Fraternity of Thieves: If the government runs it, you’ll meet the members

The usual reaction to the looter mentality, those people who seek to justify their existence by riding on the backs of the poor, the weak, the young, the minorities, so that they can cry injustice is being done, and they must help those people to create work for themselves.  These people remind me of the classic snake oil salesman that might sell a magic potion to frontier settlers to ease the minds of adventures always one decision away from death.  Looters are parasites that have nothing to offer but a false sense of security. 

Doc Thompson did an excellent report of public housing on 700 WLW.  Public housing is one of those programs provided by tax payers, created by politicians using tax payer money to leave their mark on the world by building something they couldn’t build themselves, and to help people who are down on their luck. 

What the looter mentality truly seeks to accomplish however is to make victims addicted to the service they provide, just as a drug dealer would do with highly addictive drugs.  Public housing is cheap, and provides very little incentive to the people who use it to care for the properties, making them tremendous failures.  Virtually everywhere public housing was created, they have only breed high crime, terrible real estate values, and created a class of people who are weaker than the generation that brought them into the world.  Weaker, because the ambition to create for themselves is vacant, the pride in not accepting help from someone else, especially government is gone.  Once these minds accept themselves as failures, their lives are greatly diminished.  The looter politician likes this, because now he has guaranteed voters in the next election because he has people addicted to his services.  And the tax payer becomes more of a serf because they are forced to fund programs they might morally disagree with. 

The strong and the brave know that to make a person stronger, you have to put opposition in front of that person.  For a body builder to make larger muscles, they must lift heavy weights.  “No pain no gain.”  For a football team to be good, they must have a coach that pushes the player beyond their limits.  They must be strong, lift weights and run all the drills required, and the best coached team in the end will win more games than the team that isn’t so well coached.  Being well coached means the coach has forced the players to reach a place deep inside to have a competitive edge.  A team that has a coach that panders to the players ends up with discipline problems, and victory seldom comes.  Case in point, the Cincinnati Bengals. 

The human being is built in such a way that they need to struggle to appreciate what is before them.  It has something to do with the way the brain creates neurons, how memory is written into the mind.  Memory and thought is created when the brain is forced to act to defend itself.  This is why poor managers and teachers believe that creating fear in their employees and students will make them better, but fear alone doesn’t work.  Fear breads contempt which gets in the way of respect, and without respect, the individual will fail to act on their own, but will wait for direction, which is counterproductive.  But those ill-advised managers and teachers are getting part of the process right, extreme circumstances do shock the mind into learning. 

This is why welfare doesn’t work.  This is why public workers are generally less competitive than private sector workers, and this is why public housing fails terribly.  This is also why public schools fail. 

I went to the Springboro School Board meeting on May 24th, 2011 to help my friend Kelly Kohls while she is struggling with a contentious contract negotiation with their teachers union.  The union there is adopting the same basic contract Lakota just passed.  It is obvious that the Ohio Education Association is working a strategy that is state-wide.  But to help sell the contract at the beginning of the meeting a parade of teachers came before the audience with selected children from their classes and awarded those children with awards of exceptionalism

I watched the various teachers proudly drape their arms about the shoulders of their students in great affection.  Flash bulbs filled the room often as proud parents took pictures to remember the event.  But I frowned in disappointment.  I looked into the eyes of those teachers, those bright-eyed young women in most cases, and I saw a looter.  They are looters because the traits they are celebrating in the young students were given to those students by their parents.  The teacher is just along for the ride, yet in the ceremony, the school system is taking credit for the success of the child exclusively.  This is being done to justify the existence of the education industry.  The teachers don’t know any better but to be looters.  They were taught to be in college, so their entire measuring system has its value in the heart of a looter.  They take from the community and they give back very little, something of limited value.  And they are actually the worst kind of looter, they use children to hide their actions even from themselves. 

I watched as each child received their award, the children can tell that something isn’t quite right.  Most of the kids were still under 10 years old, so their ability to tell the difference between right and wrong hasn’t been taught out of them yet, so they had blank looks on their faces.  But with each kid the superintendent stepped off the stage to shake the hand of the young student, as if the value of the superintendent had meaning.

The superintendent is a looter because his hand shake to the student has no meaning.  None what-so-ever.  But the superintendent wants to believe that his job is important, and he wants the parents to believe it too, because he wants them to be convinced they are getting the value for their education dollars spent by their property taxes.  Yet, the district is projecting a $40 million dollar deficit.  So somewhere in the awards ceremony, and the hand shake with the kids, the superintendent hopes to sell the image of importance to the parents so they can pass a levy.  That is why he is a looter, and why the teachers are looters.  They are using the parents children to sell their value as public employees to the tax payers when the value of the children and the money provided both come from the tax payer. 

Is that to say that the school does nothing for the child?  I suppose it does to some extent.  But in public school, like public housing, or even the BMV, they are all government-run and have very little incentive to succeed, because the culture of all are of the type that pander to the lowest, and weakest that participate.  So the strong children are held back.  The weak children are placed on a pedestal, and the tone of society takes a step back instead of a step forward. 

I have worked with weak, sick and even mentally deficient children.  To me, the worst thing you can do is pander down to them.  When I speak to such people, I always treat them with the same respect I’d give to the most intelligent person in the world.  When I have taken young people into the hard country and they fall, I help them get back on their feet and brush off the dust and keep walking without letting them complain that they are hurt.  When I’ve taken people rappelling and they are scared of heights I make them go with the promise that overcoming the fear will have more value than caving into their reluctance. 

When my daughters, who are very attractive young women, and I knew they would be, were little and a dog bit one of them in the ear almost tearing half the ear off, my wife and I superglue the ear back in place.  I looked at the wound and assessed that the experience of getting 25 stitches at the hospital might not only be traumatic for her and scare her worse than the blood running all over her, but it might even make her hate animals in the future and create an un-natural fear of dogs.  So I downplayed the whole thing, washed off the blood, put the skin back where everything was supposed to go and glued the ear in place. 

The natural reaction for many would be to run to the emergency room, but I was trying to teach her on that day many things.  One, not to fear dogs.  It was an accident.  Two, I didn’t want her brain to register the event as overly traumatic that might cause actual lifelong damage, and three, I wanted her to think in terms of self-reliance. 

The looter would seek to exploit a tragic situation like with my daughter.  They’d seek to comfort her, to make her trust them.  They’d go to elaborate measures to ease her mind.  But what they’d succeed in doing would be to draw her mind in the next tragedy to their comfort.  Instead of taking charge of her own situation, she’d seek them out.  This is how the health care industry has been operating, this is the cause of billions of dollars of insurance, and this is the impact of public education where information is spoon fed in comfort to the little human being.  What gets ignored is the pandering makes the child weaker while the true intention is to justify the employment of the public official. 

