’s a hard flight.  It’s challenging to travel from airport to airport over 24 hours to reach the other side of the world.  It isn’t easy to fly from New York to Los Angeles routinely, because the airplanes are just too slow.  Boom Aviation has been in operation since 2014 and has been dedicated to developing passenger air vehicles that exceed the speed of sound. They have been successful and, like Joby Aviation, are poised for market entry.  Their Overture airliner can carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7, which is 1,100 miles per hour.  That would reduce the six-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles to 3 hours.  They are working on lowering the transoceanic times to 3.5 hours, for instance, to London, which is a significant improvement from the current time.  They intend to have 1,000 supersonic airliners available for business class fares to make it economically viable, and they currently have 130 orders for aircraft from most major airlines, including United, American, and Japan Airlines.  So, Trump’s executive order is not a distant hope for the future.  It’s for right here, right now.  All we needed was a president who would embrace these innovations and nurture them forward.  All we needed was a Trump election to unleash the opportunities.

Speaking about the air taxi service for Joby, the pricing will be in the range of Uber Black, and initially, it will focus on airport travel.  For instance, as I have been talking about in my local area of West Chester, Ohio, the Joby partnership with Delta Airlines would allow passengers who arrive at CVG, which is about an hour away from West Chester, because of the traffic, its not very far away, it just takes time to get down I-75 at the rush hour times to get there, passengers could arrive from their flight, get to the skyport, and take an air taxi to West Chester to their hotel.  They could just about walk to everything they needed without having to rent a car; then do their business, and then fly back the same way.  On a business trip, which is something I see a lot of, it’s a real problem for a lot of business travelers, to catch a 5:30 PM flight, they essentially have to leave at 2:30 PM to beat the rush hour traffic, then deal with all the TSA nonsense wasting most of their day in the process.  I have people who come to see me who have to travel overseas, who deliberately leave for the airport to stay at a hotel there so they don’t have to deal with the traffic on the day of their flight, which is a massive waste of their time.  Therefore, there is a sufficient need for this service to become helpful immediately.  And it will be as common as taking an Uber within months once commercial utilization is accepted.  Uber Black pricing to CVG from West Chester would likely be around $142-$170, which is comparable to the cost of Uber Black when traveling from Manhattan to JFK, approximately 15-20 miles. 

The most important thing to consider here is not the technology itself, but valuing time.  There has been a concerning trend in the world to reduce all forms of travel and to encourage people to rely solely on Microsoft Teams, for instance, and avoid face-to-face meetings.  That was undoubtedly the unintended consequence of COVID, and it turned out to be a disaster, which the Biden administration only made worse with an anti-technology approach to the economy that was devastating.  There was no reason not to be first to market with sky cars or supersonic flight.  When you enable more people to accomplish more in a day, you expand the economy.  For businesspeople to be able to do more with their time rather than travel, the economic benefits are undeniable.  I know many people who would gladly pay $170 per person to fly over the traffic to CVG so they could work for an additional 2 hours on their Delta flight back to where they came from.  For most businesspeople, their time on the road is worth a lot more than that, and they should not be wasting it sitting around in airports or flying in slow crafts that are restricted to speeds under the speed of sound.  I would say that in just a few years, once people get used to accepting that a sky car is more useful than ordering a normal Uber to drive them around, the pricing will come down significantly and be much less.  It will take time for people to get used to the option, but once they do, lots of things will improve, including street traffic.  I see only good things coming from these Trump executive orders, and it’s about time somebody dares to implement them.  Many of these companies, like Joby and Boom, have been waiting for politics to catch up to them.  And now is the time. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Let’s Be Clear, Elon Musk Did Not Win the Election for Trump: The tempers of a dejected woman

