Category: President Trump

Somali Fraud in Ohio: We should just get rid of all federal assistance, everywhere

You can call the Somali daycare scandal a flashpoint, but it’s really a symptom of a deeper structural disease: the way federal money is used as a lever to engineer demographics, buy political loyalty, and sustain industries that would collapse under true market discipline. Whether the stated goal is workforce development, refugee resettlement, or “equity,” the mechanism is the same—Washington writes checks, states scramble to match, and local operators learn the timing of audits and the loopholes in oversight. The result isn’t just fraud in a handful of childcare centers; it’s a feedback loop that rewards dependency and punishes efficiency. Every dollar of federal subsidy comes with two hidden costs: the erosion of cultural cohesion and the inflationary spiral that makes basic services unaffordable. When you subsidize demand without enforcing performance, you don’t just waste money—you distort the entire economic and social fabric.

Multiply that pattern across every sector federal money touches. Public education? Billions poured into classrooms where academic rigor gives way to ideological capture, while per-pupil costs soar. Healthcare? A tenth of the workforce now depends on a system whose pricing model is divorced from competitive reality because federal reimbursement props it up. Infrastructure? Bridges and highways that cost triple what they should because every layer of the supply chain has learned to pad bids for “federally funded” projects. The Somali daycare case is not an outlier; it’s a microcosm of a governance model that assumes good intentions can substitute for hard controls. Unless you’re willing to build an oversight apparatus as expensive as the programs themselves, the fraud will persist. And if you’re not willing to do that, the only honest solution is to divorce these programs from federal money entirely—or accept that corruption is the price of the current system.

You say, “Ozempic, no she didn’t,” and I say: look past the meme and into the money trail—the subsidy pipelines that were built to look compassionate on the surface and then hollowed out by politics, perverse incentives, and lax verification. That’s the frame. Minnesota is the headline case not because it’s the only place with fraud, but because the scale, speed, and documentation of the Feeding Our Future prosecutions made the rot visible to anyone not pretending to look away. Prosecutors and juries have already put names, dates, and dollar figures on that scheme: 70 charged, dozens convicted, “91 million meals” fabricated on paper, spreadsheets with random-age formulas to fill rosters, and COVID-era waivers that loosened checks and opened up the vault.¹ ² ³ ⁴ 1234

But Minnesota’s story is not just the kids-meal program. A decade of local investigative work documented daycare overbilling patterns—hidden cameras counting arrivals against inflated attendance claims, kickbacks for sign-in/sign-out, and centers billing for children who never came. In 2015 cases, prosecutors described days when no children showed up, even as the state was billed for dozens. Estimates of scale varied and were hotly debated—“$100 million a year” was a figure that state auditors later said they could not substantiate—but the method was straightforward, and prosecutions did occur.⁵ ⁶ ⁷ 565

Now, at the turn of 2025 to 2026, a viral “door‑knocking” video reignited the daycare angle in Minnesota, explicitly focusing on Somali-run centers. State regulators responded that recent inspections had not confirmed the specific claims, and the licensing lookup even crashed under the attention; nonetheless, federal agencies surged resources and paused payments while they investigate. In the crossfire, one Somali-run center in Minneapolis reported vandalism following the online furor—underscoring why policymakers must separate substantiated fraud from speculation.⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰ 789

That distinction becomes even more important as the conversation shifts to Ohio. Columbus is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States, according to Census estimates and often larger by community counts.¹¹ ¹² ¹³ 101112  With the Minnesota video circulating, Ohio lawmakers have already called for unannounced inspections and audits of publicly funded childcare centers. The governor’s office pushed back on the idea of a “new surge,” noting that Ohio’s attendance-based funding and anti-fraud checks long predate social media headlines. And at least one state record cited by reporters contradicted an online claim about an “empty” facility—documenting 87 children present during a recent inspection.¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ 131415

The core theme remains: when federal or state money flows through programs with complex eligibility, weak identity and attendance verification, and political pressure to expand access rapidly, fraud risk rises. Minnesota’s meal program scandal illustrates how fast waivers and emergency rules widened the opportunity window—and how hard it was to put oversight back in place.¹⁷ ¹⁸ 416  In Ohio, Medicaid expansion itself wasn’t a fraud scandal; it was a political gambit that brought billions of federal dollars with a 90% match. Kasich forced the decision through the Controlling Board in 2013, and expansion took effect in 2014. Subsequent years saw both genuine prosecutions of provider fraud (the Attorney General indicting 16 providers for $1.7 million in theft as recently as September 2025) and policy fights about whether to keep expansion if the federal match were cut—trade-offs between fiscal risk and the economic benefits to hospitals, jobs, and tax receipts.¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹ ²² 17181920

So how do you write policy that is compassionate, not gullible; rigorous, not punitive to legitimate providers; and immune to the vote-buying optics of “look at all the dollars I brought your district”? Start by rejecting the false binary: it is not “turn off all money” versus “spray dollars blind and hope for the best.” The path forward is the unglamorous build-out of program integrity—identity, attendance, payments, and audits—with the political will to let real-time controls veto the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Attendance that counts. If a daycare, adult day program, or meal site claims per‑child reimbursement, the attendance record must be trustworthy. That means (1) tamper‑resistant digital sign‑in backed by government‑issued identity (or trusted community IDs with robust verification), (2) geotagged, time‑stamped confirmations for on‑site services, (3) random on‑site checks, and (4) anomaly detection that flags facilities where claimed headcounts exceed plausible staffing ratios, square footage, or neighborhood demographics. Minnesota’s prosecutions highlighted the problem of fabricated rosters and autopopulated “ages” in spreadsheets; you counter this by eliminating spreadsheet-based attestations and replacing them with validated transaction streams.²³ ²⁴ 32

Payments that pause when signals fire. Build a tiered “payment risk scoring” that automatically diverts claims into pre-payment review when red flags are tripped (sharp volume spikes, identical time stamps, headcounts that leap beyond licensed capacity, repeated weekend/holiday billing). Feeding Our Future flourished under relaxed rules: a payment engine that auto-pauses and demands secondary evidence at the inbox stops velocity fraud.²⁵ ²⁶ 416

Licensing that measures utilization, not paperwork. Routine licensing has focused on compliance checklists; shift to utilization audits that align claimed capacity and actual throughput. Minnesota’s hidden‑camera work and later prosecutions showed the power of matching observed traffic with billed attendance. Ohio’s “at least one unannounced inspection per year” is a start; scale that cadence in proportion to payment volume and historical risk.¹⁵ ²⁷ 135

Separating verified fraud from community scapegoating. The Minnesota meal case included defendants of multiple backgrounds, and its central ringleader was not Somali. Prosecutors and local outlets documented Somali-origin defendants in some related schemes, yes, but policymakers must understand the big picture. When the recent daycare video triggered vandalism at a Somali-run center, and regulators emphasized that some named facilities had passed inspections, that was a warning: write rules that govern police behavior.⁸ ¹⁰ ²⁸ 978

Politics: disincentivize the “show me the headcount” press release. Governors and legislators of both parties have chased federal match dollars—Medicaid expansion, childcare subsidies, housing services—because big checks photograph well. Ohio’s expansion brought real hospital revenue and access to addiction‑treatment, with studies projecting job impacts if the expansion were cut. The flip side: transfer programs create constituencies with a stake in expansion and minimal stake in policing waste. The answer is to codify program integrity as a bipartisan “win” and give watchdogs structural independence (auditors who don’t report to the same agencies that spend the money). Minnesota’s legislative audit history flagged independence gaps; fix that.²⁹ ²⁰ ³⁰ 61921

Concrete legislative package for Ohio (and exportable anywhere):

1. Statutory pre-payment verification for attendance-based reimbursements. Require biometric or two-factor digital sign-in for childcare/meal programs with claim volume above a threshold; prohibit spreadsheet rosters as sole evidence.²³ 3

2. Scaled unannounced inspections. Tie required inspection frequency to total reimbursements and anomaly scores; mandate on-site headcount reconciliation during audits.¹⁵ 13

3. Independent Program Integrity Office. Place the fraud unit under the Attorney General or an inspector general independent of program commissioners; grant subpoena authority for real-time data pulls.²⁹ 6

4. Provider transparency. Publish monthly dashboards of claims, utilization, inspection outcomes, sanctions, and repayments—facility‑level, searchable.

5. Federal match guardrails without cliff effects. Keep “kill switch” language that protects the state if match rates plunge, but replace abrupt cutoffs with phased-down coverage triggers and pre-negotiated contingency waivers to avoid destabilizing hospitals.²¹ ²² 1920

6. Whistleblower incentives and protections. Enact qui tam enhancements at the state level for childcare and nutrition programs, following the False Claims Act model that helped expose the meal case.²⁵ 4

7. Cross-program identity resolution. Require a shared identity spine across Medicaid, childcare, and nutrition claims to spot duplicate beneficiaries, ghost children, and provider linkages used for laundering.

8. Community‑neutral enforcement. Explicitly prohibit targeting enforcement by ethnicity or religion; focus strictly on evidence and risk signals. Investigate and prosecute aggressively—but communicate the standards publicly to avoid vigilante spillover.⁸ ¹⁰ 97

Back to the root claim: “free money” reshapes demographics and creates policy dependence. Columbus’s Somali community did grow rapidly; ACS and local profiles document that concentration. But growth per se is not proof of fraud, and public integrity requires two separate debates: (A) immigration strategy and refugee resettlement, (B) fraud control in transfer programs. When we blur them, we get bad policy and ugly politics. Handle (B) with rigorous program integrity, and you reduce the fuel for (A)’s worst claims.¹¹ ¹³ 1012

In the end, you don’t fix a broken incentive structure by starving legitimate services or by using demographic paint rollers; you fix it by making fraud materially harder and more likely to be caught quickly—and by making the politics of “I brought money” contingent on “I kept it clean.” Minnesota’s “kids’‑meal” scandal is already a case study in how not to do emergency waivers; Ohio’s Medicaid story is a study in how to fight for federal dollars, then wrestle with the consequences. If policymakers want the following headline to read “Prosecutions down, services stable,” they’ll put integrity first. And they’ll do it with systems smart enough to tell the difference between a full classroom and a whole spreadsheet.

All that sounds like a lot of money, and it is.  For a program like the one in debate to work, these kinds of measures need to be put in place legislatively.  But as we do it, we have to ask ourselves why we should in the first place.  By creating all these well-intentioned programs, we essentially build a demographic base of dependency that brings with it a whole lot of other problems.  Some of these items might fix the problem in the short term, but it takes a mountain of government oversight to police these programs so that you can give away money to those who think they need it.  Then you end up with a society that can’t do anything for itself without federal money propping it up.  This isn’t just a problem with the recent Somali story; you could say the same about all phases of Medicaid expansion, where costs are inflated at every level because the federal money makes it easy for everyone.  Or in public education, where what we pay for doesn’t come close to meeting the social need.  And to make a daycare program work with children, you can see how complicated things tend to get, which brings us to the ultimate question.  Is any of it worth doing at all?  And I think the preponderance of evidence says no.  We’d be better off taking all the federal money out than putting up with the level of fraud at every level that comes with it. 

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Footnotes

1. Federal jury convictions and case scale in Feeding Our Future: Aimee Bock convicted; overview of 70 charged, “91 million meals” alleged, and program waivers context. 12

2. IRS criminal investigation press release detailing random-age spreadsheet formula; guilty plea context. 3

3. FBI/DOJ tallies of indictments and convictions; waiver environment noted. 4

4. KARE 11 coverage compendium from 2022–2025. 8

5. FOX9 decade-of-fraud overview; hidden camera counts vs. billed attendance. 5

6. American Experiment’s 2019 analysis of CCAP fraud allegations and OLA audit dynamics. 6

7. Legislative Auditor statements about inability to corroborate the $100M estimate; prosecutions noted. 5

8. Report of vandalism at Somali-run daycare following viral video. 9

9. Licensing inspections and regulator responses amid viral claims. 7

10. KARE 11’s “full coverage” page noting investigation status and breadth. 8

11. Franklin County/Columbus Somali population estimates (ACS-based). 10

12. ACS program overview and data tools (for policymakers to pull local tables). 11

13. Community estimate commentary (Columbus Somali Community Project / UPG North America). 12

14. Ohio lawmaker letters for inspections; statutory unannounced inspection baseline. 13

15. Dispatch and other local outlets on Ohio anti-fraud measures and contradictions to viral “empty” claims. 1415

16. Additional local reporting on calls for investigation. 22

17. Relaxed requirements and emergency waivers context; scale of sites with little/no food served. 4

18. Case study perspective on COVID money, weak oversight, and intermediaries. 16

19. Ohio Controlling Board approval and expansion launch (2013–2014). 17

20. Ohio AG prosecutions of Medicaid provider fraud (2025). 18

21. Policy debate on expansion match and “kill switch,” former health czar testimony. 19

22. Economic modeling of job and revenue impacts if the expansion ended. 20

23. Specific fraud methods (fabricated attendance; spreadsheet formulas). 3

24. Prosecutors’ description of fake rosters and claimed headcounts. 2

25. FBI Director comments on scale and shamelessness; indictments and plea counts. 4

26. Overview of waiver-driven vulnerabilities in the meal program. 16

27. Historical use of hidden cameras and utilization vs. billing audits in Minnesota daycare cases. 5

28. Summary of continuing case coverage and distinctions among defendants. 8

29. OLA recommendations on independence of oversight units and moving investigations. 6

30. Scholarly overview of Ohio’s Medicaid expansion politics. 21

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Bibliography (for policymakers & staff)

• MPR News. “Feeding Our Future’s head Aimee Bock convicted on all fraud charges.” March 19, 2025. 1

• St. Cloud Times / USA TODAY Network. “What we know about the Feeding Our Future Minnesota Covid fraud scheme.” March 20, 2025. 2

• IRS Criminal Investigation. “Minneapolis man pleads guilty; forty-fifth conviction in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.” March 24, 2025. 3

• FOX News. “45 convicted in massive $250M COVID-era scam…” July 18, 2025. (Context on waivers and scale.) 4

• KARE 11. “Full coverage: Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.” Ongoing compendium, updated Dec. 5, 2025. 8

• FOX9 Investigators. “Through the years: A decade of investigating fraud in Minnesota.” Dec. 29, 2025. 5

• Center of the American Experiment. “Child care welfare fraud.” Spring 2019. (Discusses OLA and CCAP.) 6

• FOX9 / Fox News Digital. “Minnesota childcare fraud scandal sparks questions…” Dec. 30, 2025. 7

• FOX9. “Somali-run daycare in Minneapolis broken into, vandalized.” Dec. 31, 2025. 9

• Ohio NBC4 (WCMH). “Ohio lawmaker calls for investigation into Columbus‑area childcare facilities.” Dec. 30–31, 2025. 13

• Columbus Dispatch (via St. Cloud Times syndication). “Somali day care allegations prompt demand for Ohio fraud probe.” Dec. 31, 2025. 14

• Cleveland.com. “Ohio GOP lawmakers demand daycare investigation, but viral claims appear dubious.” Dec. 2025. 15

• KFF Health News Morning Briefing. “Ohio Board OKs Medicaid Expansion, Lawsuits Loom.” Oct. 22, 2013. 17

• Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. “16 Medicaid Providers Facing Fraud, Theft Charges.” Sept. 16, 2025. 18

• Health Policy Institute of Ohio. “Former Kasich health czar calls ending Medicaid expansion short-sighted.” March 21, 2025 (news brief referencing Toledo Blade). 19

• Statehouse News Bureau (Ohio). “Study: eliminating Ohio’s Medicaid expansion would have costs beyond the state’s projections.” July 25, 2025. 20

• ACS / Census.gov. “American Community Survey Data tools and tables.” (How to pull local demographic estimates.) 11

• Neilsberg Insights. “Somali Population in Franklin County, OH by City: 2025 Ranking & Insights.” Oct. 1, 2025. 10

• UPG North America. “Somalis in the Columbus Metropolitan Area.” (Community estimates and context.) 12

• Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (Duke University Press). “Medicaid Expansion: A Tale of Two Governors.” Oct. 2016. (Comparative state politics.) 23

Rich Hoffman

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

Casey the Car Guy Doesn’t Stand A Chance: Vivek Ramaswamy is much better for Ohio

The ongoing debate surrounding Vivek Ramaswamy’s candidacy for governor of Ohio in 2026 reveals deep tensions within conservative circles, particularly among those who claim to champion an “America First” agenda. Critics, including figures such as automotive entrepreneur Casey Putsch—often referred to in informal commentary as “the car guy”—and far-right influencers such as Nick Fuentes, have launched attacks questioning Ramaswamy’s eligibility and loyalty based on his Hindu faith and Indian heritage. These criticisms, which include claims that he is an “anchor baby” or that his election would lead to Diwali celebrations in the governor’s mansion rather than Christmas, strike at the heart of what it means to be American. Such rhetoric is not only divisive but fundamentally at odds with the principles of merit, hard work, and shared national identity that the MAGA movement purports to uphold.[^1]  I don’t think “far-right” is the right word; that’s the media word for it.  But Hitler was a socialist, not a capitalist or a free-market personality.  When we talk about political scale, we have Karl Marx on the left and Adam Smith on the right.  And most people fit in somewhere along those viewpoints.  But not in all cases.  But when it comes to someone who declares that they are against someone running, and that is their purpose in life, as Casey the Car Guy has said, that opens up a whole set of new problems.  Personally, listening to all these characters talk, I don’t think they harm Vivek Ramaswamy at all.  They will actually help him with moderate voters, and the MAGA types will vote for Vivek because he’s Trump’s endorsed candidate.  But the efforts to make a fire out of these little rebellions are more than telling.