This is why public housing fails.  It breeds crime.  It breeds welfare recipients.  It breeds broken families because when real tragedies occur the people are left defenseless, because their brains did not go thought he exercise of struggle to obtain their position in life.  That is why they fail in virtually every way possible metaphorically and literally.

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

Oh No, Did I Make Some People Mad…..TOUGH: Letters Attacking Me in the Pulse Journal

What you’ll read below is reflective of the stupidity happening in the City of Cincinnati where massive wastes in tax payer dollars are occurring.

Watch this I-Team Report.

What follows is the response to my editorial in the Pulse Journal which is found here: CLICK TO VIEW

Two letters found my comments in this week’s Journal disturbing about the school board and attempted to refute my statements. I’ll present those letters below with my response in parentheses. These two letters come on the backs of Lakota’s contract negotiation with the teachers union.


The 2 million dollars saved is almost the same amount saved from cutting busing. That’s how much money Lakota is saving just in freezing step-increases, which they should have done two years ago, to avoid the current crises. Because the school board did not act in a timely fashion, there are over 600 employees at Lakota that make over 65K per year. Click here to view who they are and how much they make.

Now the letters:

Wrong qualifications listed for No Lakota group

Rich Hoffman of the No Lakota anti-levy group presented an interesting request in his recent letter to the Pulse-Journal editor. His letter solicited new candidates for the Lakota Board of Education and it was striking for two reasons. It was striking to see what the anti-levy group listed as qualifications and it was equally striking for what it did not consider important.

The No Lakota group determined that ideal school board candidates “should be older than 55, be preferably retired or semi-retired, and not looking to use the school board position as a political platform for higher office or to enhance a real estate profession.” Evidently the ideal No Lakota group school board candidate does not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community. Just say no and you’re elected.

The No Lakota group letter continued to infer that current board members “cave to the unions,” that they “intend to overpay the new superintendent” and they are perhaps guilty of “corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.” Our community is in long-term trouble if many of the No Lakota group actually believe those charges.

Although most area residents moved here specifically because of our quality schools, Lakota could still become the next Little Miami district. Imagine that scenario: one home out of every four for sale, property values decline by more than 40 percent in three years, parents paying thousands extra to educate their kids in private schools, and local school decisions made by the state.

No thank you.

With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman, the ideal school board member should be a local taxpayer, interested in providing quality education to the community, understand school funding mechanisms from both the state and local levels, have excellent two-way communication skills, and have the real interests of students and taxpayers at heart. Care and respect for your community does not have an old-age requirement and it is not necessary to be retired.

Al Miller
West Chester Twp.

(Notice that in this survey by Coldwell Banker that nobody mentions schools as being the decisive factor in buying a home. Kind of interesting.

Al, buddy………where did I say school board candidates do not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community? Just say no and you’re elected? Don’t older people have those skills and do they miraculously lose them passed the age of 40? Is that what you’re saying? Al, I expect all those traits in a school board member. In fact, I expect all that and more. I also expect a school board member to be able to balance a budget. This school board has been tasked with balancing the budget and they aren’t doing it, so they obviously aren’t very good at “budgeting skills” as you put it. I could put a child on the school board and they could do the same job as this school board when tasked with a problem.

“Joan, we don’t have enough money to meet our budget needs,” says the Lakota treasurer.

Joan says to the board, “Ok, we need to ask for more money from the community.”

Now, how is that intelligent, wise, or in any way prudent? Like I said, that is the first response a child would have to the problem. Not any of the skills you listed. So what are you defending? Are you saying that indefinitely higher taxes are the way to go, that every time the school needs money, we just throw money at them no matter how much? And I didn’t say the school could fail either. I pay a lot of money in tax each year to that school and I don’t pay to have a crappy school. If those people don’t know how to balance a budget, then they need to be replaced, because we have provided plenty of money to be an excellent school, and continue to do so.

Now, here is the Definition of CORRUPTION, since you brought it up.

1
a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : DEPRAVITY b : DECAY, DECOMPOSITION c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

So as to the corruption at Lakota, it is illegal to use teachers while on the payroll of the tax payer to use tax payer resources to pass a school levy. That means a teacher can’t talk about it to students. They can’t pass out literature. They can’t even use a school printer, decorate a bus or design pro campaign literature while on the payroll of the school, yet they ignore the law and do it anyway. The No Lakota Group has statements that some teachers spent entire class periods lecturing their students about the merits of a levy passage encouraging those bright young minds to go home and tell their parents to vote for the levy. We also know of incidents where principals have openly threatened through their PTA organizations to boycott Liberty Twp and West Chester businesses that don’t support the levy attempt. Some of these calls were made during school hours by employees of the district paid for by the tax payer. In fact, I have a letter from a principle that was typed on his school computer and sent to all the teachers that work for him complaining about the community not supporting the levy. This was done during school hours with school equipment, and that is illegal. The school board knows about this activity yet does not do anything about it. That is corrupt. It’s also corrupt to call the token cuts to services as needed when the obvious strategy is to inconvenience parents to extort money from them. When busing was cut to save a couple million dollars under the mask of “needed” cuts when everyone knows that the payroll is simply too high and out of control is an open participation in bribery. Pay the levy or we’ll cut services you need. That is wrong. I actually have many such instances of this behavior that will be revealed should the district choose to pursue another levy. We’ve held back on this information for the sake of the community, but it will not be tolerated from here on out.

And since you seem to not understand economics here’s a free lesson for you. Notice that passing a levy doesn’t figure into the equation here. The value of your home is only worth the value it has to potential people who want it. Most people who bought on the back of the housing bubble bought too high, so you are looking at a collapse that has nothing to do with school funding. In fact, higher taxes make your home less attractive, not more attractive. If the school is expected to still be excellent, and taxes stay stable, your value will stay at market value, which is probably too high because you bought your home on the back of a bubble. Passing a levy will actually hurt your value.

Basically, Al, it is your decision if you choose to not see these things, and you have a mentality to throw more money into a bottomless pit. You won’t be one of the people we’d nominate to put on the school board. We already have too many people who think like you working for the school system already.)

This video could be Lakota, Sycamore, or Mason. The problems are all the same yet nobody wants to deal with the real issue.

Now, the next letter.

DO NOT PLACE BLAME WHERE IT DOESN’T BELONG

Let’s get the full story out there please. The Lakota School Board is acting to deal with teacher contracts the only legal way they can. They have canceled the second year of the two-year contract because it could not be funded. They are going back to the negotiating table with the teacher union to achieve the best result possible.

Do not place blame where it does not belong.

The board said they would deal with the situation through a three pronged approach — reduce expenditures, put a policy in place to limit future expenditure increases, and seek additional revenues. Students and families have given, administrators and staff have given, we need our community now to recognize the need, and participate in maintaining and preserving the investment made by this community in our schools. The fact of the matter is that our school district can not be sustained without a levy. There is nowhere else to cut costs. If we want our communities to continue to be a great place for families to live, a great place to raise children, then we have to pass the levy in November.