Let’s get something straight: Elon Musk did not win the election for President Trump.  I like Elon Musk, and I want his companies to succeed.  But he’s a political lightweight who still has a lot to learn.  The money he spent, primarily on President Trump, around $290 million, was in his own best interest. If Trump had lost, it would have essentially cost Elon Musk many billions of dollars in lost opportunity cost.  So this big head idea he has that he won the election for President Trump, and that he put a Republican House and Senate into the majority, is ridiculously wrong.  I have a news flash for Elon Musk.  Trump was going to win, and so were those majorities going to happen, with or without Elon Musk.  We don’t owe him anything.  We welcomed his help.  But we were going to win regardless.  Trump was poised to win as far back as 2022, and I said so all the way.  Everyone knew what the internals were saying; Trump was never going to lose.  And I hate to say it, but that money Musk spent was mainly worthless.   People had already made up their minds about Trump, and they wanted him, because election fraud was the problem in 2020.  Elon Musk was a Democrat who helped other Democrats feel like they could switch over to the MAGA base and be a part of it.  However, the numbers were already in place long before Elon Musk became involved.  And to whatever degree Elon Musk has deluded himself with a power play to turn against Trump in the way he did, which will have a permanent impact on the rest of his life, it’s essential to clarify the truth of the matter.  President Trump would have won the 2024 election with or without help. 

There is a part of me, and it might yet be somewhat true that the calls for war that China and Russia have been beating on, making negotiations very difficult, were why Trump and Musk went into a tag team kind of Big Time Wrestling event where the world was temporarily distracted by the most powerful person in the world getting into a fight with the world’s richest person.  Trump has done that kind of thing with Vince McMahon before.  Those kinds of acts are what WWF wrestling is all about, and off stage, all the guys are friends.  But I think Trump is legitimately hurt by what Elon Musk did, and that what happened was a permanent condition.  I would place it among the stories of Omarosa, Michael Cohen, and Anthony Scaramucci, people who were once close to Trump but fell away in disgrace.  That’s a whole topic of its own, but in this case, it takes courage to stand by a person like President Trump, and some people just don’t have it.  Is it President Trump’s fault that there are so many people like that in his life, and extending well into the past?  No, I would say that influential people attract people who want to be near power.  And as people of their own, they have fantasies of being able to manipulate influential people into doing things they want, because they lack the courage to do it themselves.  So they fly too close to the sun, their wings melt, and they fall back to earth.  Elon Musk is just the latest to experience that. 

As it looks, Steve Bannon was probably more right than wrong about Musk being a Chinese asset.  China is Tesla’s second-largest market, behind the United States, with sales growing by 8.8% in 2024.  And state-controlled banks in China gave Tesla a $1.6 billion loan from Chinese state-owned banks in 2019 to build their gigafactory there, with a reduced 15% corporate tax rate.  I think the pressure on Elon Musk to exit politics was significant due to his numerous entanglements.  I was amazed that he was able to do as much as he did.  Like a lot of people, Elon Musk got caught up in seeing the extreme wrong behind the assassination attempt of Trump, and he joined the crusade out of a moral imperative, like so many others did.  But China has been using globalist money to buy people with leverage for many years, including most of our current government.  And they are trying to undermine Trump, as they did when they released the COVID-19 virus during an election year.  We cannot ignore the role China played in election fraud in America, but also in other places, such as Brazil, and most recently in South Korea.  Doing business with China is a tricky proposition; they can and will hold everything over your head if they decide to call in a loan.  That seems to be a common practice in the world these days, so I can certainly understand the pressure on Musk to distance himself from the White House and return to running his companies, which, unfortunately, involves being a political chameleon.  Most businesspeople have to adapt their approach depending on the country they are dealing with, and with a company like Tesla, China holds significant influence.  It’s nice that it’s an American car company and that it represents a necessary export.  But at what cost? Usually, it means that at the very least, the CEO of the company can’t have political opinions that work against the country they are building and selling cars to, when they are effectively a communist run enterprise hell bent on authority control over mass society.

