“On Tuesday, Senate Bill 5 was rejected throughout Ohio as draconian overreach. Now they are trying to reach into the private sector,” said Chris Redfern, chairman of Ohio Democratic Party. “They’re inviting a challenge.”
Source article: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111110/NEWS0108/111110327/Ohio-group-pushes-right-work-amendment
This comment came on the announcement that a group not associated with Governor Kasich, not associated with the Koch Brothers, not even associated with the Republican Party is seeking to place on the ballot the ability for Ohio to become a right-to-work state. See the press conference for yourself here.
Now, I know those guys pretty well, and they are a group of fair and balanced guys. They truly desire to give to the state of Ohio a level of freedom that has been uttered from the silent parties within these unions for quite a long time. These union members who are tired of having their union dues translated into funding for the Democratic Party want out of their imprisonment, which is but one of the issues addressed in Issue 2. When opponents of Issue 2 said that the law was too “far reaching” people like Chris and Mike listened. So they are seeking just one small little measure that was in Issue 2, originally designated for the public union employee. The proposed constitutional amendment does not go after employee wages, does not ask them to pay more for their health care, and does not affect seniority or any of the union concerns debated in Issue 2. All the right-to-work amendment proposes to do in the above press conference is give people the option to be in a union or not to. It’s that simple.
But wait……………………..the unions are already upset? I thought they said they could “compromise” and be reasonable. Listen to Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for We Are Ohio.
“Just two days ago, Ohioans spoke with one clear and emphatic voice, and voted by an overwhelming margin to support our everyday heroes and their right to collectively bargain. Yet, today their voices are already being ignored, even after Gov. (John R.) Kasich and legislative leaders have promised to listen and reflect on Tuesday’s vote.”
Well, this statement requires comment since it is obvious that the opponents of Issue 2 seem confused as to what is happening in the world around them. And that comment will not come from the good people who are proposing this constitutional amendment, or any other group. They are a fair-minded assemblage who truly wants what is fair and good for the majority in Ohio. Instead the comments made below are exclusively mine and they are addressed specifically to the public and private sector unions. This is Rich Hoffman Speaking.
People who are not in a union do not take their marching orders from politicians like you in the unions do. John Kasich is not our commander as Richard Trumka and Barack Obama are yours. We do not bow down to an authority figure that takes money from us and gives it to progressive politics. We are a people who desire freedom, even if we are in the minority.
My take on the Issue 2 debate is that only 39% were able to comprehend the contents of that very good bill, the rest were simply too stupid to wrap their little minds around the idea. I would say the same if it was only 1% who voted, because I read the bill and thought it was fair, and believe it or not, I did so completely on my own. No union steward told me to read it. I did it on my own. That’s called self-responsibility. I witnessed the union machine, which I am forced to help fund, scare Ohioans into voting the union way. I watched money pour in from out-of-state and saw the influence all the way up to the White House taking part in being a gear for that machine. And even with all your efforts 39% still voted against you.
I said all along that the Yes vote would need 2 million voters to win at the polls and only 1,321,494 showed up. During a presidential election 5 million voters usually turn out, so a lot of people stayed home and watched TV, so by no means the 2 million who voted to repeal Issue 2 represent Ohio’s wishes. It represented the 350,000 public workers their moms and dads and wives, girlfriends and children, grandmas and grandpa’s, and the rest are people scared of their own shadows. This landslide is not what you think it is. All it means is that Issue 2 was too hard to understand, so those who might have voted against you stayed home and ordered pizza.
I have watched school levy after school levy get voted down on Tuesday, and go right back on the ballot on Wednesday. That is the union way, if you don’t get what you want the first time through, then push it through again and again until it passes, till the opposition is so worn out they no longer have the will to fight. Why then should not the same tactic be applied to the unions? Did you think that those of us who want to be free of you would just go away? Why would people like me not wish to drive the measure back down your throats, once, twice, or twenty-five more times? It would be my hope that instead of Issue 2 being passed in one large bill as it was that it will be passed as 15 separate bills and that the unions will spend themselves into oblivion defending each and every one of them. Did you think that this would all just go away on the day after the election? No, welcome to our world where taxes are constantly proposed to fuel your tyranny! Those of us who have defeated our tax levies know the fight will never end till the unions are out of the business of government. You did it to yourselves. I do not hate you because of your two legs, two arms and one head; I hate you because you are an instrument of tyranny and your higher taxes are an imposition to my freedom. You ask more of me so that you my live and I demand of you to do for yourself and to leave me alone.