Back when the first levy failure happened, the “no” people said they wanted the district to make serious cuts before they would support a levy. The cuts have been made. The cuts continue to be made. What is their argument now?

We must recognize that our school district and the school board are limited by law and mandates. Dedicated and civic minded individuals who genuinely care about the future of this district and these students would be welcome to be a part of the solution. Please be a part of the future of our communities and support our schools.

We must pass the next levy in order to have a sustainable and continuously excellent school district.

Andrea Henderson
West Chester Twp.

(Andrea, those cuts have not been made. The school board cut buses, laid-off some newer teachers, and made sports a pay for play deal. All those cuts are designed by the OSBA to inconvenience parents and force them to vote for a levy the next time. These strategies are taught to school board members at Levy University in Columbus. I know many school board members that have taken this class, so I know what goes on there.

Now, as to the district being limited by law in what they can cut, what you’re talking about is the teacher’s contracts and the protections the OEA have lobbied on their behalf. That is the very reason that Kasich signed Senate Bill 5 into law, to give the school board the ability to control their costs. So technically it isn’t illegal any more to attack those contract costs. Unions are scared to death of this bill, which is why they are trying so hard to get the bill repealed. Notice how these teachers speak in extreme ways. “It will destroy what we fought for, for years.”

We can’t afford their union. We can’t afford their collective bargaining. These rights they are speaking about are a result of FDR and LBJ, and their big government policies. They aren’t rights granted by the US Constitution and we are not required to pay for them as property owners. It should actually be discussed that it’s unfair to property owners to be forced to pay for the high expectations of these union employees.

Once those current teacher contracts are up, school boards can deal with that 85% of their escalating costs that have been illegal. Besides the potential problem with the law restricting control of those employee costs, we also have the trouble with quantitative easing that is about to hit us all hard from the federal level, so asking for a higher taxes will destroy many families. Oh, you don’t know what quantitative easing is. I’m sorry. Here’s a lesson.

The sad thing is, and I don’t mean to pick on you, there are thousands of people who think the same way you do, and they’re all wrong; that you are willing to write these people a free pass. For a district to be forced by law to incur further taxation is insane, foolish, and pure extortion in the simplest form. Anyone that supports such measures has an education that has failed them completely. Supporting your school does not mean tossing money out the window of a runaway bus. Supporting your school means solving problems when they come up. Squeezing the property owners for everything they have while an aggressive teachers union has negotiated a scam on us all, to maintain an average wage of 63K per year is insane. People who say “good” and “money” in the same sentence do not understand the value of things, and are ignorant to what makes something better than something else. You cannot rape and pillage a community of its resources and expect it to last.

The No Lakota people have different degrees of resistance. For me, I want education reform completely. I don’t like the current system, and I want to see major changes. It’s not worth 10K per kid. The senior citizens in our group are on a fixed income, and they can’t afford the tax. And the business owners in our group are people who have been hit hard by the recession. They are sitting on property that they invested in years ago that should have been paying them back by now, but are currently sitting vacant. Further taxes on that property only drain more money from them. So when people who don’t value money say these people are rich, and should pay their fair share, they sound like fools because they aren’t the people who are building up the community. The people supporting these tax levies are typically people who have kids in the school, they moved to Lakota to be a part of a good community, they want sports for their kids and all the electives of a large school, but they also want it cheap. They want the “shared” costs of the entire community that pays these costs year after year. These are the same people who will move out of Lakota when their kids grow up and leave the community, and those parents will downsize to another home in Florida or someplace else. Meanwhile, they’ll leave people like me with the bill they racked up. So don’t lecture me about what makes a good community. The people who want this levy are people who want something good cheaply and you want it for your own selfish reasons. When your kids are done with the system, chances are you’ll move anyway. )

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

Mark Mallery Sues the City of Cincinnati: Looters, thieves and scum bags strike again!

Who are the modern looters of our society? Doc Thompson of 700 WLW explores that concept in this fantastic broadcast.

It is a disturbing trend that we are seeing, which has been occurring for a number of years. There are two kinds of Americans. There are those that desire socialism, where a cradle of collectivism will provide a utopia of love, understanding, fairness, and collective salvation. The other kind of American looks to the traditional values that made the United States successful in the past, and believe that the same traits that made the United States great then can do so in the future. The first type of person believes that for collectivism to work, society must rid themselves of all desire for violence and personal property. The second type understands that conflict is part of the human condition, and that by harnessing that conflict in a positive way, capitalism will bring great inventions and production capacity to society. They honor property as a way to measure themselves and their achievements and as an incentive toward competition. Property is like a scoreboard in a football game. It lets people know the score of the game.

Spirituality, which both versions of living struggle with is knowing that the game you’re playing doesn’t matter in the long run. It only matters on the field of battle. When death comes, the games of life matter very little. The scoreboard only reflects the status of the game.

Now playing all these versions of existence against each other are looters, and thieves. In an uncivilized society, looters put on a mask and rob people in side alleys of their wealth. In a civilized society, the looters put on masks too, but they are the masks of authority, and they rob you without threats of violence, not openly. They rob you with the threat of potential violence inflicted by some random act beyond your control, which they as an authority figure can protect you from. So what they do is basically extort from the unknowing, naive victim, “protection money.” These are looters. They are anybody that makes a living off the public. Anyone that takes, but does not give back. For instance, Barrack Obama is a looter. Not because he’s a black president, or even a democrat, a progressive or a socialist. But he is a looter because he could never have personal success without public work. He’d not sell one book if he wasn’t running for president or if he wasn’t the current president. And none of the money he earns is for the personal worth of what he produces. He earns money for what he won’t do to a company, such as GE. Companies throw money at Obama and his progressive friends in congress and the senate to avoid regulation, and to create regulation against enemies. Obama earns his money by this process. Not by creating a product, or even working a punch press. He simply loots off the public to facilitate a process favorable to thieves. Without public office, his ability to produce in society would be non-existent. That makes him a looter.

This does not include the one or two term politician that just wishes to contribute something to their community. This term of “looter” does apply to the career politician who just takes, and takes and takes. They spend their time making new laws with the money they’ve looted so that the new laws will make it easier to loot you.

A good example of this is Mayor Mallory of Cincinnati. He reveals his true intentions. When the city cut his car allowance, as heard in Doc Thompson’s broadcast, he sues the city to recover those costs. His actions show that he ran for mayor, so he could put on the mask of authority, and therefore openly rob anyone he chooses. It’s no different from a thief.

Other examples are school superintendents. They are retiring from service to the district, then being hired by the school board just two days later, which is legal, and taught to them by the OEA. The OEA lobbied for that legal precedent so they could dangle the greed carrot in front of school superintendents and buy them off. Click here to see the I-Team report. It’s a very common practice. With superintendents, the money flows easily and all that is required of them is to maintain an “excellent” district which requires lobbying the Ohio Board of Education, and to secure funding when it’s needed. So when the teachers unions present “looter” style contracts, the superintendent signs off on it and gets the levy passed to pay for it. That’s the game, and they are looters.