I think the pressure got to him. There are a lot of leftists who work in executive positions at Musk’s companies, and they weren’t happy that he was suddenly one of the key Republicans in Washington D.C., attached so intimately to the Trump administration with direct, and open friendship.  For Trump’s part, it was good to have Musk as a friend.  In business, you keep your friends close, and if you can, you keep your enemies closer.  If you have your arm around them, it’s hard for them to stick a knife in your back, because your arm can control their movements to a greater extent.  But for people like Musk, and the long line of individuals who have tried to be close to Trump, to control him in some way, and then found out things didn’t go the way they wanted, it’s like the woman who marries a man to change him.  And after all the sex and laughing at his dumb jokes, he still doesn’t willingly cut the grass on Sunday, the woman feels dejected and angry.  And I think Elon Musk is like so many women who try such a thing only to realize they weren’t able to change the man they married, leaving them embarrassed and regretful.  And Musk wanted to make a clean break to get his companies back on track by using the protest against this Big Beautiful Bill as an excuse.  Because if you did want to help the Chinese stay in power, you would like to stop the Trump campaign bill from passing the Senate.  Passing the bill, as expensive as it is, essentially reduces China’s influence over American politics.  That’s why it’s so costly.  Debt can be leveraged to advantage.  But to make it work, you have to have something valuable to work with.  China has been trying to destroy that value, so this Big Beautiful Bill of Trump’s is all about leverage.  Not actual debt.  And Elon Musk found himself caught between those two worlds, and he had to pick.  And I don’t blame him.  It takes a lot of guts to stick to these kinds of things.  And it’s challenging at best, especially if you have a substantial amount of money and want to maintain it.  But let’s be clear, Musk didn’t win the election for Trump.  He was just lucky to have been a part of history.  He certainly didn’t make it.

Rich Hoffman

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

Vote for Mark Welch as Trustee of West Chester, Ohio: The island of misfit toys wants to ride the success of good politics

Mark Welch, the long-standing trustee of West Chester, Ohio, has undoubtedly been one of the main reasons that the northern Cincinnati community is one of the best places to live in the world.  And that’s not just me saying that because I like West Chester, Ohio.  Years ago, some effective policies were implemented to limit government overreach and foster a free enterprise approach to the growing community. This was achieved through a collaborative effort, led by then-trustee George Lang, with Mark Welch subsequently elected to provide a much-needed second vote.  It used to be that George was always outvoted two to one, and he needed someone who could share his vision with him. The result was a period of prosperity in West Chester, Ohio, which has made it unquestionably one of the best places to live anywhere in the world.  As a result, many people have moved into the area, bringing with them political ideas reflective of their origins, which have evolved.  George is now Senator Lang of Ohio, representing the 4th District.  However, Mark Welch remains a trustee who is now up for re-election in 2025.  With his excellent track record, he should have an easy re-election to his seat.  But we don’t want to take anything for granted.  Another long-time holdout, Lee Wong, who is very sympathetic to Chinese causes, is also up for re-election.  He is the kind of person who a lot of Democrats vote for, so he tends to get support from the many moderate Republicans, and the Democrats so there is some concern that in a race that is introducing the long term police chief to the mix Joel Herzog, that if Republicans don’t work together, that damage could be done to the seats in West Chester. 

Most of the time, there aren’t many people who run for these spots, and it could be assumed that Mark would win his seat back and that there would be room for Joel Herzog to join him.  Lee Wong, under all considerations, is vulnerable for many reasons, but he plays nicely enough with Republicans to avoid drawing too much hate, which is part of his strategy.  In a three-way race for two seats, it can get tricky.  The ideal situation would be for Republicans to show up and support Mark and Joel, thereby putting Lee in third place.  However, as I mentioned earlier, Lee will likely draw Democrat votes without needing to do much campaigning.  And the way these elections work is that it’s the best of the candidates who get the highest vote count.  Therefore, the top two vote-getters will win the seats.  And if it were just between these three, I would say Mark Welch would have no problem retaining his seat.  Joel Herzog is a good guy who comes highly recommended by everyone who knows him.  I have mentioned that, as a former police chief, it would be challenging for him to negotiate police contracts as a trustee with impartiality.  But most people agree that the good stuff with him is so good that that’s not a concern in his regard.  To regain the support of two conservative West Chester trustees, it will require a coordinated effort to retain Mark and help Joel win without one of them losing to Lee Wong.  The current belief is that Lakota schools will attempt to put a levy on the ballot, which is expected to attract many big-spending Democrats, making the math for Lee much more favorable than in previous years.

