Category: Religion

End the Department of Education Now: The march to a smaller government should start there

The videos shown on this article I find repulsive. The Department of Education is populated with these types of people, which equates to a lot of talk about collaboration, caring for children, and test scores. The reality is that they are just adults spending a lot of money to pretend they are actually doing something that justifies the incredible amounts of money they expect to be paid. They are good at sounding important but when watching these videos consider if there is any authority, or truth in anything they are saying. There is a disconnect between these people and reality. They collectively believe that “outsiders” shouldn’t tell them how to behave, yet they forget that the “outsiders” are the people who pay the bill, and are therefore their bosses.

The Department of Education is one of those government creations that have no place at all in education.  It shouldn’t exist.  It costs too much, and has lost its way over the years. It has a budget roughly of $107 Billion dollars and has a jaw-dropping 4,800 employees.  By the governments own estimates in preparing for a government shut-down recently roughly 89.4 percent of the employees were deemed non-essential to operations. Yes, you heard that right, 89.4 percent…….non-essential.  That means only 10.1% of the employees at the DOE are needed to operate that whole branch of government. 

In 2009 the average federal employee earned $81,258 where the average private –industry employee made $50,462.  The private-industry employee then garners approximately $10,500 per year in benefits.  The federal employee receives a staggering $42,000 or more for benefits. That means the cost per federal employee at the Department of Education is $123,258. 

Reagan immediately tried to get rid of the DOE, as he promised, but he couldn’t get the democrats in the senate to go along with him, after all, they had already taken money from the NEA, and that was the last chance we had to rid ourselves of this giant government behemoth. 

We have created a government department that costs a lot of money, and is dedicated on taking the country in a direction that is against traditional American values. It’s a progressive branch that does nothing, staffed by non-essential employees, and it is formed to solidify the political power of a strong union, and we pay for it completely with tax money. 

Locally, school boards everywhere blame the DOE for compliance, which takes the anger away from the local districts.  The bureaucracy is created to make the system so large it can never be criticized because problems are too large for any one person to ever deal with.  It’s an organization built to maintain control of the NEA.  As school funding comes crashing down, and more parents are being forced to pay for sports programs, electives, and other extra-curricular activity, teachers won’t sacrifice any of their excessive wages as they stand quietly in the corner and watch parents struggle to give their children options.  Many parents are not only paying for their tax bill, which in my neighborhood is $3000 to $5000 dollars per home per year, but now parents are trying to come up with the extra money to pay for the stuff that used to be free, included in the price of their tax bill that supports the school.  Now parents must include the cost of transportation twice a day in many schools where a bus used to pick up the child.  Now the bill to teach a child has went up because school systems led by the example of the Department of Education have extorted massive amounts of money from the tax payer.  In fact, since the Department of Education was implemented, in just the last two decades the average spending per pupil has went up 44%.  That average salary for a teacher just since 2001 has jumped up 26%.  The cost of education isn’t increasing because the cost of actual education such as books and school buildings is going up.  It’s going up because the teaching profession is unionized and unlike in the private sector when costs go up we can go to Walmart, or buy a car from Japan, in education they have a monopoly, no competition, and therefore no mechanism to bring costs down. 

In many states Medicaid costs have increased and tax revenue is decreasing as industry moves over seas to avoid higher costs of doing business in the United States.  To deal with these financial realities states have decreased education funding by 17 billion dollars over the past two fiscal years.  Funding won’t be increasing, not unless the United States creates more product and exports goods instead of importing them.  So schools rather than change their funding model which is tied up in labor costs are resorting to passing the cost increases off onto the customer, the taxpayer.  In Medina, Ohio school costs have risen 23% over the last 5 years to $75 million in 2010, most of it is wage increases.  To shave costs the Medina school board eliminated 106 teaching position, otherwise 20% of their teaching staff over two years.  Class sizes increased from 25 kids per teacher to 31.  The teachers union agreed to $1 million in concessions taking just a 2.45% pay raise instead of the scheduled 3.45%.  The average cost per teacher with salary plus benefits is about $68,000 per year. 

Medina has tried to close the revenue gap by asking for levies which voters have rejected for three consecutive years.  So the district began charging $660 to play a high-school sport, $200 to join the concert choir and $50 to act in the spring play.  Local tax payer and senior citizen 70-year-old Joyce Harris said, “We can’t afford our teeth fixed because it’s too expensive.  If we have our taxes go up to pay for little Joey’s football, that’s not exactly fair.”

Notice that Arnie says “it will not become a competitive program,” as if that were a bad thing somehow.

So the Department of Education is worthless.  Their education standards have pushed America out of first place.  Click here to see my article on Waiting for Superman.  They are too expensive, and they have paved the way for the expectation that teachers should be making six figures.  And because the Department of Education is really a front organization that provides legitimacy for the teachers union, it has only exceeded in driving up the cost of education, eliminating competition by imposing on tax payers a monopoly that is arrogant, selfish, and grossly out of touch.

Now, this is a video that pulls back the curtain on the rest of the videos from above. This is a video that I have learned is the truth over years of personal experience.

I spend a lot of time talking about these education issues because our future is being raised in this public school system and I see an organization that I am paying good money for, teaching them all the wrong things and it disgusts me.  And because of the scam I am forced to support a union that I find un-American, corrupt, and destructive to the kind of country I want to live in.  So eliminating the Department of Education is something that should have happened the day Ronald Reagan took office.  In fact, it should have never happened to begin with.  It’s unconstitutional, violates numerous issues revolving around the 10th Amendment and is just something that should be removed immediately.  It has no place in American society.  It can’t even justify itself with results.  It’s just a waste of money that stands in the way of reforming our education system to something that is more effective, and it needs to go away.

 

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

Pirates and Politicians, Same Thing: One uses a cutlass, the other uses a pen to force us into serfdom

Doc Thompson of 700 WLW discusses all the various ways politicians are misspending our tax dollars.

This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Halliburton. There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument. The only question is how to spend it.

Van Jones, Former Obama Administration Green-Jobs Czar

It is not a false statement to call people like Mr. Van Jones a simple looter. Comments like what he has made, such as the one in the example, are statements rooted in sheer ignorance. But this is not an article to condemn only Van Jones. This is an article about condemning all those like him that look to the tax payer to fund their looter mentality. I write this on the heals of watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, which I liked a lot, but when watching the behavior of the pirates, and their mentality, I fail to recognize the difference between any official that asks the tax payer for more money to fund their “big ideas” when the reality of what they are doing is stealing the money outright. Yes, stealing is the correct term.