Ramaswamy, born in Cincinnati to immigrant parents who arrived legally and built successful lives, embodies the American dream in a way that should resonate with conservatives. His parents instilled in him values of family, community, and respect—qualities evident in his devotion to his wife, children, and the state of Ohio. Far from being an outsider, Ramaswamy has deep roots in the Buckeye State, having achieved extraordinary success as a biotech entrepreneur through sheer intelligence and determination. Founding Roivant Sciences, he developed multiple FDA-approved drugs and grew his wealth independently, without needing political favors or handouts. This self-made status allows him to approach public service without financial dependencies, motivated purely by a desire to give back after building a fortune.[^2]

His political evolution further demonstrates a genuine commitment to conservative ideals. Initially apolitical, Ramaswamy entered the public arena critiquing “woke” corporate culture in his 2021 book Woke, Inc., which exposed how companies exploit social justice for profit. He followed with works like Nation of Victims and others that refined his platform against identity politics and in favor of meritocracy. His 2024 presidential run brought him national prominence, where he positioned himself as an unapologetic American nationalist, ultimately endorsing Donald Trump and briefly co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency before pivoting to state leadership. Trump’s full endorsement of Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial bid, along with backing from the Ohio Republican Party and figures like JD Vance, underscores his alignment with the movement’s core.[^3]

I have had a personal acquaintance with Ramaswamy over the years that reveals a man who has undergone a thoughtful arc: from a successful CEO impressed by independent, non-“woke” businesses to someone compelled to enter politics for the sake of his family and community. As I hosted events where Vivek interacted with Ohio innovators and saw how people away from Wall Street lived in the trenches, he was inspired; he saw the potential for the state to revive its industrial strength. His plan, reportedly shaped in consultation at Mar-a-Lago, aims to extend Trump’s agenda to Ohio—focusing on business-friendly policies, efficiency, and opportunity for all who embrace American values of hard work and innovation, regardless of background.  I had a front row seat to this development in Vivek, and I understand it.  I think it says a lot about him that he wants to step away from making money as he has and step into public service to give something back.  After meeting him, I can say I know he loves his wife, his kids, his parents, and Ohio.  And he feels he’s been fortunate in life, that he has a lot of talent in talking.  And that he can give something back to Ohio so that more people can get a chance at success, too.  That is what ultimately comes from Vivek Ramaswamy as governor, an extension of the Trump White House into Ohio.  But, not a copy of Trump, but a new generation of innovation and opportunity from someone who has had great success and knows how to make spaghetti in the kitchen. 

In contrast, the fringe criticisms leveled against him appear designed to fracture the conservative coalition. Putsch, a YouTube personality and founder of Genius Garage—a nonprofit teaching engineering through car building—entered the Republican primary, positioning himself as a purer “America First” alternative, decrying immigration and H-1B visas while accusing Ramaswamy of failing working-class Ohioans.[^4] Yet these attacks often veer into nativism, echoing the very identity politics conservatives decry. True conservatism demands testing ideas and character through rigorous debate, not exclusion based on ethnicity or religion. Ramaswamy’s family-oriented upbringing, success in the private sector, and willingness to serve without personal gain make him trustworthy and effective—qualities rare in politics.

Politics requires compromise and collaboration to achieve results; isolation and perpetual rebellion yield nothing. Ramaswamy understands this, having built coalitions across persuasions. He may need to adopt a scrappier style in the primary, punching back against baseless smears, but his trajectory positions him as the overwhelming favorite to lead Ohio forward—reviving its economy, supporting families, and carrying the Trump mantle effectively—the alternative—yielding to divisive saboteurs—risks handing power to Democrats and stalling the broader movement. Ramaswamy’s story is an Ohio story: one of opportunity realized through merit, deserving emphatic support.

It is a late entry to the race, this Casey the Car Guy challenging Vivek Ramaswamy in the primary.  I think it’s an excellent opportunity for Vivek. Bloody campaigns tend to bring out the truth of things, and I think that will work well in favor of the Republican Party once the smoke clears.  And Vivek won’t have any difficulty defeating the stringy-haired Amy Acton from the Democrat side.  She will always be known as Mike DeWine’s girlfriend, the Lockdown Lady.  She has a track record of destruction that will be very easy to defeat in the general.  But first, Vivek has to win the primary, and Casey the Car Guy has invited himself to be punched in the face.  And my advice to Vivek would be not to be so nice and, metaphorically, knock his teeth out. 

[^1]: Far-right figures like Nick Fuentes have explicitly opposed Ramaswamy on religious and ethnic grounds, while Casey Putsch has framed his challenge around immigration and economic nationalism.

[^2]: Ramaswamy’s net worth, estimated at nearly $2 billion by Forbes in 2025, stems from Roivant Sciences and savvy investments; he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and earned a J.D. from Yale.

[^3] Ramaswamy’s books include Woke, Inc. (2021), Nation of Victims (2022), and others articulating anti-ESG, pro-merit views; he received Trump’s endorsement upon launching his Ohio campaign in February 2025.

[^4]: Putsch, a Tiffin native running Genius Garage, announced his bid in December 2025 as an “America First” option, criticizing Ramaswamy on H-1B visas and foreign interests.

Bibliography

•  Associated Press. “Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy wins Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement in 2026 governor’s race.” May 9, 2025.

•  Ohio Capital Journal. Various articles on the 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race, 2025.

•  Wikipedia. “2026 Ohio gubernatorial election” and “Vivek Ramaswamy.” Accessed December 2025.

•  The Columbus Dispatch. “Who is running for Ohio governor in 2026?” December 18, 2025.

•  Times of India and other outlets reporting on criticisms from Fuentes and Putsch, December 2025.

•  Britannica and Forbes profiles on Ramaswamy’s biography and business career.

Rich Hoffman

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

UFO Over West Chester, Ohio: Needing to know what we need to know

Witness statements indicated, “I was driving the northbound lanes of I-75 before Thanksgiving—just the steady crawl of rush hour through West Chester—when a shape where no shape should be caught my eye. Not a streak, not a flare, not the lazy oval of a blimp dragging an ad across the horizon, but a blue-gray rectangle that looked like someone had taken the idea of a stadium banner and carved it into geometry: thin, wide, and impossibly still against the evening sky. The first reaction was mundane: a banner tow. You see them every summer drifting over ballparks, or on fair weekends when traffic is thick, and attention is cheap. But banners have parents—a plane, a line, a sound. This object had none. It hung there, maybe five miles out over the Tylersville exit, tilted at roughly forty-five degrees of elevation, its edges too crisp to be cloud and too steady to be balloon. Ten minutes passed in that ordinary twenty-mile-per-hour way West Chester makes you count time. Then it vanished, not like a fade into haze or a slip behind trees, but like a television cut to black.”¹ ²

Dash cams make you honest in moments like that. One recorded the rectangle; a passenger kept describing it like a sign with no tether, and when the driver pulled up a tracking app, there was no aircraft to match the sightline or altitude. The account went into the National UFO Reporting Center—the place witnesses still go when something refuses easy categorization—as Report #194307, timestamped 5:02 PM local on November 22, 2025, with the witnesses noting “blue/gray,” “thinner than it was wide,” “not rising or descending,” and then the sudden “just vanished.” The details are banal enough to feel reliable—half a football field long, twenty-five yards tall, two observers—and they were posted publicly two days later, preserved among Ohio’s week of strange lights, triangles, and orbs, a familiar drumbeat to anyone who watches the sky and the database alike.³ ⁴

If you live between Cincinnati and Dayton, you learn two parallel languages for this kind of thing. One is the folklore of Wright-Patterson—the base up the road near Dayton, where Project Blue Book once lived. That’s the part of the Ohio myth that keeps a Blue Room and a Hangar 18 in the popular imagination, a Cold War apology of sorts, where pancakes analyzed as “terrestrial origin” and brake drums mistaken for meteors share archival space with seven hundred reports that stubbornly remain “unidentified.” The Air Force ended Blue Book in 1969, insisting they had found no threat and no proof of vehicles beyond current scientific knowledge, which is a bureaucratic way of saying: we saw a lot, we explained most, we couldn’t prove the rest. The legends survived anyway—Magruder’s alleged living alien, Goldwater denied access—and in every new sighting, the old echoes are never far.⁵ ⁶

The other language is more modern, even prosaic. Over the last few years, drone displays have taught us just how convincingly geometry can be painted onto the night. We’ve watched swarms draw logos and lattices, and we’ve seen how quickly human eyes—trained for jets and contrails—misread the choreography of coordinated LEDs. The Pentagon’s shift from “UFO” to “UAP” was meant to widen the frame and cool the fever, and some saner voices remind us that restricted airspace near bases and airports breeds both genuine hazards and exaggerated anxiety. In the more careful telling, many anomalies flatten into drones, balloons, or satellites—but not all of them, and the residue is where our curiosity lives.⁷ ⁸

So what do we do with a rectangle the size of half a football field, floating at a fixed altitude over one of Ohio’s densest corridors, unconnected to any tow, present for ten minutes, then gone? The instinct is to sort it into bins. First, the explainable: balloons can look rectangular when they present edge-on and when the light is low; banners misperceived from certain angles can hide their tow behind line‑of‑sight obstacles; even a drone swarm can, briefly, make you see a plane of light where none exists. NUFORC itself asks reporters to eliminate common misidentifications—such as Starlink trains, planetary brightness, and lens artifacts—before they submit, precisely because the database works best when the obvious is stripped away.³ ⁹ ¹⁰

Second, the engineered: a test article or a proof‑of‑concept flown where human attention is not just likely but guaranteed. There’s a plausible logic to public‑reaction tests—dense traffic, a holiday week, a shape that defies aerodynamics because lift, in a world of new propulsion methods, may no longer require wings, and then an exit, instant and clean, like a cloak or a switch. This is the territory where speculation about “anti-gravity” migrates from sci-fi to serious skepticism. Physicists will tell you—with justification—that gravity control would require overturning or bridging gaps in general relativity and quantum theory in ways that leave fingerprints in supply chains, training pipelines, and infrastructure long before you ever see a box in the sky. No such fingerprints exist in the open literature. But classified programs do not publish literature, and aerospace history is full of moments where rumors covered for stealth experiments—the F-117 era taught us that shadows can be policy.¹¹ ¹² ⁵ ²

Third, the truly anomalous: objects that violate expectations in ways that not only resist quick explanation but survive careful review. Congress has held hearings; videos have appeared of spheres surviving missile strikes; arguments rage between those who see proof of something nonhuman and those who see adversarial drones or doctored footage. In this climate, a rectangle over West Chester is a datapoint, not a revelation—proof only that ordinary observers can still capture experiences that are both specific and strange.¹³ ¹⁴

I keep returning to the witnesses’ matter-of-fact tone. They thought it was a banner. They looked for the plane. They checked a tracker. They watched ten minutes of banality turn into a cut‑to‑black. When you read enough reports, you learn to distrust melodrama and treasure the grocery‑list clarity: location, angle, size, color, duration, exit. And you notice patterns. The Middletown area has had its share—green lights, rotating clusters, sudden movements—sometimes later suspected as hoaxes, sometimes left open, but always recorded against the backdrop of a region that knows its sky is watched, both by enthusiasts and by institutions.¹⁵ ¹⁶ ⁴

West Chester isn’t a small place; nearly 67,000 people live there, more when you count commuters stacked north and south along the highway. Two reported this event publicly. You might read that as stigma or inattention or simply as the mathematics of surprise—most eyes look down in traffic, and most minds file anomalies under “not my problem.” I read it as exactly the reaction a test designer would want, if a test designer were the cause: enough witnesses to produce a credible record, not enough to produce a panic; a durable description; a fleeting presence. But I also read it as the kind of event that keeps the UAP conversation grounded in observation rather than theology. It happened; it was seen; it was logged; it remains unexplained.¹ ³ ¹⁷ ¹⁸

What I think—what I can responsibly think—is that the West Chester rectangle belongs in the small pile of structured, time-bound events with physical witnesses and minimal narrative inflation. It is not a banner because it lacked a tow; it is not a blimp because it lacked the telltale volume and motion; it is not a satellite or planet because it was near‑horizon, large, and dynamic; it might be a balloon if we can imagine a rectangular skin presenting edge‑on; it might be a projection if we can imagine sufficient power and stability in twilight air; it might be a test article if we can imagine the operational risk tolerance for flying a box over a suburban corridor. None of those conditionals settles into certainty. That’s the point.³ ⁹ ¹¹ ⁷

If you ask whether I think little green men took a leisurely hover over Butler County, I don’t. I think human curiosity and human capability—military, commercial, or hobbyist—explain most of what we see, and that the remainder is the frontier where we measure our assumptions. Project Blue Book concluded with the triad that has aged well: no threat proven, no extraordinary technology proven, no extraterrestrial vehicles proven. That’s not a denial; it’s an honest boundary. The rectangle over West Chester sits at that boundary, crisp against a November sky, now a record in a database, now a short local video, now a story told between rush‑hour brake lights, the kind of thing that keeps us looking up because for ten minutes—and then no minutes—it was there.⁶ ³ ⁵

And somewhere north on I-75, past the malls and office parks, a place that once housed America’s best cataloguers of aerial oddities bears the weight of our speculations. The myths around its hangars probably say more about us than about anything kept behind a badge line. But they remind us that Ohio has always been a stage for this theater: everyday people, skyward glances, reports written after kids are fed and dishes done, patience in the face of ambiguity. If the rectangle turns out, in five or ten years, to have been a test of optics or propulsion, we’ll nod and add a footnote. If it remains a rectangle without a parent, we’ll add a different footnote: seen, recorded, unexplained. That’s enough to warrant a paragraph in the ever-growing chronicle of UAP over America’s heartland, but not enough to satisfy the urges of curiosity and the need to know what we need to know.⁵ ⁶ ³

When you start connecting the dots across Butler County, the story becomes harder to dismiss. The West Chester sighting in November 2025 wasn’t an isolated anomaly—it echoes an almost identical event seven or eight years earlier over Monroe. That earlier case, often referred to as the “Middletown UFO,” even has video evidence circulating on YouTube. Two sightings, separated by years but sharing the same geometry and behavior, suggest a pattern rather than coincidence.

The Monroe incident carried an extra layer of irony for me. Just days before, I had recorded commentary criticizing the CIA, arguing that an unaccountable government agency posed a greater threat to society than any hypothetical alien landing at the old Lesourdsville Lake amusement park. Then, as if on cue, a highly defined UFO appeared in the sky over Monroe—right above the road, visible to anyone passing through. Was it occult synchronicity, a manifestation triggered by calling it out? Or was it a projection, seeded into the narrative to reinforce assumptions and steer public perception? Either explanation underscores a truth: the skies are not always what they seem, and the mechanisms behind what we witness may be far more psychological and technological than extraterrestrial.