Your nature is revealed in your opposition to becoming a right-to-work state. You wish simply to hold the paychecks of your member’s hostage so they will turn out and vote your way. You want the membership numbers for reasons of extortion, and force. You care not that some of your members seek freedom from your clutches. You only care that they send you a check! THAT IS YOUR NATURE! You are parasites who consume the world around you. You will do anything to win no different from a sleazy thief picking pockets in a Las Vegas casino. I watched you hide behind the firefighters to gain support among the mushy minded masses. Do you think you will be so successful if the firefighters and police were not involved? You should be thankful that the Republicans at least attempted to be honest and fair from their stand point. Me………I would have attacked each union separately, starting with the teachers and severed the flow of money from the NEA into our state politics. Then I would have reformed the FOP and their connection to the AFL-CIO, then maybe the firefighters and their connection to the Trumka gang. I would have also have done so with 20 different bills and forced those groups to fight on every front! Spend 30 million dollars fighting the ability to strike. Spend 30 million dollars fighting the right to collectively bargain. Spend 30 million fighting the insurance premiums. Spend 30 million fighting the right-to-work. Spend 30 million fighting the issue of step increases. Yes unions, you were right, Issue 2 was too sweeping for one swallow. Only 39% of the voters were able to swallow, and the rest sat on their hands in indecision. My plan would have emptied the 1 billion dollars that Obama is sitting on in his election bid and forced him to save his union brothers and sisters in an attempt to win Ohio leaving him with no money to win any other state. You should be thankful that John Kasich and his Republican friends did not attempt to be so malicious. I would have.
Fair? I heard that term over and over during the campaign. Is it fair that one dollar of my money goes to support an organization that I consider detrimental to America? I don’t want my money sent to my local school to pay a teacher to then be converted by union dues and used by the teachers union to fund candidates who are progressive and out to rob my country of its freedom loving nature. Look at the child with a helmet on his bicycle riding 5 MPH as his frightened mother looks on afraid that her little one will splat his brains all over the sidewalk. This is the result of your unions and their attempts to justify their existence by overreaching their authority in the class-room and among the police authority. Look at the fat-fingered politician who creates legislation due to the union lobby in trade for campaign contributions that find themselves in the G-strings of a local stripper, the politician and his comb-over slicked over with French fry oil is using campaign money so his wife doesn’t find out about it. Look at the cops on a Saturday night setting up DUI checkpoints to “rid” society of drunk drivers. What they are really doing is showing that they are overstaffed and need something for those officers to do. The MAD mothers who created much of that “drinking” legislation played right into the hands of the union lobby, and gave them an excuse to mandate insurance, which gave cops something to do, mandate drunk driving laws, which gave cops something to do, and revenue to generate, and gave police the right to pull people over even if they were only on their way to the video store, to take away freedoms of the citizens using safety as the guise. Is it fair that your existence is eroding away my freedoms?
Is it fair that my quality of life is diminished because your mind is like a rock; it absorbs nothing, gradually becomes smaller over time with erosion, and sinks to the bottom of anything it’s tossed in to. Is my life to be attached to yours out of some altruistic fantasy? Am I chained to your lack of ambition for life? Is that what you think?
If I were to bring a company to Ohio, I would not want some parasite union attempting to corrupt my workforce with socialism. I would locate in Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina and other right-to-work states. In those places, if someone wants to organize a union, they can. But the members aren’t forced to join. Unions are a form of cronyism that involves fathers employing their sons, and uncles employing their nephews. It does not guarantee the best employee for the job and performance on that occupation. I have traveled extensively, and I have toured many manufacturing plants, and common to the union facilities are employees who watch TV during their shift. Cross-training is nearly extinct, and there is always a fear that the whole workforce will walk off the job if they become unhappy. Why would Boeing want to locate to South Carolina? TO AVOID LABOR STOPPAGES THAT AFFECTS THEIR ORDERS!
I have never met an enemy of the American system that is as clueless as the typical union worker. And I want no part of them. I will gladly support workers who are not part of a union. If there is a right-to-work option I could see who I can trust and who I can’t. I should have that option! And so should the employee! The only reason a union would be against an employee right-to-work option is to force them into a marriage they can control. What happens to the man who attempts to control his wife by forcing her into a marriage with intimidation and control? The woman may play along for the benefit of her family, but secretly she is scheming against the husband. Secretly she is looking for lovers. Secretly she plays the husband’s friends against him. Secretly she spits in his food when she prepares it, and she denies him sex except when he forces himself on her in a drunken splendor. That is what your employees who want out of the union are doing to you behind your back. Believe me, I know, I hear from them! They are praying that someone come and help them, to break the chains which shackle them to tyranny so that they may spring free!