Why is stealing the correct term? Well, politicians are using tax money in many cases to buy votes. Lyndon Johnston was doing that as president. He was openly creating government programs that had to be funded with tax payer dollars to care for voter demographics beneficial to him politically. In other words, he took money from people who wouldn’t openly support his programs, but took that money in the form of taxes. If the tax payer refused to pay taxes for the programs he created then the tax payer would be arrested under force and thrown in jail. FDR did the same thing in the 40’s. Roosevelt wasn’t interested in being a president; he wanted to be a king. How is that any different from a pirate stealing the resources of a vessel at sea under a black flag? It’s not. LBJ justified this theft by declaring a war on poverty, which he lost, because if the war on poverty truly wanted to be won, the free market would be more openly embraced. Capitalism would be the goal, making money would be the goal, because if a society desires not to have poverty, it would be more in the business of making money so there is more money to be had. Not just simply printing money, like the Fed is doing now to cover the looting they have been doing for years, but actually producing goods that can be exported to a buyer in another country. That’s how you fight poverty.

Karl Marx spent most of his life in poverty, so it is no wonder he looked with jealousy at the world around him and wanted to steal from them. So he came up with communism as a way for people like him, that didn’t know how to make things, and didn’t want to work for a living, to loot money from those that do make things. Since he was a poor man himself, he didn’t understand the value of money. He thought like Van Jones does, that money just existed out there in the world and he needed to find a way to take it from those that have it and give it to people like him, in other words, outright theft.

Each week portions of our pay are taken from us without our consent. This money is taken under the justification of caring for the government. But if you are a person like me, that won’t use Medicare, that won’t draw a Social Security check, that doesn’t want government to be so big. That doesn’t want to support a system that breeds “legal” piracy, you don’t have a choice. I want government to be smaller, so it can be better managed. I don’t want my money taken and used for such purposes as to the expansion of government. In other words, my money is taken and used for purposes I’m against. It is not for the greater good of government, or the country, it is for the looting and plunder of pirates that instead of dressing as Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean they wear a suit and tie. In function they are no different. I will debate anyone that wishes to challenge me otherwise. If they do they are fools, because they are simply covering for crimes they know to be true and are complicit in that crime either through ignorance or their own corruption.

Want some proof? Of the 62 members of Congress that left office in 2008, 16 of them now work as lobbyists. Of those 16, 13 are Republicans. Between 1998 and 2004 43% of those former lawmakers became lobbyists. What is a lobbyists? A lobbyist pushes law makers to pass laws that give the organization that hires the lobbyist to have a competitive advantage over either the government itself, which is essentially a pay-off to avoided excessive regulation, or to gain an advantage over another competitor. This isn’t happening in isolated cases. This is the law of the land. It’s common practice! Think about it, why do we need so many laws? We already have a constitution. With every new law passed, there is money involved, money for attorneys, money for tax collectors, and a reason for politicians to be in session and not off doing something actually productive. Law makers are no different from a fry guy in a local fast food restaurant. If there aren’t any customers, they don’t have anything to do, so they’ll just shuffle the French Fries around the fry bin to look busy. Law makers create new customers with our money so they can have something to do and a reason to exist. And in the complicated laws they pass, lobbyists will then hire them for the knowledge on how to comply with that legislation. That’s how a thief gives value to nothing using the plunder of our resources.

To put the whole looting scheme into terms we can all relate with, lets look at school funding, and something we all must send our children to, so it affects virtually every single one of us. The teachers union lobbies law makers for legislation that protects their members. This is why in Ohio school boards can only negotiate approximately 15% of their total budget costs. The 75% to 85% are completely off-limits because they involve wages and are the largest cost of a school system. This means every time a teacher gets a higher degree, they must be compensated according to state law, because the OEA lobbied for the creation of that law. So when a school like Lakota is told that a $160 million budget is not enough and the question is asked, why? The answer is that labor costs that have no limit in their ceiling value are exploding the budget. Since in Ohio property tax is the primary way of funding schools, a school system has no choice but to ask property owners for more money. For a property owner like me, that thinks an average wage of 63K per year is too much to pay a teacher, I’d favor something more reasonable like 49K to 55K, but that doesn’t matter because the contracts were negotiated with the lobbyist not the tax payer. The politicians made the deal to buy votes from the OEA members in order to secure a deal to put the politician in office so he can collect tax money of their own in a different way. It’s lucrative otherwise they wouldn’t be fighting so hard for the opportunity to loot the public. And all the money used is coming from the tax payer. In this case my property value is looted to support values and education I think are mediocre and too expensive. But I have no choice. If I don’t pay, I would be prosecuted. Yet a prosecutor won’t touch the illegal activity that goes on in schools to pass a levy because a deal is made with the money the members of the teacher’s union supply. The prosecutor won’t touch the issue because they don’t want to deal with the political fall-out involved. The teachers union is too powerful, and not worth the political fight.

Why is the teacher’s union so powerful? Because they have many members and if you want to teach in the state of Ohio, you must be in a teacher’s union. There is no choice. So for every school built, and every teacher hired, a new union contributor is born. Each member contributes money to the union through their checks to feed the system. They do this because teachers know that the union has negotiated a larger than average wage for them, about 30% more than they’d earn in the private sector for the same job. The union knows it must negotiate wage levels that high because teachers are less likely to complain about spending their money on union dues if the teacher has a money surplus each week. As long as the union collects the dues from its members it can then dangle that money in front of politicians to achieve their goals. If teachers made less money, they’d be less likely to openly pay a portion of their check to union dues. But since the teacher is paid with taxes and the dues paid lobby the tax payer’s representatives who then make deals with the unions which then turn around and drive up the costs of the service on both ends, the cost of education goes up, and the elected representative has wasted tax payer’s money. The tax payer is spending money on the politician for making deals and not doing the business of the people. The money is stolen from the property owner and then used against the property owner in the form of higher taxes to support the structure of the scheme.

The tax payers just want their children taught. They want their children to read, write and know how to do math. But educators have made the whole business so complicated that they know in order to rally tax payers behind their cause they must hide the shell game behind local sports, like football, or basketball, things that the whole community values, while the real problems lurk under the façade. That is why sports are the first things districts cut, it’s to loot from the community the thing the whole community values in order to extort a vote in the next election to increase taxes. The message is “you will have something taken from you. You’ll lose your social event, (football games) or you’ll lose money from your property value.” Pick your poison.

But what if I don’t want to pay the extra cost? The answer from them is that “you aren’t patriotic,” or “you don’t like children,” or “are you so poor that you can’t afford the higher taxes.” These are the same games played with our politicians to convince them to work against us. But what if you still don’t want to pay? “Then you will be prosecuted.” The money will be confiscated from you one way or another. That’s why such people are simply looters. They are modern pirates out to loot our wealth. They take from us and give to their whore houses, liquor and other scandalous behavior. And by whore houses, that doesn’t always refer to sex. There is a lot of ways people whore themselves.