In the case of West Chester, my view remains pragmatic. If you were an engineer testing cloaking or anti-gravity technology, you’d want real-world conditions—dense holiday traffic, a populated corridor, and proximity to a major Air Force base. You’d want to measure public reaction without announcing the test. And judging by the sparse reporting—two witnesses out of thousands—the experiment likely achieved its goal. That ratio is common in paranormal phenomena: many see, few speak. Stigma silences disclosure, and silence is the perfect cloak for those who prefer their work to remain invisible. In a society that should demand transparency, these events remind us how easily concealment thrives in plain sight.

—

Footnotes

1. NUFORC – West Chester Report #194307, details on date, shape, duration, and description (posted Nov. 24, 2025).

2. NUFORC – Ohio Index, showing the West Chester entry and contemporaneous Ohio reports on 11/22/2025. 1

3. NUFORC Databank (About/Indexes/Disclaimers) explains grading, common misidentifications, and posting practice. 2

4. YouTube: “UFO over West Chester, Ohio” (local upload summarizing the event and public interest). 3

5. HISTORY.com – “Does Hangar 18, Legendary Alien Warehouse, Exist?”, Wright‑Patterson lore, Roswell connections. 4

6. U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet – Project Blue Book (conclusions; 12,618 reports, 701 unidentified). 5

7. Scientific American – “The U.S. Drone Panic Mirrors UFO Overreactions,” context on drone/UAP misreads near restricted airspace. 6

8. Florida Today Op‑Ed – UAP video debate (sphere struck by Hellfire; interpretations vary). 7

9. NUFORC – “File a Report” guidance, checklist to avoid common misidentifications (Starlink, planets, lens artifacts). 8

10. NUFORC Homepage (Recent Highlights), public transparency, and investigation notes. 9

11. Freethink – “The search for anti-gravity propulsion,” survey of claims and physics constraints. 10

12. Flying Penguin analysis – “Gravitic Drones…”, skepticism about gravity‑control claims and the absence of supporting infrastructure. 11

13. USA Today – “UFO hearing video shows Hellfire missile fired at mysterious orb,” congressional UAP context. 12

14. Enigma Labs – Ohio sightings dashboard, trends, and regional density (Cincinnati/Dayton corridor). 13

15. WCPO – “Strange lights captured… appear to be a hoax” (Middletown, June 2023), local precedent and cautionary notes. 14

16. Knewz – “UFO in Ohio? Several Residents Report Seeing Strange Green Lights”, summary of the Middletown event and official reactions. 15

17. West Chester population profiles (CityPopulation/WorldPopulationReview), confirming township scale and density. 1617

18. UFO Index – Ohio (latest reports incl. Middletown references), shows regional cadence of events.

—

Bibliography

• National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). “Sighting Report #194307 – West Chester, OH.” https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=194307; “Reports for State OH.” https://nuforc.org/subndx/?id=lOH; “Databank.” https://nuforc.org/databank/; “File a Report.” https://nuforc.org/report-a-ufo/

• HISTORY.com. “Does Hangar 18, Legendary Alien Warehouse, Exist?” (updated June 30, 2025). https://www.history.com/articles/hangar-18-ufos-aliens-wright-patterson

• U.S. Air Force. “Unidentified Flying Objects and Air Force Project Blue Book – Fact Sheet.” https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104590/unidentified-flying-objects-and-air-force-project-blue-book/

• Scientific American. “The U.S. Drone Panic Mirrors UFO Overreactions.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-drone-panic-mirrors-ufo-overreactions/

• USA Today. “UFO hearing video shows Hellfire missile fired at mysterious orb.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/09/10/ufo-hearing-video-hellfire-missile/86073340007/

• Florida Today. “UAP video: Alien tech, drone test or military cover-up?” https://www.floridatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/09/14/uap-video-alien-tech-drone-test-or-military-cover-up/86076327007/

• Freethink. “The search for anti-gravity propulsion.” https://www.freethink.com/space/anti-gravity-propulsion

• FlyingPenguin. “Gravitic Drones From China: Classic Counterintelligence Pattern…” https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=64204

• WCPO‑TV. “Strange lights… appear to be a hoax” (Middletown, June 2023). https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/butler-county/middletown/ufo-sighting-in-middletown-strange-lights-captured-on-video-late-wednesday-night

• Knewz. “UFO in Ohio? Several Residents Report Seeing Strange Green Lights in the Night Sky.” https://knewz.com/ohio-residents-report-seeing-ufo-night-sky/

• CityPopulation.de / WorldPopulationReview. West Chester Township profiles. https://www.citypopulation.de/en/usa/ohio/admin/butler/3901783150__west_chester/ ; https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/ohio/west-chester-township

• UFO Index. “Ohio UFO Reports.” https://www.ufoindex.com/ohio

• YouTube. “UFO over West Chester, Ohio.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG0Nv8NVfzI

Rich Hoffman

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

Marijuana Use at the High Place of Tel Arad, Israel: The problem with legalizing communication with inter-dimensional entities

I promised more context for why I hate the legalization of marijuana so much, and in the case of mass society, intoxicants.  It’s not enough to say that drugs should be illegal; people need to understand why.  And for me, it’s a battle of consciousness and who controls your thoughts.  How can people, for instance, fight for small government and the benefits of an intelligent republic, but then surrender all thought through intoxication over to other forces that invade your personal sovereignty, and the most important at that, our minds and the thoughts that those minds produce?  When smoke filled the air of an inner sanctum, it was never accidental. It was engineered. In the eighth century BCE, at the Judahite fortress shrine of Tel Arad, roughly thirty-five miles south of Jerusalem, two limestone altars stood before the threshold of the “holy of holies.” Laboratory analysis of the charred residue on those altars has now told us plainly what ancient worshipers were inhaling: on one, frankincense blended with animal fat to volatilize its perfume at higher temperatures; on the other, cannabis mixed with animal dung to slow‑burn at lower temperatures, releasing a psychoactive aerosol sufficient to induce altered states. The compounds identified—THC, CBD, CBN, terpenes, and terpenoids—leave no doubt that the cannabis inflorescences were burned not for fragrance but for ecstasy.¹ ² ³ ⁴ 1234

That is the kind of hard, physical evidence that strips away modern euphemisms. At Tel Arad, cannabis was a ritual technology. It was the apparatus by which priests or officiants crossed the threshold from sober perception to trance, much as frankincense, sourced via Arabian trade routes, made the sanctum smell like heaven even as cannabis smoke tuned human minds to hear it.¹ ³ ⁵ 135 The shrine’s use window, ca. 760–715 BCE, places it squarely in Judah’s political and religious turbulence, between the First Temple’s glory and the Assyrian pressure, when competing cults and high places dotted the land. The Arad altars stood not in a marginal folk‑site but in a fortress on the southern frontier—a liminal place in geography and consciousness.² ⁵ 25

The broader archaeology of Canaan corroborates that mind-altering substances were embedded in ritual. In the Late Bronze Age cemetery at Tel Yehud, archaeologists recovered imported Base‑Ring jugs shaped like poppy heads whose residues test positive for opium—likely associated with funerary rites and the cult of the dead, whether to raise spirits or ease the passage.⁶ 6 Across the Near East, ecstasy was not a fringe practice; it was a cultivated technique. Tel Arad’s twin altars memorialize that technique at the threshold of the inner sanctum, where incense regulated the smell and cannabis regulated the state of mind.¹ ³ 14

From that ancient record, one conclusion emerges that remains relevant today: cannabis was used to override sober cognition in a sacred framework. It did not sharpen judgment; it sought communion—voices, visions, feedback from a realm beyond ordinary waking life. Whether you interpret those experiences as genuine encounters with non-human intelligences or as products of hyper-stimulated neural circuitry, the public‑policy implication is the same. Normalizing marijuana enshrines altered consciousness as a cultural good. The more potent the product and the wider the adoption, the more a society tunes its public square toward ritualized disinhibition.

You can see the continuity of this logic in India’s long bhang tradition. Bhang, a paste made from cannabis leaves, has been woven into festivals like Holi and Maha Shivaratri for centuries, with references in Vedic literature and Ayurvedic lore and with colonial observers documenting its ubiquity.⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰ 78910 Contemporary estimates run in the millions of annual consumers around major festivals, placing cannabis within a sacred calendar rather than on the margins of culture.⁸ 8 In visual culture, the art that issues from such states is strikingly consistent across continents: charged neon geometrics, entity‑forms, fractal mandalas—repertoire that echoes shamanic cosmologies from Siberia to Amazonia and now saturates modern psychedelic aesthetics. The continuity of motifs suggests a continuity of effect: the same kinds of altered states produce the same types of visions.

But where ancient priests burned cannabis to induce ecstasy within a small, controlled ritual community, modern legalization scales that effect to whole populations. That is where archeology’s lesson collides with public health. If cannabis is a portal, the portal’s throughput matters. Epidemiology repeatedly associates heavier or earlier cannabis use with increased risk of psychotic outcomes, observing dose‑response effects: meta‑analysis finds the heaviest users have odds ratios near 3.9 for schizophrenia or related psychoses compared with non‑users.¹¹ 11 A 2025 synthesis applying Hill’s criteria argues there is a high likelihood cannabis contributes to schizophrenia development overall, with a pooled OR ≈ 2.88 and roughly two‑fold greater risk for adolescent users.¹⁴ 12 More granular clinical work shows that in diagnosed schizophrenia, cannabis use is tied to increased positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions) and higher excitement, even as negative symptom patterns can vary; no causality is claimed, but the association is robust.¹³ 13 And among people with schizophrenia, cannabis use is significantly associated with some suicide‑related outcomes, including elevated odds of attempted suicide and increased hazards for suicide death.¹⁵ 14

Jurisdiction-level studies add a societal lens. After U.S. recreational legalization (2009–2019), modeling shows +5.8% injury crash rates and +4.1% fatal crash rates in the aggregate, controlling for factors like unemployment, speed limits, seat‑belt use, rural miles, and alcohol trends—effects vary by state, but the direction is worrisome.¹⁶ ¹⁷ 1516 Systematic reviews converge on negative road‑safety impacts in most studies, and national surveys now find 4–6% of drivers self‑report driving within an hour of cannabis use, with risk perceptions conspicuously more lenient than for alcohol.¹⁸ ¹⁹ 1718 None of this proves that every consumer will suffer harm; it demonstrates that scaled access increases measurable externalities—most acutely among young men, high‑potency users, and those who combine cannabis with alcohol.¹² ¹⁸ 1917

So why invoke Tel Arad in a twenty-first-century legalization debate? Because it reveals what cannabis was for in a culture that canonized sacred space: it was for ecstasy, for crossing boundaries, for letting something else participate in one’s thinking. If you grant the metaphysical possibility that those “somethings” are genuine non-human intelligences, then mass legalization looks like opening a wide conduit into a population’s decision-making machinery. If you deny that and call the entities neural artifacts, the conclusion hardly changes: repeated entry into states that mimic external agency undermines habituated sovereignty and clarity—what a civilization requires for law, craft, and self-government.

There is also a moral claim at stake. Cultures thrive on lucidity—on earned competence and honest accountability. We do not need to romanticize intoxication because it looks antiquarian. Tel Arad was not quaint. It was precise. One altar perfumed the sanctum; the other hijacked cognition. Judah’s priests were innovating in ritual engineering, not engaging in harmless herbalism. The residue composition—the dung matrix, the cannabinoid profile, the deliberate temperature control—shows purposeful design to modulate consciousness.¹ ² ³ 123 That is the legacy modern marijuana culture inherits: techniques to create porosity. Legalization, commercialization, and age-neutral marketing scale porosity to a level ancient officiants never imagined, and the data on psychosis and road safety tell us the cost.

For these reasons, I reject marijuana as a cultural good. The Tel Arad shrine is a fossilized warning: cannabis has been a conduit into ecstasy in high places for a very long time, and cultures that survive do not hand their sovereignty to smoke. The way forward is not to sacralize intoxication, but to honor clarity—frankincense is fragrant; cannabis is psychoactive. The former perfumes a room; the latter reprograms it. Tel Arad did both. We should do neither.

David Jay Brown and Sara Phinn Huntley’s The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities: Machine Elves, Tricksters, Teachers, and Other Interdimensional Beings (2025) brings this conversation into sharp modern focus. Structured like a naturalist’s handbook for hyperspace, the book catalogs 25 distinct entity types encountered in DMT and ayahuasca experiences—from self-transforming machine elves and mantis insectoids to reptilians, gray aliens, fairies, nature spirits, and divine forms like Grandmother Ayahuasca and the Virgin Mary. Each chapter includes encounter narratives from trip reports and scientific studies, rich descriptions of behavior, appearance, and the messages or teachings they impart, accompanied by visionary artwork from artists such as Alex Grey and Sara Phinn Huntley herself 12. The field guide poses a profound question: Are these beings mere constructs of the human psyche, or are they independent intelligences inhabiting other dimensions? That question lies at the heart of every cross-cultural psychedelic tradition, from Tel Arad’s cannabis altars to global shamanic rites.

The guide has not only attracted readers interested in visionary art or entheogens but has also gained credibility through endorsements from figures like Graham Hancock and through guest appearances by Brown and Huntley on platforms like the “Rebel Spirit Radio” podcast 3. Meanwhile, mainstream voices like Joe Rogan regularly revisit “DMT astronauts”—individuals who deliberately seek these entities for spiritual insight or practical guidance—and discuss whether contemporary governments and institutions might align with such interdimensional “high priests” to influence mass consciousness 45. This book is a frontier consideration into a new science of analysis and reinforces the core argument: humanity’s engagement with psychoactive smoke—from ancient altars to modern DMT breakthroughs—is not benign. It is a politics of consciousness intervention, where the line between personal sovereignty and external mental imposition is perilously blurred.  And it’s very dangerous, and should under no rational endeavor, should ever be legalized in a serious society.

