Category: Progressive

A Philosophy for the 22nd Century: iPhone 6 and Glenn Beck’s American Dream Labs

My wife and I have been getting acclimated to the new iPhone 6 for a few days now and the thoughts I’ve had while going through all the subtle new technology and the emerging business model so obvious, have only convinced me that the 21st century will be full of such extraordinary breakthroughs that by the time mankind gets to the 22nd century the world will be much different. As I write this Apple is not only in the market for making fabulous personal devices like iPhones and personal computing systems—but are developing a new car with their nearly 1 trillion dollars in market value. It costs roughly a billion dollars to perform the R&D for a new car, and Apple is at the front of that cutting edge by 2020 because they have the cash to do the job. The terrorist group ISIS is using some of that technology to broadcast to the world their level of Islamic theocracy in a negative way, and the American government is trying to create Net Neutrality through the FCC to get control of the run-away-technology so to slow it down and put it back in federal control. But more than that, my T-Mobile plan informed me that they offer free data streaming for music—such as iHeart Radio. That means twenty-four hours a day seven days a week no matter where I am, I can listen to The Blaze without any interruption in service. I don’t have to worry about consuming too much data from one place to another where free Wi Fi isn’t available which for my lifestyle of motorcycles and other unconventional travel means I can have 100% access to the new radio station for the first time since its creation without any worry. No wonder the FCC wants so much control.

The iPhone 6 is about the size of my iPod but it does so much more as the technology has shrunk to fit into such a small device. Even now if I am rappelling in the middle of Red River Gorge or backpacking to the top of Mt LeConte I can still listen to The Blaze Radio Network the entire time—which for me is relaxing. I don’t always want to hear the birds and the babbling brooks of nature. I like to hear the ideas of mankind and find out what the disputes are against modern philosophy, and The Blaze gives me that kind of information. More than anyone else in broadcasting on such a large-scale with a large and well-respected retinue of current politicians offering their insights Glenn Beck’s The Blaze is positioned in much the same way as Apple is to bring broadcasting, news, and entertainment to the next century while traditional companies shrink away and go extinct because they couldn’t keep up with the technology. Beck through his American Dream Labs is about to unleash several feature films and is unveiling several new innovations on April 4th of this year—just a few days before my birthday—which I am very excited about. There is a lot going on in the world that is truly scary, but there is a lot to be excited about as well. Glenn Beck’s innovations are among them and I will use my new iPhone equipped with a wonderful T-Mobile deal to stay plugged in along the way.

A few friends of mine from a secret Atlas Shrugged type of real life Galt’s Gulch just yesterday were contemplating the implication of the new iPhone also coming in April. I am certain that I will be getting one at some point in time, but just the sheer opportunity that such a device holds in such a small package is a stunning display of technological ability. If you mathematically apply the types of innovations being unleashed just in the last couple of years to the youthful generation that is taking them for granted in their replication of advancement every 18 months or so—that same generation will expect that type of progress in everything from televisions to automobiles. The self-driving cars from Minority Report will happen regardless of political road blocks because these young people will demand it. They want to play Xbox and text their friends while driving and Apple along with Google looks to be among the first companies poised to provide such a thing. I joked to our T-Mobile rep as he was displaying all the unique features of the iPhone 6 that in two years the phone would be outdated and he laughed, because he knew it was true. Things are moving that fast—yet government isn’t moving with it—because they are functioning from the failed philosophies of the past.

During the week my wife managed to convince me to go to Costco with her, which I seldom ever like doing—not because I dislike shopping or Costco—but because time is often short. I have a very busy and packed life—so grabbing a hot dog at Costco and shopping for necessities is last on the list of things to do. But she managed to convince me, and upon arriving I had to marvel at the prices on their 80” flat screen televisions and their new curved screens which were reasonably priced at under $5000. The prices are coming down to the point where every room in a home could have one of those large televisions without any trouble at all. The technology in them is simply incredible. The next challenge is going to fall on production companies to provide content that people actually want because the technology is there. Again, that’s where I think Glenn Beck will have an advantage over even the most deep pocketed traditional studio. The old way of producing video is long gone. The iPhone 6 has a mini camera in it far superior to what even a $10,000 camera cost in the 1990s so everyone with an iPhone is holding in their hands a television studio if they desire to utilize it. Of course that is another reason the FCC wants to create a Department of the Internet—because that notion scares them intensely.

My two-year old grandson is already speaking in complete sentences. Much of that I would attribute to the various learning devices he has available to him such as the television program on Nickelodeon called Blaze and the Monster Machines—which is a cartoon designed to teach kids about language, science, and physics. It is not as clunky as Sesame Street was—nor as agenda driven. It’s just about learning and having fun while doing it. Consider on top of that he has a Leap Frog tablet and other similar devices that allow his imagination to just soak up all this vast information so quickly the education model is obvious. Everything I have said negative about public education just became much, much, much more relevant. I am convinced that kids could learn everything they would typically learn by age 22 in college by age 10 because of the education options available now, that simply weren’t there 5 years ago, let alone 10.

So given all this rapid acceleration in technology, there is nothing in the adult world that is preparing for this onslaught in thought. Fox News is talking every night about the 2016 election where Republicans will likely put up another boring candidate based on the old machine politics of tradition and Democrats will put up Hillary Clinton, another old hippie progressive out of touch and expecting feminist nut cases to carry her into the White House. Neither political party is poised to deal with the typical iPhone user. Just as the car companies are lecturing Apple about how hard it is to get into the car market. But Apple will expect to do in two years what it takes General Motors a decade to perform, and they have the available R&D cash to pull it off. Just this past week Amazon.Com was upset that the FAA created regulations against their proposed drone delivery system, and they also have the cash to challenge the government’s attempt to preserve the old-fashioned way of delivery by UPS, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service. From the government its business as usual reacting to lobby money poured into their offices—but the marketplace represented by Amazon wants their products delivered within hours not days—and the collision will impact the government more than it will the marketplace because the next generation will expect fast delivery-because technology has always provided them with quick and immediate gratification on anything they have wanted.   They will expect the same out of their politics. Politicians standing in the way of that desire will be chewed up and spit out. Trust me. It’s coming fast and furious.

That is why it’s important to now focus on a philosophy for the 22nd century because it will take that long for the dust to settle. It has taken a 100 years to arrive at this current juncture, and it will take that long for the intellect of mankind to catch up to the philosophy needed by their recent inventions. Politicians like the Hillary Clinton types who expect to show up and walk on stage uttering a few lines of dialogue to pretend they are in the most powerful position in the world aren’t going to be able to deal with the advantages given to the typical person through all these new inventions. The explosion of invention coming available requires a new philosophy to deal with it all, and one of the first things that will have to go is the old adherence to the political machines of the past. The tools given to mankind currently allow for such a philosophy to develop. The old systems will be swept away in the current—car companies will go out of business as new ones emerge, power generation will change dramatically as more and more people learn of the options kept from them through unnecessary regulation, and stonewalling politicians will be crushed by a coming generation deeply impatient and empowered with knowledge at their fingertips. There’s no way to stop it now. What is needed to help the transition is a new way of thinking—a philosophy for the 22nd century so that when the dust clears, the mind of mankind will be aligned with the products of its innovation.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Understanding Leadership: The difference between success and failure

Compared to most everyone else I have some bizarre ideals about leadership that certainly don’t travel well with the currents of civilization. Yet I am so certain of them that I no longer entertain opinions to the contrary because I recognize it as a special gift that is of great benefit not only to myself, but everyone I happen to know. Of course this leads to many matters of conflict which part of me strategically avoids while at the same time seeking it out. Leadership is one of the least understood attributes to modern society even though it should be easily plotted through history. Our best modern attempts is to believe that somehow West Point makes leaders through the military and that somehow the armed services through the concept of sacrifice makes great people. The other belief is that somehow in the classrooms of our colleges a teacher touches the life of a student and magic happens and a leader is born. So the mystical belief is that if society wants leaders, they need more procedures and rules to create an environment for a leader to evolve into the role of a savior willing to sacrifice themselves for a common good—so most schools of thought travel down that path. Yet, that grasp is likely the most ardent enemy of leadership that there is, and ends up crushing such opportunities for such people to emerge leaving in the wake chaos and process driven bureaucracy where everything just grinds to a halt with inaction.