When I have to spend the day in court on occasion, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are employed in positions that are simply “looter” positions. The only contribution they give society is in the handling of a driver’s license, or the processing of a court document. Most of the activity that goes on, including the issuing of tickets, the legal maneuvers of lawyers, the process of issuing permits and every form of “red tape,” the grandparent of apathy, are positions created for the thief and carnival con artist to lift money from you and place it their pocket. The role of the teacher that proclaims that their master’s degree merits 90K per year is no different from the fast talker at the county fair that asks you to step right up and try to throw the ring around the pop bottle. After he’s scammed you from your money you realize that the rings were weighted so it was nearly impossible to get the ring on the bottle. The same with schools and balanced budgets, the levies are weighted against the community, so the money tree can keep on growing, thriving off the money looted from that same community. The looters use fear to keep you from seeing what their hands are doing, or what their hearts truly desire.

When in doubt, remember the school superintendents that say, “money doesn’t matter to me, I am committed to the children,” yet retires from their job one day, and two days later is rehired so they can collect a full retirement pension, and a full salary. Or the mayor that proclaims that they are doing what’s best for the city he runs, while at the same time suing that same city over a car allowance.

These scum bags are thieves, creeps, and losers that only gain power because you empower them to take it from you with your desire for peace, which they use as a weapon against your sovereignty.

Yes, there are two kinds of Americans. The first kind desires socialism, and it is under this system of government that the thieves also desire, because it creates a society of easy victims that will empty out their pockets in a desire for peace. The second kind of American is the enemy to the thieves, because they aren’t so easy to fool. The thieves under that second type of American have to use a literal mask to do their looting, because they are forced to hide from the mainstream.

It’s important to know who you are, the first or the second, because there is no in between. There is no gray area in this matter. To know the answer, you must know your heart, are you a looter that wants something given to you without giving back, or are you a producer that just wants to live your life free of being robbed?

You better know which you are because America will not survive both. We can’t be home of the brave and home of the coward and thief at the same time.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Hopes to Freeze your Memory: The LEA and the school board freeze step increases

BRIAN COMBS OF 700 WLW ANNOUNCES A CONTRACT CONCESSION AT LAKOTA SCHOOLS

I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: a better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than to live our own lives according to our values—at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Ronald Reagan, 1976

Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute talks to Doc Thompson about union indoctrination in public school. This is a big problem lead by the OEA and the LEA. Listen to that very informative interview here:

The 1,190 member Lakota teacher’s union is set to vote on approving a contract that will eliminate step increases which will be a true “freeze” on wages, which is considered by many to be an unprecedented move. Many consider such a “sacrifice” by the union as a reasonable concession. As I watch the union’s movements closely, what they are doing is showing that government doesn’t need S.B.5 to create an environment of reasonable negotiation. They are using this negotiating strategy to point to in the fall when they are going to attempt to repeal S.B.5, and proclaim that the unions have been reasonable and worked with the school board.

The only reason they are doing this now is because it has now become evident that the unions have pushed things too far. Teachers are only working 9 months a year, 8 hours a day with some take home work on occasion, and they are being paid about 30% more than everyone else who pays their wages and are working longer hours each day and working 12 months out of a year. People are aware of the scam, and now the teachers union knows that S.B.5 could end their grip on local politics, so they are doing the only thing they can do, and that’s attempt to put on a softer face and appear to be “working” with the communities.

My opinion on the step increase removal from the contract is that it is a nice gesture that is about a year and a half too late in Lakota. It’s probably about 5 years too late in economic reality all across the state. Teachers showed no restraint in negotiating their contracts with lap-dog school board members, leaving the average wage at Lakota to be over 63K per year. About half of that 1,190 member organization makes over 65K per year going as high as six figures for a teacher. (For a review of what step increases are listen to this broadcasts between Darryl Parks and I from way back in September of 2010.)

The trouble is that these teachers believe they are entitled to this amount of money because they have, “seniority,” “specialty certifications,” and various degrees. They have the same mentality as those that have grown to accept Medicare and Social Security as “entitlements” instead of calling them what they really are, and that’s welfare programs for the elderly. Politicians for years have been successful in convincing Americans that they have a “right” to other people’s money regardless of how much they’ve paid into the system. And history shows, especially in regard to Medicare that if the money is on the table, coming from the invisible hands of tax payers, then there is no shortage of people willing to over-charge for services, or to go to the doctor for every ailment, because they can. And doctors are all too willing to prescribe medication to a patient to help out the pharmacist, and to help his patient. After all, all it takes is a doctor’s note to get out of work, so the doctor wins both ways. He helps a colleague make a few bucks, and he gets to get the patient out of some work so everybody wins. That’s what you get out of Medicare. It’s a big pot of money that everyone wants to stick their hand in and fill their pockets. Being human nature, it’s all too tempting to take more than is needed, because it’s there. So the more you put in front of people, the more they’ll want to take. Using Medicare and Social Security as an example, of the $31,406 Washington has spent per household in 2010 $9,949 will go to just Social Security and Medicare. And it was like that from the very beginning. This quote from the Harford Courant, July 2nd 1969. “Social Security officials conceded Tuesday that the cost of Medicare and Medicaid are running way over original estimates.” The more we put in, the more thieves there are to take it out.

This is what teachers have done. Communities have put a lot of money in their community pots by way of property taxes, and teachers using tenure, step up and have taken as much as they could carry. The newer teachers are all too happy to wait in line behind those with seniority because their leaders in the unions have made good on their promise that if the money ever gets too low, they’ll just go back to the community and refill the pot. They do this because they believe they are entitled to the money. They believe that their degrees, or their years of service make them “qualified” for a certain amount of money. Well, their degrees don’t mean anything to me. Why do we need a teacher with a doctorate, or even a masters to teach 1st or 2nd grade. I’ve seen home-school moms do a better job in their kitchens. So why should a school district have to pay wages that are excessively high for a teacher that is over-qualified? The teacher with their hand in the pot will say they “earned” the “right” to that amount of money because they did the work at college. Well, I didn’t ask those teachers to go to college. I didn’t ask them to get a master’s degree. Those types of deals were made by crooked politicians with OEA lobbyists to create laws that allowed those classifications of teachers to take more of the pot away quicker. It’s a little scam they’ve worked out in Columbus. I didn’t agree to be robbed of my property tax to participate in such a foolish system. That kind of deal was done behind my back and I don’t like it!

In the private sector the teacher would be paid based on the value of their service, not some arbitrary figure come up by politicians from 30,000 feet that haven’t a clue what education is supposed to be. They are only in office so they can take from another pot provided by the tax payer. These people with their hands in the pots, teachers unions, politicians and the like are simply moochers. They rely on a producer, such as myself, and most likely a majority of the people reading this article, to put money into that pot. I have no respect for a moocher.