Footnotes

1. Arie, Rosen, Namdar (2020), GC‑MS identification of THC/CBD/CBN; animal dung/fat matrices; dating and functional interpretation. 1

2. Science News coverage of the shrine context, the cannabis–dung mixture, and THC levels consistent with altered states. 2

3. Taylor & Francis newsroom summary highlighting frankincense chemistry (boswellic acids) and deliberate psychoactive use of cannabis. 3

4. Times of Israel report: cannabis “to stimulate ecstasy” and implications for Temple ritual analogs. 4

5. Sci. News overview of shrine chronology, fortress border function, and compositional findings. 5

6. Biblical Archaeology Society: Tel Yehud opium residues in Base‑Ring jugs; cult‑of‑the‑dead context. 6

7. Wikipedia (summary with sources) on bhang as an edible cannabis preparation and festival use. 7

8. Firstpost explainer on Holi and bhang’s historical embedding; contemporary practice estimates. 8

9. IndiaTimes feature with Vedic/Ayurvedic references and colonial documentation of bhang. 9

10. SAGE review on the historical context and research state of cannabis use in India. 10

11. Marconi et al. (2016) meta-analysis: dose‑response; OR≈3.9 for heaviest use vs. non-use. 11

12. JAMA Network Open invited commentary (2025) summarizing evidence and Ontario cohort demographics; rising PARF after medical legalization. 19

13. eClinicalMedicine IPD meta-analysis (2023) associating cannabis use with higher positive and excitement dimensions in schizophrenia. 13

14. Biomolecules (2025) systematic review applying Hill’s criteria; overall OR≈2.88; doubled adolescent risk. 12

15. Psychological Medicine (2025) meta-analysis: cannabis use in schizophrenia linked to attempted suicide and suicide death hazards. 14

16. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (2022): legalization associated with +5.8% injury crashes and +4.1% fatal crashes in aggregate. 15

17. IIHS bibliography summary of the same study’s methodology and state heterogeneity. 16

18. MDPI systematic review (2023) concluding negative impacts of legalization on road safety in most studies; risk profiles. 17

19. AAA Foundation (2024) fact sheet on DUI‑C prevalence (~4–6%), risk perceptions, and sex differences. 18

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Bibliography

Arie, E.; Rosen, B.; Namdar, D. (2020). Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad. Tel Aviv, 47(1), 5–28. 1

Bower, B. (2020). An Israeli shrine may have hosted the first ritual use of marijuana. Science News. 2

Farmer, C. M.; Monfort, S. S.; Woods, A. N. (2022). Changes in Traffic Crash Rates After Legalization of Marijuana. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 83, 494–501. 15

Marconi, A., et al. (2016). Meta-analysis of the Association Between the Level of Cannabis Use and Risk of Psychosis. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 42(5), 1262–1269. 11

Argote, M., et al. (2023). Association between cannabis use and symptom dimensions in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. eClinicalMedicine, 64, 102199. 13

Pourebrahim, S., et al. (2025). Does Cannabis Use Contribute to Schizophrenia? Biomolecules, 15, 368. 12

Mulligan, L. D., et al. (2025). Cannabis use and suicide in schizophrenia. Psychological Medicine, 55, e79. 14

González Sala, F., et al. (2023). Effects of Cannabis Legalization on Road Safety: A Literature Review. IJERPH, 20(5), 4655. 17

AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (2024). Cannabis Use, Public Health, and Traffic Safety (Fact Sheet). 18

Biblical Archaeology Society (2022). Narcotics used in Canaanite Cult: Opium in Late Bronze Age Graves. 6

Firstpost (2025). The Big ‘Bhang Theory’: Why Indians drink bhang on Holi. 8

IndiaTimes (2023). On Holi, a look at the tradition of using bhang and its legality. 9

Rich Hoffman

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

It All Comes Down to Sullivan: Live by the Legal Sword, die by it too

These people never learn. When you are the front runner in a serious commissioner election in Butler County, Ohio, as Michael Ryan is, the dirty tricks trying to prevent his momentum are just the kind of thing that give politics a bad name.  What starts you on the road to good health in politics isn’t kale or cardio, it’s truth without legalese, straight talk without a billable hour attached. I deal with lawyers all the time—good ones, bad ones, and the “print this from the shelf and scare them” variety—and my general opinion, even conceding that the profession began with noble intentions, is that far too much of it has drifted into a uniform intimidation racket. You’ve seen the type: the form-letter cease-and-desist that looks like an astrology reading for defamation, except the fortune costs you a retainer and the outcome is a long, nervous wait for a judge who usually tosses it after you’ve lost sleep and savings. The trick is the tone, not the law: it’s written to make you believe you must respond with a lawyer, because only priests of the temple may interpret the runes. I don’t like the practice and personally think it should be destroyed, and that the perpetrators of such legal manipulation should be thrown in jail and punished with career-ending justice, just for applying the kind of abuses of power that are all too common.

And then there’s this, additionally

This is why the old play of lawfare against rivals—especially in local races where reputations are accessible targets—needs to be called out. We’ve watched how it stains the process in Butler County. Roger Reynolds, who was convicted on a single count in late 2022, later saw that conviction overturned on appeal in May 2024 for “insufficient evidence,” with the appellate panel ordering an acquittal and discharge. The case centered on the golf academy idea tied to Lakota Schools and Four Bridges; the court noted that the proposal never matured, that the school board held the authority, and that the key witness’s legal counsel ended the discussion before any contract could be secured. 1234 In September 2024, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to restore him to the auditor’s office immediately (the seat had been filled due to the bar against felons holding office at the time of his conviction) but clarified he remains eligible to run in the future. 5 That’s the landscape: facts matter, timelines matter, and our politics should run on open argument, not legal intimidation.

Then there’s Cindy Carpenter. She recently walked into a student housing office in Oxford to resolve back rent tied to a family member. A surveillance camera caught her flipping off the counter during the exchange; staff alleged racist language and abuse of office. The Butler County Prosecutor investigated and concluded that her conduct, while “unseemly,” did not rise to the level of misconduct or abuse of power. 67 It’s all on tape and all public now; the gesture happened, the allegations were made, and the official finding closed the matter without charges. 86 You can dislike the behavior—I do—but voters deserve a campaign where candidates fight this out in daylight, not by hiring attorneys to stuff the mailbox of a rival.

Enter Michael Ryan. He’s a Hamilton City Councilman turned countywide candidate, and he’s collected a long list of conservative endorsements—state senator George Lang, multiple township trustees and councilmembers, and county auditor Nancy Nix among them—because he’s making the case for generational leadership and a forward-looking county agenda. 9 He launched his commission bid in May 2025, framing it around growth, jobs, and fewer distractions—promising to fight for every city, township, and village, and to recruit the next-generation workforce. 10 Ryan’s pitch has resonated in part because people are tired of courthouse drama and lawfare theatrics; they want a debate about budgets, infrastructure, and living standards, not another stack of demand letters mailed in bulk from counsel. And he’s not alone—the GOP field is crowded, with Reynolds and Carpenter in the mix for the May 2026 primary—but the voter mood described by local reporting is unmistakable: they’re weighing future capacity, not re-litigating yesterday’s trials. 11

Now, when the intimidation letter lands—as it did from Reynolds to Ryan—you don’t have to swallow the premise that only a lawyer can answer it. You can answer it yourself, plainly and legally, because the guardrail is still the Sullivan standard from 1964. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan was a 9–0 Supreme Court decision that put a constitutional backbone into defamation law for public officials: to win, a public official must prove “actual malice,” meaning the speaker knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for its truth, and must do so with “convincing clarity.” 1213 The case grew out of a civil rights-era advertisement that contained factual errors; a local jury hit the Times with $500,000 in damages, but the Supreme Court reversed, explaining that debate on public issues must be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” even when the attacks are “vehement” and sometimes “unpleasantly sharp.” 1415

If you want numbers: the jury’s original $500,000 damage award (an enormous sum in 1960) was wiped away; the final holding established a higher burden that has, for six decades, made defamation claims by public officials very hard to win without proof of knowing falsity or reckless disregard. 1514 In practical terms, that means campaign statements, press releases, and political commentary about public officeholders are protected—unless the speaker crosses the line into deliberate falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. 1316 The standard is why you don’t need to hire a lawyer to say, “We disagree, and our statements are protected political speech,” and it’s why cease-and-desist letters are so often theatre: they depend on the recipient’s fear, not on an actual path to winning under Sullivan.

So let’s put it together. Reynolds’ single-count conviction was reversed; whatever lessons he took from the ordeal, sending form-letter threats at a rival to police campaign commentary is the wrong takeaway. 12 Carpenter’s apartment-office incident was embarrassing but not criminal; voters can judge her temperament, but the prosecutor closed the file. 6 Ryan, meanwhile, has stacked endorsements and is running an argument-heavy, growth-forward race; that’s where the energy is. 9 Let them debate. Let voters see who can build coalitions and deliver results without resorting to legal cudgels. And when the legal cudgel shows up anyway, answer it with Sullivan—because in American political life, the First Amendment demands a high tolerance for hard speech about public officials, and the courts have enforced that by design. 1315

In the decades since Sullivan, the Supreme Court clarified and extended the actual-malice requirement through several landmark decisions:

Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974)

This case distinguished between public officials, public figures, and private individuals. The Court held that the actual‑malice standard does not apply to defamation claims by private individuals. Instead, states may allow recovery with a lower standard of fault—such as negligence—when proven, and plaintiffs are limited to actual damages unless actual malice is shown 12.

• Outcome: Private individuals need not meet the high threshold; states can define fault and damages within constitutional bounds 23.

Curtis Publishing Co. v. Wally Butts (1967)

Extending Sullivan, the Court held that public figures (like former coach Wally Butts) must prove actual malice to prevail in libel suits. The investigation in question fell short of reasonable journalistic standards, leading to damages after the Court found reckless disregard for truth 45.

Philadelphia Newspapers v. Hepps (1986)

When private individuals sue over speech on matters of public concern, the Court ruled they must bear the burden of proving falsity—not leave it to the defendant. This ensures truth holds primacy in public discourse and avoids chilling speech 67.

Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell (1988)

This case affirmed that even intentional infliction of emotional distress torts related to offensive parody do not evade the actual‑malice rule when a public figure is involved. Religious leader Jerry Falwell could not recover without proving that Hustler knowingly published false statements or acted with reckless disregard 89.

• Result: Political satire and parody targeting public figures are constitutionally protected—even if deeply offensive—absent false statements made with actual malice.

—

Together, these rulings illustrate how Sullivan’s actual‑malice standard has been reinforced and nuanced:

• It does apply to both public officials and public figures (Butts, Falwell).

• It does not apply to private individuals (Gertz), though they must still show fault and harm.

• Plaintiffs challenge private or public speech tied to public concern must prove falsity (Hepps).

These cases bolster the legal shield for political speech—underscoring that public dialogue outpaces legal intimidation unless clearly false and malicious.

We’ve seen it too often, when candidates in politics can’t make a good argument, they turn to lawfare and hope that the public perception of expensive lawyers will do the work for them of winning an office they otherwise don’t deserve.  In Roger Reynold’s case, he is the one who got himself into trouble in the first place, and nobody wants to see that kind of trouble in the office of the Butler County Commissioners, just to repair the reputation of a person looking for respect that he lost during the process.  There are other ways to win respect, and this isn’t how you do it.  Showing leadership is the way to restore party integrity, not to make more rifts that cost more than reputations.  And hiring expensive, pin-headed lawyers to send out form letters of intimidation on a case they know is phony as they sent it, is why there are problems in politics to begin with.

Footnotes

1. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan set the “actual malice” standard for public officials, requiring proof that the defendant knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard, and emphasized “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate on public issues. 1314

2. The original jury verdict in Alabama awarded L.B. Sullivan $500,000 in damages; the U.S. Supreme Court reversed unanimously in 1964. 15

3. Former Butler County Auditor Roger Reynolds’ 2022 unlawful-interest conviction was overturned for insufficient evidence in May 2024; the appeals court ordered acquittal and discharge. 12

4. The Ohio Supreme Court, in September 2024, declined to restore Reynolds to office mid-term but affirmed his eligibility to run in the future. 5

5. Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser cleared Commissioner Cindy Carpenter of misconduct after the Oxford apartment incident, noting the gesture was “unseemly” but not unlawful. 6

6. Michael Ryan launched his commission bid in May 2025 and lists numerous Republican endorsements on his campaign website. 109

7. Local reporting describes a crowded May 2026 GOP primary field for the commission seat and outlines competing narratives about experience versus future focus. 11

Bibliography

• New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case summaries and analyses: LII / Cornell Wex; First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU); Wikipedia overview; FindLaw case history; Encyclopaedia Britannica.

• Reynolds appellate decision and related coverage: Twelfth District opinion (PDF); WCPO; Cincinnati Enquirer; WLWT; Ohio Supreme Court case update.

• Carpenter incident and prosecutorial review: Journal-News; Local 12 WKRC; Cincinnati.com video clip.

• Michael Ryan campaign and endorsements: Ryan for Butler County website; Journal-News launch story; Primary field coverage.

Rich Hoffman

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

Jim Cameron Has Lost It: Democrat movies are bad for theatre owners and very irresponsible

I’m not rooting for this new Avatar film to be a bust. I want the theaters breathing; I want popcorn machines humming; I want the marquee lights on for people who built these auditoriums and stuck it out through shutdowns, strikes, and the great experiment of “day‑and‑date” streaming. I’ve always liked the filmmaker; I’m not rooting for him to fail. But I can read a marketplace, and I can listen to what regular moviegoers tell each other—at the concession stand, online, at church, at work—and they’ll forgive almost anything except being lectured when they paid to be entertained. If the third one—this Fire and Ash one—lands, I’m happy for every exhibitor who cashes tickets and sells a few extra souvenir cups. If it stumbles, the reason won’t be the craft; Jim Cameron still builds technical worlds like few others. It will be the message mismatch in a market that has shifted under his feet. And that shift isn’t in our imaginations; it’s in the numbers. Opening weekend? $345 million globally, $88–89 million domestic—second‑largest global debut of 2025 behind Zootopia 2, but materially softer than The Way of Water’s $435 million holiday launch in 2022. The third film’s premium formats carried a heavy share—IMAX alone did $43.6 million, and 3D/IMAX accounted for 66% of grosses—proof that the draw remains “event tech” even when general interest cools a bit. 12

And yes, Jim Cameron knows exhibition math, over the years, he’s been the best at it; these films play for legs, not for a single weekend spike. The first one opened to $77 million domestically but camped at No. 1 for seven weeks and marched past $2.9 billion lifetime—still the all-time champ after reclaiming the crown via China re-release. The second one opened bigger—$134.1 million domestic—and legged out to $2.343 billion worldwide. So “Fire and Ash” starting below Way of Water doesn’t predetermine the finish line, but it does announce the current climate: domestic ticket buyers are more selective; they save their premium formats for must-see spectacles and otherwise wait for streaming. 34

Cameron bets that Fire and Ash can give Pandora a human core the audience bonds with again. He’s been telling the press that family—love, bonds, empathy—moved to the forefront after Way of Water’s reception, and that the “Ash People” show a different angle on the Na’vi. The studios pushed all of that: ABC’s primer explains the arc and the 197-minute run; USA TODAY walked folks through the romance pivot with Spider and Kiri; People and the official Avatar site laid out the December 19 release, cast, and creative. It’s all there if you want the meta‑story of the franchise’s evolution and Cameron’s tinkering to tune it to audience reaction. 5678

But I’m going to say the part people mutter in the lobby: Avatar is FernGully in space, Dances With Wolves in space, hippie parables in space. Beautiful, yes. Bioluminescent, yes. But the heart isn’t the creature; it’s the ride. You can see it at Disney’s Animal Kingdom—Pandora is a marvel of engineering; Flight of Passage is a technical knockout. People queue for hours, glow under the blacklight, and walk out saying, “That was cool.” Then they turn left and head for Everest or the safari. The land is loved; the Na’vi dolls are not driving retail like Marvel or Star Wars. Pandora is foremost an experience of tech and design. 910

That’s the sore truth Cameron wrestles with: he won the world by selling a technical spectacle and then tried to use that platform to teach environmentalism and human restraint to a culture whose purchasing habits—phones, trucks, streaming subscriptions—declare that they want harmony with technology, not a scolding about it. If you can make the metaphor land without the wagging finger, you’re in business. But modern audiences, especially domestic ones, have tuned their ears to “message movies,” and they pick them carefully. When they don’t like yours, you feel it in the Friday night cash drawer. Ask the theater managers: they’ll tell you that premium‑format demand spikes when the spectacle is undeniable—and the rest of the release slate lives or dies by word of mouth about fun, action, and escape, not the righteousness of the lecture. 1

And since we’re talking about keeping theaters alive, let’s talk economics. The domestic yearly box office has clawed back to $8.2 billion as of mid December 2025—up from pandemic lows but still well below the $11+ billion of pre-COVID years. Ticket sales around 726 million and an average price in the $11 range (with premium surcharges pushing the “effective” average higher for event weeks) tell you how fragile attendance remains even when tentpoles overperform. Zootopia 2 blasted the family corridor and crossed $1 billion in just 17 days—the fastest PG film ever to the milestone—demonstrating that when a title hits, America still shows up with kids and grandparents. But the recovery is uneven; mid-budget adult films continue to crater, and exhibitors need reliable pipelines of four-quadrant hits to pay the rent. 11121314

Operating a theater is unforgiving math: payroll, lease, utilities, insurance, and the studio’s cut, which is heaviest in the opening weeks. Concessions are the lifeline—popcorn and soda can carry margins north of 80%; ticket revenue shares may be 70–90% to studios in week one, easing toward 50/50 later. So the survival instinct for exhibitors is simple—give them blockbusters frequently enough that the concession engine runs hot, and use subscription programs to smooth the demand curve. That’s how you pay the $83K monthly OpEx and keep the HVAC humming. When tentpoles slide, and streaming conditions lead audiences to wait, that cash‑flow logic breaks down. 1516