Many times while dealing with a political system from local government to a business of some kind, what is found there is a process driven commitment to a rigid line of thought mystically protecting them from the scandal of inefficiency. The belief is actually as stupid as a group of head hunters from a South Pacific island refusing to allow their picture to be taken because they believe that their soul will be captured in the process. The belief in processes and procedures comes directly from a lack of leadership—it doesn’t act as a substitute. Where it gets really confusing is that some sense of order is needed for mankind to act with one another but to have real leadership it often requires visionaries to break those rules so that leadership can occur.

Readers here know of my thoughts on the work of Robert Pirsig who developed the Metaphysics of Quality and specifically captured the essence of leadership in his contemplations on philosophy. I often refer to his train motif to explain leadership—who is always the character at the front of a long train spotting things at the cutting edge of travel along the tracks. Process driven analysis is usually at the back of the train—away from the leader—as far as possible in most organizations. They are never in a position to make decisions at the cutting edge because by the time the problem gets to their part of the train at the back, decisions are long passed the point of no return. The only way that decisions can be made at the back of a train is for the train to go very slow or to stop all together—so that communication from the front can get to the back of the train in time for decision makers to consider the information and then project it back up to where the engineer is, and the train can turn, stop, or go faster depending on what is needed. It takes courage to be at the front of the train, and when decisions are made there, they can be immediately applied allowing for more swiftness in movement. Most modern organizations, the American military included, function from the back of a train of thought.

The back of the train is safe. It covers up the great mystery as to why some people are naturally better than others at the task of leadership. In fact, it avoids the entire question when process driven analysis can just keep everyone busy giving the illusion of productivity. But frustration often emerges that the train just doesn’t move fast enough—and that is because there isn’t anybody competent at the front of the train because everyone is stuck in the back. Those most able to be great leaders get bored and just step off in frustration leaving an organization even more befuddled than they were before. This is essentially why Apple fired Steve Jobs the first time—before hiring him again to save their company. Steve Jobs was always at the front of the train—and was happy no place else. Most great companies with the most innovation coming out of them have a leader at the front of the train who is most comfortable being there. There are of course people in the back who collect data to analyze, but the train is not driven from there. It is given to the leader to create a history to learn from so that decisions can most fluidly be made at the very front of the train as the future progresses.

I would never make it in todays military. Even while watching American Sniper I kept thinking how stifling the military is on a human mind, and that is for a good reason. When you become a soldier, you become part of a system and surrender your individuality to process driven goals. I could never do that, and I never have been able to. Yet great individuals in the military like Chris Kyle, Chuck Yeager, General Claire Lee Chennault, and General Patton all had a strong streak of individuality in them that sometimes defied orders and acted on their own merit from the front of whatever train they were on. All those characters found life at the back of the train boring and stifling desiring instead to be at the cutting edge of action. For those characters, the orders were less process driven because they were literally on the front lines of combat. However, especially in Chennault’s case when General Stillwell became U.S. Army commander in China during World War II Chennault was much less effective as a leader because the jealous Stillwell insisted on running the war from the back of the train, instead of the front where Chennault resided. This caused constant feuding between the two generals and cost the lives of many soldiers as the end result. Patton was much the same kind of man, and if reading the book Killing Patton is studied, it was likely that someone killed the general because nobody wanted to deal with him in peace time.   Likely it was Stalin who ordered the assassination, and at the time they were supposedly allies with the United States-but Stalin just didn’t want to deal with Patton in a future war—so they killed him—likely. And many in the U.S.—including the White House—secretly breathed a sigh of relief. But why? Because, Patton insisted not only at being at the front of the train, he wanted to be on the sweep at the front—the closest to the tracks as he could get. He was a real, natural-born leader and he often defied orders to do what he thought was best. If not for Patton, it is likely that the Germans would have beat America to the bomb—and the Allies would have lost.

So given all this historical data—why are organizations still insistent on back of the train analysis designed to stifle leadership? Well, it is the same vile human emotion that desires communism over capitalism—the jealous refusal to accept that some people have leadership, and some people don’t. Those that don’t desire process driven rules and regulations to protect them from their own inadequacies—and that pretty much sums it up. They hover like ghosts behind a leader in the back of the train and look for ways to take the credit for decisions made at the front once they think the situation is safe for them to do so. In Patton’s case they of course waited for a few days after the war ended to kill Patton. Authorities did something similar in China with Chennault sending him quickly to pasture once the conflict ended trying quickly to silence the petulant general. Instead Chennault wrote a great book The Way of the Fighter which revealed all his contentious exchanges between FDR, General Stillwell, and Truman up until the publication of the book in 1949. Chennault was irate with frustration saying that the conflict in China was not against the Japanese, but with the encroaching communists from the North. The authorities at the back of the train laughed it off and pulled out the United States surrendering all the hard-fought gains to the communists to become our future enemy. If Truman had listened to Chennault instead of Stillwell, there wouldn’t have been a Korean War, and there wouldn’t have been a Vietnam. And China would to this day be a capitalist country and friend to the United States instead of the holder of its debts and leveraging itself for a fiscal take-over of the American economy. And for a modern context, Chris Kyle would have likely had many less killings if he had always done what he was told. It’s part of the American way to think on ones feet and to make judgment calls from the front of the train. But first someone has to have the courage to reside there—and that is what’s short in most organizations. If they can find someone who wants to be at the front of the train, they are lucky. Those types of leaders are rare, but they are the key to making an endeavor successful or a failure. In classrooms look at the kids in the back of the class as opposed to those who voluntarily sit in the front—and you will see the difference between potential leaders and slugs who want to hide in the masses.

The failure to recognize such people is the problem, and they are often concealed behind jealousy, inflated egos, and overly educated process driven knuckle-draggers. Even the best leaders were hated even when they were loved. People love the results, but they hate that they can’t emulate a leader through processes, graphs, and structural definitions. There isn’t a class at West Point that can properly teach leadership and there isn’t a single course anywhere that can teach the proper behavior. It comes to some people naturally who love to stand in the fire at the front of the train. Leadership takes a natural courage that is vacant from most people, and if a society wants more leaders—it has to create an environment that produces more of them. But more often than when potential leaders are discovered within government schools they are beat into submission before they get out of the fifth grade and destroyed like baby seals surrounded by sharks that just want a meal. Most leaders are destroyed before they ever make it to adulthood. Today’s real leaders are taught early and often to stand at the back of the train and to shut up. So, not knowing any better, they do—and live desperate lives unfulfilled quietly screaming in silence to words that can’t be articulated.

