Category: Social Networking

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

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

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

http://oln.org/

 

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

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

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

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

________________________________________________________________________

Wanted: New School Board Members

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

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

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

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

Contact us today.

More to come…………

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

Rich Hoffman

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

The Eye of a Photographer: My Daughter’s Adventure

I have a very talented daughter that does some fantastic photographic work. My wife and I took her to launch on Saturday and I had to take a minute to admire the person she has become. As a photographer her pictures are worth millions of words.

These are the pictures that reflect the young woman who sat across from me on Saturday and ate Teriyaki Chicken. It was impossible when looking at her to not think of jet setting all over the world, camping at Stonehenge, crawling on her belly through the mud to take a picture of a flower in the wet morning mist. To see the young adventurer that will fight through the thugs on a DC subway to get unbelievable pictures around the nation’s capital, or the young woman who went with her husband every weekend by train into London, and rode ferries to the shores of France in the frigid punishment of the English Channel.

She is a remarkable young lady that gets better by the day. And her extraordinary ability comes through in her art, captured through the lens of her camera. This was the young woman who laughed at her joy of living while stuffing the Teriyaki Chicken into her mouth, which seemed so incredibly fitting. I wondered while watching her how her vision would increase in the future. What she has managed so far is quite impressive.

She likes friends, so if you want to meet her, here’s her Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Townsend-Photography/212389878774547

She enjoys that kind of thing much more than I do. But that’s part of what makes her unique, and why I think her photography provides a glorious insight into the human experience.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Royal Wedding, Exploding Gas Prices, and Superman Lets us Down: the mentality of a servent

I normally have a lot to write, but today I am astonished at the level of inept servitude millions of Americans have shown toward the royal wedding. If you are one of those people enchanted by dresses and royalty, nobody can help you. Because while you were trying to figure out who made the dress of the princess, the unlived dreams of millions of young and old women manifested before the lens of their psyche of being a princess to some king. They forget that each and every person in America that owns a home is a king of their own domain, and every woman that owns property is a princess of her own land. For the millions that look to a far away kingdom, of a socialist economy, which is what England is, and get giddy feelings, you disgust me so further words cannot be uttered with my thoughts.

Doc Thompson feels pretty much as I do and covers it in this broadcast while gas prices shoot up over $4 per gallon, sad that the rest of the world is drooling over a meaningless event in another, irrelevant land of former glory.

And people wonder why they lose their freedoms. They are stolen from you while you are distracted with honoring others who don’t deserve your worship.

Rich Hoffman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oklahoma House Passes School Choice Program with Broad Student Eligibility

_____________________________________________________


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

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

_____________________________________________________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

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

If You Vote for a Levy, of ANY Kind, YOU’RE STUPID: The Ten Planks of Communism

I have to give the disclaimer more and more these days because my comments are aggressive and as I see it. I see no benefit in dancing around the subject. There is no gain in a lie, such as, at the end of a movie you’re wife likes, and you didn’t, one might be tempted to say, “I liked the movie.” Well, regarding taxes here’s what’s going on, we are being robbed and forced to spend our money on things we don’t agree with. To get a taste of the problem have a listen to Darryl Parks on 700 WLW.

Now, a lot of people don’t want to deal with viewing tax collection as a form of robbery. So they put on the blinders and just try to forget about it. And if you make them look at it, they’ll be angry with you……….at first. Everybody knows the truth whether they speak it or not. Taxes are organized crime style extortion that is outright theft taken from us under a legal premise and sold as good intentions.

How do I know? It’s easy. You can conduct a simple test, the same type of test that you might use to check the chlorine content of your pool. Just take a sample of the water and check the chemical mix. For our society where education is the centerpiece of our social programs funded with tax money from funds collected and spent in our own communities, just take a sample and study the behavior patterns. It’s fairly easy to track. The superintendents of school systems are collecting enormous sums of money for phantom administrative needs while they actively cut teachers at the bottom of the pay scale. When they are directly challenged for their inefficiency and lack of control over school budgets, such as we have done in Lakota, and Mason, and now Lebanon, they scamper off in retirement or transfer to another system to maintain the façade rather than face the music of corruption that happens under their watch. (See the Channel 9 News story coming up on May 9th at 6pm.)