Industry analysts tracked closures: roughly 5% of U.S./Canada screens gone between 2019 and 2022; AMC closed 106 net theaters through 2023; Regal/Cineworld shed dozens through bankruptcy. Foot traffic dropped by double digits across major chains in late 2023–mid 2024 because strikes delayed releases. Even with 2025’s steadier slate, domestic totals were still hovering in the low eighths by December, threatening fatigue if the holiday anchors didn’t deliver. That’s the context in which exhibitors watch Avatar 3: if it has legs, the end-of-year swing can push totals toward $9B; if it behaves like a front-loaded blockbuster without the legs, the last two weeks don’t bail out the ledger. 1718

Meanwhile, the streaming battlefield grew sharper. Households averaged 2.9 paid streamers, spending ~$46/month, with Netflix the most used; Amazon introduced default ads unless you pay to remove them; Disney tightened windows on high‑performers like Zootopia 2, stretching theatrical exclusivity into 2026. Consumers say inflation bites their entertainment budget, but they don’t cancel streaming easily; ad-supported tiers make the price stickier. All of that pulls casual theatergoers away from opening weekends—unless the title is a true “you gotta see it on the big screen” phenomenon. That’s the point: theaters remain vital for communal spectacles; streaming dominates convenience. 192021

So where does Cameron’s messaging collide with that behavior? Hollywood’s data on “woke” communication is complicated: some research finds inclusive advertising drives sales and engagement; other research warns consumers may perceive “woke‑washing,” eroding brand trust. In exhibition terms, the American audience isn’t a monolith—some will welcome explicit themes on environment, identity, or politics; others recoil if they feel preached to. When a movie becomes the avatar of a social crusade, it risks trading broad escapism for factional passion. That can be commercially fine when the target demos are wide (family animation, for instance). It’s harder when the film expects legions of repeat adult viewers to sustain $400M budgets. 222324

Technically, Cameron is still a master. The franchise’s premium format share proves that—audiences paid more than the average to see the images in the best way possible. Guinness World Records still catalogs the original’s mountain of achievements: the highest-grossing 3D film at the time, the fastest to a billion at the time, and global king. Way of Water reinforced that technical leadership, but here’s the 3D lesson of the last fifteen years: outside of Avatar (and a handful of bespoke releases), 3D became a surcharge for middling conversions. Audiences noticed; the novelty wore off. When Avatar returns, people remember, “Oh, this is what 3D is supposed to feel like,” and they show up in IMAX. But it doesn’t rehabilitate 3D as a default; it just says “this franchise is the exception.” That’s both a badge of honor for Cameron and a ceiling he can’t escape: as long as the brand’s primary hook is visual immersion, the story has to be world-beating to keep legs beyond the tech hit. 2526

You can ride that tech wave into theme parks. Pandora at Animal Kingdom opened in 2017 and became a crown jewel; it did exactly what the films do best—make you feel like you’re inside a place. But again, the halo is experiential. People gush about the floating mountains and Flight of Passage. They don’t fill shelves with Na’vi figurines the way they do Marvel characters. That’s not a moral judgment; it’s a merchandising truth that tells you what audiences connect to: the ride and the view. 10

Now, to the box office chessboard of 2025. Zootopia 2 became the highest-grossing American film of the year, blowing past $1 billion in record time for a PG title, with China acting as a rocket booster—over $430–$ 447 million there, second only to Endgame among MPA releases. Family content remains the most reliable play in a jittery market; inside Disney’s slate, you can see the split personality—animated juggernauts on one end, adult mid-budget dramedies like Ella McCay face-planting on the other. Exhibitors need the former to keep the concession margin pumping through the holidays, and they will take any Cameron-sized spectacle that keeps teens, dads, and gearheads buying premium tickets. 271314

On that score, Fire and Ash didn’t exactly bomb, initially—it managed to gain a $345 million worldwide opening and posted more assertive China than Way of Water’s first frame. But domestically, it’s under the sequel’s pace. Not the kind of performance that a film like this needs, given how many resources went into making it.  They are expensive to make and market.  And this kind of performance doesn’t come close to what the industry needs.  Analysts called out the new reality: three years after Way of Water—without the thirteen-year nostalgia gap—brand saturation and the streaming habit create a ceiling. Cameron is competing against his own legacy. The question is legs: holiday weekdays that behave like weekends, repeat viewings in premium formats, and the overseas skew that has always been Pandora’s ally. If the film holds like the first two, the break-even—reported budgets of ~$400 million plus $150 million in marketing—demand $1B+ to be comfortable. Disney’s decision tree on parts 4 and 5 will look at those legs, not the Friday surge. 2829

But let’s say the worst happens and domestic audiences shrug after two weekends. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean theaters are doomed. It means studios must feed exhibitors with a genre spread that respects what Americans actually buy: action they can cheer, family movies they can share, comedy that feels “earned” not sermonized, and adult thrillers that find urgency beyond streaming. The market is proving it will sprint for the right reasons—look at 2025’s slate: Minecraft, Wicked: For Good, Superman, Jurassic World Rebirth—all fueled weekends over $90–160 million. The domestic total we saw in Box Office Mojo’s year page—low eights as of Dec 22—can still jump if the holiday corridor behaves and Cameron’s legs show up. But the macro trend is stubborn: we’re not at $11 billion, and we won’t be until release pipelines and consumer habits align. 1211

A word for the owners who lasted this long: your business is still, fundamentally, concessions powered by event content. Subscription passes (AMC Stubs A-List, Regal Unlimited) cushion attendance; laser projection, PLF screens, and dine-in service lift per-patron revenue. But your fixed costs don’t care about critical scores; they care about whether Friday brings teenagers who buy buckets of popcorn and dads who add an IPA. So when a Cameron tentpole arrives, you pray for the old magic: repeat viewings, premium surcharges, and a “must see on the big screen” vibe. That’s why, regardless of anyone’s politics, I want Avatar to do well enough to float the end of the year for the exhibitor class. 30

And the politics—since we’re being honest—matter in a way studios underestimated. The 2016–2025 period trained Americans to see media as partisan signaling. Some studies say inclusive marketing drives sales; other data points to backlash when consumers smell inauthenticity. The Bud Light saga, Target backlash, Disney controversies—they taught brand managers to avoid overt culture‑war stands unless they can carry the consequences. Films became lightning rods. When a blockbuster’s press tour tilts into liberal advocacy—it can polarize the chatter that would otherwise be “did you see that set piece?” Cameron seems to have steered Fire and Ash toward grief, family, and character, perhaps as a recalibration. But if the audience has already filed Avatar under “lecture about environment,” you need months of word‑of‑mouth to prove you’ve delivered a narrative they can feel passion for. 2231

Cameron at his peak was never “woke” in the modern meme sense; he was a master of romance in catastrophe (Titanic) and man‑versus‑machine (Terminator), of Marines versus xenomorphs (Aliens). Those are universal frames you fill with craft, pace, and heart. Avatar’s universalism is visual; its message is particular. The bigger the individual, the narrower the net. Maybe Fire and Ash, with Lo’ak’s POV and Neytiri’s grief, has found the core that makes Pandora feel like a home family fights for rather than a lecture on planetary stewardship. Reviews and audience scores suggest the gap between critics (67%) and audiences (91%) is real—if the crowd likes it, the legs can happen. That’s the best-case path: the people drown out the pundits and get their friends to go. 32

As for me, I’m still walking into Pandora at Animal Kingdom and grinning at the floating mountains. I’m glad the tech exists, but my wish this holiday is practical: give exhibitors enough cash flow to survive. Give them Zootopia 2 numbers every Thanksgiving and Cameron-sized legs every Christmas, and then scatter a year with mid-range hits that fill Tuesdays. Give the owners who survived a marketplace with streaming siphons and political crossfire a break. They’re the stewards of a civic experience—strangers laughing together in the dark—that no algorithm can replace. If Fire and Ash ends up short of the Way of Water’s heights, I hope it’s still long enough to keep the box office humming while studios recalibrate toward stories that are fun first, message second, and always worth buying a large popcorn for. And when the exhibitors tally the year—$8.2B domestic, maybe a late surge to $9B if the holiday miracles stack—they’ll know the path forward. Audiences haven’t disappeared; they’ve become choosier. Earn the trip. Earn the concession upsell.  But a fair warning for Cameron and the rest of the Hollywood lefty types, when you find out that people don’t support your fantasy messaging for a Democrat platform at the movies, don’t be surprised that people reject you. 3311

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Footnotes

1. “Box Office: ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Powers to $345 Million Globally… Premium formats accounted for 66%; IMAX $43.6M.” Variety/Yahoo syndication (Dec 21, 2025). 1

2. Box Office Mojo: Avatar: The Way of Water totals and opening; franchise legs. 3

3. Wikipedia: List of box office records set by Avatar; regaining #1 worldwide via 2021 China re-release. 4

4. ABC News: “Everything to know about ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’” including runtime and Dec. 19 release. 5

5. USA TODAY: Cameron’s emphasis on relationships; Ash People context. 6

6. People.com: Fire and Ash overview; Ash People framing; Dec. 19 release. 7

7. Avatar.com: official runtime, cast, awards notes. 8

8. Walt Disney World: Pandora – The World of Avatar land overview. 9

9. Pandora – The World of Avatar (Wikipedia): acreage, attractions, opening history. 10

10. Deadline: Domestic box office crossed $8B in 2025; holiday expectations tied to Fire and Ash. 33

11. Box Office Mojo: Domestic Yearly Box Office (historical totals). 12

12. Deadline/Hollywood Reporter/Variety: Zootopia 2 crosses $1B in record time for PG; China lift. 133427

13. Variety: Ella McCay opening; mid-budget adult titles struggling. 14

14. eFinancialModels: Concession margins and opening‑week revenue shares, typical breakdown. 15

15. Financial Models Lab: Example OpEx profile (payroll, lease, utilities) for a theater. 16

16. IndieWire/Yahoo: NATO/Cinema Foundation report—average ticket price $10.53 (2022) and ~5% screen decline 2019–2022. 1735

17. RetailStat industry outlook: chain closures, strike impacts, foot‑traffic declines. 18

18. Forbes Home: 2025 streaming habits—average subs and spend; Netflix share. 19

19. Inside the Magic: Zootopia 2 theatrical window held into 2026. 20

20. Nielsen Consumer Survey (2023): inflation concerns; ad-free streaming preference stability. 21

21. Kantar Brand Inclusion Index (2024): Inclusive advertising drives purchase decisions. 22

22. Journal of Brand Management (2023/2024): “woke” brand communication engagement; polarization nuance. 23

23. International Journal of Advertising (2024/2025): woke‑washing risks to brand trust. 24

24. Guinness World Records: Avatar records; 3D/IMAX dominance; analysts projecting Fire and Ash domestic potential. 25

25. ScreenRant (Oct 14, 2025): 3D boom and decline context; post‑conversion fatigue. 26

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Bibliography & Further Reading

• Brueggemann, Tom. “The NATO Annual Report… Average Price of a Movie Theater Ticket.” IndieWire, Mar. 9, 2023. 17

• Rubin, Rebecca. “‘Zootopia 2’ Crosses $1 Billion Globally…” Variety, Dec. 12, 2025. 27

• Tartaglione, Nancy. “‘Zootopia 2’ Crosses $1 Billion… Fastest Hollywood Animation Ever.” Deadline, Dec. 12, 2025. 13

• “Avatar: The Way of Water – Box Office Mojo.” boxofficemojo.com. 3

• “List of Box Office Records Set by Avatar.” Wikipedia. 4

• “Pandora – The World of Avatar.” Walt Disney World Resort. 9

• “Pandora – The World of Avatar.” Wikipedia. 10

• “Economic Contributions of the US Movie Theater Industry (2019).” Ernst & Young for NATO (Cinema United). Aug. 2021. 36

• RetailStat. “Movie Theater Industry Outlook.” Sept. 12, 2024. 18

• Forbes Home. “2025 Media Streaming Stats You Should Know.” Nov. 27, 2025. 19

• Nielsen. “2023 Consumer Survey Report.” Nov. 2023. 21

• Kantar. “Brand Inclusion Index 2024.” July 15, 2024. 22

• Journal of Brand Management. “How persuasive is woke brand communication…” Dec. 21, 2023 (Vol. 31/2024). 23

• International Journal of Advertising. “Is woke advertising necessarily woke‑washing?” 2025 (accepted 2024). 24

• Guinness World Records. “Unbelievable amount of records Avatar has broken…” Dec. 19, 2025. 25

• ScreenRant. “The Rise and Fall of 3D Movies: Avatar’s Unfulfilled Promise.” Oct. 14, 2025. 26

Rich Hoffman

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

There’s Not a Lot of Compassion for Rob Reiner: Hollywood has made itself the enemy of America

The December 2025 killings of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer and producer Michele Singer Reiner, and the subsequent charging of their son Nick Reiner, ignited polarized reactions across news and social platforms.   The recent tragedy has sparked intense debate—not only about the crime itself but about the cultural backdrop that shaped this family. Critics have noted that President Trump’s response lacked overt compassion, but this reaction must be understood in context. Rob Reiner was not just a filmmaker; he was a leading voice in Hollywood’s anti-Trump activism, often positioning himself against traditional American values. For years, Hollywood has distanced itself from the everyday realities of most Americans, creating a cultural divide that has eroded public sympathy for its employees.  Hollywood has made itself the enemy of traditional America, and in that regard, Rob Reiner was considered an immoral slob that nobody should feel sorry for. 

The contrast between Trump’s family values and Hollywood’s permissive lifestyle is stark. Trump famously raised his children with strict rules—no drugs, no drinking, no tattoos—reinforcing accountability and discipline. Hollywood, by contrast, often fosters environments where excess and indulgence are normalized. This permissiveness has consequences: many children of Hollywood figures struggle with addiction and instability. In Nick Reiner’s case, reports of substance abuse and personal turmoil underscore a broader pattern—liberal culture rarely emphasizes personal responsibility, and the fallout can be devastating.

Examples abound. From Sean “Diddy” Combs’ recent court revelations of grotesque excess to Charlie Sheen’s own admissions of destructive behavior, the Hollywood lifestyle often spirals into dysfunction. These stories are not isolated—they reflect an industry that glamorizes extremes while neglecting the foundations of family and morality. When tragedy strikes in such a context, the expectation of widespread public compassion becomes complicated. Americans increasingly view these outcomes as the predictable result of choices and values that run counter to the principles most families hold dear.

This is not about piling on during a tragedy; it is about recognizing the cultural divide. Rob Reiner championed a worldview that sought to undermine traditional norms, and the consequences of that worldview are now painfully evident. While no one justifies violence, the reality is that Hollywood’s broken culture produces broken lives. When those lives implode, the public’s reaction—muted sympathy at best—reflects a growing rejection of the values Hollywood promotes.