For more on this topic read my article “Making Omelets: The essence of leadership” which features several videos of Gordon Ramsay the popular chef and television personality who is famous for fixing failed restaurants. There are millions upon millions of people who can cook, and there are hundreds of others who have made successful television careers out of cooking. But Ramsay is different. It’s because he makes decisions at the front of the train instead of the back—and that skill is one of the most unusual in the world—the culinary world is much, much better off.   Whether its food, war, or just aspects of manufacturing, real leaders are hard to come by, but when they are found, they are more precious than a treasure trove of wealth discovered.   They have the ability to see and guide others through dangers not yet seen and can create what’s needed before anybody even understands why. But before one can be a leader they must have courage—because the front of the train is scary. And that is why organizations without good leadership languish in bureaucracy. Because they have to go slow enough for the cowards in the back to make a decision—and that is a promise of inevitable failure—because the competition out there will likely happen across a leader—and they won’t be moving slowly—they’ll travel fast because they have a leader at the front of the train. It’s not the size of an organization that makes it successful; it’s about the quality of their leadership. And to understand that, quality has to be understood—which is the topic of a whole new article.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Net Neutrality and Castro: Both lied to achieve their political objectives

Anyone claiming that Net Neutrality is a good thing is a political insurgent within the United States and they are lying. They are up to the same kind of lies that history has seen before, and they are after control of information and the taxation of the Internet with the creation of yet another government department. They are following a pattern very similar to one that was seen in Cuba when Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Bastista to bring communism to the small island occupied largely by American businesses. The very same people who currently support Net Neutrality watched and supported Castro’s use of communism as a weapon and are still seeking to apply the same methods to capitalism wherever it flourishes. In 21st century America, there is no place that capitalism is more alive than on the Internet—so those who advocate that the FCC take control of the Internet are using nearly the same strategies as Castro did to win the hearts and minds of supporters to execute the task at hand—the spread of socialism. To illustrate my point watch the clip below where Castro promised during a speech that he was not bringing communism to Cuba. Of course in hindsight we now know better–just as it will be with Net Neutrality. Castro lied openly that he and his party were not communists. He also lied that he did not want power for himself. He’s still in charge in Cuba some 60 years later—and people are still dirt poor and crumbling away into dust because of socialism.

Castro became a communist during his jail term from Bastista after the failed attack on the Moncada Baracks. It was in prison that he formed a revolutionary group with Che Guevara and his brother Rual Castro—who just worked out the deal with Obama to reopen Cuba to Americans. American intelligentsia particularly on college campuses openly supported Castro as a hero of Marxism and thought of him as a rock star. Castro was treated with the kind of fanfare that might only be seen today from a Hollywood celebrity. Yet all during this period Castro denied being a communist, until he was in charge. It was then that he made the subtle announcement shift and began to lace his speeches with references toward socialism. Please take the time to watch the next video, which is a pretty good documentary about Castro and the whole Cuban situation on the world stage. After watching it will become clear what the strategic desires for communism were and what a thin line America really walked on—and still does. For instance, when Castro created the “boat people” as a way to infect the political leanings within America with socialist trained insurgents trying to reach their families already in America the move was a tactical one—just as the push for open boarders is today. The third world countries to the south of the United States are poor because of the open utilization of socialism, yet they are being encouraged to move into the United States to infect the political process with socialist voters. It is the desire of most on the political left in America to see communism spread globally, and to eliminate capitalism everywhere. Go ahead; the history is clear in the following video.

Net Neutrality advocates are performing the exact same strategy and are openly lying to the American people so the FCC can create a Department of the Internet. Their intentions are first to put on the breaks to the open capitalism currently so prevalent there. They then intend to tax the Internet so that they can increase the amount of revenue to the Federal government. Then, most importantly of all, they want to control information. For those on the left who have captured our education institutions, the media and even the values of the American nation with sentiment, they are still a party that looks like its going to be extinct within a few years, just because they are mathematically a minority party. Just look at their upcoming field of candidates for the 2016 elections. They really only have Hillary Clinton as a viable progressive. There are no other challengers—whereas the Republicans have a dozen or so. There is a lot of competition in the Republican Party, but hardly any within the Democrats and most of them are within the groups mentioned. Mainstream America still leans toward the right and toward capitalism. The only way the progressive left can win elections is through voter fraud, or by encouraging right thinking people to just stay home and not vote—because it’s a pointless exercise, which then cuts into the voting numbers.

 

The desire by the left to allow amnesty to illegal aliens is the same strategy that Fidel Castro imposed on the United States when he used his own people to infect the Florida political system with socialist Cubans so to slowly rot America from within. It was a strategy that even modern communist loving progressives still want to continue—because it’s working. It’s a way that Democrats can turn red states into purple states and continue to do the work that Castro started in the Western Hemisphere—the end of capitalism and the spread of communism.

Communists can’t have an open exchange of ideas on the Internet. China regulates what people can see, and there is a desire for the same in America. After all, the political left has control of the current media—including Fox News. Fox would be a lot harder hitting if they didn’t want to play fair and so not to threaten their White House press pass. And anybody who has worked for media knows that editors and program directors trained in liberal institutions lean to the left as opposed to the right. Those on the right often find themselves clamped with FCC regulations that target the removal of such characters with surgical precision—which is how the left managed to take over the media in the first place.

They wish to do the same with the Internet. Because the left controls the media citizen journalists have risen to challenge traditional broadcasts-and information is getting out that the government clearly is embarrassed by. For instance, take this article for example. No broadcaster on the air today would dare make such comparisons to Fidel Castro and Net Neutrality—even though the strategies are clearly the same. Castro to achieve power lied about his support of communism until it was too late. In the same manner the producers of the below commercial are doing precisely that—denying the real intention of Net Neutrality by attempting to capture the position of their opposition—which progressives do all the time. It was Republicans that ended slavery in America.   Yet to this day, it is thought that Democrats are for all people of color. During the Iraq War, the left pounded President Bush for American involvement. Now, under Obama, they are calling for war to attack a group of radicals they helped empower in Egypt, Libya and the entire Middle East. Now suddenly the left-leaning media is pounding the drums of war. When people like me point out the hypocrisy, the political left is embarrassed, so they seek to remove the observer so they can continue to hide in the shadows behind lies. If they can regulate me out of existence, they can continue to rule politics as a minority party. That is what Net Neutrality is all about—control.

This is typical among communists; they are second-handers who live through other people. They falsely expect others to do the work while they benefit and in Cuba once Castro took possession of all the American businesses there, their economy died and they essentially currently live in the stone age, until fellow socialists in America desired to come to Cuba’s rescue with an insurgence of American investment hoping to further spread the message of communism to the heartland of the United States through vacations and interaction with the landmass south of Florida.

Net Neutrality is about destroying capitalism and the advocates in favor want control—just as Castro wanted control of Cuba. The political left has already destroyed an entire generation through public education and sappy entertainment options from a Hollywood no longer supporting capitalism. This has given rise to the value of the Internet and created a desperate need by liberals to capture and control the Internet for their own survival. The only way they can perform the task is through a Trojan Horse insurrection, just as Castro did in Cuba-by openly lying about their intentions until it was too late. For the Internet that time will come when the FCC creates a Department of the Internet and seeks taxation and permits right out of the gate to destroy their philosophic rivals—just because they can’t compete. Because that’s the real secret between those who support socialism and communism, and those who support capitalism—the capitalists aren’t afraid of competition because they are always striving to get better. But the socialists are already of the weak type and just want to be told what to do because they are too lazy to think. Those are the type of people buying into Net Neutrality—and due to the lies being spread—historically the perpetrators know that the results will likely reside in their favor.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Ideas are Scary: The important task of being a place that lets them grow

By far my favorite commercial of 2014/2015 is the one below from GE about how ideas can sometimes be scary featuring a little alien looking ET creature being born and ridiculed until GE opened its doors to the innovative prospects of the fledgling creature. It’s a very honest commercial for such a huge corporate giant and it tells me that at least in practice GE hasn’t lost its way in understanding where it came from and what role it plays in America’s future. Growing up in Cincinnati it is impossible to not have GE a major part of my life and whenever I have to travel downtown and drive by the Evendale plant there is a little happy place that keys off in the back of my mind knowing to what a great extent GE has advanced technology and really lived up to the aspects of the commercial on innovation.