Is moocher too strong of a word? What other word is there? That’s what they are. The OEA is doing what kids do when they play house, they are coming up with a set of rules that they negotiated with themselves, and values that they created for the confined little world that exists only to them in their bedrooms. They are moochers because they don’t contribute anything useful to society. Parents are paying these people to watch their kids while the parents work. And the moochers have invented all kinds of titles and regulations to make their little game seem relevant. They are doing the job that parents are too busy to do themselves.

When my kids were going to school, my rule was that if the teacher cared enough about teaching as I did, I let my kids listen to that teacher. There were a few teachers that my kids had that were very passionate, and I admired those people. Not because they had a degree, a title, or tenure. But because they had passion for life. For the rest, the majority, that just lived an idealized life, just waiting for school to let out for the summer, that took every personal day they could, and was just doing their time waiting by the pot of taxpayer money to come available so they could reach in and take all they could, I told my kids to watch out for people like that. Watch out for sinners dressed as “saints” I’d tell them. Be careful of the con artist with the smile on their face waving you into someplace they want you to go. I warned them about such teachers with the same caution that I’d warn them of a strange old man trying to get a young girl into their car. Whether the danger is physical or mental makes little difference to me. “Watch out what people try to pour into your minds. For every negative that someone tries to give you, you must off-set it with four positives. If someone tries to give you an ignorant thought, cleanse yourself with a book before you go to sleep. The process of reading will help your mind work out corrupt thoughts the same as water assists in the digestion of food.” That’s the kind of talk I had with my own kids. And my advice to parents and children everywhere is the same. “Be careful what you let people tell you, especially moochers like the OEA that are only out to build a financial empire for themselves with money from the pot we created.”

So what are the teachers at Lakota giving up in voting away their “step increases?” They are agreeing to not take away money the community hasn’t even put into the pot yet. They are agreeing to keep all they’ve taken already, but not to take too much of what we put in next time, since the pot is empty again, after the community just filled it.

We all know the answer to this. We’d tell our children who drank too much Kool-Aid and came back to the kitchen crying after the pitcher was emptied, “I want more.” We’d say to them as reassuring as possible, “You should have thought about that before you drank it all up.”

What the Lakota teacher’s union is essentially saying is “we’ll keep drinking just as much Kool-Aid as we always have, but we won’t ask for more, so long as you keep the pitcher full” Now it’s our responsibility to tell the children, “we can’t afford to give you so much Kool-Aid. You need to drink less.”

Rich Hoffman

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

Becki Villamagna crossed the LINE: The Empire of Education and Money

The following note is what public education ran by teachers unions is all about. The following letter was intercepted from Becki Villamagna of the Ohio Education Association. This was the email message sent to EOA members.

__________________________________________________________________

A teacher from Springboro is having a petition signing event this Saturday from 11 AM till 1 PM. She lives right across the street from Kelly Kohls, a Springboro Board member who is tight with Shannon Jones, testified in favor of SB 5, the new president of the Warren County Tea Party, and a founding member of Educate Ohio – an anti public education, teacher and union group.

Would put out the word to your contact list? Even if all they do is drive over and clog the street, that would be great.

The address is 4188 Belle Terrace in Lebanon which is off of Pekin Road between St Rt 48 and St Rt 741.

Thanks!
Becki Villamagna
Communications/Political Action
Ohio Education Association

______________________________________________________

The email is a call to action to harass anyone that is for education reform. The union uses an aggressive strategy like this email to radicalize members against anyone that questions how much money is being wasted on public education.

This email is a perfect example of why we must have S.B.5. The more I learn, the more I am convinced that the OEA needs to be completely dissolved as a publicly funded organization. And it is publicly funded by tax payers. The members are radicals that are dedicated to preserving a destructive monopoly.

Glenn Beck did a wonderful show with college students who provided testimony to the radicalization of education, which reveals the true behavior that is behind public, and college education.

Here John Stossel does his own investigation into the public school system government monopoly that is being run by people like Becki Villamagna. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want one cent of my money in any form to go to people of such low quality.


Here’s another show by Glenn Beck. The teacher’s union and radical leftist groups do everything they can to smear Beck for shows like this, but the guy is exposing them. So Beck gets attacked the same way as Becki Villamagna is doing on behalf of the OEA going after Kelli Kohls of the Springboro School Board. This issue particularly angers me because I know Kelli, and she is one of the most sincere people on this issue that there is. She is trying to bring sanity to a monopoly of thugs, and they hate her for it, just like they hate Glenn Beck. Listen to some of the stories taking place all over the country.

If you think that Glenn Beck is pulling your leg, and is the crazy loon the unions want you to believe he is, then listen to John Stossel again, in yet another show on the education monopoly.

People like Becki Villamagna will tell you that this is a FOX News conspiracy against the working people! That is a line straight out of the Communist Manifesto. I have followed John Stossel for a long time. I loved his work on ABC’s 20/20, but he left there to work for Fox News. Listen to him explain why he left ABC to go to Fox. He’s a great reporter. He left ABC to be a reporter. That’s why Fox News is a good network, because they are actually doing the job of reporting.

Stossel reminds me a bit of the local reporter in Cincinnati Brendan Keefe, whom I have the pleasure of knowing. Check out Brendan’s work here if you haven’t seen it already. These stories have been going on for a long time. It has been people like Becki Villamagna that has singled out anybody that speaks out against their monopoly with thug-like tactics.

Click here to see when David Little of Progress Ohio was hired to come after me in similar way, which only ticked me off. In fact, the day they came after me, was the day I decided that the OEA was no longer valid as an organization. They no longer had any credibility in my mind and I would fight tooth and nail to see that they no longer loot anymore tax money. They revealed to me what education is to them, and they confirmed to me that people like Glenn Beck, and John Stossel have been telling the truth. But nobody wants to hear it, because it’s inconvenient for them. After all, most parents see public school as a day care facility, otherwise they’d take a more active role in their children’s life.

Milton Friedman has been speaking about the education empire for years. This empire of terror and money isn’t new.

Kelli knows that the union will be out in force to attempt to intimidate her and the other board members as they vote on the next union contract. The meeting is at Springboro High School May 24th at 7 pm. The best way to end this reign of thugs is to counter what it is they intend to do. So if you are sick and tired of this kind of behavior, show up at the school at that time and at that place and let those union thugs know they have no power to coerce, intimidate, antagonize, manipulate and twist the arm of your elected officials with fear. Because if they were planning to “clog the streets” over just a petition, imagine what they will try to do over a new contract.

Rich Hoffman

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

Kasich and the Casinos: The many levels of EVIL all at war for justification

Governor Kasich has drawn a lot of unnecessary controversy to himself by standing in the way of the casino deal in Ohio where voters approved the casinos in Ohio by a slim margin. The casino lobby for a long time solicited Ohio as a possibility for gambling, and for many years I took great pride in Ohio for being a place were gambling wasn’t accepted.