That’s just on the local level, in your school. Such things are happening in the building of bridges and highways. In the transfer of property from residential to commercial use, in the creation of every new federal program. If such looting wasn’t going on, K Street and the corrupt activity that goes on there in Washington D.C. would dry up like a mountain town in the Wild West that only exists for the benefit of the gold rush. When the gold went away, the town died. In Washington, the prostitutes that walk the streets with police officers driving by them all day long, the pimps that stand in the middle of the street watching over “their girls” all night, the drugs and bribe money that passes hands across the dinner tables would go away. But all those things are thriving to this very day, at this very hour just steps in front of the White House while Obama practices shooting basketball on the White House basketball court, that we pay for too. Stand on the corner across from the Days Inn on K-Street from 9 to 12 PM and watch the prostitutes standing there with their fish net stockings, their skirts that are so short you can see their panties standing up. Their long high heels force their butts to strut unnaturally as they get into a car, drive off and 15 minutes later that same car comes back around the block and pulls up. The girl gets out, joins the other girls, if any are left, then within 10 minutes, depending on how good she is, she’s back in another car and back around the block. I watched one night the same girl get into 5 different cars over the course of an hour and a half.

Who are the customers, lobbyists out-of-town and away from their wives, spending the money that comes easily for them. They are some of our elected representatives. They are mostly men enjoying their plunder, the same as pirates did in the sinful town of Port Royal. What’s the difference? The plunder was stolen whether it was at gun point on the high seas or under threat of jail. What’s the difference? Very few of us would choose to support this activity. So why do we, because we don’t want to be harassed by the government that we pay for?

Through taxation we have created a political class that believes just as kings and queens did in Europe that they are our rulers. They are entitled to loot from us, to rule us as they see fit. And to pay for their service we are taxed on virtually every movement we make in society. We are taxed for every item of food we eat, every gallon of gas we buy. We are taxed for the cloths we wear and the cars we buy. We are taxed, taxed, and taxed working toward goals that are not our own objectives to sums of money we don’t agree with, to support a public social class that thinks it rules us. There is only one term that describes such a person and that is a serf.

What is a serf by definition?

1. A member of the lowest feudal class, attached to the land owned by a lord and required to perform labor in return for certain legal or customary rights.
2. An agricultural laborer under various similar systems, especially in 18th- and 19th-century Russia and eastern Europe.
3. A person in bondage or servitude.

Doesn’t that sound like what we are? Like with the school systems, I am legally bound to pay for a school system against my wishes? My property is taken from me in the form of money so that I may retain my right to property in the form of land. That is theft. I don’t give willingly to my community, the way I’d prefer it. It is taken from me and spent in ways I find disgusting and sinful, unethical. Yet when I get up in the morning and go to work, I pay over 50% of my earnings as a serf.

The Road to Serfdom:

If we’re only a serf to them why not call them what they are. We may have to pay them as a legal obligation, under the threat of the law that they control with the money we give them, but don’t endorse their behavior with legitimacy. Don’t call them “sir,” or “your honor,” or any respectful designation. Call them pirates, thieves and liars, because they are. It’s not extreme to call them what they are. It’s not out-of-place just because they wear a suit and not a pirate hat and sword. They don’t need a sword, because they have a pen which truly is more mighty and dangerous. It is with the strokes of many pens that we are no longer Americans working for liberty and justice, but serfs working to support giant programs that our citizens are now addicted to like drug addicts that will never get enough. We are now committed serfs that are losing more and more of our wealth to support the extortion of radical pirates with only the mind of a looter. They are willing to take from us everything we have to give until we can’t give any more. It is the same thought process of the master against his slave that only has use for the slave as long as the slave is productive.

We are on the path to serfdom, and we are further along that road than many of us are willing to admit to ourselves. Until we are willing to admit to ourselves the reality of these impositions, and to call the conduct of the looters for what they properly are, we will continue down that path until it runs out. That is the nature of the pirate, they will loot and loot until it’s all gone because they lack the ability to plan from one day to the next. They are only concerned for the prostitute in front of them, or the food about to go into their stomachs. Planning for tomorrow’s sunrise is beyond their capacity, and they don’t need to, as long as they have serf’s like us that will continue to feed them.

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

Don’t Wait for Superman, Look in the Mirror: KASICH HOSTS A STATEWIDE PARTY!

At the Republican Headquarters in Lebanon Thursday May 19, 2011 a unique event occurred. I was skeptical of this event at first, but once concluded, I will admit to a level of enchantment that is unprecedented in these modern times. Concerned citizens looking for options in education funding and content issues gathered to listen to the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich speak from Cleveland at a statewide showing of the film Waiting for Superman.

I wasn’t sure how such a thing would be done. I knew the technology was available. I’ve been involved in many conference calls for business meetings, but what Kasich was trying to do was unique.

I sat down in the lobby of the Republican Headquarters, a small converted house just behind the historic Golden Lamb. It’s an older building unpretentious in it’s nature. Several of my friends were there popping popcorn and eating pizza. At 6 PM a laptop on a desk in the corner played Kasich live over the internet as he introduced the film Waiting For Superman, a film made by the same people who did An Inconvenient Truth which made Al Gore so famous. Kasich spoke about the need for education reform and said that this film, made by liberals, touched him so deeply that he felt compelled to act. He also added that he didn’t like to speak after watching the film but said that we’d all meet back online to have a discussion. Then he said hit play, and enjoy the movie.

There were about 25 of us crammed in the lobby sitting in chairs and watching a widescreen television that was playing the movie, which follows a number of children on their quest for a voucher school. The film explained how devastated public school had become through union influence and kids weren’t learning what they needed to. There were many charts about how America is falling behind the rest of the world in education and there simply isn’t any reason for it. America is nationally spending close to 10K per student, yet the results have not shown up in the kids.

The movie was sad. It’s a film I had wanted to see for a long time, but just didn’t take the time to view. It’s on Netflix, so if you haven’t seen it yet, make it a point to do so. I truly felt sorry for the parents that had children crying because they weren’t able to hit the lottery, which is how kids get into these crowded schools. It’s amazing that these charter schools are so crowded, that there is such a demand for them, because public school is free, and is supposed to take care of this issue without the extra expense. But like anything that’s good, and like everything that’s government run, there are vast discrepancies. What’s good is driven by passionate people who care, and are able to see beyond the headlights, visionaries, and other creative people. Government produces complacency, mediocrity, and sheer dullness. The two different styles and their results are grossly evident in the film.

As I watched the closing moments of the film, the popcorn that was freshly popped just hours before still filled the room with its festive aroma. A screen door that was the threshold to the small building was blowing open and closed in a gentle evening wind as the sun was setting quickly outside. I watched traffic rolling aimlessly down the street outside as the credits ran and nobody spoke for several minutes, computing their emotions. I thought of the people driving those cars, how most of them were so easily manipulated, because they are too busy to think. They are the first type of person that believes the Lakota Administration when they proclaim that their recent contract negotiation with the LEA was done in good faith, and not the threat of S.B.5. Those people driving down the road can’t see the shell game being played against them, not because they are too stupid, but they aren’t willing to deal with the problem. They do like they do most things in their life, they throw money at it and hope the problems go away. Their car breaks down a lot, they throw money at a brand new one. Their neighbor gets new gutters that direct the water away from their homes, so they go buy new gutters. Their neighbor buys a new television, so they buy a new television. They work too much, they are on their second marriages and have step children that need educated, but they don’t truly care for their step children, because the children remind them of a previous spouse, so they avoid the children psychologically. They instead count on the schools to fill the emotional gap so they throw money at the schools.