Being a corporate giant isn’t easy, and I am often distrustful of them to stay nimble in the field of innovation simply because there comes too much pageantry and fluff just to keep rules and regulations off their back to maintain the kind of forward thinking that made them great in the first place. Jeffrey Immelt after Barrack Obama was elected was put into a very difficult position. Here was a president openly hostile to corporations and business that would see GE as a massive target for socialist implementation. As a CEO it is first the job of such a person to guide their corporation through the potential threats that exist so that those gates of innovation can stay open for such fledging ideas shown in the commercial. So Immelt did what he thought was best, he made a partner out of Obama running the president’s Jobs Council for a few years. In so doing he was able to exploit the lack of financial understanding of the barely concealed socialist by enacting 54 of the 60 recommendations made by the Council—such as fast tracking key infrastructure projects and selling more leases for both oil and gas production. But in the end, only 4 of those recommendations were completed as is typical of government which loses focus quickly as life in the Belt Way quickly kills off ideas like an African hunter on the Serengeti. Under the auspices of government ideas quickly become extinct—and Jeffrey Immelt’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was one of the first things that Obama hung on his trophy wall. Obama tried to use GE to stimulate his economy, and largely took Immelt’s advice without knowing anything else to do—but failed to nurture those ideas into fruition

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/01/31/the-one-job-jeff-immelt-might-be-happy-to-lose/

For the last 20 years the GE90 engines from GE have been a game changer in commercial aviation. It is largely because of this engine that oversea travel has been on the increase just because now airlines can perform such a task with such a powerful engine without massive fuel consumption. That engine is exactly what the metaphorical commercial about GE innovation was all about. It was one of the great leaps of innovation from American culture that could have only come from such a large corporation that embraces such invention. And to make the GE90 work, it took a lot of the best minds at the time in the field of aerospace to pull it off.

There is a new generation of engines coming to serve for the next two decades, so the GE90 today is something of a Payton Manning in aviation. It’s still a great engine, but it has set the bar very high and newer, younger players are entering the market to break those previous records—but it took the pace setter first to show everyone what the innovation looked like. While some may look at the GE commercial in respect to Immelt’s work with President Obama and cry foul, I have a tremendous amount of respect for those open doors which allow scary little creatures like new ideas a place to go. I wish there were a thousand GEs in America—and I believe there is plenty of room for all of them—but unfortunately for most, they end up in the trophy case of some politician’s game wall—hunted, killed, and stuffed for memory.

I don’t watch much television so I didn’t see the GE commercial until I was watching the start of NASCAR last weekend. I love NASCAR because of the innovations—the new MAC tools, the tires, the corporate sponsors. I love seeing a pit crew in action trying to troubleshoot a problem in record time to get their driver back on the track as quickly as possible. There are a lot of ideas born on those tracks which end up in the cars we drive, so I love to just watch NASCAR for a glimpse into the future. It was in looking for innovations that I actually saw the GE commercial.

Recently I had one of the worst days of my life where everything that could go wrong did and there was just a mess of activity that had to be cleaned up from more of those idea killing vermin. So to brighten my day, my wife went to McDonald’s and picked up a couple of Big Mac meals so I could watch the news while enjoying that wonderful idea from McDonald’s ancient past—which I still think is one of the greatest inventions ever created. Big Macs would be an impossibility to the typical hunter and gatherer in New Guinea or Africa—yet out of the mind of Ray Kroc came a company called McDonald’s that made quality fast food easy and affordable on the go—the Big Mac was created. When I have a really bad day-one of those days where it’s difficult to breathe from one moment to the next, I typically get a Big Mac and just like that—I’m good to go. My worries and concerns evaporate. It’s not just the taste of the burger that drives my interest, it’s the story of McDonald’s itself that does. It reminds me of what innovation is supposed to look like. As rapidly as McDonald’s makes Big Macs it is astonishing that they always come out well, cooked perfectly, possessing just the right amount of lettuce, onions and sauce, and can be done so quickly. To this very day if I buy a Big Mac in Florida, it will be made nearly to the same specifications as one that I might buy in Wisconsin. They are little miracles—now taken for granted like the GE90 jet engine—but they have changed the way the world interacts with each other—and each one of those ideas is beautiful.

So I have a major soft spot for the GE commercial with the little alien idea being born to the voice over about ideas being scary. Ideas are the natural-born enemy of the way things are. They are ridiculed and mocked, and are often hunted by members of the political class for sport. When Immelt joined Obama’s Job’s Council, the move to me was to protect all the ideas brewing at GE from the hunters of the political class who want to destroy those wonderful creatures before they can bloom into beautiful creatures. That’s what a CEO should do, and if that sometimes means drawing fire away from those they are trying to protect—then so be it. Because as the commercial says, “under the proper care, [ideas] become something beautiful. They do.

The task of a massive corporation like GE is to create an environment where ideas can grow. Not everyone within that culture embodies such a spirit, of course, but in general, the philosophy of the company must seek to strive for such creation. If it does, then it will bring into the world ideas that would otherwise be destroyed by humanity always speculative, and short-sighted. It was a bold commercial from a company that really didn’t need to push the limits of perception—yet they did. They didn’t have to ruffle any feathers, yet they did—and for that I deeply appreciate the commercial. It is good to see that GE is not playing it so safe in the public relations market—and that they are remembering who and what they are—and how they got where they are today. Ideas are beautiful—even when they look scary to the un-enterprising and clandestine political hunters. It is good to be the natural-born enemy to the way things are. That is the spirit of innovation—and the direct benefit is humanity and its offspring.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Why I’d Vote For Scott Walker: The worthlessness of a college education

Out of all the potential candidates for the upcoming presidential election in 2016, it is Scott Walker who most personifies my expectations for such a high administrative position. He is certainly the most qualified, and vetted of any potential candidate except for maybe President Obama himself. Walker has been through a remarkable amount of tribulation—and has come out on top each and every time. He has the even temperament to take on anything and still come out as someone who can build bridges with those he disagrees with. From my vantage point, he’s the perfect candidate including the fact that he did not graduate from college. Recently when progressives have witnessed the polling numbers of Walker and realized that he could have a legitimate chance at running for President of the United States, they have been clamoring for anything and everything negative about Walker that they could—which has been a very short list. Even when they looked for skeletons in his closet they found it surprisingly empty. All they could muster was an attack on his intelligence because he did not complete college—which again to me is one of his greatest strengths.

The college myth was created by the progressive class to perpetuate the complete lie that college would allow kids to purchase their way into merit for income earning potential. It has only worked in regard to government workers who don’t have any real expectation of performance anyway. In the private sector college experience has not replaced the traditional ground up mentorship’s which used to be so common—where a hard enterprising worker learned everything there was to know about a business and worked their way up the ranks through tribulation and experience. Progressives in their desperate task of creating a society of collectivists decided that the best way to accomplish the task was through public education and colleges—which they have done. There is a good reason that most educators throughout the United States are known liberals. It is to teach students liberalism and to implant in their young minds the concept of selflessness. For instance, when my wife attended college she was told to read the Koran. When she asked the question about why the Bible wasn’t offered she was instantly told that she wasn’t there to ask questions but to do as she was told—which came as a surprise to both of us. The college had an agenda for their students and that was to spread the theocracy of Islam while charging students huge amounts of money for the indoctrination. The results can be easily seen around us to this day.

In college I was primarily interested in economics and philosophy—and my professors were wrong on both. In philosophy on the very first day the topic of conversation and first reading assignment was I Ching, which I thought was stupid. I explained the book to the class and professor as a ridiculous expression of oriental mystics that had very little to do with American economic power. Of course the professor attacked American domination through economics around the world and cited that the oriental people had it right as a best approach through a happy life toward our deaths. Even more shocking to me was the fact that out of a class room of 50 students I was the only one who had read I Ching so I was the only one who knew what I was talking about—except for the professor who was clearly a huge bleeding heart liberal. I Ching essentially preached the ideals of Confucianism which was really a back door approach to preparing the mind to accept communism as a state-run option—because the orient is essentially a collectivist based society and their philosophies reflect a lack of focus on individuality. I had read the book on my own the year before and already knew what I was going to get out of it, yet the philosophy professor was planning to spend four weeks on the book—which to me was just ridiculous.

There was a similar story which involved my economics studies. When I discovered that the professor in that class was essentially preaching the merits of Keynesian economics I completely rejected the class and was ready to withdrawal. Again, I had already read enough prior to the class to know what the professor was teaching and to stay in his class meant I would have to turn off my mind—not turn it on to a greater degree. Clearly, the experience my wife and I had in college was evidence that the college experience was not about teaching students to be productive people in society—it was to indoctrinate them with as much liberalism as they could cram into a four-year degree hoping that students would take with them that idiocy into the real world to implement progressive political strategies.