The timeline:

• Discovery and identification: On December 14, 2025, Los Angeles authorities found Rob Reiner (78) and Michele Singer Reiner (70) dead in their Brentwood home. The L.A. County Medical Examiner later listed the cause of death as “multiple sharp force injuries,” manner: homicide. 123

• Arrest and charges: Police arrested Nick Reiner (32) hours later, and he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with special‑circumstance allegations that could carry life without parole or the death penalty; he is being held without bail. 456

• Court appearances and schedule: Nick appeared in court on Dec. 17; his arraignment was set for Jan. 7, 2026, after his counsel waived speedy arraignment. 789

• Family statements: Siblings Jake and Romy Reiner issued a statement calling the loss “horrific and devastating” and asking for privacy and compassion. 710

Medical Examiner determinations and arrest/charging information are consistent across CBS News, Deadline, USA TODAY, and ABC reports. The dates (Dec. 14–17, 2025) and charging language (“first‑degree murder” with exceptional circumstances) appear verbatim or in close paraphrase across those outlets. 1254 

• In contrast, documented coverage after the killings focused on President Trump’s own posts, in which he mocked Reiner and attributed the deaths to “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Mainstream outlets, not fabricated screenshots, reported these remarks. 1415

Snopes (Dec. 17 & 19) and Lead Stories (Dec. 17) show no record of Reiner endorsing political violence; USA TODAY and Axios document Trump’s remarks following the homicide. 1211131415

• Nick Reiner’s publicly discussed struggles with addiction date back to his teens, including multiple rehab stints, homelessness, and collaborative work with his father on Being Charlie (2015/16), a film loosely inspired by those experiences. 1617

• After the killings, reporting highlighted Nick’s longstanding challenges, with sources and past interviews noting volatility and non-linear recovery—common in chronic substance‑use disorders. None of these reports. 185

USA TODAY and PEOPLE provide direct quotations from earlier interviews/podcasts, situating addiction history in a verifiable record while avoiding speculative causation. 1617

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1. Celebrity activism and partisanship: Rob Reiner’s role as a high-profile critic of Trump and supporter of Democratic causes shaped how political audiences perceived him—before and after his death. 1415

2. Media dynamics: The Reiner case drew wall-to-wall coverage, but notable outlets also ran fact‑checks to counter false claims (e.g., fabricated posts, conspiracy theories about “secret tunnels”). The effect: a fractured information environment in which audiences pick narratives that fit their priors. 20

USA TODAY/Axios frames Reiner’s political profile; Snopes/AFP/AllSides documents rumor‑correction cycles that coexist with breaking news coverage. 1415111920

• Responsible inferences: It is fair to conclude that political identity and celebrity status influence public reaction, that false quotes altered perceptions of Reiner’s character, and that addiction history was part of Nick’s public narrative before 2025.  Those quotes that were attributed to Reiner were in the spirit of the way he projected himself, leading people to draw their own conclusions past the clean public relations efforts that actors often use to hide their true feelings which they utter to other people in private. 121417

• Where we should not refrain: this family’s tragedy is a sweeping indictment of entire political or cultural communities in regard to Hollywood as a culture.  And we must make claims of definitive causation without court findings because the courts as we have seen recently no longer represent the kind of justice Americans expect, and we don’t have time to wait on them. Nick Reiner’s case is ongoing; presumption of innocence applies even as the blood drips from the weapons he used to conduct the killings. 5

While in the past a story like this might have sparked weeks of discussion and reflection on Rob Reiner’s life, as an artist most people knew something about.  But in the wake of his political statements and his attempts to steer people away from supporting Trump, he has essentially angered most of the country.  And when something bad happens in Hollywood culture now, people have much less compassion and are ready to move on from the story much more quickly.  Forgiveness of these terrible Hollywood families and the lifestyles they live, and produce children out of, is not on the table any longer.  And Trump represents that evolution in his comments after the murders.  Because it’s not Trump that leads the nation, it’s Trump who is a creation of that nation and their sentiments.  And Hollywood, clearly, didn’t respect that process, and they took advantage of the power they did have within the entertainment desires of American culture.

Footnotes

1. L.A. County Medical Examiner cause of death: “multiple sharp force injuries,” homicide; Dec. 17, 2025. 12

2. LAPD and DA timeline; arrest, charges, special‑circumstance allegations. 45

3. Court appearance and arraignment scheduling. 78

4. Family statements requesting compassion and privacy. 710

5. Debunked quotes attributed to Reiner about the Trump shooting attempt. 1112

6. Documented coverage of President Trump’s remarks after Reiner’s death. 1415

7. Nick Reiner’s publicly discussed addiction history; Being Charlie context. 1716

8. Rumor‑correction cycle (fabricated posts; conspiracy content). 1920

—

Bibliography & Further Reading

• CBS News — “L.A. County medical examiner releases Rob and Michele Reiner’s causes of death.” Link

• Deadline — “Rob Reiner’s Official Cause Of Death Revealed By LA Medical Examiner.” Link

• ABC News — “Rob Reiner’s son, Nick Reiner, charged with 1st‑degree murder with special circumstances.” Link

• USA TODAY — “Rob Reiner’s son Nick charged with murder in parents’ deaths.” Link

• CBS News — “Nick Reiner, Rob and Michele Reiner’s son, appears in court; arraignment set for Jan. 7.” Link

• Snopes — “Rumor claiming Rob Reiner said he wished would‑be Trump assassin ‘hadn’t missed’ is unfounded.” Link

• Snopes — “Did Rob Reiner say ‘too bad he turned his head’ about Trump assassination attempt? There’s no proof.” Link

• USA TODAY — “What did Rob Reiner say about Trump? POTUS called it ‘derangement.” Link

• Axios — “Trump mocks Rob Reiner after death. Here’s what Reiner said about Trump and Charlie Kirk.” Link

• PEOPLE — “Rob Reiner’s Son Nick Previously Spoke About His Struggles with Drug Addiction and Homelessness.” Link

• USA TODAY — “Rob Reiner’s son Nick once ‘wrecked’ his parents’ guest house” (podcast recollections). Link

• AllSides (Snopes reprint) — “False claim of secret tunnels beneath Rob Reiner’s home spreads online.”

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=2070

Nick Fuentes Picked a Fight with the Heavyweight, Vivek Ramaswamy: And he’ll get his teeth knocked out and his jaw broke, just like Jake Paul–but he’ll be rich

Jake Paul’s recent fight with Anthony Joshua is the perfect illustration of what happens when spectacle replaces substance. Paul, a YouTube celebrity with millions of followers, stepped into the ring against a world-class heavyweight—a man with Olympic gold and years of professional dominance. The pre-fight theatrics were designed to sell the drama, but anyone who understood boxing knew the outcome was inevitable. Paul fought briefly, suffered a broken jaw in two places, and left the arena humiliated in front of tens of millions of viewers. Yet, for him, the payday—reportedly $92 million—made the beating worthwhile. It was never about winning; it was about monetizing attention, even at the cost of personal dignity.

In many ways, that’s exactly what Nick Fuentes is doing with his attacks on Vivek Ramaswamy and, by extension, the MAGA movement. Vivek is the Trump-endorsed candidate for Ohio governor, a heavyweight in political terms, and Nick is trying to build his brand by picking a fight he cannot win. The goal isn’t policy or principle—it’s clicks, donations, and notoriety. Like Paul, Fuentes is willing to take a beating if it means short-term gains. But compromising integrity for a few bucks is a dangerous trade. Real influence comes from credibility, not shock-jock theatrics, and when the dust settles, Vivek will be fine. Nick, on the other hand, risks being remembered as the guy who sold his future for a viral moment.

Before we get lost in the weeds on Nick and the “war” he’s trying to gin up against Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, the first thing to understand is that this is a publicity grab, a brand‑building exercise in the attention economy dressed up as a crusade. Tucker Carlson’s long sit‑down with Nick dropped late October 2025 and lit up the right for weeks—not because Nick said anything new, but because platforming him without hard pushback sparked a visible fracture among conservatives: Shapiro condemned the interview as “normalizing” a Hitler apologist, Heritage’s president defended Tucker as a free‑speech stand, and even Senate Republicans openly rebuked the tone and content. That intra‑movement rift is real, it’s documented, and it tells you what lane Nick is driving in: controversy converts to cash. 12345

When Nick went on Piers Morgan Uncensored in December 2025, he doubled down—“Hitler was very f***ing cool,” he said, shrugging off historical atrocity with aesthetic fanboy talk about uniforms and parades. That wasn’t clipped speculation; it aired, it was challenged in real time, and it produced the predictable outrage cycle. He also conceded “at least six million” Jews were killed, but framed Holocaust memory as a mechanism to browbeat white Christians—a rhetorical move that’s been part of his pattern: push past decency, trivialize mass murder, court the shock. The point isn’t whether he “means” it; the point is that publicly saying it pays in a donor‑driven creator market. 678

And sure, people will ask how a 27‑ or 28‑year‑old ends up with this microphone. There’s a timeline: Unite the Right 2017, Groyper wars harassing mainstream conservative events in 2019, deplatforming cycles from YouTube for hate speech, and then re‑ascendance on platforms willing to host him; he even turned up at Mar‑a‑Lago in November 2022 when Ye (Kanye) brought him to dinner with Trump—a fiasco the former president later said he didn’t foresee. That dinner is a hinge in the public memory; it proved how oxygen flows to extremism when spectacle meets lax vetting. 910111213

Now, does Nick hurt Vivek in Ohio? No—he helps him by contrast. Ohio 2026 is shaping up as Ramaswamy vs. Acton, and the fundamentals are what they are: Vivek’s cash advantage, statewide endorsements, and consolidated GOP backing set the terrain; Acton’s own story is COVID‑era and compassion‑branded, but even Gov. DeWine has publicly said those shutdown decisions were his, not hers—undercutting the “Lockdown Lady” moniker his party uses.  Because, DeWine is really a Democrat, and Amy was his girl.  On balance, the race is competitive in public polling but leans Republican in a red‑trending Ohio; when the smoke clears, voters will choose jobs, affordability, and competence over influencer theatrics. That’s why a shock‑jock swipe from Nick won’t move the needle—it hardens a tiny niche while most Ohioans tune out the performative nihilism. 141516171819

And here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud: this is a business model. The pundit economy rewards dopamine spikes—outrage, taboo, transgression—because creator monetization has shifted from legacy ad rails to direct fan funding. Platforms like Rumble now integrate Bitcoin tipping (with Tether) so audiences can spray micro‑payments across controversial content in seconds. You don’t need brand safety; you need attention. That’s why “Hitler is cool” becomes an economic lever: it draws fire, it drives views, it pulls in tips from an aggrieved subculture that feels ignored by institutions. In this incentive structure, “being unhinged” is not a bug; it’s a feature. 202122

So, the math here is straightforward. Nick’s short‑term revenue maximizes by attacking Trump‑aligned figures like Vivek; it creates a pseudo‑rebellion narrative (“I speak the truths your gatekeepers won’t”), harvests donations, and inflates his standing with under‑30 males who see no path in a culture saturated with porn, atomized dating markets, and collapsing family formation—all frustrations he riffs on. But that same strategy destroys long‑term trust and any real governing coalition. Tucker’s interview gave Nick oxygen; Shapiro’s response—and the broader backlash—marked the boundary lines of mainstream conservatism. Vivek will do well to stay above it, keep on policy‑first, and connect with Ohio’s economy and families, and let the theatrics burn themselves out. That contrast, in the end, will decide everything. 3235

I’ll add one more note because I’ve lived this choice set: taking money and chasing the algorithm means someone else owns your argument. Independent voices who refuse the pay‑to‑play goose—whether that’s bot‑inflated follower counts or crypto tip farms—give up the easy ego pop in exchange for credibility with serious people who need facts, not theatrics. In Ohio, facts look like campaign filings, union endorsements crossing over, county‑by‑county organizing, and policy planks about taxes, education, and industry. That’s where Vivek is playing. That’s where this race will be decided. 1516

 While Vivek Ramaswamy will be fine in Ohio—his strategy is solid, his Trump endorsement is strong—he could easily swat away Nick Fuentes by pointing to the Jake Paul fight as a metaphor. Picking a fight with a heavyweight when you’re clearly outmatched is reckless, and Nick’s attempt to derail Vivek’s campaign is no different. It’s a stunt, not a strategy, and it will fail.

But here’s the deeper truth Nick is tapping into: the rise of a disenfranchised generation. Under‑30 men are angry, disconnected, and increasingly unwilling to pursue marriage or family because they see the culture as broken—porn saturation, hookup norms, and progressive narratives have eroded trust. Nick speaks to that frustration, and that’s why his voice resonates even when his tactics are self‑destructive. This is the future of media and politics: decentralized, unfiltered, and without institutional guardrails. Legacy platforms can’t contain it, and the genie isn’t going back in the bottle. Even when Vivek wins and MAGA thrives for now, the next wave will be shaped by these angry young men who feel robbed of a normal life—and commentators like Nick will only grow louder in that vacuum.

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Footnotes

1. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes published Oct. 27, 2025; episode listings and YouTube analytics confirm timing and reach. 12

2. Coverage of the interview’s fallout and intra‑GOP rift (Heritage defense; Shapiro’s critique; Senate Republicans’ reactions). 345

3. Piers Morgan interview (Dec. 8–9, 2025) where Fuentes said “Hitler was very f***ing cool”; additional reportage on his Holocaust remarks. 687

4. Fuentes background and extremism timeline: Unite the Right, Groyper wars, deplatforming, ideological positions. 9

5. Mar‑a‑Lago dinner (Nov. 22–25, 2022) with Ye and Fuentes; Trump’s later statements on not recognizing Fuentes. 10111213

6. Ohio 2026 overview: Ramaswamy’s fundraising and endorsements; Acton’s profile; DeWine clarifying COVID decisions. 141516171819

7. Creator‑economy monetization and Rumble’s Bitcoin tipping integration (Tether partnership; rollout timing). 202122

8. Shapiro’s extended takedown of Tucker/Fuentes; the boundary between mainstream conservatism and the groyper fringe. 235

—

Selected Bibliography

• Tucker Carlson x Nick Fuentes: “Tucker Carlson Interviews Nick Fuentes” (Podchaser listing, Oct. 27, 2025); “Tucker Carlson Interviews Nick Fuentes” (YouTube). 12

• Intra‑movement rift: USA TODAY analysis of interview fallout; POLITICO on Shapiro’s critique and Heritage backlash; Fox News coverage of the AmericaFest sparring. 345

• Piers Morgan interview: The Independent, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and The Forward reports on Fuentes’ Hitler comments and Holocaust remarks (Dec. 2025). 687

• Mar‑a‑Lago dinner (2022): USA TODAY, NBC News, ABC News, POLITICO accounts and Trump’s statement. 10111213

• Ohio 2026: Cleveland Scene and Columbus Underground on fundraising and endorsements; Acton campaign site; NBC4 on DeWine’s COVID responsibility remarks; Ohio Capital Journal profile. 1415241718

• Creator monetization: Cointelegraph and industry reports on Rumble’s Bitcoin tipping rollout and Tether partnership. 20

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=2070

The Problems with the Brown University Shooter: MKUltra killers and why we can’t trust the intelligence community

You want the switch flipped in the storage locker, the last light turned off, and the chain of events made to click—clean, audible—like a bolt sliding home. So here’s the Brown shooter case, the way I see it, the way the case sounds when you’ve done the hard part and need the paperwork to catch up to the conclusion, but it never does, because that’s the nature of conspiracy.  So, let’s start at Brown University, finals week, Barus & Holley—the engineering building, a first-floor classroom, kids huddled into a study session—and an assailant who walked in with a 9mm and fired around forty rounds, killing two, wounding nine, and triggering a search that ran across states and ended in a New Hampshire storage unit with a body, two pistols, body armor, phones, and the kinds of IDs and thumb drives that investigators comb for motives that never quite appear. The suspect: Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, Portuguese national, former Brown physics grad student circa 2000–2001, withdrew by 2003, last known address in Miami. Claimed alone; matched by ATF/FBI ballistics; found dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound; autopsy timed his death likely two days before discovery. The police narrative is linear, methodical, and, to their credit, supported: surveillance, a rental car, a license plate reader, a tip originating on Reddit from “John,” a mysterious witness who cracked the case open, tracing a grey Nissan with Florida tags to an Alamo rental, anchoring the suspect’s name to paperwork and video frames—then running the string to Salem, New Hampshire, where the locker doors were breached and the search ended. 12345

“Okay,” you say, “but MIT? How does Brookline link into Providence?” That’s where it gets tight: Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was shot in his home two days after Brown. Federal prosecutors say the suspect previously attended the same Portuguese university as Loureiro; classmates recall the suspect as brilliant but volatile. The U.S. attorney connected the rental car movements from Boston to Providence and back, and later to New Hampshire. ATF and FBI say two 9mm pistols recovered with the body correlate—one to Brown, one to Loureiro. Rapid DNA preliminarily matched the suspect to Brown-scene evidence. Motive? Unclear. But the official chain is stitched: a single offender acting alone, two crimes linked by ballistics, travel records, and surveillance timelines. 67358

I’ve seen neat narratives before—too neat, there are a lot of problems with this case.  Homeless tip, locker, suicide, no interview, gun matches, case closed. We’ve been here many times before. San Bernardino had the ‘terrorism-or-not’ dance before the bureau put a label on it.” In 2015, the FBI designated San Bernardino as a terrorism homegrown violent extremist, self-radicalized.  It took days; the public memory often compresses the sequence. But the record shows Comey’s official framing and the FBI’s documentation of the radicalization indicators, alongside caution that the attackers weren’t part of a larger network. That’s all in the transcripts and the DOJ-COPS incident review that dissected command and communications. I’ve covered this case extensively over the years, and the FBI clearly contaminated the crime scene with the media to shake the case into an easy conclusion where they controlled the narrative. 91011  This kind of behavior would later be revealed in Comey’s handling of the incoming presidency of Trump.