At the end of the credits Kasich was back on live from Cleveland speaking from the laptop. He went on to perform an hour of questions and answers about his views on education reform. Educators, school board members and other concerned citizens spoke in the town hall-style meeting and I thought Kasich did a great job of opening himself up. I couldn’t recall any governor of any state attempting with such sincerity to do anything close to what Kasich was doing, let alone tackle the controversial issue of education with such direct frankness.

Around 9 PM everything wrapped up, I grabbed a handful of popcorn and headed back to the car with my wife. On the way home we talked about the experience. She looked at me as the darkened countryside passed by outside the window. “I understand with clarity what the problem is.”

“You do?” I asked.

“Yes, I felt sorry for those mothers, but the problem is many of those women have forgotten to be mothers. They had other options. Looking to someone else to educate their children is asking for a disaster.”

I thought about it. She was right. She is a woman who took a lot of criticism while we were raising our kids because she took a very active role in their lives. When we were first married we made the decision to have her not work, so when we had kids she would be able to commit herself toward their development. We didn’t want to do daycare. We didn’t want to rely on a family member, because there was a certain vision toward life I wanted them to have, and I wanted a mother there to make sure they got it. We didn’t raise our kids waiting for superman. We decided to be superman. I did the extra work to make sure my wife was free to raise my kids. And she did the extra work to make sure it happened even though society ridiculed her for it. Here was a woman who could have been a professional model, here was a woman who had a load of brains and was book smart, where school was easy for her. But to society, she was wasting her life in sacrifice to her children. She was giving up a career and everything that comes with it so she could be cooped up in a house with a bunch of little kids. To society, that decision was tragic.

My opinions on this matter where settled when I was very young. My mother was the kind of woman everyone wanted for a mom. She did all the things that kids fantasize about in having an ideal mom. She was always there for a little treat. She was always there to hand out a band-aid. Dinner was always ready around at 5:30 pm when Dad came home. She was a room mom in school that would make treats for every kid in my class. She did all the little things that are so important while children are still developing their consciousness from those tender ages of 1 to 12. My mom was the kind of woman who would give me books that she’d write little things in that I still have, and I may not read the book right then, but within the next year or two, I would. She still does things like that, just the other day while my dad and her were vacationing in Hilton Head, she brought me back a new book mark that had pirate skulls all over it in 3D. She wrote a little message on the back for me to remember, which I will.

For me, I was done cooking at age 12, because I had a dedicated mother, and a grandmother that was equally dedicated. I had a stable father, and a good positive family environment. It worked wonderfully. All the kids my mother had turned out well. Nobody has any deep psychological problems. We all handle stress well, and are successful at the art of living, not just financially, but emotionally as well. It’s not a surprise. It’s not a secret formula. All it took was a mom. As a man, I don’t have a single insecurity. Not a single inferiority complex. I don’t have a single doubt, or fear. I didn’t get that by age 12, but the foundation was set. The rest I had to do myself and that didn’t get completed till I raised my own kids. Because when you are raising kids, you may not fear for yourself, but you do fear for them.

I married a woman who wanted to commit herself in the same way to my own kids. That’s what I looked for in a woman, someone who would be dedicated to building a family. Someone that would always be there for my kids, someone who would make actual birthday cakes, and not buy them at Kroger, someone who would buy my kids little treats while they are out shopping, so the children would have something fun to greet them when they came home from school. I wanted a woman who would drive them to school everyday so my kids wouldn’t have to ride a school bus, because I remembered what happened to little girls on the school bus in grade school, and since I had girls, I wasn’t going to put them through the humiliation. I didn’t want them to accept humiliation. When the school system crossed the line and didn’t teach my kids what I thought they should be learning, or they didn’t teach enough, we pulled the kids out of school and taught them ourselves. I wanted a woman that would do that kind of thing, that would buy my kids books and would read to them every night.


As the countryside went black I looked at my wife. She had done all those things over a 20 year period. She endured ridicule from family members and friends that most people never experience, because most people don’t go against the grain as furiously as she did. Only in hind-sight can those same family members see the benefits. Only in hind-sight do we understand what we fought so hard for. Our children are evidence of all the hard work. They are brilliant and good in every way a parent hopes for.

We have occasional disagreements like when I recently argued with my youngest about applying to college in London. I told her those socialists would attempt to reprogram her and she’d be too far away from home to get her grounding again. “Oh, dad, I’m not a weak-minded fool.”

My kids don’t lack courage. They are secure. And there isn’t any problem that they think they can’t handle, at any level. Why is that? Because they had a fantastic mother.

In the movie, Waiting for Superman, I realized my wife had hit the core of the issue. Those mothers, crying to get their children in a charter school and away from the apathy of public school were making a fundamental error in raising their children. They were looking for the school to do the job of the mother. That is the fatal error.

Not everyone reading this can take pride in having such mothers as I describe. We are suffering through a hundred years of progressive brain-washing. I know how hard it was on my wife and me, so I understand why people give up, or don’t even get started on the commitment. However, no amount of money can be thrown at a situation to fix education. It cannot be the job of a school of any kind, especially a government-run entity, to replace the parent. There is no substitute for a mother, especially a good one.

My advice to people is don’t wait for superman to come and save you. Become superman and save yourself. If you really want your kids to have a good life, fight for lower taxes so you children can keep more of the money they make. And spending time with your children is a lot more productive than spending money. There is no substitute as much as lost progressive souls wish upon a star of illusion. Their legacy has left mothers trying to be fathers, fathers trying to be mothers, and fathers divorcing mothers and mothers marrying other fathers of other children while those fathers marry new mothers. Progressives drool over the hope that they can fill the social destruction with a teacher that we are asking too much of, what they don’t see is that it is their policies that created the mess to start with. Progressives are responsible for the whole mess. They are what destroyed the American family. They are what have destroyed education. They are what have left us taxed beyond existence, the blood is on their hands as millions of young people grow less intelligent the older they get.

I know a very bright-eyed young girl of about 7 that is full of hope and dreams. Everyone when they first met her thought “this is a young girl that will be something.” But the closer she gets to junior high, the closer she gets to older kids that are “giving up,” because they see where their lives are going in their messed up parents, the light in this young girl’s eyes is dimming. I told my wife that in a few years, the light will go out all together.

“Why, we must do something,” she said.

“You can’t help her,” I said. “You can only help your own children, your nieces or nephews. You can be kind and offer yourself as a mentor, but ultimately those kids will only be as good as their parents.”

She whiffed in frustration, but she understood what I meant. We both drove into the darkness of Monroe, passed the Hustler of Hollywood store and noticed that it was full on a Thursday night. We both knew what the other was thinking as we continued west back to our home. Government tried to replace the family and they failed, and public school is the evidence of that failure. More money won’t fix that problem until we fix our desire to have strong families again, as a society. Because it all starts with a mom and a dad. And if the mom and a dad don’t make it, the kids will suffer. No amount of money can wash away the guilt of what those parents put their children through, even though countless parents hope and pray that the sins of their lives can be purchased from the souls of their children. We now understand that it is impossible.