I believe Kasich is legally wrong in what he is doing, since the will of the voter has spoken. However, I can’t say that I blame him, as a resident of Ohio, for not wanting to see casinos in Ohio.

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect Governor Kasich isn’t too far off from my thinking, based on his actions. So I’ll offer my opinion on gambling in Ohio as a possible window into the ethical problem Governor Kasich, in his position might be struggling with.

The Constitutional amendment for casino gambling has been floating around for a number of years. If you look at the chart below, you’ll notice that essentially the same constitutional amendment was dangled in front of voters from 2006, 2008 before finally being passed in 2009. So the vote in 2009 wasn’t a pure vote, done with the overwhelming approval of the Ohio voter. This vote was done just like school levies, where if the amendment didn’t pass the first time, then voters would just see it again a few months or a few years later. The vote in 2009 was passed by beating down the voter, attempting till those opposed just gave up realizing that bigger and bigger waves were on the horizon, and resistance was futile.

2009 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Passed

2008 Referendum Payday lending Failed

2008 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Failed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Minimum wage Passed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Failed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Pro-smoking measure Failed

I see the state looking toward casinos as a desperate ploy by bankrupt souls to cover costs they don’t have the courage to address any other way but by throwing money at the situation. The same people who foolishly conceive that by spending money on school levies, tend to also support infinite amounts of money poured into education, police departments, fire departments and all public services, because in their limited perspective of the world, spending money equals success. These are the same idiots that believe that spending money at a craps table, or by playing dice, or pulling the lever on a slot machine, a person can win.

It is these types of minds that have led our civilization to the condition it’s in. To understand that world, study a casino. Here in Cincinnati, the closest major casino is Hollywood Casino’s in Lawrenceburg Indiana. At first glance, this is a neat place. The parking is cheap. The drinks are cheap. The lobby is extravagant. They have an excellent, all you can eat Egyptian Temple themed buffet that is spectacular. On the way into this palace where the hotel rooms are lavish, and quite impressive, designed to lure the drunk gambler or the illicit fly-by-night lovers to relish in some nocturnal sin, there are giveaways for Harley Davidson motorcycles and other “free gifts” that are designed like insect traps to emit pleasurable thoughts only to trap the poor creature into the actual ambush. The trap is the casino itself, where a smoky room and chaotic noise greets the would-be-gambler. Once inside the temptations of great wealth lures the player to a table, or a slot where the hopes and dreams of a lifetime are placed in the fate of the randomness of dice, cards or a computer selection.

I stood in this place and watched players for well over an hour. My lack of participation was alarming to many of the employees that watched me like a coyote roaming a hen house. What I witnessed in this trap was a decadent place that feeds off the ignorance of the players. I had heard stories for years of co-workers, and some of my own employees that had gambling problems. One woman is a little black woman who was a friend of mine named, “Fuzz.” Well, Fuzz every week when I gave her a check on Friday would proclaim, “time to hit them slots!” She looked forward all week to those slot machines. She spent all her money on those things. She was perpetually broke, and bought most of her attire at dollar stores. She was even on some government assistance even though she had a full-time job. I liked Fuzz, but I felt sorry for her. I’ve known one too many people like her. When I was younger I worked with a guy named Sonny who was addicted to the race tracks in Lebanon. Sonny spent all his money on the tracks, went through at least two wives that I know of, and ended up in a trailer in South Lebanon before meeting a dismal end due to alcohol related illnesses.

Fuzz and Sonny are just the bottom feeders. They represent a modestly small percentage of gamblers in casinos, and it could be argued that if there weren’t any casinos, these self-destructive people would find other way to destroy themselves. But casinos certainly take advantage of self-destructive people. And they by their nature encourage people to become self-destructive.

U.S.50 that Hollywood Casino is built off of used to be a country road leading into downtown Lawrenceburg. As promised by developers, the casino did bring some business to the surrounding area. There are some car dealerships, restaurants, and some shopping complexes, the same ones that seem to go in wherever large groups of people are brought together. One of the fears when Lawrenceburg first brought casinos to the neighborhood was that crime would go up, prostitution would sky rocket and there’d be drug dealers on every corner. Well, that was a bit dramatic. At first glance, Lawrenceburg’s economy did improve. They have retail there they wouldn’t have otherwise because of the casinos, and the prostitution and drug use are like they are everywhere else hidden from view. But, I have family out in Indiana and used to travel U.S. 50 a few times a year to visit them and I remember when the bridge for I-275 was being built by the power plant, so that’s how far back my memory goes. Back in those days, a strip joint was a far-away place. Newport was known as Little Vegas back then and there all the derelict men that wanted fast women and all the things organized crime provided was in some far away land. Not anymore. Concepts Show Club offers topless dancing right in downtown Lawrenceburg, there have been prostitution busts in a few massage parlors, which is carefully swept under the rug, because the local politicians love having the extra tax money to throw at government services, because as we can see historically, politicians use tax money to buy votes, and when there is more tax money collected, there is more money to buy votes. Casinos are simply disguised taxes. They are ways to pull more money away from “working people” so more money can be used to buy votes.

For the casino proposed in Cincinnati there are already discussions about having a strip club near that casino. I remember when Larry Flynt first brought Hustler of Hollywood to Cincinnati and all the controversy over putting that business in Monroe, and people were up in arms about having immoral business in Cincinnati.

15 years later, Hustler of Hollywood up in Monroe is always busy, all hours of the day. My wife and I have been in there, and I really don’t see the big deal. But apparently a lot of people love porn. But is Monroe a better place because of it? No. Monroe has struggled. They have the big discount outlet mall, and Traders World, but no major business has gone in around Monroe. No big new companies. Only little retail centers.

That is the same model in Las Vegas, Vegas is shows, restaurants, hotels, but how about those manufacturing jobs that actually employee people, not in service jobs, but production jobs? Why do people go to Vegas? Prostitution is legal in Nevada. So they go there for that. They go there to gamble, and maybe catch a glimpse of Area 51. But do employees go Vegas to produce, or to sell themselves?

That requires a different definition of employment. Does the employee get paid to make something, or do they simply entertain for the sake of amusement. For instance, a grill cook at Wendy’s makes a burger so he exchanges his time and contributions to the construction of a hamburger. But what about a casino owner, what are they producing? They are producing jobs, but what kind of jobs? The product a casino produces is hope. The cocktail waitresses do deliver the drinks from the bar, where the bartender makes the drink. But the function of both is to diminish the senses of the customer so they spend more money on hope. And those are the types of jobs casinos bring to a community. Yes, they do create jobs, but they do so by being a parasite to the community they serve. Casinos are like sex to what production oriented business is to romance. Sex is quick and easy. Romance can take a whole evening or even a weekend. Sex is tearing off the cloths of your mate on a beach in some exotic location after four or five drinks at the bar. Romance is having your mate go out to dinner without her underwear, and letting her know through the evening that you know it, but you don’t touch her. You go to dinner, you go to your movie, you behave respectfully showing restraint, then when it comes time to do the deed, you make it last for a couple of hours. However in the minds of some, sex and romance is the same thing and these are the same people who think casino business and regular business is the same thing. They are not.