Then there is the issue of Ann Becker. A couple of other prominent Democrat challengers, affiliated with the Kathy Wyenandt area Democrats, who are certainly in the minority, are also running. Still, they are organizing to tag-team their efforts with the Lakota school levy push, so they hope to have higher than normal voter turnout to capture some advantage.  Ann Becker is the third trustee who was formerly a Tea Party conservative, serving as president of the Cincinnati Tea Party and the West Chester Tea Party.  She used to have a show on 55 KRC to discuss Tea Party topics, but Ann Becker is long gone these days.  She used to be a good tag team vote with Mark Welch, but she has changed quite a lot over the years, to the point where she might as well be a Democrat.  Therefore, electing Joel and retaining Mark become that much more critical.  When I first met Ann, whom I have been good friends with for a long time, she was associated with the levy supporters of Lakota, and we were at odds politically.  However, I always liked Ann, and she made a transition into the Tea Party movement, where we saw many things eye to eye.  People would warn me that she used to be a Democrat.  But I liked her anyway.  I also like Kathy Wyenandt, too, as a person.  However, Democrats are not adept at handling money or policy, and the needs of West Chester require a particular kind of mind. Unfortunately, Ann has lost her way and reverted to the person she was before I met her, before the Tea Party movement.  These individuals might be friendly, but they shouldn’t be in government. 

The other two candidates stepping into the crowded race for those two trustee seats are both Democrats: Alyssa Louagie and Amanda Ortiz.  I don’t think either one of them has a chance, but they think they do because they plan to tag-team the Lakota levy, which many are counting on Ann to lend her support as well.  So, we suddenly have a lot of Democrats taking a calculated leap into the mix, hoping that something will stick.  There is also a risk of losing what made West Chester great and falling into the same trend that muddles so many other communities, which assume that their success stories can survive with Democrats moving into positions of leadership.  People see things going well, so they give the misfit toys a chance, out of the luxury of success.  Then democrats ruin everything, and they want to attach themselves to the success story of West Chester, and the game for the rest of us is to preserve that success by re-electing Mark Welch and adding Joel Herzog.  However, the Democrats want to capitalize on the success to fund their social engineering projects, which will then alter everything great about West Chester, turning it into just another typical community that has seen its success fade because it was taken for granted.  And if we let the Democrats have a greater share of the seats at the table, we could easily end up with three Democrats as trustees, which would be detrimental to the interests of the other parties. That provides some early math to put the situation in perspective.  I think it will be good for Lakota to put out their ridiculous school levy because it will bring out more MAGA, Trump-voting Republicans, who will only help Mark hold his seat.  I think the math works in Mark’s favor to pick up votes this year, given the anger at Lakota schools over their proposed tax increases.  But we’ll see.  What we do know is who is running, and it’s now that the strategies for preserving West Chester need to be developed, before it’s too late.  And taking a long view, Joel would be great, but the more strategic seat comes up in a few years. To protect West Chester, we need a strategy and a lot of players willing to support the long view, especially in a crowded field.

Rich Hoffman

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I’m Thinking of Getting a PhD: The mysterious Qesem Cave

I have been thinking a great deal about pursuing a PhD.  For me, it’s a debate of time; it’s hard for me to dedicate too much time to any one thing, and pursuing a PhD requires a significant amount of time in a specific field of study.  However, my reason for wanting to do it, and I think I will at some point regardless, is that I want to prove it can be done without losing your mind in the process.  I want to prove that if you look at the world with your face up against the glass, you can still see.  And I could do just that, and in the aftermath, I could be very dangerous.  However, typically, it costs around half a million dollars to pursue a PhD, and the time commitment is mind-numbing.  However, it could be fun if it were in a field that you enjoy. I want to pursue one in Bible Studies, Philosophy, or Archaeology because I am passionate about these topics and have many ideas on how to improve them for the betterment of human civilization.  But unfortunately, and this is just how things are in the living world, what you want to do and what you should, or could do, is not always the same.  And the skill that I am best at, which is specifically me, is consuming vast amounts of random information and solving problems outside the box.  And that is something I wouldn’t be able to do if I had my face too close to the glass for an extended period.  My reasons for pursuing a PhD are not the traditional ones, but rather to demonstrate that one can be obtained despite the institutional problems in the process.