Become Superman, don’t wait for him. The greatest gift you can give a child is to give them someone to look up to, to emulate. Money won’t do it. Only what’s in your soul will work, and you can’t hide that with material goods. You have to be superman to the core of your being.

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

Shoudn’t Superintendents Go To Jail for the Crimes Against the Tax Payer: Yes, according to George W. Bush

With all the discussion about corruption in public education there are options that the tax payer can participate in. One of those options Representative Bill Coley talked about with Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. Click this link to listen to that broadcast. It’s the ability to expand education opportunities for both students and teachers in the future, and to emerge from the scandalous behavior that we are seeing more and more in public education. It’s not that these corruption problems weren’t always there, they have been for years, but now there are people who are willing to look at them. After Representative Coley came on to speak to Doc, I provided further testimony to the benefits of Coley’s congressional bill. But, it is obvious that something must be done to protect our schools from the kind of social reform that is being imposed on our kids, such as what was revealed at this Tuscan School Board meeting on Tuesday May 10, 2011

As parents learn that they have options, it is by using those options that they can be most instrumental in bringing about change. By voting down school levies, by using other forms of education to teach your kids, by taking advantage of every opportunity available, the parent of a child will go a long way to ending these massive public education debacles that are making a joke of education in the United States.

Keynesian economists like Barrack Obama believe that the more money you pour into a program, the better it is. Well, that’s not true, and Barrack reveals his inexperience at life by subscribing to a popular theory that circulates around universities all across the county. It circulates through academia because that’s the only place it works, because in academia tax payers and tuition increases cover the cost of such foolishness. In reality the more money you throw into a situation, the more corrupt it becomes. As shown in Brendan Keefe’s I-Team report, (click here to view) when a lot of money is supplied by the tax payers, there is no shortage of thieves that will line up to take that money for everything they can. We live in a culture that has learned to “game” the system, and our educators are teaching our children by example, and we are teaching our children its ok, because we continue to pass levies and feeding the corruption with our apathy. People like this woman are perfect examples of Keynesian economics. They just don’t understand how things work. They are a lost group of people who have been lied to by the kind of people who taught them in public education. She obviously learned from the same kind of people who put together the text-book in Tuscan.

I have to credit West Clermont that put their levy down in a spectacular way last week. The residents there are demanding change, yet their superintendent is defiant and toeing the line. (You can see that story by clicking here.) What’s happening is that Governor Kasich is trying to give districts like West Clermont the tools they need to manage their costs, but S.B.5 will have to withstand the repeal attempt by the type of people in the protest speech, well-intentioned people who have simply been taught incorrectly virtually everything the foundations of their lives are built on.

The solution to this kind of nonsense is in programs like what Bill Coley spoke about. When people start using them, the thugs that are embedded in public education can begin to be filtered out of the process. So take charge of your child’s education. Don’t just drop them off for baby-sitting convenience while you’re at work. The tools are available to you right now that give your children options to avoid the kind of bottom-feeders that are attracted to the lucrative business of public education. All people need to do is use them.

But doing nothing will only make the situation worse.

If you’re a CEO and you think you can fudge the books in order to make yourself look better, we’re going to find you, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to hold you to account.
–President George W. Bush, 2002

That’s tough talk for a president, but it’s only talk. Under his watch, corruption in public education exploded because he threw money at it. It looks like every superintendent in Ohio is guilty of doing exactly what President Bush declared CEO’s are doing. If superintendents want to be considered as CEO’s shouldn’t they go to jail when they get caught “cooking the books” commit “fraud” or participate in out-right “cover-ups?” Because it looks like the jails in Ohio would fill beyond capacity with those committing the crimes.

So why send children to such places, where criminals reside and pretend to be authority figures? Why do it when there are options such as the Online Options Bill Coley speaks about, or School Choice which is coming along under Governor Kasich’s reforms. By endorsing these criminals with your tax money, you are making the situation worse and are partially guilty of crimes against our society. By participating in competition you will force the best to survive and the crooked to be cast out, and that needs to happen quickly.

Rich Hoffman

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

Innovation in our Ohio Schools: Bill Coley explains, and Lakota looks for new school board members

Welcome to the Ohio Learning Network. Meet the future of Education NOW! Click the link below to visit.

http://oln.org/

 

If you want to meet the guy who brought this innovative program to Ohio, listen to Representative Bill Coley talk to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW.

I came on with Doc Thompson to support Coley, where I’ve been quite aware of what Bill was working on, so I am a big fan. Kids these days are so bored in the classroom, I know firsthand, my kids just graduated, and I know a lot of young people. The way they spend their leisure time, with video games, Facebook, smart phones, hundreds of channels on TV, computer web sites, the world has become incredibly interactive, and the idea of a teacher standing in front of a class and preaching to students that are just staring at the clock waiting for their life to begin at the end of the day is completely barbaric.

Yet school boards are still trying to hold on to the old way of learning. They are completely unable to think outside the box of tradition and embrace aspects of education reform that have been presented by Representative Coley. This is why Lakota, and many schools are floating the idea of another levy for November of 2011.

In the Pulse Journal, I gave a lengthy interview to Lindsey Hilty, about the NoLakotaLevy.com group which is due out on Thursday, where I also provided an editorial. As a benefit to my readers here, I am going to provide you with a preview of my comment before its release in the paper. My frustration with the school board is in their expensive, and blind grip on the old “brick and mortar” cost of education. So my anger is evident. I see aspects of education like the Ohio Learning Network as some of the solutions to the extraordinary costs schools are seeing, and the school boards and teachers unions as expensive old models that have failed. So I don’t attempt to disguise my feelings since they are the enemies to a solution.

________________________________________________________________________

Wanted: New School Board Members

It is gravely unfortunate that the Lakota School Board has made it known that they intend place another school levy on the ballot in November of 2011. While the Teachers Union at Lakota had a much publicized wage freeze in August of 2010 mysteriously the wages for Lakota teachers crept up anyway.

Lakota has assured everyone that they have done their best to cut costs, they’ve cut busing, they made sports a pay for play program, they’ve cut electives, and teaching positions, but out of all those supposed reductions, not once did anyone address the problem of paying teachers too much.

Last year at the NoLakotaLevy.com web site we brought out an article where 434 teachers made over 65K per year, that was in 2010. In 2011, there are over 625 teachers that make over 65K per year. Nobody is looking out for the tax payers in the Lakota School District.