Most business owners I know would prefer not to have strip clubs and casinos near their businesses because they provide temptations to employees to take too long at lunch, and to waste their money. An employee with empty pockets and a desperate heart is an unreliable employee. They cost an employer in thousands of uncalculated ways. It’s one thing when a casino is in some out-of-the-way place, because it takes effort and planning to get there, because casinos are subconsciously looked upon as places of low quality. The casino in Davenport Iowa when I visited that city years ago cheapened in my eyes the entire state, because it said to me that the state was desperate for money, that the political leaders took the cheap sex route no different than porn as a way to solve their financial problems. I thought the same thing in Kalamazoo Michigan when I saw casinos there. It said to me, “I’m desperate for money, so desperate that we seek to drain every last dime out of our local economy and the people that support it.” And we all feel the same way about Vegas. It’s cheap, sleazy, and speaks of raw sex. That’s why it’s so popular for bachelor parties to go to Vegas. Men don’t go there to be good. They go there to be bad.

So why would we want casinos in Cincinnati or anywhere in Ohio? Why would casinos attract big business to Ohio? Have casinos attracted large firms to Las Vegas? Is Microsoft and Silicone Valley seeking to relocate to Vegas? How about all the big car companies of the world? Are they flocking to such regions?

No. People who like casinos like to go to them, but they don’t want the sins of their illicit behavior to be a constant reminder to the thousands of dollars they lost, or the girl they bought to give them a “hand job” in some dark corner of a strip joint. They want to go back to their homes at the end of the night, far away from their sins and sleep with there nice wife, while their children sleep safely in the next room, far away from their improprieties.

So casino planners that speak of urban development being solved by casinos are extremely short-sighted. If anything, downtown Cincinnati would become even more of a temporary tourist destination. Why would residents want to move next to a casino in a multi-million dollar real-estate development? They won’t. People who can afford such things will still fly to Vegas, so they don’t have to stare their sins in the face every day from the balcony of their homes.

So if I were the Governor and I knew that the constitution of Ohio had been beat into submission by thousands of weak souls what didn’t put it on the ballot just once, but three times since 2006 and I knew that the casino deal is a very progressive plan to implement on the state, I’d drag my feet too, or I would at least not make it easy for them. I wouldn’t want those businesses desiring to bring casinos to Ohio to feel comfortable with using Ohio and its people to just rob and loot the wealth of our communities, without making them jump through hoops to test their sincerity. But that’s the problem with fairness. The right thing is to show equal opportunity to all business no matter if you like it or not. The marketplace needs to decide what succeeds or fails, and government has no place in the regulation of such things even if the business is evil and vile.

So whatever Kasich’s motives are, he shouldn’t be using regulation to discourage casinos from setting up shop in Ohio. But I cannot be angry with him, because the casinos themselves, and how they came to be are progressive institutions that I find repulsive and they should have went away when voters said in 2006 that they didn’t want casinos in Ohio. Instead, they did as all government does when they don’t get their way, just as in school levies, they just kept putting it on the ballot until resistance to them gave up, and the amendment passed. That’s how we obtained casinos in Ohio, under the strong-armed tactics of thugs, corrupt politicians looking for a financial bail-out from all the votes they’ve purchased with tax money and out-right-thieves that are licking their lips to take all the money they can from the weak, like my friend Fuzz, and Sonny till there is nothing left but a corpse.

So with all that said, I’m still a fan of John Kasich. It’s not an excuse to abuse a government position even if in his mind it is to right an evil. But in the face of all the evil present in the situation, I’ll give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder for only being human.

For the rest, those small little minds that are so enticed with bright lights, cheap 19 year old women and their bare breasts, and the fantasy that wasting your night in a casino constitutes nightlife, nothing can help you. You are the same people that believe in collective bargaining as a right given to you by FDR. You are children of LBJ’s Great Society and seek to cover the sins of not only your deepest desires, but your political subscription to that mythical society paid for by the future. You’re guilt causes you to endorse policies you know are wrong because the guilt of your poorly lived lives is too great for you to carry alone. So you seek easy money through casinos to lessen your burden.

You are the same people who seek to repeal S.B.5, because should the curtain be taken away from the shell game you and your generation have used for years to hide your deeds described above, there will be no place else for your guilt to reside, but in the mirror. So keep signing those petitions and try and erase S.B.5 from the books, and continue to solve your big government ideas with casinos and higher taxes, because you will not leave this earth with less of a burden, but with the knowledge that you have not only bankrupted us all financially, but morally as well. Keep signing those petitions! I will make sure everyone remembers who the villains are.

Rich Hoffman

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

Why Progressives Hate Westerns: Red Dead Redemption against Americans United for Change

I had four choices demanding my time Thursday night; one was a School Choice event at Van Gordon Elementary. That’s an event I wanted to attend more for moral support than anything. I am a believer in it, so there isn’t much I could learn from the meeting. The second was an invite to go see the premier of the new film Priest down at the Rave Movie Theater. I enjoy those kinds of things, but my primary occupation had my mind on overdrive, with many problems to solve over the next 24 hours, so a movie on a Thursday night wasn’t the most responsible thing to do when Excel spreadsheets should be filling my vision. The third thing is homework, for that same occupation. Sometimes you need more than 24 hours in a day, and this is one of them. But a person has to know how to manage their time, so I picked my fourth option, I played Red Dead Redemption.

Why????

Well, I love the game, I love the songs in the game, and I love what it’s about. For those of you that don’t know what Red Dead Redemption is, let me bring you up to speed. It’s a video game for Xbox that is set in the Wild West as the Progressive era is taking over the individuality that settled the country. The game is wonderfully done, and the action is set up wonderfully. Here is the way the game begins. Pay special attention to the characters on the train. They are wonderfully depicted to illustrate progressive era politics. The lone rider of course represents the main character, a loner, one of the last of his kind that is observing all these changes around him as an introduction to the clash of progressivism and American individualism.

Video games like this one have taken over what films used to do, and that is illustrating complicated themes into entertainment. Red Dead Redemption, while intended to be an action packed shooter, is wonderfully insightful, philosophical, and places the player into the context of history. The game is about, a world that is losing its innocence, and freedom.

What brought up my desire to revisit this beloved video game is a website I ran across in my research today. I discovered Americans United For Change, a very progressive group.

http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/

 

And they produce videos like this.


Americans United For Change is everything that’s wrong with our current country. When I read their mission statement, it reminded me of a letter I received last September from a union leader that accused me of wanting to take the country back to the days of the Wild West after I produced this video that was featured on www.TheBlaze.com.