I lived on the campus of the University of Cincinnati for one full year and part of another without the desire to party at the fraternities, or to hang out at the bars and nightclubs. I went to a few of those events just to see what all the fuss was, and I didn’t like them. So I spent my time reading books in restaurants that were open all night and maintaining my emotional distance so I’d have clear observation. I was able to watch the college students—who were my age, with the gained insight of uncommitted logic and I drew my conclusions—which turned out to be extremely right. College for most people is a really bad idea. It’s good for learning something in the medical industry and other sciences, but for practical application into the manufacturing sector, or in sales, invention, and even engineering—college does a terrible job in producing intelligent, hard-working masterpieces. College is the dream of progressives to ruin the minds of the young with collectivist crap with the promise that success in life can be purchased. All you have to do is sit through the liberalized classes like a time share victim and hope that you come away from the experience with a free vacation from life.

College teaches people to think within a system—but often the answers to the hardest problems are outside of any organized structure. This is why major progressives like Howard Dean were threatened by Scott Walker as seen in the video above. This is also why Walker has been so successful in Wisconsin where other governors throughout the country have faltered. Walker is functioning from personal experience instead of direction from a system of collective thought. College graduates make nice little party leaders who will think for the good of the political orthodox, but if a problem falls outside of those parameters, they are often lost as to what to do—because collectively their party has not yet answered those types of questions. That happens to Barack Obama all the time. He is the epitome of a college graduate ill prepared for the world outside of liberal institutional thought.   He cannot think on his feet.

College success is a myth created by progressives and largely the baby boomers bought into the lie completely surrendering logic to pure speculation. Boomers wanted to believe that they could purchase a better life for their children with a college ticket—but all their kids really received was a trip into the “Brave New World.” College often ruins minds and destroys opportunity—and most kids are better off not going. There is no replacement for good old-fashioned hard work—and that is the kind of person that Scott Walker is. A quick study, and one of my most popular articles seen on the sidebar to the right indicates that most successful people avoid the damage that college does to their minds. I saw little of nothing in my college days that was helpful to a human being who desires to think. What I saw happen to women in particular I thought was devastating to their integrity forever. What I gained most out of college was found at a local Burger King that I sat in and read my many books—which I could have done without going to college. It was the most positive aspect of my experience. I ate a lot of Whoppers.

The panic of a Walker candidacy from both Republicans and Democrats is in finally convincing America of the worthlessness of a college education. If Walker wins, it will be a major blow to the progressive myth—and that has all those who love their institutions deeply concerned. But that issue needs to be addressed, sooner rather than later, because America needs the innovation that comes from those who normally get frustrated with college and drop out all together as opposed to those looking to purchase their way through life by turning off their minds just so they can get a piece of paper. From my personal experience there are a lot of potential Bill Gates types out there along with his nemesis Steve Jobs—both who didn’t have a college education. College destroys minds, it doesn’t help them grow and develop new ideas—not at the normal pace of human need. College limits people far more than it helps them, and that is what a Scott Walker President would illustrate to the 21st Century masses. The college scam is already falling apart and people will discover it by default, but Scott Walker could accelerate the process, and might actually save some of what’s left of America. So if I get the opportunity, I will vote for Scott Walker.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Ayn Rand’s 1961 Capitalist and Communist Warning: Why Apple is successful and everyone else copies

The Ayn Rand Institute recently posted the below video from 1961 by Ayn Rand herself about capitalism and communism. At the time there was a lot of debate about which was better for society. The political class and intelligentsia decided they liked communism whereas the American people still in love with their John Wayne westerns and old-fashioned ideas of westward expansion loved their capitalism. Democrats and labor unions in a partnership with each other decided that they would avoid the name of communism in much the same way that Fidel Castro did during the period that he was trying to convince Cuba to turn toward Marxism by denying that his proposed dictatorship was a party of communists. Of course we know by history that it was a complete lie, just as history will show that in America public schools, colleges, and the federal government itself has fully embraced communism all along—and sought to teach children those “communal” concepts from before even kindergarten. Visit any daycare facility and you will see communism being taught to 3 and 4 year olds in great abundance. In 1961 Ayn Rand was despondent as to how the great America could even conceive of making the mistakes she had just escaped from in her mother Russia. So she made the below recording to the Presidents Club of the American Management Association to contemplate why.

Speaking of management associations and the innovations available to America it is an aspect to my life that I know first hand. I came to know Ayn Rand and the ARI work because I share with them very similar ideals about how business should be conducted and why capitalism is such a vastly superior mechanism in any global marketplace. I never read Ayn Rand until just a few years ago, yet I lived my life nearly in parallel with her character Howard Roark from the great novel The Fountainhead. When I finally did read it I wondered how I had traveled through life for over 40 years without running across it—and once I did I understood completely the intentions of the novel.

For me the most powerful part of the book was when Roark refused to be a member of the architectural board for the World’s Fair exhibit because of his strict personal revulsion toward collectivism. I too have been invited and had to decline many such associations and it has cost me likely millions in so doing. For thirty years I have been given many, many, many opportunities to do just as what was offered to Roark in The Fountainhead and I declined for the same reasons so to keep my own integrity intact. I had never heard of anybody doing the things I had been doing and taking the social positions I had until I read The Fountainhead, which was really the first time I had a measure that I was actually right in my instincts—and it was good to hear Ayn Rand from beyond the grave tell me she understood.

I had for years been struggling with the communism so present in American business—everything from Six Sigma concepts to Jack Welch management methods. I was sent to many classes over a great deal of time and on day one I lost interest because essentially what they were teaching was classic communism—not capitalism. It was no wonder that companies struggled with profits and innovation and I had no desire to learn such a stupid thing. I often refer to my years at Cincinnati Milacron as one of those pinnacle moments of understanding. I was sent to a Lean Manufacturing seminar as a hand-picked bright spot in their future only to discover that the company was dying on the first day of class. I lost interest in that company once I realized that they were has-beens and would soon go out of business more or less—which of course they did. My views at the time I couldn’t articulate against the current because everyone essentially thought I was nuts—since I was the lone voice against “consensus” and other focus group derivatives. I knew from experience that I wanted to maintain my individuality because it was within that element that true innovation in thought was brought forth.

I still run into the same opposition—actually every day. But I now have a track record to beat over people’s heads which quiets them. When I was in my 20s and 30s everyone just thought I’d grow out of such thoughts of independence—but instead I just got worse over time the more I saw that my methods worked as opposed to other studies. During the 90s I likely read every management book there was in Barnes and Nobel over a ten-year period, and most of them were so wrong, that they might as well be the equivalent to the latest “quick diet” fad because the methods were built around the same mysticism. Most corporations, and most businesses function like a communist dictatorship which quickly saps the strength of an organization of its most valuable resource—the individuals who actually work for the institution. It isn’t long that a company dies on the vine once a few decades of communist dictatorship ruins them for life. Cincinnati Milacron died in this fashion—as did General Motors. The later was only saved by government bail-outs.

Banking institutions, corporations, political structures—everywhere that there is a hierarchy of a few nameplate administrators who have power over others just by title, communism is found to be at the core philosophy of the leaders within the institution. Many of those tuning in to listen to Ayn Ran only cared about what she had to say about profit—not about the means of obtaining it. Most American businesses in 1961 were already infiltrated with communist ideals through their education institutions. They were already thinking in the wrong manner and were mapping out their own personal destructions even as the leaders built their careers and retirement pensions. Those same individuals might have been paid good money for their leadership—but what they often left in their wake was a declining business, not a flourishing one. I simply refused to play along—and over time it has benefited me and many others because when fresh ideals are needed, they are available because I have not destroyed the means of obtaining them.