The No Lakota Group met on this issue early last week, in anticipation of the school boards announcement. So here’s what we’re going to do. Any board member that votes in favor of another school levy will be looked at to be replaced with a new board member. If you are interested in becoming a school board member please contact us at NoLakot@roadrunner.com. We have several people who have spoken to us over the last couple of months, but we would like the opportunity to put the best candidates on the school board and would like to begin interviewing now. The best candidates would be over 55, preferably retired, or semi-retired and not looking to use the school board as a political platform for higher office, or to enhance their real estate professions. We want people who will not cave to the union, or pay 50K just to look for a superintendent that they intend to over-pay at 200K to 300K per year. We want people who have been successful at life, and therefore able to run our school system without corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.

Contact us today.

More to come…………

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html

Rich Hoffman

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

Superintendents Make More than the Governor: Changes and Corruption in Public School

Today was a significant day in the world of education reform. As cops are using a memorial service in Cincinnati to repeal the S.B.5 Bill, which public school teachers through their union organization worked hard at during the election last Tuesday to collect signatures for their referendum attempt, new innovative ideas that those same teachers stand against were discussed by Bill Coley and Doc Thompson on 700 WLW.

It was refreshing to hear Bill talk about an idea that he has worked hard on since 2007-2008 where he actually managed to get Ted Strickland to sign the bill allowing Online Classes for public education. This new form of learning will be implemented in Ohio which is further along than any state in the country at this point in education reforms that will not only save money to the school districts and the state, but also stimulate the children being educated. So there isn’t any downfall to the students of Bill’s Online Education Innovation for Public Education. The downfall is only in the employment of teachers in a brick and mortar style classroom where all classes must be under 30 students where a teacher stands in front of a class and teaches as society has taught since the age of the Greeks.

But the story doesn’t stop there. As we have worked very hard to bring to the surface, education as it stands now is not about teaching children. It’s about making money for the employees of the district. After I came on Doc’s show to provide my support for Representative Coley’s project, which will become a major part of Governor Kasich’s education reform agenda, and one of the reasons teachers are trying to repeal S.B.5, so they can maintain their iron grip on tax payer funds with no flexibility at all for innovation or budget reductions, Brendan Keefe came on Doc’s show to discuss the ground-breaking I Team Report that he has by now unleashed to the voting population.

If you missed the broadcast, just check it out at the top of this page. In that report, what quickly becomes evident is that superintendents and other members of school administrations are deeply corrupt, because they know that if you live in a district, and want your kids taught, and you want your property values to remain favorable, then you will pay these extortion artists whatever they demand because they are openly scamming all tax payers. They don’t even respect people enough to come on camera to explain the situation. They won’t come on because they can’t.

I know Doc has extended the offer to come on WLW to many superintendents to defend themselves and all of them rejected it. Brendan did the same, he extended the branch of journalistic peace to all administrators and nobody would speak. The reason is that they are guilty of what they are accused of, and they won’t go on the record to project a lie that will hurt them latter. They are playing politics, hoping that people will just go back to sleep and pass their levies, and that the education money machine will always take care of them.

These people are so crooked that even before the election results were over from Tuesday’s election, these superintendents are floating out more levy requests for this November. I know that in the Edgewood district, just to the north of Lakota, they are considering not even announcing it in the paper, hoping that only school supporters show up to vote, leaving everyone else in the dark. That’s the game we’re playing in education, and this is why kids are not learning more than they are, yet we are spending more money than ever on education. But that money is not finding itself to the kids, it is being scrapped off and placed into the pockets of the corrupt public servant.

We have no choice but to call these people thieves since they refuse to give an interview to Channel 9, or WLW to say otherwise, because all the evidence points to these people as first class crooks.

Click on the link below to get to Brendan’s page where you can look up your districts superintendent. 

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/i-team%3A-5-southwest-ohio-superintendents-make-more-than-the-governor

Rich Hoffman

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

Wanted: New School Board Members at Lakota–Apply at www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Lakota announced that they intend to vote on the placement of a new levy at the August 27th School Board Meeting of 2011. Apparently the school board, who I had been hoping would work with us in the community, has not received the message. They simply cannot see past the end of their nose. They only seem to know how to spend money in spite of the fact that most of their excessive costs bankrupting their budget is in their wages. Nobody on any side of the education issue at Lakota has shown any desire to deal with the issue at hand, so the school board is resorting to the only thing they know to do, and that’s ask for money.

Doc Thompson covers this issue and some of the “cultural diversity” that school systems are spending money on that is not something people like me find necessary to proper education of a child. I simply don’t want to spend good money on teachers that are teaching aspects of social behavior that are the jobs of the children’s family. The Cultural Center at Lakota is not something that is necessary as a funding option. Any employee that works on that program should be dropped for budget reduction reasons, because it is not something that a public school should even be involved in. Listen to Doc’s broadcast here as he breaks down the new levy attempt and a breakdown to the cultural sensitivity issues going on in our public schools, Lakota specifically.

Matt Mayer always has great information at the Buckeye Institute. He has an article that shows the origin of this behavior that we are being asked to pay for in school levies. Click onto this link to see his report and a copy of the magazine that the Ohio Education Associate sends its members. This tells you all you need to know about the social agenda of the OEA.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/s-b-5-would-have-saved-1-3-billion-in-2010-yet-the-oea-says-its-teachers-will-suffer-when-the-average-teacher-makes-55k/

So the real question is do we want to pay for this kind of stuff? I don’t. This is why I don’t want any of my tax money to go to union activity. I would like to vote to not have that kind of behavior taught in my school district because I don’t support all this cultural stuff. When a school does this, they are crossing the line to what is my responsibility as a community member and parent.

The Lakota School Board should first look at cutting these kinds of non-essential social programs well before they come to the tax payer for funding beyond the allocated budget. This is an old game that is not only socially corrosive, if you’re a non-progressive person such as myself, but is extraordinarily expensive and people are forced to pay for the whole deal instead of just the portions they support.

The No Lakota.Com group had a meeting on this issue last week, in anticipation that the school board would attempt to pass another levy in 2011 well before they attempted to fundamentally change the way they do business, which is extraordinarily arrogant on their behalf. So the No Lakota Group decided to change our strategy a bit. Instead of just defending the tax payers from further increases in their taxes, as we’ll still do, we will now start taking applications from members of the community to become the next school board members. There are two seats that are up this year on the school board and in the next couple of years the remaining three seats. The No Lakota Group will be seeking to replace each seat that votes in favor of a levy starting with the vote in August established by the Lakota School Board. If all the school board can do is ask for more money, they are useless, and must be replaced. So the No Lakota Levy.Com group will not only be committed to defeating the next levy, but they will actively elect the next school board members.

So if you’d like to be a school board member and would like to serve your community and have a non-progressive, business oriented background contact us at NoLakota@roadrunner.com so we can add your name to the list of people we are assembling for our strategic replacement of school board members who vote in favor of more taxes instead of the more difficult management aspects of a school boards responsibility. We have two issues that are driving up the cost of education that a school board needs to have the courage to tackle. First is the foolishness of union contracts to not manage their step increases which are bankrupting the district. The second is the failure to filter out social teaching programs that if parents want their kids to be “culturally diverse” they can pay for it separately. The community at large should not be forced to pay for education measures that they don’t agree with. Social Justice is an elective that should be up to the parent. It is not essential education for young people to live their lives. Social Justice Education is something that should be independently funded, and its removal from the classroom could dramatically reduce education costs to the tax payer. Again, if a parent wants that type of teaching for their children they are free to pay for it elsewhere, or as an added fee in the school. But it is up to the school board to separate these costs before ever considering another levy attempt.