The best example of this is in Qesem Cave, a topic I first learned about while reading my favorite magazine in the world, the November/December 2007 edition of Biblical Archaeology Review, which was available in print at the time.  Later, in December, I noticed a brief online article about Qesem Cave that had not been included in the print edition, and I thought it was astonishing.  Here, a cave was discovered just outside Tel Aviv, Israel, and about an hour’s drive to the west of Jerusalem, that had human habitation 420,000 years ago.  The cave was discovered while building a highway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the interior, and its existence was entirely a matter of happenstance, which I found alarming.  How many Qesem Caves were there in the world just waiting to be discovered, just short of the surface of the earth?  And the answer is an astonishing amount that we are just starting to wrap our heads around, especially in hostile zones like China, Russia, and all over the Middle East.  However, this discovery was so unusual and difficult to categorize that even in an archaeology magazine that typically reports on such issues, they weren’t quite sure what to say about it.  Because it didn’t fit any previous assumptions about the region.  And even then, it took seven years from its discovery for the world to learn about it.  And since then, it has been researched a bit here and there up to 2016.  However, much of the work has been relatively small in scope because the discovery process is overly bureaucratic and detrimentally procedural.  The most intelligent people on the planet who could study these kinds of things were too tied up in peer review commentary to even begin to think of something that was not within the box of their specialized fields of study. 

But Qesem Cave proves something I had long been thinking about in the specific region of the Bible lands.  I believe there was a very good reason why Abraham was instructed to sacrifice Isaac at the location he did, and that the Holy of Holies was situated where it was.  And that the skull of the first human ever, Adam, was buried in a cave under the site where Jesus was crucified.  Academics with their face up against the glass write off such stories as fictional apocrypha, but I think the desire to write such stories such as in The Book of the Cave of Treasures is because under modern Jerusalem is an ancient system of caves that were always there, and that Yahweh was very angry at the Canaanite culture which resided there for many hundreds of thousands of years, well outside our accepted timeline for the flood stories and evolution of the Biblical characters.  I tend to think that the story of Genesis compresses millions of years into the arrival of Abraham, allowing the plot of the Bible to begin.  And that its reference points reach too deep in the past to connect to historical anchors.  And Qesem Cave proves this to be true, not just because humans were using it as shelter from the outside world and the elements, but also because they were practicing shamanic practices there, which would be the oldest spot in the world where such activity was observed.  I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg.  And that the world is filled with such places.  However, the Holy Land is so well-documented that a discovery like this can’t be ignored in any historical discussion. 

Inside the cave were elements of apparent ritual activity using swan wings to mimic shamanic spirit flight while under the influence of hallucinogens, which the current argument is the foundation of all religious belief, the deliberate attempt for people to reach across known perception and talk to spiritual entities to assist with daily life.  And biblically, we have people talking to what they think is God a lot.  Qesem Cave reveals that this kind of practice has been ongoing for a much more extended period than previously understood.  And for me, that’s a big deal, which is why I’m considering getting a PhD.  I want to prove that you can achieve this without compromising your ability to think critically when new information is introduced.  As I am, I excel at solving complex problems because my knowledge base is extensive.  However, academia is designed against the broad acquisition of knowledge and is structured to be too specific, making it difficult to incorporate new information and advance understanding.  And that’s why Qesem Cave has been so little explored, and why the Indian mounds of North America, and the world, get so little attention, because they don’t fit a narrative that academics have staked a stake in, and many PhD papers were written.  I think the best and only way to shatter that assumption is to undertake one myself, so that I can conduct my thesis on the shortcomings of the current PhD process.  We should encourage people to think primarily about multiple matters, rather than focusing on a limited vantage point, and then make the process so complicated that, once you survive it, you are changed forever by the experience.  I interact with many people who hold advanced degrees every day, and I would say I know more of them than most people do.  And I like them, but they all share the same problem: they think too specifically and do not think large enough to deal with the vast world of knowledge that we have yet to unlock.  And in the process, they are often paralyzed by the procedure and cannot see the obvious.  And that is precisely what Qesem Cave, which I think is one of the most incredible discoveries in the world, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt.  And what is both scary and delightful is that it’s just the beginning.  As far as me getting a PhD, I would like to get to a point in my life where I could take a few years and just think about the things I enjoy thinking about.  It would be fun, and I could do a lot of good things with it.  I may not be at that stage in my life now, but if and when I could, I think I would.

Rich Hoffman

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