I’ve been around rooms where hit men get green lights and walk out with tacit immunity. I know the feeling of a case that’s been pre-sorted. I hear ‘MKUltra’ in the pattern of this Brown University shooting. Operation CHAOS ran domestically even when the charter said otherwise. Drugs. Leverage. Control. Charlie Manson—how do we not see it?” And this is where disciplined skepticism meets documented history. MKUltra happened. It was clandestine, unethical. Gottlieb ran it; LSD and other substances were tested on unwitting subjects; much of the paper trail was destroyed. That’s not “theory”—it’s recorded, investigated, and widely sourced. Operation CHAOS existed: inter-agency projects surveilling domestic movements amid Cold War paranoia, overlapping with the FBI’s COINTELPRO. Those programs are in official histories and journalism. Where the debate sharpens is the degree to which MKUltra or CHAOS tangibly shaped specific criminal acts or assassinations, and whether Manson was an instrument rather than merely a manipulative sociopath who exploited a drug-saturated counterculture. Tom O’Neill’s book CHAOS pushes hard on those linkages; Errol Morris’s 2025 Netflix doc explores O’Neill’s material while stating on camera he isn’t entirely convinced. Reason’s review captures that tension: dogged reporting, provocative connections, and a frank admission about what’s not proven. People Magazine and The Standard recapitulate the operation’s history and O’Neill’s framing. Wikipedia’s CHAOS entry, while tertiary, anchors dates and publication context. All of that gives you a scaffold: MKUltra and CHAOS are real; the “Manson-as-mind-control asset” remains a hypothesis with intriguing circumstantial roads and contested conclusions. 1213141516

Intelligence programs did pursue capabilities that, left ungoverned, warp into precisely the abuses I’m describing.  In 2025, Brown/MIT investigators found no writings, no cohort, no direct ideological manifesto—no Islamist tie, despite early rumor fog. The autopsy nails suicide—the ballistics match. The timeline is complete with the standard drudgework—video canvases, LPR hits, rental contracts, financial traces, and an eyewitness who chased the suspect on foot and recorded enough detail to triangulate the car. If there’s an invisible hand, it left no fingerprints in the evidence boxes presented to the press, which is why controlling the narrative is so important in these cases, and is at the heart of the conspiracy, and the cover-up.  These are authority figures who have lost the trust of the public because of their vast past incompetence. 123

Like the Brown killings and the Manson case, the Charlie Kirk hit has the smell of trained escalation. The record on Kirk is, tragically, public and detailed: shot on Sept. 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University, an outdoor event, a single lethal shot, a search, a strong consensus describing the act as a political assassination, with subsequent reporting documenting the suspect’s surrender and charges. Across mainstream outlets—PBS/AP live updates, USA TODAY analysis on rising political violence, ABC News coverage of the search, Fox’s timeline, and even Britannica’s digest—the event is treated as targeted political violence. No credible outlet has publicly substantiated an MKUltra-style control narrative here; the official storyline is a sniper attack amid a documented rise in politically motivated threats and violence across the spectrum. The timeline of the killer in that case, engineered radicalization through online interactions, the Furry culture, and likely drug use among the peers produced evidence of orchestrated programming that we’ll never learn about, because the same investigators who set up the scenario are the same ones doing the investigation.  As long as they can put a logical ribbon on the story, the details will be lost to the whims of chaos. The present, verifiable truth is that assassinations “work” in the brutal arithmetic of power vacuums and coalition fragmentation; Matt Walsh’s comments on that point echo a centuries-old grim reality: kill one leader and you often create chaos rather than a million martyrs. 1718192021

We have a long history of the intelligence state learning to steer populations. Drugs are the lever; compromise is the clamp. Here, the record is mixed but consequential. MKUltra’s intent included behavior control. The technique set—psychoactive dosing, sensory manipulation, psychological breaking—was documented, condemned, and dismantled in public view. Operation CHAOS and COINTELPRO surveilled and infiltrated domestic groups. It’s fair—and historically supportable—to argue that those programs sought influence over mass behavior. It’s also fair to say that the cultural legacy—mistrust, prosecutorial skepticism, and persistent fear of engineered radicalization—survived well beyond the programs’ official end dates.  O’Neill’s book treats Manson as a possible node in a larger pattern; Morris’s film examines but does not authenticate every link. That is the present epistemic posture. 1213

Now, let’s stitch the Brown/MIT narrative into cohesive, investigative, clean of rumor, clearly flagged as such, and consider the story under the lens of history.  Start with the site: Barus & Holley, Providence, Dec. 13, 2025, 4:05 p.m. Shelter-in-place; grainy surveillance; early misidentifications; a person detained and later released Sunday; FBI announces a $50,000 reward Monday; a public map showing movements near campus; a “John” in the footage that police seek to identify. By Thursday, a breakthrough: a Reddit post about a grey Nissan with Florida plates, believed to be rented; “John” identifies himself; police find the rental company, pull the contract, and get the suspect’s name, plus video stills matching the clothing worn by the shooter. Then the license-plate readers point to the vehicle’s path; the car is seen intermittently around Brown from Dec. 1–12; the suspect travels, swaps plates to an unregistered Maine tag, and heads north; FBI SWAT executes warrants and finds the suspect dead in Salem, NH, at 9 p.m. Two firearms. A satchel. Body armor. Phones. Thumb drives. The autopsy on Friday calls suicide; estimates death occurred Dec. 16. ATF/FBI match the guns—one to Brown, one to Loureiro—and report preliminary rapid DNA linking the suspect to Brown-scene evidence. Press conferences at Providence and Boston lock the conclusion: one offender, two related crimes. No manifesto. No accomplices. Motive unknown. 122234235  The main question that arises, who is John from Reddit?

And now we had a mass shooter and an immigrant program intersecting at the podium, enough meat to wave away critics of the case with a shiny new toy. Within twenty-four hours, Homeland Security announces a pause on DV lottery-linked green card cases, the State Department pauses diversity visas, and the political layer lights up—evidence that the suspect entered on DV1 in 2017. Policy, blame, deterrence—the usual sequence. This is how a hidden hand remains so in these cases, how public bandwidth is used to conceal the real story; it is proof of the political reflex to attach immigration architecture to tragedies involving foreign nationals. That reflex is its own story. 724

The Brown/MIT case can be laid out in verifiable terms that contradict early social media claims about Islamist motives or campus cover-ups, because the ballistics and autopsy are hard facts, and the investigative timeline is coherently documented across outlets, conveniently, both guns were at the scene, set out nicely to remove all doubt. But we have a historical record: MKUltra’s existence, Operation CHAOS’s framework, COINTELPRO’s domestic operations, and the known ways agencies pursued behavioral leverage via drugs, surveillance, infiltration, and disinformation. From there, we can and should argue that modern patterns still exhibit the signatures of chaos management: misinformation storms, rapid political pivots, and neat closures that evade deep motive accounting.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a wound in the nation’s nervous system added to an already long list; the Brown/MIT chain is a wound in a university community; San Bernardino was a wound that aged into a permanent scar on policy and practice. In every case, the first narratives are unstable, and the final narratives may be incomplete. Reading back through O’Neill and Morris, through FBI releases and DOJ reviews, through PBS/AP live logs and USA TODAY retrospectives, you can say: America’s institutions have proven they can both investigate well and fail spectacularly; the intelligence state can both protect and overreach; and the line between manipulation and enforcement remains the most dangerous seam in our civic fabric. Drugs, kompromat, pressure—those are tools. The question is who wields them now and to what documented effect.  And the crimes of concealment are in erasing the evidence before anybody can uncover it, such as witness statements indicating that the shooter yelled an Islamic reference during the killings, which turned out in the end to be reported, “he barked like a dog.” 

What makes the Brown University case so unsettling isn’t just the violence—it’s the speed and neatness of the official narrative. A suspect identified, a body found, a motive declared “unknown,” and the story sealed before the public could even process the contradictions. If you’ve studied the history of covert influence—from MKUltra’s mind-control experiments to Operation CHAOS and COINTELPRO—you know these patterns aren’t new. They rely on complexity that exceeds the average person’s ability to digest, then offer a simplified explanation that satisfies curiosity without exposing the machinery behind it. That’s how power protects itself: by controlling not just events, but the interpretation of those events.

The lesson is bigger than one crime. When institutions learn they can steer perception, they will—whether through media framing, selective disclosure, or outright fabrication. Oversight exists for a reason, because unchecked authority becomes a self-perpetuating system of manipulation. Today, those same psychological levers pioneered in the Cold War are embedded everywhere: politics, advertising, entertainment, and yes, intelligence operations. The Brown case is a reminder that truth often hides behind the curtain of “closure,” and unless we demand transparency, the cycle will continue—quietly shaping the world while most of us accept the story we’re given.

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Supplemental Notes & Footnotes (by topic)

Brown University shooting & MIT professor killing (Dec. 2025):

• Suspect identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48; former Brown physics grad student; found dead by suicide in a Salem, NH storage unit; linked to both crimes via ballistics/DNA; motive unknown. 135

• Investigative breakthrough came via eyewitness “John” and a Reddit post about a grey Nissan with Florida plates; rental contract and surveillance confirmed ID; Flock Safety LPRs helped track the vehicle. 27

• Evidence recovered from storage unit: two 9mm pistols, ammo, body armor, multiple phones, thumb drives, IDs; FBI analyzing for motive. 4

• Autopsy: self-inflicted gunshot; estimated date of death Dec. 16; body found Dec. 18. 23

• Policy reaction: DHS and the State Department pause DV lottery-related processes after confirmation that a suspect entered via DV1 in 2017. 247

San Bernardino (Dec. 2015) for historical comparison:

• FBI officially designated the attack an act of terrorism, citing indications of radicalization and attempted destruction of digital evidence; emphasized no larger directed network. 910

• DOJ COPS Office critical incident review details response complexities and lessons learned. 11

MKUltra / Operation CHAOS / COINTELPRO / Manson:

• MKUltra: CIA mind-control experiments (1950s–’60s), led by Sidney Gottlieb; documented use of LSD and other methods; evidence partly destroyed; later investigations and bans. 12

• Operation CHAOS: CIA domestic surveillance/infiltration of antiwar/counterculture movements; referenced in O’Neill’s CHAOS. 14

• Tom O’Neill’s book CHAOS (2019) argues alternative linkages among Manson, MKUltra, and intelligence programs; Errol Morris’s 2025 Netflix documentary explores, but with measured skepticism. 13

• Pop and press summaries of MKUltra’s history and claimed Manson connections provide accessible context but are not dispositive proof. 1516

Charlie Kirk assassination (Sept. 10, 2025):

• Live updates and mainstream reporting document the assassination, search, suspect surrender/charges, and political reverberations; no verified evidence of MKUltra-style programming made public. 171819

• Commentary on the political impact and the grim efficacy of assassinations in creating leadership vacuums. 21

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Bibliography & Further Reading

Primary/current-event reporting (Brown/MIT 2025)

• Boston Globe/Boston.com live coverage: “Man suspected of Brown University shooting, MIT professor slaying found dead in N.H. storage facility” (Dec. 18–19, 2025). 1

• ABC News: “What investigators know about suspected Brown, MIT shooter and hero tipster” (Dec. 19–20, 2025). 2

• USA TODAY: “What we know after authorities find Brown shooting suspect dead” (Dec. 19, 2025). 3

• NBC News live blogs (Dec. 19, 2025): suspect found dead; ballistics/DNA updates. 65

• CBS News live updates: motive sought; DV program pause. 7

• WPRI Target 12: storage unit evidence (Dec. 19, 2025). 4

• Fox News Digital: autopsy details; DV program reaction (Dec. 18–20, 2025). 2324

• Providence Journal live updates and recap: timeline synthesis, local impacts (Dec. 18–19, 2025). 2225

Historic references (San Bernardino 2015)

• FBI timeline/releases: “FBI Will Investigate San Bernardino Shootings as Terrorist Act” (Dec. 4, 2015). 9

• GBH/NPR coverage summarizing FBI statements and social media indicators (Dec. 2015). 1026

• DOJ COPS Office: Bringing Calm to Chaos (2016 critical incident review). 11

MKUltra / Operation CHAOS / Manson (contextual background)

• People Magazine explainer: “What Was Project MKUltra? Inside the CIA’s Mind Control Experiments” (Mar. 8, 2025). 12

• Reason review: “Was Charles Manson Carrying Out a CIA Experiment?”—Errol Morris’s Netflix documentary (May 23, 2025). 13

• Wikipedia entry on O’Neill’s CHAOS (publication/context). 14

• The Standard (London): documentary overview and historical background (Mar. 2025). 15

• All That’s Interesting: summary of O’Neill’s claims linking Manson and MKUltra (Mar. 7, 2025). 16

Charlie Kirk assassination (Sept. 2025)

• PBS/AP live updates and associated coverage. 17

• USA TODAY: “Charlie Kirk murder the latest in political violence…” (Sept. 10–11, 2025). 18

• ABC News: “Manhunt for shooter continues after Charlie Kirk killed…” (Sept. 10, 2025). 19

• Fox News: “Charlie Kirk’s assassination latest case…” (Sept. 10, 2025). 20

• RealClearPolitics: Matt Walsh interview discussing assassination effects (Dec. 19, 2025). 21

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=2070

The Cause of the Affordability Crisis: Managed economies and political interventions have destroyed cost structures

The truth about affordability, because that’s the tired drumbeat the Left will pound all the way into 2026: “prices are high, blame the billionaire.” It’s the same old class-war script—paint the rich guy as out of touch, pretend the pain at the pump and the grocery store fell from the sky, and hope voters forget who built the scaffolding for that pain. The truth is, affordability has roots—deep, structural roots—in policy choices that take years to unwind. Unwinding is slow; rebuilding competitive markets is slower; letting innovation breathe is slower still. But it happens. And when it happens—especially around energy and health care—you feel it first in the path of prices, then in the path of opportunity. That’s the meat and potatoes of the issue that everyone needs to understand as we go forward.

Starting with health care because it’s so grotesquely obvious—the Democrats’ favorite talking point and, paradoxically, their favorite controlled market. What the public senses as “expensive care” is really an industry whose cost structure is defended by regulation, protected monopolies, and financial engineering that prioritizes jobs and margin over cures. Just look at the macro: national health expenditures reached roughly $4.9 trillion in 2023—17.6% of GDP—and blew past $5 trillion in 2024, with CMS projecting the health share of the economy could hit 20.3% by 2033. That’s not me speculating; it’s the official actuaries. They estimate spending growth of 8.2% in 2024 and 7.1% in 2025—outpacing GDP—driven by rising utilization and coverage levels. 1234 You don’t need a PhD in economics to hear what that says: health care, as currently constituted, is set on an upward cost glide path that eats the economy.

Dig beneath the top line, and you find what patients feel: hospitals posted double-digit spending growth in 2023; physician services accelerated; prescription drugs jumped more than 11% in 2023 alone. 1 These are not isolated blips—they’re part of a financing machine that has learned to monetize chronic decline. It’s the difference between maintaining weakness for revenue and making patients truly well, which would shrink the revenue base. That philosophical choice drives both policy and practice.

Layer in the private‑equity wave. In health care, PE ownership has expanded rapidly across hospitals, specialty practices, nursing homes, and ancillaries. Systematic reviews in BMJ and updates from Wharton’s HMPI synthesize dozens of empirical studies and repeatedly find what clinicians and patients suspect: PE ownership is most consistently associated with higher costs to patients or payers and mixed-to-harmful impacts on quality. Staffing skews downward, administrative pressure increases, and the exit horizon is 3–7 years, with debt piled onto the acquired entity. 56 Even JAMA’s coverage of the evidence lands in the same place: higher costs, quality concerns. 7 Now, to be fair, not every PE hospital outcome is catastrophic; a late‑2025 research brief found no excess closures and cost-cutting concentrated in admin rather than core medicine, though patient satisfaction dipped. 8 But the through‑line is unmistakable: financialization has bridged into care delivery, and the pass-through is inflationary for payers and patients. When you lace debt service, management fees, and rapid roll-up incentives on top of already rising unit costs, affordability dies by a thousand cuts.