As Ayn Rand said, it wasn’t communism that proved to be superior to capitalism. It was that in America capitalism committed suicide because businessmen and women discovered that to be good at capitalism they actually had to be good people to the very core of their being and could not have their egos uselessly massaged by corporate structure. The ability to dictate the lives of others because they held power over their employees’ financial purse strings proved too tempting and they fell in love with the power of communism—the ability to be the center of control of all things distributed to others according to their need. For men, the best way to test this morality is in placing a beautiful young secretary outside of their offices. If they contemplate using their power and influence to bed her—they are not moral enough men for capitalism. For women, if they use their power and position to decorate themselves with excessive sign stimuli and tales of oversea travel not out of necessity—but grandeur for the sake of it—as if to exemplify that they hold a higher title than others and therefore hold the fate of so many in their hands—then they are not moral enough for capitalism and will become seduced by the profiteer communism eventually. Once they do, you can hear the term, “team” uttered from their mouths more and more often as they are always on the search for “communal” exercises intended to achieve consensus. A typical episode of The Office is a good place to start to see this withering, pathetic diatribe of failure manifested through comic relief.

As I write this article my wife and I just bought iPhone 6 mobile devices—which to me is one of the most innovative items on planet earth presently. The company itself is nearly at a $1 trillion market cap valuation, and they’ve done it their way. They are very much as a company the way Howard Roarke conducted his business—vastly independent of other companies. They make the market come to them instead of forming themselves to the market. Many analysts college trained to think like nice little communists wonder why the market evaluation of Apple isn’t already over $1.26 trillion—after all it could be. But Apple does things their way for their own reasons and they are driving the market according to their creative input as a company driven by individuals. Steve Jobs after all was a very informal businessman who didn’t have a college degree, and was actually fired from the company he created. But in the end it was Jobs who made Apple what it is and paved the way for creative minds through an excessive commitment to a capitalism loving culture that made Apple such a successful company. Jobs was one of the first to introduce casual wear to the business place just to break down the top down communist culture of rigid dress codes and oppressive company reminders that the employees served the institution—not the other way around. What Jobs did at Apple he was able to perform because he wasn’t taught in college to hate it capitalism—but to use it to be a creative human being. He was essentially a modern real-life Howard Roarke.

Apple isn’t the only company out there who understands that communism has no place in American business. There are others, but they are definitely on the fringe. I am one of those proud fringe people and I know of several others because like-minded people tend to know each other. But what Ayn Rand said in her lecture to the Presidents Club of the American Management Association was completely accurate. It’s not that communism is superior, or had even won. Communism has seeped into our culture as a profiteer while those who were supposed to protect capitalism were too busy thinking about how powerful they are over their employees, or in banging their secretaries. Instead of conducting themselves in a moral way, they have instead turned toward Apple and tried to copy everything about the company hoping that they will strike gold in the same manner. But they can dress in jeans and follow other similar attributes of Apple, but if they don’t develop a creative—capitalist environment for their employees to prosper in—they will fail leaving the default mode of operation to the mindless communists who will sweep in to save the day with bail-outs, focus groups and the constant reminder that institutions are all about “consensus” building. But they were, and will always be wrong. Successful companies are built by individuals for the sake of creative enterprise and it is there that capitalism shines best and brightest—and for the most people’s benefit. It is what’s missing from our present culture and why everything taught counter to that basic ideal is a waste of time.  American business knows how to get there, but they are not willing to act morally to achieve it—which is why Ayn Rand in 1961 was so baffled by the American approach to the long-standing debate. There just weren’t enough defenders of capitalism out there because too many executives were staring at the boobies of their secretaries—instead of on the next great idea and how to free the minds of mankind to unleash the power of capitalism and the ideals that spring forth from such a culture.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

The Control of Net Neutrality: Third Way economics reinvented

One of the great failures of the human condition is the personal desire to control other people through manipulation, social titles, and just sheer domination. Anyone who has worked in an environment where other people were constantly in interaction, they have witnessed this desire for control over others in all its dysfunction. Control is essentially the primary reason for the governments’ desire for gun control over its population. It is also the primary reason Obama through the FCC wants control of the internet through Net Neutrality. The control desired isn’t anything needed, but is only to satisfy the egos of bureaucrats and their lust to have the kind of control over others that they can’t get in their personal lives. If the root cause of the human desire for control is analyzed in most situations it will be found nearly 100% of the time that those who desire control over others most are those least secure about how to guide their own lives from moment to moment.

Often control is disguised to be seen as a helpful measure. An insecure parent might desire to control the finances of their children so to keep them close—so not to leave them vulnerable to social judgment which might otherwise be noticed. A boss might desire to control an employee they know is superior to them by crafting mundane procedures to wear down the challenging individual in hopes that the tasks will hone down ambition so corporate superiors might not notice. And the government at all levels–from the local zoning board all the way up to President of the United States can’t resist controlling other people through rules and regulations. For the political employee it is difficult to resist when power is confiscated through government mechanisms and provided to the desk of a bureaucrat the means to sort through and re-distribute the fruits of productivity to those they deem worthy. For the zoning administrator the rich land owner who wants to build a new garage will have to pay more and grease many more wheels to get approval than the hot young blond who wants to build a deck to sun bath upon. When the rights of others must be filtered through some government bureaucrat abuse through control is a common occurrence.

It is because of this human frailty desiring control over others that economies struggle and do not reach their full potential. It is also why there is much resistance to laissez-faire capitalism as opposed to socialism, communism, or some mixture of those ideas, especially by the political left. If the mind of those who call themselves democrats is analyzed correctly, it will be discovered that deep down inside they typically have serious personal control insecurities—which is why they are Democrats to begin with. Those who lean liberal tend to be insecure with themselves and desire to use re-distribution of resources through politics as a means to inflate their personal power over others. This was never more apparent than in the 1990s when then President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair attempted to hide their human frailties behind economic policies that pretended to support capitalism, only with a new spin on the type of socialism that control addicts desire most. They called it “The Third Way.”

In politics, the Third Way is a position that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.[1][2] The Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for economic liberalism and the New Right.[3] The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and social liberal movements.[4]

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism. Blair said “My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice … Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly”.[5] Blair referred to it as “social-ism” that involves politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity.[6] Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism, and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies, and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism.[7] Blair in 2009 publicly declared support for a “new capitalism”.[8]

It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.[9] It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.[10]

The Third Way has been criticized[11] by some conservatives and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism.[12] It has also been heavily criticized by many social democrats, democratic socialists and communists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values.[13][14][15] Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way

In other words, the Third Way is identical to the corporate boss who is technically incompetent who steals the ideas of a superior minded employee so to impress their bosses when performance reviews are requested to drive up job security. Government has recognized that socialism and communism tend to rob people of initiative, so they give the illusion of capitalism so that the work excess produced can then be stolen and re-distributed to their political supporters to keep them in power. So essentially the Third Way is socialism without the title designed to hide the intentions toward control. It would be equivalent to the jealous husband who won’t let his wife drive a car under abusive circumstances—afraid she might find a better lover—by telling her that driving is dangerous and that he loves her so much that he doesn’t want her to get hurt. That is the essence of the Third Way economy patterns so prevalent today, introduced by progressives like Bill Clinton and heavily supported by open socialists like Barack Obama.

The point of this article is to illustrate what is really going on behind Net Neutrality. Under the current policy of Internet regulation and creativity, it is essentially a model of laissez-faire capitalism. Products are bought and sold rapidly in great number because there is an incentive to make money—so a very diverse number of products are available to consumers at a wide range of prices driven by competition. Government regulation hardly exists on the Internet and this has allowed a market sector to flourish—much the way the economy in America did during the 1920s, and 1980s under presidents Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.   Communists and socialists however have had their presidents elected in most of the other periods and the result has been lackluster economic growth—except for the advent of the Internet. At the heart of the desire for Net Neutrality is the desire to control the economy and the people who make it up.