So if it’s happening right under our noses, what do you think is happening at the federal level? Where do you think all our hard-earned money is going? Well, let’s start at the top, with President Obama and his trip out to California to raise money for his re-election campaign. President Obama declared the 41st annual Earth Day as proof of America’s ecological and conservation spirit—then completed a three-day campaign-style trip logging 10,666 miles on Air Force One, eating up some 53,300 gallons at a cost of about $180,000. And that doesn’t include the fuel consumption of his helicopter, limo, or the 29 other vehicles that travel with that car.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/04/22/earth-day-ends-obamas-53300-gallon-trip

Why does he talk out of both sides of his mouth? Well, he’s  practicing communism just like most of government. Communists, socialists, and progressives believe that as the ruling class they know better than you do, and you are their children to care for. But they have a “do as I say, not as I do attitude,” which doesn’t fly with me. I don’t need a single one of them for anything. There is isn’t anybody in any government position including education that I can’t do for myself and do it better. Oh, I heard that, you say we need the military. Well, I like the military and for offensive weapons and the expansion of American ideas, I’m ok with some money going to a military. But for self-defense, if I didn’t have to waste money on the taxes, I could easily have my own militia that would protect my community or even my city. I don’t need a third-party for that kind of thing. So every dollar of money I spend in taxes is going to some inferior person to do a job that I could do better. That’s not to say that they are bad people, but it means that they function from a different ideology than many Americans. For instance, Obama and his friends while smoking pot in college sat around reading The Communist Manifesto, which I’ve talked about in great length. I read the whole book in one evening while I was waiting for my wife to pick her supply of books for the week, but that’s beside the point. Myself, and the people I tend to enjoy spending time with read Atlas Shrugged, which is the polar opposite of The Communist Manifesto.

Now, to my reasoning mind, The Communist Manifesto has been proven to be wrong. Poor Ayn Rand who wrote Atlas Shrugged was a direct victim of the Communist Revolution when the Bolsheviks over took the Russian government in 1917 under the long arm of Lenin, who began the revolution while not even on Russian soil. That’s how it starts. Today in America it is George Soros who is playing the Lenin role, with the massive amount of money he pours into the cause and he achieves his objective with his media power. Only he’s not trying to overthrow a country, he’s trying to create a World Government, and to do that he must eliminate the United States. He’s said as much. It’s easy to find.

But in essence, it’s no different from what Lenin did. But the idea is to create an army from within our own nation. Guns and frontal attacks are such a messy business. People don’t engage in war like that anymore, especially against a technologically superior opponent. You have to bring them down from the inside out, and the first step is to undermine the economy so the superior enemy can’t produce those powerful weapons. That’s what’s happening to us whether the weak-kneed want to believe it or not.

How has that happened in our nation? Well, it starts in our education system. It has always baffled me how protective a mother is when she has a young child, but how willing that same mother just surrenders her children to the minds of strangers within a school system, as if the mother has no right to question a school district about what goes into their children’s heads for 7 hours out of a day. Not all teachers are socialists, but quite a few are. Is that what you want your children learning, and do you want to pay for it with YOUR money, and pay excessively well for it? This chart is what teachers are making in Ohio compared to what the rest of us make. What are they doing that is so special and unique that only they can do?  How did we let them get paid so much?  Because they threatened to strike, often, so we threw money at them so we wouldn’t be late for work if the school wasn’t open?

Ayn Rand’s family suffered greatly under communism and she came to America and told the story of how it happened in Atlas Shrugged, which to me is the answer to any theory that Marx worked up in his poverty driven depraved state while writing The Communist Manifesto. The problem is that Atlas is a big book. The Communist Manifesto is a very small book, and is easy to read by losers, malcontents, hippies, punks, creeps, and the very lazy, so they make it their kind of Bible of philosophy because of the ease in mastery of the subject.

And we all know that it is a majority of the people described above that are drawn to politics. So it is simply a math problem to deduce that communist leaning politicians have infested our political system like termites since the middle of the 19th century. And they have done their damage.

Don’t believe me. Ok, you want proof. Fine.

Here are the 10 Planks of Communism as listed in The Communist Manifesto. Does any of this sound like the kind of activity you’re pouring your hard-earned tax money in to?

The 10 PLANKS stated in the Communist Manifesto and some of their American counterparts are…
1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.
Americans do these with actions such as the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), and various zoning, school & property taxes. Also the Bureau of Land Management (Zoning laws are the first step to government property ownership)

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Americans know this as misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913, The Social Security Act of 1936.; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; and various State “income” taxes. We call it “paying your fair share”.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Americans call it Federal & State estate Tax (1916); or reformed Probate Laws, and limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Americans call it government seizures, tax liens, Public “law” 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of “terrorists” and those who speak out or write against the “government” (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); or the IRS confiscation of property without due process. Asset forfeiture laws are used by DEA, IRS, ATF etc…).