Unions, you are not as strong as you think you are. Yes, you have many members who are selfish activists to suit your cause. You have built a system constructed on extortion and your members are addicted to the income you’ve stolen on their behalf. But people are waking up. You spent over $30 million dollars and could only get 2 million voters to the ballot box. That is not a task I’d be slapping any back about. It is hardly a mandate to your existence. You could have obtained 2 million votes with only one dollar spent, because it was your internal network that showed up. Not one person more!
So I think it is more than fair to put an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that allows every employee the option to decide if they want to join a union or not. The option should be there for them to make, which is a form of transparency that is much-needed. For all the reason above and many, many more Ohio is a state in need of options. And I personally want to be free of the radicalism of the unions, and I want to support employees who elect to also be free of those tyrannical organizations.
Making Ohio a right-to-work state is a long, long way from what I want, but it is a reasonable concession for the other 99.9% of the state who might not feel as strongly as I do. I would think that all parties involved, unions and non-union would at least honor the right to American freedom, unless I am right about the union intentions, which is to be a dictatorship of socialism that is anti-capitalist in their nature. Because that would be the only reason they’d stand against Ohio becoming a right-to-work state.
For the answer to everything click the link below!
Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
That quote from Margaret Thatcher accurately sums up my reasons for putting out the book, The Symposium of Justice back in 2004. Recently at the Annie Oakley Wild West Showcase in Greenville, Ohio many of my friends from there had been talking about my 2004 book and how prophetic it now seemed in 2011, and it took me on a journey down memory lane about the content of that artistic work. As I ate Chinese food from a fairground vender my wife and I had a discussion about just how crazy many of the things I wrote about in The Symposium were at the time of its publication, and ironically how true many of those things had become in a world that is clearly headed in the direction of events written about in The Symposium of Justice.
My publisher back then was against the entire book. There were many arguments about content, which resulted in a rushed publication date. The editor who was working from an office in Paris quit altogether leaving the entire editing process to my wife, who can read and edit basically, but she wasn’t a professional editor but she stepped in to meet our deadlines. The conflict basically went like this, “Mr. Hoffman, what are you thinking? You open the book with the attempted rape of a young girl by a disgusting pedophile. You have old women who are terribly rude dissected by some future race of aliens thousands of years in the future. You go off on some tangent where there is a dragon slayer hunting dragons! Then you have a group of rebels launching an attack on Washington D.C. with flying cars! ARE YOU CRAZY! You’ll get no positive reviews within the United States. No paper will provide an endorsement. No TV station will touch this material. I mean you’re main plot point is that you have this vigilante running around in the night like some kind of Batman character using bullwhips to punish criminals, and trying to free society from a mind control device that is emitted in radio waves which affect the brain and make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do! Mr. Hoffman, we advise you to rewrite this material, to stick with the primary storyline of the vigilante and expand on that character arch. You need to make this novel much more contemporary (progressive). As it is now, it belongs in a dime store saloon in Nevada, 1890. This type of pulp literature won’t even resonate with young people in the comic book market! The main character, this CLIFFHANGER/Fletcher Finnegan has absolutely no weaknesses. He seems to be a superman able to fight off thousands of enemies all by himself! Where is the conflict in that? What is he afraid of? Even Superman had Kryptonite which gave him human appeal. Your character is the perfect man, and there are no perfect men, so how can the audience relate?”
In duress prior to a rewrite my wife and I took a trip to Niagara Falls and stayed at the Marriott Fallsview Hotel and Spa to get away from our normal environment for the weekend and talk about what to do about the book. We went to Canada because the publisher was in Canada and I wanted to put my mind in a unique setting so I could think clearly on the issue, and Clifton Hill like Gatlinburg and International Street in Orlando, Florida is a hotbed of commercialism, audaciousness, and imagination. Walking around the commercial districts targeting an international audience which seemed appropriate since The Symposium of Justice was an international publishing effort my wife told me, “It’s your book, your vision. I think it’s great. It’s our story, it’s about our struggles. It’s your autobiography, your heart, your soul. If you want to change it to match the publisher recommendations it’s your call. It’s also your writing career.”