There is no problem with the Internet, there is no unfairness. Everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed or fail on the Internet because of its limitless creative options. It has regulated itself through competition the way laissez-faire capitalism tends to anywhere it is utilized without controls imposed upon it by weak-willed personalities. Net Neutrality is all about control over others. That need for control is built on inner insecurities by lesser individuals who want to appear as equal or even superior to their betters. With Net Neutrality weak people who know they can’t compete in life need the protection of government so that they can feel equal to everyone else. Under open market capitalism, they can’t, so they must sabotage the successful so that they can feel equal. That is what is called “social justice.”

Net Neutrality is all about control and insecurity. It’s about a government that is useless trying to make itself relevant with “social justice” by stealing from the productive and giving to the lazy. It is just another version of the Third Way. It’s a scam—just like most things in government are. It’s an attack on laissez-faire capitalism. It’s all about control from inferior minds over superior ones in the only way that such an arrangement can occur—through manipulation, emotion, and a promise of security from illusionary concerns. Net Neutrality is a false argument against freedom by a lying government for the sole purpose of convincing the strong to give up their rights to the weak so that social justice through the Third Way of compromise can occur—which is nothing more than a way to hide the inadequacies of failed personalities from the realities they’d otherwise make for themselves.

 

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Pigman Fights Radical Islam: Want to strike back at ISIS–start with Bosch Fawstin’s creation

 After a friend of mine read my latest Cliffhanger installment they informed me of the comparison to a character named Pigman—which at first I thought was an insult. These are interesting days for the intersection of comics and the “clash of civilizations” indeed. The real-life adventures of a former al-Qaeda militant has become a popular comic book in Indonesia – the most populous Muslim nation in the world – chronicling his transformation from enemy to ally in the fight against terrorism. DC Comics, the home of Batman, sent the classic superhero to Paris and replaced sidekick Robin with a French Algerian Muslim known as Nightrunner. “The 99,” is a comic book creation out of the Middle East featuring 99 superheroes, each representing a different aspect of Islamic culture. “The 99” has received the blessing of President Obama and is working with other DC comic heroes as well as becoming an animated TV series. So there is a lot of literary and creative propaganda out there representing many of the real life tensions percolating under the surface of superficial reality.

Then there’s Pigman, the jihadists’ nemesis and the protagonist of Bosch Fawstin’s latest graphic novel “The Infidel,” a story of Muslim twin brothers whose lives veer in polar opposite directions in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. “The Infidel” echoes Fawstin’s own journey from his Albanian Muslim beginnings, to apostate and Ayn Rand devotee—which is quite a swing in reality.

Fawstin is a cartoonist who scored an Eisner Award nomination – the comics industry equivalent of an Oscar nod – for his debut graphic novel, “Table For One.” He’s also a FrontPage contributing artist and the author/illustrator of ProPIGanda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad, a collection of images and essays that serve as a companion piece to “The Infidel.”

http://fawstin.blogspot.com/2012/04/who-cares-about-islam.html

http://fawstin.blogspot.com/2009/03/propiganda-drawing-line-against-jihad.html

When I first looked up Pigman I thought it was a reference to the 1968 novel—and I couldn’t see how that would be applicable to my Cliffhanger character. This same friend for quite a while has been uttering that Cliffhanger should be a graphic novel, but my argument has been that I need the literary structure to tell my story. A picture is not always worth a thousand words if each of your words represents a thousand ideals. So a well written novel or literary story still has a power that I don’t think graphic novels and even movies can fully utilize. When the focus on an image is the premier concern—something usually gets lost in the translation as a compromise. In literature compromise isn’t needed, and readers are free to paint their own pictures in their minds. However, that’s not to say that is the case with Pigman.

In a time such as we live in now where any language against jihadist activity is considered radical and an invitation to personal destruction—I have to admire Bosch Fawstin for having the testicular fortitude to take the approach he has. He’s talented enough to work for any major comic house, but he has taken the independent path and built a character that is opposed to the political structure currently in place. In that respect he and I are in the same situation. He knows that any work he does for the industry will have to come from himself—because nobody is going to hire him due to his strong beliefs now that he’s shown them in the Pigman character.

The crime that Fawstin has committed which orthodox media and politics have deemed so terrifying—is that he clearly has identified the jihadist activity from Muslim religion as a vile evil and he doesn’t stray away from the designation. In a world where everyone seems indecisive on Islamic radicalism—especially in a creative capacity, Fawstin has drawn a clear line in the sand for all his readers to observe. Islam based on his experience with the Koran is evil and he uses his character of Pigman to become the worst nightmare of the jihadists inflicting terror upon humanity. For that reason, I LOVE PIGMAN!

So I can see why my friend drew such a parallel between Pigman and Cliffhanger. Fawstin and I are doing similar things for similar reasons. It is up to creative people like us to see evil where it is hiding and root it out through our mechanisms so it is easy for others to see. That is clearly what Pigman is all about. For a change there is a superhero for those in the current freedom movement doing the kind of work that might not be appreciated for another half century. It might not be readily acceptable in our current mainstream culture, but 50 years from now I have a strong feeling that Fawstin will become a cult classic and will go a long way into shaping the kind of culture that young people will be looking for in the aftermath of our current tribulations.

Traditional comic heroes like Batman, Superman and many of the others have had artists handling them over the last couple of years steering them in a progressive direction. Superman a few years ago gave up his American citizenship to fight for the United Nations, and of course Batman had the little Muslim guy Nightrunner as a viable—more global sidekick in an effort to push the cape crusader into a wider market. The Green Lantern re-launched as a gay hero—attempting to take such radical ideas into the mainstream. So it is certainly worthy for a talented guy like Fawstin to make Pigman as a conservative argument against the progressive tide and to let history determine the victor. In the end, the trend will show that the progressive attempts will fail, because generally people don’t respect those types of approaches. Most people by default are more comfortable with conservative ideals when they can get them, because society in general when stripped away from political motivations is right of center in value. So it is likely that Pigman will have a longer shelf life than someone like The Green Lantern or even Superman if that United Nations crime fighter trend continues away from the traditional, truth, justice, and American way approach. Pigman is not about political correctness—which comics have traditionally stood against. When comics start pandering to the political establishment, they are suddenly, “uncool.” And they won’t last when there is competition like Pigman out there that more appropriately articulates the concerns of modern audiences.

After watching the severed heads, and brutal murders of late from the ISIS insurgents in the Middle East and how weak Obama’s political approach has been in reaction, I know I personally want to see someone punished for the evil inflicted. We aren’t getting that satisfaction in reality, but in our minds, at least we are not broken as a people. Bosch Fawstin is proof that the minds of Americans are not yet destroyed by the insurgent application of terror from continued social stress and political policy directly applied through mainstream culture. Comics live and breathe beyond the mainstream and the more orthodox they become—such as in the latest movie adaptations, the more need there is for characters like Bosch Fawstin’s Pigman. So I consider it a privilege to receive such a comparison. It’s a tough fight out there—and it is good to see another valiant character taking care of a market sector that is desperately in need of a strong opinion. And Bosh Fawstin is not short on opinion—which is the greatest gift a comic book artist can provide to the world.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

Obamacare is the Cause of Longshore Worker Stoppage: An American embarassment

 I spoke months ago about the embarrassment of the Longshore workers on the West Coast with their deliberate slowdown of work to force contract talks with their employer.  Because of the amount of cargo moving to and from their ports, their work slow down is embarrassing to American productivity.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  I am embarrassed that they are Americans representing to the world the merit and speed of the American workforce.   Because of their actions, they should all be let go and replaced with newer—less expensive workers who will show the world the enterprising speed of Americans.  Instead they have been drag-assing for months upset that they have not received a new union contract forcing valuable product to sit idle until the workers get to it.  This entire workload backup has forced numerous weeks of consecutive weekend overtime which has cost millions of dollars in lost profitability.  That was always their union strategy.   Not only did they waste time during the week forcing trucks and ships to wait on their weak effort at productivity—but they have done the same under premium pay on the weekends compounding the insult.