I’ve heard from many of you over the last several months. Now is the time to act, so contact us today!

www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Rich Hoffman

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

Looters against Logic: The Thieves of Education!

I was on 700 WLW May 4, 2011 speaking to Doc Thompson about the Lakota School Levy situation, superintendent expectations, and the ridiculous way education is sold to mask larger social agendas by tricking tax payers into paying for things they’d consciously reject if they were aware of those issues.

This interview comes on the day after the illustrious attempt by several local school districts, namely Lebanon, Little Miami, and Batavia among others. Thankfully, those levies failed. It gives me hope that there are fewer stupid people in the world than I had feared, because if you vote for a school levy, you’re stupid.

As voters hit the polls yesterday there were petition booths set up to repeal S.B.5. I have to laugh at the type of people who are behind this movement. These are people that subscribe to Keynes economic theory, which in short believes that money spent equals value. This is a preposterous idea, one that is abysmally off center and has no grounding in reality.

S.B.5 is the only way school districts can get their costs under control and the unions are terrified that once the scheme is revealed to people, which is what is happening, that they’ll loose forever their power in politics, and they should lose that power. I don’t even recognize the right of a union to exist in the public sector. Unions have no place in American society. They are creatures of LBJ’s Great Society that reflected FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. Booth of those Presidents were ego driven fools that wanted to live on forever to memorialize their power and prestige in the minds of people deep into the future. It is these types of people the Constitution was designed to protect us from. The reason that Keynesian economic theories fail is that they don’t account for the faults of the human mind. They assume that the privileged few who rule are without corrupt intentions. Unfortunately, those who crave power are often prone to corruption. They might start off with good intentions, but the job and temptations often ruin their minds. That’s why term limits are so important.

What is terrifyingly obvious once a little investigation is applied to school systems is that superintendents as a group seem prone to fill empty aspects of their lives with the value of money. That’s where Keynes fails as an economist, it does not account for corruption and failures of the human heart.

In the story with Doc, we discussed how Lakota wanted to hire a superintendent at 300K per year, and the arguments are that Lakota is a massive school with a lot of students and that’s what a position with such responsibility merits. Well, traditionally, the President of the United States is the highest-paid public employee. President Obama currently earns $400,000 per year, along with a $150,000 expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account and $19,000 for entertainment. The most recent raise in salary was approved by Congress and President Bill Clinton in 1999 and went into effect in 2001; prior to the change, the President earned $200,000, plus expense accounts. By the time you add up the car allowances of superintendents and all other benefits, they are getting paid too close to what the President of the United States is making for running the whole nation, not just a school district. So this gives some idea how far off base these numbers are for pay scales.

That’s why S.B.5 is important. It will allow communities to bring these types of corrupt costs under control and create a pay scale the tax payers can deal with. This is also why those people looking to repeal the law want to do so, because they seek to continue the theft they have been conducting on us for years. They want the spoils system of education to continue even when it’s obvious that the system is bankrupting itself just like every Keynesian theory does.

I am proud that WLW has covered this issue, and have done so boldly for quite some time. It also gives me great pleasure to know that these education stories are now being covered by television. To learn more, get ready for the I-Team report by Brendan Keefe on Monday, May 9, 2011 on Channel 9 at 6 PM. It will open your eyes, and close your wallet and teach you things you never thought were possible from the people we entrust with our children’s lives.

Rich Hoffman

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

23 Years of Marriage: Fighting the Maoists, Marxists, and other parasites that want to undo our flag

I spent my twenties reading Joseph Campbell who was an intellectual very well-respected among virtually everyone no matter what the political affiliation. And after I read every Campbell book, some of them several times, I read his autobiography by Stephen and Robin Larsen called A Fire in the Mind, The Life of Joseph Campbell and I remembered with some surprise the quote from that book on page 466 paragraph 3, “Campbell believed in a great revolution of the spirit, and deplored the authority figures of the world who sought to keep human-kind in line. While he seemed to be siding with the powers that be, on the other hand he felt that the revolution of the Marxists and the Maoists was no real revolution but only the triumph of a new kind of collectivism, perhaps even worse than the old religious orthodoxies, because it had totally repudiated the spiritual element—and even worse, the celebration of individuality.” That comment came on March 10th in 1969. It made Campbell very upset that many of his students at Sara Lawrence College were missing class to protest the war and that is the context of his comments.

Well, those Marxists and Maoists that were skipping Joseph Campbell’s class are now the old hippies and idealists that are in public office now. In 1979 lobbyists committed to the 10 Planks of Communism finally convinced Jimmy Carter to begin a Department of Education founded by those Maoists and Marxists types and since then they have penetrated our schools with the ideology of collectivism instead of actual fundamental education. It was during this period that the United States went from ranking second in education to other countries to fourteenth in the 1990’s just 15 years after the start of The Department of Education. That’s quite a sharp decline.

Today is my 23rd wedding anniversary with my wife. She knows what to give me, a guy that reads and writes continuously while watching the news and cutting hours of radio broadcasts into digestible bits so people who miss valuable information can hear them at their convenience. So she made me an American flag blanket which she gave me this morning.

She and I have fought through a lot to arrive at 23 years of marriage and we know what it takes to pull up the boot straps and accomplish a task. We’ve raised a couple of kids along the way and went on countless adventures. And it gives me great pride to look at each stitch on that blanket and think of the countless hours of quality she poured into it.

Those disgusting old hippies, goons, freaks, losers, Marxists, Maoists and thieving intellectuals that wish they encompassed just a fraction of the mind of someone like Joseph Campbell are now taking our nation on a path as seen in this chart by David Murrain, and this is something I take very personal, because it’s my country they’re attacking, and have been for a long time.

You can see more from the work of David Murrain at this link.
https://www.breakingthecodeofhistory.com/about.htm
Who is David Murrain, check him out here:

Here is another bit from David on the devaluation of American currency.

The solution I see, as opposed to open warfare, is a candidate in 2012 that will punch hard those Marxists and Maoists that have entrenched themselves in our economy, our education, our politics at every level, our media, virtually everywhere. The next president will have to be combative, articulate, and a creator of magnificent proportions if we hope to avoid the decline of the over-extension portion of that chart, because Obama and his gang of Marxists and Maoists are taking us to an end quickly.

I agree with the Bull Dog from 700 WLW that Donald Trump is the kind of guy that can level out that curve. He may not be the guy everyone loves, but we need a media equivalent to the Marxists, Socialists, Maoists, radical extremists, union interests composed of the same elements, that are embedded in our culture and it will take someone like Trump to do it. If someone comes up with better candidate, fine, but the Bull Dog articulates the problem very well in this bit.