And we haven’t even touched the bigger affordability architecture—consolidation and financialization across supply chains. Ten years ago, lean shops squeezed costs by owning their processes and competing in open markets. Today, in many sectors—manufacturing, food processing, distribution—the playbook is add-on acquisitions, platform roll-ups, and fee-driven intermediaries. Private equity has poured roughly $262 billion into U.S. manufacturing firms since 2020, explicitly to consolidate and “unlock value at speed,” while debt financing has been layered into an already fragile logistics environment. 910 The National Economic Council’s 2021–2024 Quadrennial Supply Chain Review lays it out in sober terms: critical chains—from energy components to pharmaceuticals and agri‑food—were brittle, policy‑distorted, and subject to non-market practices that amplified shocks. 11

Why should voters care about that alphabet soup of capital and supply chain policy? Because the price on your shelf has a genealogy. COVID made that visible; economists at Brookings argue that the inflation shock was largely supply-driven, with long lags as delivery times normalized and margins reset—proving that what breaks upstream ripples downstream for years. 12 The Richmond Fed estimates that about half of a disruption’s total effect comes from amplification through the supply network; shocks abroad propagate into U.S. GDP and inflation, and re-shoring, redundancy, and inventory carry real cost. 13 Translation: if you replace diversified mom‑and‑pop networks with concentrated platforms, then hit those platforms with a once-in-a-century shock and policy friction, you get sticker shock that doesn’t vanish overnight.

Then there are the minimum wage mandates, which I warned about a decade ago when Democrats pushed for them and which, mainly, got what they wanted during Covid—the bottom-up piece of the affordability puzzle. The Left sells them as “free money,” then acts surprised when menus and price tags jump. The CPI tells a straightforward story: food away from home rose 3.6% in 2024, outpacing grocery inflation, and industry groups show menu prices still rising into late 2025. 1415 CNBC put a fine point on limited-service meals: almost 28% price growth from 2019 to 2023—well above the overall CPI—driven in part by labor cost increases that chains passed on to customers, especially in high-mandate states. 16 The academic literature fills in the mechanism. Recent meta-analysis estimates a 0.03–0.11 price elasticity to minimum wage changes—meaning a 10% hike produces roughly 0.3–1.1% price increases, bigger in labor-intensive sectors like restaurants. 17 NBER and Upjohn surveys show mixed employment effects but clear evidence of slower job growth and hours adjustments over time, with price pass-through in narrow industries. 1819 And when wage floors leap in gig delivery, the “unintended consequences” are no longer theoretical; a 2025 NBER working paper tracking Seattle’s 2024 ordinance found base pay doubled per task, but tips and order volume fell, netting out the gains for most active drivers within a month while delivery costs popped and idle time rose. 20 All that flows straight into the affordability experience at the counter. If your value meal used to be $5 and now feels like $10, it’s not imaginary—the chain is absorbing higher mandated labor costs, higher input volatility, and a consolidated middleman layer that taxes every step. The macro data confirm the sting: food prices rose 2.5% overall in 2024, but restaurant inflation was higher, and eggs, beef, and insurance were outliers. 14

The other pillar in the affordability conversation is energy—because it feeds trucks, ships, harvesters, ovens, and heat. Here’s some good news: U.S. oil production set records through 2024 and 2025, with the EIA projecting record crude and gas output in 2025, and AAA reports December 2025 gasoline averages around $2.89 nationally—the cheapest December since 2020. That’s not partisan; that’s a supply reality. 212223 The EIA’s Short‑Term Energy Outlook expects Brent to settle near $55/bbl through 2026 as inventories rise, while dry gas production continues climbing. 24 In plain English: drilling and efficiency gains—especially in the Permian—have kept domestic supply high and prices stable, muting one of the biggest drivers of household pain. 25 So when we say a pro‑production posture affects affordability, this is the line we draw: more barrels and cubic feet, fewer spikes at the pump, cheaper freight, easier input cost for food and goods.

Affordability isn’t “high versus low prices in a vacuum.” It’s the architecture of how costs stack up: energy feeds logistics; logistics feed input prices; input prices feed menus and store shelves; health care premiums drain the checking account regardless. If your cost stack is built on regulated scarcity, consolidated intermediaries, debt‑service layers, and mandated wage floors, you’ve engineered inflation. If you reverse the stack—by increasing supply (energy), rebuilding distributed ownership (manufacturing and ag), and unleashing cures (health)—you engineer disinflation. And yes, it has a lag because capital redeployments and networks re-route over quarters, not weeks.

Now, about health care’s future—the part that sounds disruptive because it is. The frontier is not the following billing code; it’s gene editing, cellular regeneration, and targeted micro‑devices that fix the plumbing without cracking open the chest. CRISPR-based therapies have already crossed the FDA threshold for specific indications, signaling that programmable biology isn’t science fiction anymore, though current price points are eye-watering and regulatory guardrails are tight. 26 Stem cell advances proceed unevenly under FDA frameworks, but the pipeline is real, and the durability of regenerative approaches changes the calculus on chronic disease costs. 27 As for “nanobots in arteries,” let’s be scientifically precise: at present, that’s experimental vision—nanotechnology for targeted delivery and plaque management is under research, but widespread, approved deployment in the U.S. is still a few years away, as in 2030. The trajectory, however, is toward minimally invasive, programmable interventions that obviate today’s expensive, labor-intensive procedures. If you strip the hype and ask, “What happens to costs if cures replace maintenance?” the answer is radical deflation in medical services that today require giant physical plants, armies of staff, and recurring billing. The only things stopping acceleration are policy acceptance and risk-tolerant frameworks that protect patients while allowing innovation to scale.

That leads to the tricky question: do we design a system that keeps people sick slowly—so the machine gets paid—or do we create a system that heals fast, and then reallocates labor to growth sectors like space, advanced manufacturing, and AI-enabled industrials? We can’t flip that switch in two months. If you liberated regenerative and gene therapies tomorrow without adjusting reimbursement and licensure, you’d displace millions of jobs and crash legacy revenue streams. But over a decade, with clear lanes for innovation and targeted transition support, you can migrate human capital to sectors that compound prosperity—what I call the “space economy” and adjacent fields—so people live longer, healthier lives and earn across extended productive spans. Morgan Stanley and others project trillion-dollar trajectories in space-enabled services, manufacturing, and communications; the point isn’t the exact number, it’s the labor shift: from managing decline to building frontiers. 28

Affordability also lives in the home. Property taxes are the most visible local lever, and they’ve been creeping up. ATTOM’s national analysis finds the average single-family property tax bill rose about 5–6% in 2024 to roughly $4,300, while effective rates ticked slightly down as home values rebounded. The press summary in early 2025 pegged average bills around $4,172 and highlighted regional variance, with Northeast/Midwest rates higher. Different methodologies, same lived experience: homeowners feel the pinch. 2930 AAA talks about gas as one side of the ledger; property taxes are the other, especially in school-heavy budgets. The Lincoln Institute’s state-by-state comparison shows effective rates are a function of reliance on property tax, home values, and spending levels, with Detroit at the high end and Honolulu at the low end for homestead effective rates. Assessment limits can shift burdens onto new buyers—a silent affordability killer. 31 Economists even argue that higher property taxes can—counterintuitively—reduce entry prices and reallocate homeownership toward younger families by capitalizing the tax burden into lower upfront costs, though that shifts pain onto older and low-income owners. 32 My point isn’t that one tax tweak fixes affordability; it’s that you can’t jack up wages, ignore supply, and raise local levies without squeezing families from three directions. If wages must rise for entry-level dignity, then energy, health, and taxes must fall—or the squeeze is intolerable. That’s arithmetic.

Ask yourself: who broke the affordability architecture? Food-at-home inflation cooled in 2024—USDA pegs it at around 1.2%—because some inputs normalized after supply shocks, yet restaurants remained pricier because labor and overhead didn’t normalize. Eggs spiked again on disease resurgence; beef rose on low cattle inventories. 33 Meanwhile, gasoline trended down year‑over‑year into late 2025; the national average sat below $3 by December. 2223 None of that aligns with the “blame the billionaire” slogan. It aligns with policy levers: energy supply, wage mandates, consolidation rules, and the health care financing model.

So when critics sneer, “What does a billionaire know about affordability?” the answer is: affordability isn’t about your bank account, it’s about whether you understand the machine. In 2017-2019, we saw what pro-production energy, plus regulatory breathing room, can do—pump prices stabilized, and freight costs fell. In 2024‑2026, EIA projections show strong domestic output and soft global prices—potential tailwinds if you don’t throttle drilling or overregulate pipelines. 2124 In the next three to five years, health innovation could begin to bend the cost curve—but only if you let it. And over the same window, you can chip away at consolidation by encouraging distributed ownership, limiting fee extraction, and restoring competitive procurement in sectors like aerospace and ag.

Agriculture is instructive. USDA reports 1.89 million farms in 2023—down slightly—with land in farms also down and acreage concentrating in high‑sales classes. In 2023, farms with $500,000+ in sales operated roughly half of all farmland—a consolidation pattern built over decades. 34 ERS’s historical work shows crop acreage shifting persistently toward larger operations; livestock consolidation has been episodic but dramatic in some lines. 3536 Production expenditures climbed to about $482 billion in 2023, with feed, labor, and services dominating the cost share. 37 That’s not a mom-and-pop landscape; it’s an industrial farm economy whose cost base moves with energy, labor, and finance. If you push mandates and taxes up while tolerating monopolized inputs, you get $6 milk and $10 burgers.

Affordability doesn’t fix itself in a quarter. It takes enthusiasm and patience—years, not months. In a MAGA-style agenda, you’d do three things at once: push energy to keep gasoline, diesel, and electricity stable; open lanes for regenerative medicine and gene therapy with reimbursement and safety frameworks that accelerate cures; and de-financialize chokepoints in supply chains by favoring private ownership, competition, and transparency over fee-stacked intermediaries. The lag effect is real. CMS projects health’s share of GDP rising, not falling, through 2033 under current assumptions; turning that curve requires more than rhetoric. 38 But you can feel affordability improve in the interim if energy and freight stay tame and food inflation stays cooled—as the 2024 numbers did. 1433

The choice at the center of health care affordability, because it’s moral as much as economic: do we maintain people’s weaknesses to preserve a sprawling, union-protected, fee-protected medical services empire, or do we make them strong again—knowing we must redeploy those workers into frontier industries? If you want the second outcome, embrace innovation and plan the transition. The space economy, industrials, AI-enabled maintenance, precision manufacturing—those aren’t sci-fi; they’re labor sinks ready to absorb talent. 28 You don’t solve affordability by berating billionaires; you solve it by designing an economy that doesn’t require families to hemorrhage cash for energy, food, and maintenance of decline.

Today’s gas is under $3 in many regions. 22 Food-at-home inflation cooled to near 1%. 33 Health spending is still climbing because we feed the maintenance machine. 1 Minimum wage hikes push menus higher, especially in limited‑service. 1617 Consolidation and financialization tax every step of the supply chain. 1110 Property taxes squeeze homeowners even as effective rates wobble with valuation cycles. 29 If you want affordability, you have to unwind the stack that made it scarce—and that takes leadership, authentic leadership that is very hard to get and takes a lot of guts to utilize.

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Footnotes

1. National health expenditures and projections: CMS NHE Fact Sheet and analyses indicate $4.9T in 2023 (17.6% GDP); projected 8.2% spending growth in 2024 and continued gains through 2033 to ~20.3% of GDP. 123

2. 2023 component growth: hospital (+10.4%), physician services (+7.4%), prescription drugs (+11.4%). 1

3. PE in health care—cost and quality impacts: BMJ systematic review (2023); HMPI update (2024); JAMA coverage (2023). 567

4. PE hospitals: no excess closures; admin cost cuts; patient satisfaction decline. 8

5. Supply-driven inflation and lagged normalization: Brookings commentary (2024). 12

6. Supply chain shock amplification: Richmond Fed Economic Brief (2025). 13

7. Restaurant price dynamics: BLS CPI (2024 review); National Restaurant Association menu price notes (2025). 1415

8. Limited‑service price increases vs CPI: CNBC analysis (2019–2023). 16

9. Price pass-through elasticities from minimum wage hikes: meta-analysis (2025). 17

10. Seattle gig delivery minimum wage outcomes (2024–2025): NBER working paper coverage. 20

11. Energy production and prices: EIA STEO (Dec 2025), projections of record crude/gas; AAA national average ~$2.89 in Dec 2025; EIA weekly regional gasoline data. 24212223

12. U.S. oil production highs in 2025 (EIA/Reuters round-ups). 25

13. CRISPR therapy approvals and trajectory: FDA‑tracked approvals in 2023–2024; cost and regulation context. 26

14. Stem cell therapy/regulatory status: overviews and policy context. 27

15. Space economy outlooks and manufacturing metrics: NIST manufacturing report (2024) for macro context; industry projections. 28

16. Property tax trends: ATTOM 2024 analysis; Mortgage Professional America summary (2025); Lincoln Institute 50-state comparison; Minneapolis Fed analysis on property taxes and home prices. 29303132

17. Agriculture consolidation and expenditure trends: USDA NASS Farms and Land in Farms (2023); ERS “Three Decades of Consolidation”; AEI policy slides; NASS production expenditures (2023). 34353637

18. Food‑at‑home inflation easing in 2024; category specifics and 2025 outlook: USDA ERS Charts of Note. 33

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Bibliography & Further Reading

• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). “NHE Fact Sheet.” 1

• American Hospital Association summary of CMS projections (June 2025). 2

• Peter G. Peterson Foundation on health share of GDP. 3

• American Medical Association Policy Research Perspectives on NHE 2023. 4

• BMJ (2023). “Evaluating trends in private equity ownership…” 5

• HMPI (2024). “Update on impacts of PE ownership in health care.” 6

• JAMA (2023). “Private Equity Ownership in Health Care Linked to Higher Costs…” 7

• Cato Institute (2025). “Private Equity in the Hospital Industry.” 8

• Brookings (2024). “Lagged effects of COVID-19 supply chain disruptions.” 12

• Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (2025). “Supply Chain Resilience and Shocks.” 13

• BLS. “Consumer Price Index: 2024 in review.” 14

• National Restaurant Association. “Menu Prices,” Dec 2025. 15

• CNBC (2024). “Why fast-food price increases have surpassed overall inflation.” 16

• NBER Working Paper (2024/2025 meta & surveys). 1839

• Jorge Pérez Pérez (2025). Meta-analysis on minimum wage and prices. 17

• Reason (summarizing NBER Seattle delivery study) (2025). 20

• EIA Short‑Term Energy Outlook (Dec 2025). 24

• Offshore Technology (Mar 2025). “EIA forecasts record US crude and gas production…” 21

• AAA Fuel Prices Newsroom (Dec 2025). 40

• EIA Gasoline & Diesel Update (Dec 2025). 23

• Pipeline & Gas Journal (Aug 2025). “U.S. Oil Production Hit Record High in June.” 25

• FDA-related coverage and analyses of CRISPR therapies (2023–2024). 26

• Health journalism on stem cell regulatory landscape (2025). 27

• NIST (2024). “Annual Report on the U.S. Manufacturing Economy.” 28

• ATTOM (Apr/Jul 2025). “2024 Property Tax Analysis.” 29

• Mortgage Professional America (Apr 2025). “US property tax bill jumped again in 2024.” 30

• Lincoln Institute (Jul 2025). “50-State Property Tax Comparison Study.” 31

• Minneapolis Fed (Nov 2024). “How higher property taxes increase home affordability.” 32

• USDA NASS (Feb/Jul 2024). Farms and Land in Farms; Production Expenditures. 3437

• USDA ERS (2018). “Three Decades of Consolidation in U.S. Agriculture.” 35

• AEI (Feb 2023). “Farm Consolidation: Three Implications for Farm Policy.” 36

• USDA ERS (Jan 2025). “Retail food price inflation subsided across most categories in 2024.” 33

Rich Hoffman

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