Then to make matters worse to any investigator with an inquisitive eye toward reality, one comes to realize how much these union workers make as a salary—which proves how out of touch they really are.  When the union leaders were upset that their employers just shut down the weekends because they are now so dreadfully behind schedule it is no longer worth the premium money to spend to move units—the audacity of the Longshore workers unions become very clear.  What follows are a collection of articles that explains more deeply the situation:

Longshore workers, according to a contract that expired in July, can earn $25.71 to $35.68 — or annual salaries of $53,476 to $74,214— depending on seniority. Workers get more money for special skills and experience, plus overtime.

According to the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents the employers, the average salary is $147,000, which combines the earnings for registered longshoremen, clerks, walking bosses and foremen who have worked 2,000 or more hours.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/business/20150202/longshore-workers-deal-with-no-night-shifts-vie-for-day-jobs-amid-contract-dispute

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Companies that handle billions of dollars of cargo at West Coast seaports said Friday they will hire far fewer workers this weekend, the latest escalation in a contract dispute with dockworkers that threatens to shut down a vital link in U.S.-Asia trade.

The association representing port terminal operators announced its members would not hire crane drivers to move containers on and off massive ocean-going ships. Instead, employers could order smaller crews to clear already-unloaded containers from congested dockside yards.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/west-coast-port-employers-to-cut-weekend-shifts-amid-contract-dispute-with-dockworkers-union-291119461.html

The slow-roll implementation of Obamacare threatens to close U.S. commercial ports on the West Coast. The 29 ports, which handle 70 percent of maritime imports from Asia, were closed over the weekend after months of contentious contract negotiations. The ports reopened Monday, but 20,000 longshoremen are still threatening to strike over a new Obamacare tax.

Obamacare imposes a 40 percent tax on health benefits deemed too generous by the government. Health benefits exceeding $10,200 a year in value for individuals or $27,500 for families are defined as “Cadillac” plans and are subject to the tax. Health benefits for longshoremen exceed $40,000 per employee, meaning the union would be served an enormous tax bill when the penalty is imposed in 2018.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/10/obamacare-tax-threatens-to-close-west-coast-ports/

Well, how about that, Obamacare penalizes health care plans that are too luxurious so to ensure that everyone is the same no matter their personal effort or worth—and the Longshore workers don’t like it.  The situation is so serious that it should require the involvement of the President of the United States to step in and keep American productivity flowing.  But he hasn’t because Obama is aligned with such radicals as they think the same way.  Yet even in this case even the union workers are to the political right of Obama—because it is Obamacare that is the largest sticking point in obtaining a new contact.  The Longshore workers already make too much money to be worth the effort—now with Obamacare pressing down on the port employers they simply have reached their breaking point and are giving up.

For Obama, this is one of the biggest issues of his presidency.  When President Bush was faced with the same type of work stoppage in 2002 after only a ten-day lockout by the same union he invoked the Taft-Hartley Act as reported by the World Socialist Web Site:

On Tuesday a federal judge in San Francisco granted the Bush administration’s request for a temporary injunction lifting a ten-day lockout and sending West Coast longshoremen back to work. The court order was a prelude to the declaration of an 80-day “cooling off” period under the provisions of the anti-union Taft-Hartley law.

The lockout had shut down 29 West Coast ports. The judge issued his order barely three hours after attorneys from the Justice Department presented a fact-finding report drawn up by a special Board of Inquiry. George W. Bush had announced the formation of the panel the day before, setting into motion the legal process leading to the declaration of a national emergency and the implementation of the Taft-Hartley Act

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents the West Coast shipping companies, reopened the ports on Wednesday for the 6 p.m. shift.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/10/ilwu-o10.html

Of course the socialists thought that Bush had overstepped his boundaries and forced the Longshore workers back to work because they represent the basic philosophy of all labor unions—that jobs exist for employees and that employers are meant to be servants to the whims of the “middleclass.”  And now that socialist types have their president in the White House there is no relief for employers coming—instead there are only more socialist driven costs induced by Obamacare.  So for employers—it’s a no win situation.  Product is stacking up on shipping docks and not making it to their destination on time—and America looks inefficient because of it—which makes socialists happy.

The Longshore workers are disgraceful.  They have a history of this radical behavior and have driven up their wages to a level that is simply not sustainable.  And now because of Obamacare, they have overstayed their welcome and are due for an innovation to replace their sudden worthlessness.  The rest of America should not have to wait for those idiots to do their jobs.  Their selfishness is epic—but worse than that—it is Obamacare that has broken the back of logic.  Yet nobody is talking about that on the nightly news.  That is because the dispute is between various factions of liberals—the Longshore workers and Obama himself.  The companies caught in the middle simply want to operate their businesses.  And with the Obamacare imposition being so high—they decided they can’t.  So employers shut down their weekend work and are ready to move on.  For them—it was the correct decision.  These port employers aren’t alone.  Here is a list of other major companies who have decided that Obamacare is just too expensive.   And this is just the beginning.

http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/090514-669013-obamacare-employer-mandate-a-list-of-cuts-to-work-hours-jobs.htm?fromcampaign=1

Rich Hoffman

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A List of Proven False Flags: How many can you name not yet clarified?

 

“A history of false flag attacks used to manipulate the minds of the people! In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

I occasionally discuss false flags created by governments and organizations to induce a given social reaction.  I don’t believe everything is a conspiracy theory, or a false flag but I am extremely distrustful of conglomerations of people when they are trying “collectively” to get something done.  I read the work of Friedrich Nietzsche at a very young age and his view of the individual versus the collective—such as the phrase above—have become a fundamental part of the way I view the world largely because I have been able to confirm the results with experience.  For instance, a few years ago the public school in my home district of Lakota was demanding a tax increase on property values.  One of their reasons for asking for more money was to make the school safer because of the recent school shootings—like the Sandy Hook incident.  Conveniently a shooting spree threat was found a few days before the election in the girl’s bathroom of the high school inciting panic throughout the district.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  The tax was won in favor of the increase by approximately a 1% swing.  Likely a radicalized teacher union member left the note, but nobody will ever be able to prove it even though there were cameras and witnesses—the investigation never turned up an arrest of any kind.  After the election, the issue was just dropped and within a few weeks—everyone forgot about it.  That would be an instance of a likely false flag operation by an organization that needed to swing votes in their favor for a collective cause.

There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.  Below is a list of several that are now far enough into the past that they can be looked at honestly.  Many modern false flags still have too much political weight to them, so any analysis is still decades off—and likely history will view our current time as being filled with them.  False flags are natural by-products of collectivism and such philosophy is taught in our public schools so groups of people as Nietzsche said—are quick to lend their support.   In the following list, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to their part in a false flag endeavor, either orally or in writing.  Pay close attention and then consider if any such action is likely in the modern context.

  • Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army .
  • A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.
  • Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.
  • Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.
  • The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and falsely blame it on the Nazis.
  • The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings.
  • Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).
  • The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.
  • The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.
  • The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.
  • In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]“.
  • Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.
  • As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
  • In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States – such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.
  • The U.S. Department of Defense even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo.”
  • The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war.
  • A S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.
  • A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example”.
  • The German government admitted that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted “escape tools” on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.
  • A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.
  • (22) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

(23) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

(24) An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that “elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked”.

(25) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(26) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(27) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(28) As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”.

(29) Senior police officials in Genoa, Italy admitted that – in July 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa – planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(30) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the White House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country.

(31) Similarly, the U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war. Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction (despite previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers).  (I don’t completely agree with the cause, but there was certainly foul play involved)

(32) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”

(33) United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

(34) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

(35) Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers.

(36) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

(37) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts in 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

(38) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

(39) The highly respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.

(40) High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.

(41) The former Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others.

(42) Britain’s spy agency has admitted that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-08/42-admitted-false-flag-attacks

Very interesting isn’t it?  Now—after watching Brian Williams fall from grace and knowing what you do now dear reader—how many false flags can you name in your neighborhood?  I bet you can find enough to fill a lengthy list.  Now, imagine how many there are at the state and federal level.  Think about that the next time you vote—and before you fall for the contents of the next sappy news story.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development