. To repair the nation it will take each and every person that makes up that nation to do their part, be good individuals and work toward the goal of renewal, and we’ll do it one stitch at a time, or one word at a time, but we will get there because I have committed myself to as much in this next phase of my marriage. That’s why my wife gave me that gift, to show her support of my effort.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Tossed Away Good Money on Gary Hudepohl: Why people who don’t value themselves don’t understand the value of money.

Who are those vacant souls that cleave to chaos on a quest to control everyone from their self-important temples behind the desk top nameplate? Doc Thompson explores how a double-standard of racism is making Cincinnati Public Schools a maze of malice that masks the true conduct behind a school superintendent.

Superintendents are a mysterious species and within the Lakota School System Gary Hudepohl of Hudepohl and Associates made an abysmal statement in his assessment of what it is going to cost Lakota to hire a new superintendent that is business minded, and reflect the values expressed by the business community within the Lakota School District. His audacious statement, after the school board paid his firm 40K for just a search of candidates, is that the community will have to pay over 300K per year for the position of a qualified superintendent.

What?????????? Why?

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2011/03/28/lakota-superintendent-search-presented-at-board-meeting/

This tells me that Lakota wasted its money on Hudepohl. This guy is as clueless as the people who threw the community to the wolves by agreeing to teacher contracts that blew the budget with no management cost controls. Hudepohl clearly doesn’t have his mind around the type of superintendent that Lakota needs, and the school board paid 40K for that bit of information, that we’re just supposed to throw more money at the problem. And wasn’t it said by one of Lakota’s school board members who protested the spending of the 40K on a superintendent search that 40K would pay for two teachers? No, it won’t. 40K will only get you one teacher at Lakota. How can they manage their costs if they don’t understand what they are?

The next question I have is why does it take months and months to find a superintendent? If I were paid 40K for a search, I would have delivered within the week. Why is Gary Hudepohl so inefficient? If our school system has to pay his fee, why hasn’t he performed? Does he think speeches to the board and to community’s business leaders earn his money? And why do we even need a superintendent. Lakota has effectively been without a superintendent for two business quarters now. It appears that Ron Spurlock who is an assistant superintendent and filling in the role has done a good job so far, and he’s cheaper. Why not give him the job? I’d say he deserves it assuming he can stick up to the union in that role instead of caving to it because he is a former member of it.

I know that West Chester Trustee George Lang was asked by Hudepohl, “who should be the next superintendent at Lakota?” George called me and told me what he told Hudepohl, “Call Rich Hoffman. He knows what you should be looking for.” Of course Gary didn’t call me, so instead, he is choosing the same old expensive, big government type that he believes will come in and be able to get control of the situation and sell the status quo to the community. That’s why he thinks it should cost 300K, because the new superintendent will have to be able to campaign against people like me, who can go on the radio and debate false facts and make people believe them, in other words, a union stooge that can maintain order.

Well, Gary, you are going to be looking a long time because the person you’re looking for doesn’t exist. You’re looking for a big government school type when schools need to be downsizing. As seen in the below article, Oklahoma just voted in favor of a major bill that will expand School Choice. Ohio is marching in the same direction. And when that happens, Lakota will have to become 500 times more efficient than it is now in order to survive. They think they do more with less now, and they do, compared to the massive inefficiency of the public school system. But the cost per pupil needs to be driven down to less than 6000K per student. And Lakota isn’t even considering how to achieve anything close to those kinds of numbers. And Gary’s 300K superintendent won’t be able to do that job so the 40K we’ve spent on Gary’s firm was as predicted, a tremendous waste of money that has delivered nothing, and won’t.

Oklahoma House Passes School Choice Program with Broad Student Eligibility

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OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — More Oklahoma families will be able to send their children to the schools of their choosing, following today’s passage of the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act. The bill will provide partial tax credits to individuals and businesses that donate to nonprofits that distribute private-school scholarships to eligible families.
By a vote of 64-43, the Oklahoma House of Representatives approved the measure, which previously passed the Senate chamber by a vote of 30-14.
“This is another step in the direction of choice for Oklahoma’s parents and children,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice, said. “We look forward to seeing school choice continue to flourish in the Sooner State, and we are eager to watch other states follow Oklahoma’s lead.”
The Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act, sponsored by Rep. Lee Denney (R) and Sen. Dan Newberry (R), would make families with incomes up to 300 percent of the income needed to qualify for the federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch program eligible to receive scholarships; however, scholarship-giving nonprofits must spend a portion of their expenditures for low-income students in an amount equal to or greater than the percentage of low-income students in the state.
Eligible students, 50 percent of whom must be enrolled currently in public schools, can receive scholarships worth up to $5,000 or 80 percent of the average per-pupil expenditures in the school districts where they reside. With a “cap” of tax credits allowed set at $1.75 million—and with the tax credit itself being worth 50 percent of the donation—the program will provide potentially $3.5 million toward scholarships. The program also provides a separate $1.5 million in tax credits for donations made to nonprofits that distribute “educational improvement grants” to public schools, which is similar to a 10-year-old program in Pennsylvania.
If the Senate agrees to the changes made in the House, the bill will proceed to Gov. Mary Fallin.

The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.

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School Choice is the future of education. Not big expensive superintendents. Schools will have to shrink in size, not expand larger. And those are the facts of life.

Gary Hudepohl is out of his mind and is too expensive in his thinking. He’s looking for the wrong candidate and this disappoints me greatly and here’s why. Money’s value is equal the person that makes it. The formula gets skewed when you give money to people who don’t value that money, because they are people in and of themselves of little value. You can’t give a fool money and expect them to know what to do with it, which is evident in the exploding school budgets in all school systems. And in this case Hudepohl was thrown money by fools that don’t value the effort it took to earn the money. When you work in government, this is a common tendency because the money spent is seldom earned. 50K or 100K is all the same to a fool. It’s just a number. And only a fool thinks it’s appropriate to throw 300K at a position that an assistant making a third of that money is currently doing. Because to the fool, 300K or a million is all the same value, because they know very little about value, because as people they lack value in themselves.

Oh, I heard what you said in your mind. You said how can I make such negative assessments on people? Who am I to make such an assertion?

Well, I’m a person who knows people. And people who are attracted to board of education positions that are supposed to be a donation of their time, and very little, if any, financial compensation is provided for such jobs, are attracted to those jobs because those people are looking for value in their lives, because they lack value in themselves. They look at a public position to give them respect, and power. That’s why they crave these jobs for very little money because the money isn’t important to them. Because they have no value of it to begin with, they seek the approval of others to obtain the value in their lives that they are missing. This is why education is so expensive. It is run by fools that are missing much in their lives and pass themselves off as authority figures. That is the tragedy that has revealed itself and the answer to the riddle posed at the beginning of this article.

That is why those of us that do value money won’t just blindly throw money at fools.

Rich Hoffman

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