This person reflected many of these progressive types that have worked very hard to pull America into a direction of their design, which I completely disagree with. Listen to the mission statement of AUFC in their words.

AUFC has challenged the far-right conservative voices and ideas that for too long have been mistaken for mainstream American values. In the process, we helped create a groundswell for a return to the traditional progressive values that have defined America—economic fairness, opportunity, national and economic security and democratic leadership.

Today we are building on that success through national campaigns that utilize grassroots organizing, polling and message development, earned and paid media, online organizing, grass-tops outreach and paid and volunteer phones to pass the transformational legislation coming out of the Obama White House.

After reading that, I usually have to take a minute to listen to music like this, which is the standard music on my IPod. The following songs are from Red Dead Redemption, which is heavily inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns of the late 1960’s.
Some sample music.


Progressives love to make things more complex then they need to be, that’s how they pull the con game on people. They are like Las Vegas card dealers that hope the pretty lights, easy alcohol and scantily dressed women will alter your judgment. The reason I like westerns is that they seek to get to the bottom of a situation, not to complicate things needlessly.
If I had a nickel for every time a progressive wrote me or left me a comment that “westerns are a simplistic view of existence,” I’d have vast amounts of wealth. My response to these people is, if something is too complex to understand, it’s because the con is hidden in the confusion. Everything in human existence can be explored into its simplest form. If it is not, then the philosopher, the scientist, the mathematician, the teacher, has not done their job correctly. That’s why the westerns done by Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and redone by the makers of Red Dead Redemption have a lasting impact in American culture. Those old westerns even to this day are loved by millions, and for good reason. They offer a truth that is hard to get, and progressives are scared to death of the truth. Progressives take great measures to avoid the truth even from themselves. They thrive in chaotic environments. They enjoy drunken splendors where avoiding the responsibility of thinking are honorable activities among their kind. In the western, a drunk is the fool that ends up dead. In the progressive mind, the drunk is the “party animal” that is honored with trophies. Such an example would be the film, The Hangover where four fools have a massive bachelor party in Vegas and end up passed out forgetting what happened. That’s the plot of the movie! That is also the result of progressive ideology. The myth of a culture, the kind of stories it tells, reflects the culture itself. In a progressive culture, such films, like The Black Swan, and The Hangover reflect the values of the culture. It’s quite understandable why people in a progressive culture wouldn’t understand the values displayed in a western. Because the concepts of individuality, and rugged conquest where life and death are only moments apart are far away from the progressive mind, which seeks with every breath in its body, safety. The progressive will trade freedom for safety whenever the two are offered together.

The reason why England has lasted as long as it has is because it has at least held on to its identity. They have their monarchy, and even though I think having a king is an archaic idea, it’s at least something they believe in as a cultural identity. The Japanese are in the same situation, they celebrate their samurai culture. The myths and traditions of the samurai are very sacred to the Japanese. In America, it’s the cowboy. The reality of frontier living isn’t what’s important. But what the cowboy represents to American culture is. Progressives have managed to discredit the myth of the cowboy with the plight of the Native American, just as they have done using the black man against the founding fathers, framing in American minds that the United States began after the Civil War, and not in 1776. Progressives seek to destroy the myths of our culture so they can replace them with new ones created by them.

Mythology is the most important aspect of a culture. Without a societies myths, the culture will fail.

The myths that the progressive propels as honorable is despicable, vile behavior of interdependence. This is why Hollywood is losing money and must resort to all the comic book adoptions to generate fresh revenue. This year it’s Thor, last year it was Iron Man 2. In years past it was Spiderman. Hollywood has tried twice to deal with The Incredible Hulk. The first was a good film by Ang Lee that I enjoyed, but it suffered miserably at the box-office. So Hollywood tired again and did a bit better the second time. But Sylvester Stallone was on to something when he said our action heroes got watered down when Tim Burton’s Batman came out in 1989. Batman fits the progressive model, a hero with some screws loose. So Tim Burton set the pace for future action heroes that didn’t have to have real muscle or strength, but could put on an outfit and become strong through technology. During this mythic journey over the years characters like Superman have become less about the American way, and more of a progressive. Recently Superman renounced his citizenship. I understand that the upcoming Captain America is following a similar path. We’ll see how that turns out.

But where are the fresh, ideas coming out of progressive Hollywood? Is anybody but Pixar, who ironically has the most iconic character in Woody, played by Tom Hanks, who is a cowboy, doing anything memorable? Where are the Davy Crockets, made popular by Walt Disney, or the Daniel Boone’s made popular in novels by Alan Eckert. Who is the modern John Wayne…………….Johnny Depp, who’s most iconic role to date is a drunken fool of a pirate? What about the next Clint Eastwood? Who can do those kinds of myths anymore? Robert Duval? He does a good job with westerns, but he’s also an old timer. Who are the people of the next generation? Gerald Butler?

For that matter, why are all the strongest leading men now in Hollywood these days Australian? Is it because the United States isn’t making men anymore? Why does Hollywood have to look to other countries for “men?” Where are the modern Harrison Fords? Burt Reynolds? Steve MacQueens? Lee Majors?

That’s the heart of the problem, America isn’t making them. Progressives have infected our culture to such an extent that we’ve finally hit a generation of lost children that have forgotten how to be men leaving women hungry in the sheets of their beds for the secret thoughts of a real man to rescue them. Hollywood used to satisfy that market need by putting men up on the silver screen so women would by a ticket. But not any more. Women are going to the movies to watch girly men, as Arnold Swarchenegger calls them. That’s why Arnold dumped his wife recently, to fill that market role as a reemerging action film star as a 60 something year old man. That’s also why Harrison Ford played a 70 year old Indiana Jones for the fourth time, because nobody else can. Spielberg and Lucas tried to put Shia Labeouf in position, practically placing the hero role in his lap with Transformers and Indy 4, but the kid just doesn’t have it in his eyes. He’s a good all American kid, but the problem is; it’s the wrong kind of American kid. He’s a kid from progressive America, and American’s don’t truly like those types of people in their movies.

Young Guns led by all the hot young actors of the day led like Emilio Estevez and music by Bon Jovi tried to resurrect the western with a bit of a progressive spin, but it didn’t hold up in a progressive mythology. People have rejected it after a few years, because westerns must fight the progressive in order for the plot to work. Not the other way around.

People don’t want to honor the weak with the price of their movie ticket. Unless they can justify their own bad behavior with a film like Something About Mary, or The Hangover. As far as the kind of film a family can sit down and watch together, and have the values of the culture ooze into the inquiring minds of the viewers, those kinds of things just aren’t being made anymore.

Except in some video games, where the tradition lives on.

That’s why I played Red Dead Redemption and let everything else fall by the way-side for an evening. It’s nice to roam around in an environment where things make sense, where the progressives are the villains instead of the heroes, and doing good is actually rewarded, and evil is castigated. Red Dead Redemption is just such a place, and I am thankful for it.

Rich Hoffman

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

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