Chapter 2: Stereotypical Reality: is the story published in the town paper of two vain women who are contemplating why they should live forever. One of the women is extremely wealthy and is considering a new technology called cryogenics, to freeze her body upon death to be awaked at some future time when technology can revive her. This woman realizing that she is virtually immortal becomes audaciously arrogant and rude to other people as the natural wisdom of age is interfered with the illusion that death is not on her horizon, so she reverts to a teenage mindset. When the public has had too much of her rudeness she is killed and revived in the distant future to find an alien race has found her body and is using it to perform genetic engineering to build slaves for themselves.
Chapter 4: The Perilous Bed: Another story published in the town paper which Cliffhanger introduces his Ten Rules for Living to the community, hoping to fight off the mind control methods of “The System.” It’s about a young knight who wants to marry the daughter of a much respected noble. He thinks that by cutting off the head of a dragon, it will earn him the right to ask the noble for permission. The noble turns the dragon head offering down, but invites the kid to attempt to stay on a magical bed, in a magical room that will hurl three perilous tests at the young man. If the kid survives, he earns the right to ask the nobles daughter to marry him. (This was a story intended for my son-in-law which he understood)
Chapter 9: Tabernacles of Joyless Lust: A newspaper story about a real-estate agent trying to repair a deal gone bad. The agent is in an affair with her boss who is using the relationship against the woman plunging her into a law suit against her clients whom she is particularly fond of.
Chapter 12: Salad Bar Goddess: The assassin is sent to an upscale restaurant near the town where his career took a nose dive. This “hit” given to him by “The System” is a chance at redemption for his failure at the river. His target is the outspoken Fletcher Finnegan who has been all over the newspapers and television recently speaking out against the policies of “The System.” The assassin’s job is to locate the man, kill him in a highly public place in front of his family, and send the subtle message to the town that resistance is futile. At the restaurant where Finnegan is reported to be at, the assassin sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen at the salad bar. He recognizes the woman as Misty Finnegan, whom he remembered the slain mayor had been trying to get into his bed, and was denied much to his frustration. The assassin is then shocked to find that the woman is strangely unconcerned about his presence as she returns to her table where her small children are eating with her husband, making eye contact with the assassin several times with pity on her face. Then the assassin makes eye contact with her husband and discovers it is he who is the target of his assassination. It is Fletcher Finnegan himself, and he is aware of the assassin’s presence also, as he stares him down from across the room. The assassin looking into the eyes of Finnegan is startled to see absolutely no fear there, which is an emotion he is not prepared for. He had never met a man without any fear behind his eyes of any kind. It was at that moment that the assassin had seen that same look in the eyes of Cliffhanger, and that the two men were one in the same.
I remember when the Pulse Journal came to my house to do an interview about my book when it came out in the spring of 2004. He wanted to talk about my whips but wasn’t sure how to make such depressing topics appealing in a newspaper article to the general population. I had the same trouble at book stores and other media events, where the focus of the story was on my use of bullwhips, but nobody wanted to touch the content of the story, rape, murder, civil war, mind control, drug trafficking, spies, global conspiracies, it was just too much for the general public to accept, and the media was lost in how to cover it.
At the hotel in Cleveland, at a film festival where I won a screenwriting award for a different project, but had been receiving a lot of comments about The Symposium she said to me at the pool while I was swimming, “Do you remember the homeless guy in the movie Always, who Richard Dreyfuss as a ghost was talking through. The homeless guy was one of those guys who just saw too much, and was close to the edge of death, so close that he could see beyond his surroundings. You’re like that only you have learned to function in the world like a normal human being. Many of these people haven’t learned to do that. They see TOO much, so they seem crazy to the rest of the world that is really just half asleep. That is the pain of being too awake, is that you run the risk of having your brain fried.”
This is fresh on my mind now, because more and more people are thanking me for writing The Symposium of Justice and even though I have put that book on the shelf and am moving on to new projects, it gives me great pleasure to know that it is touching people’s lives. So to those of you who wanted to know the story of how that book came to be, and why I don’t talk about it much, it’s because for one, I think it’s cheesy when involved in high-profile cases like I am, to always be pimping a book. That book for me is something that has meaning beyond these current years, so it’s not important to me to have my ego massaged with a boost in sales. It’s more important to deal with the issues of the day, which currently is protecting S.B.5 and fighting school levies which are obvious crimes against the tax payers. But the creative side of me does enjoy knowing that people are touched by something that was extremely difficult, and controversial to create, that fell short of my quality standards because of the circumstances under which it was produced, but the heart of the project remained uniquely in place because I had angered everyone involved in publishing and marketing to bring to being something that was WAY out in front of the political curb.
The Overmanwarrior 