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Americans call it the Federal Reserve which is a privately owned credit/debt system allowed by the Federal Reserve act of 1913. All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) another privately owned corporation. The Federal Reserve Banks issue Fiat Paper Money and practice economically destructive fractional reserve banking.

6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.
Americans call it the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) mandated through the ICC act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, The Interstate Commerce Commission established in 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Executive orders 11490, 10999, as well as State mandated driver’s licenses and Department of Transportation regulations.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Americans call it corporate capacity, The Desert Entry Act and The Department of Agriculture… Thus read “controlled or subsidized” rather than “owned”… This is easily seen in these as well as the Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of business through corporate regulations.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Americans call it Minimum Wage and slave labor like dealing with our Most Favored Nation trade partner; i.e. Communist China. We see it in practice via the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two “income” family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920’s, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
Americans call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public “law” 89-136. These provide for forced relocations and forced sterilization programs, like in China.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Americans are being taxed to support what we call ‘public’ schools, but are actually “government force-tax-funded schools ” Even private schools are government regulated. The purpose is to train the young to work for the communal debt system. We also call it the Department of Education, the NEA and Outcome Based “Education” . These are used so that all children can be indoctrinated and inculcated with the government propaganda, like “majority rules”, and “pay your fair share”. WHERE are the words “fair share” in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26)?? NO WHERE is “fair share” even suggested !! The philosophical concept of “fair share” comes from the Communist maxim, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need! This concept is pure socialism. … America was made the greatest society by its private initiative WORK ETHIC … Teaching ourselves and others how to “fish” to be self-sufficient and produce plenty of EXTRA commodities to if so desired could be shared with others who might be “needy”… Americans have always voluntarily been the MOST generous and charitable society on the planet.

Source article:
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

Now, to me, it is totally unacceptable that America has been tricked into a direction of communism. Communists are now in every layer of our government and our lives, and people no longer remember the basic premise of American life. We have several generations now that think history is listening to “oldies” from the 50’s. Their minds and sense of history is shallow and easily manipulated. But my mind is not shallow. I see that the state of our nation is wrong and I don’t like it, and I certainly don’t want to pay for it. Why would I give my money to a system of education I don’t agree with, that I believe trains kids to become less intelligent instead of more so? Why would I want to pay any money in taxes that gets funneled back to a public sector union that then spends some of that money on union dues that finances democratic candidates that are preaching communism with different names? Why would I want to send money to a health care system that just throws money at people who smoke, drink, have illicit sex and allow their waistlines to form their own gravitational pull on the moon? Yet my money is taken from me and given to places I don’t want it to go. It is taken from me without choice, and the thieves are asking for more every year.

The poor and sick need help you say………then let me give them a job. Get out of my way and I’ll put them to work. Don’t waste my time in court over your silly laws and I might eliminate the poor class altogether. What about the sick and handicapped, or the elderly? Get the hell out of my way and I’ll solve that problem for you too. Why do people need to get sick and die? And why do people have to be handicapped? Genetic engineering and regenerative medicine eliminates those archaic forms of medicine completely. But that’s not the real motive here. The real motive is the same as the superintendents of these school systems. Government has token positions that are all about power. Nobody actually wants to solve a problem. They want a needy public addicted to their services. That’s all communism understands.
On a daily basis, how much tax is stolen from us to be spent on anti-American activities?

Item Rate Notes
Federal personal income tax 17%
(2011 est. – 18.2%) Top 25% rate. It ranges from a credit up to well over 40%. Source

State & local income taxes 10.1%
(2009 – 10.6%) State taxes range from under 6% to over 12%. Local taxes run from zero to 2.75%. Source, source, source, 2009 source

Sales tax 9.7%
(2009 – 10.3%) Figure is the average rate. State sales taxes range up to 8% and local taxes run from zero to over 5%. Source, source, source, 2008 source, 2009 source

Social security & Medicaid 7.65% Total rate is actually 15.3% since half is paid by the employer, but we’re ignoring that to be kind. Source, box 1

Federal corporate income tax share 3% Based on corporate taxes being approximately 1/6 of personal taxes, and that they are paid by individuals in the final analysis. Source

Property tax 2.5%
(2007 – 2.7%) Yearly average actual costs range from under $200 in Alaska to almost $1900 in New Jersey. Source

Fuel/gasoline tax .5%
(2009 est. – .6%) Approximately 23% of the 2005 gasoline price is for federal & state taxes. The federal excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. Per the CPI, about 6% of the average budget is for transportation. Estimated. 2010 estimate, $.45 per gallon average. Source

Other 5%
(2009 est. – 7%) Includes estate tax, fees, licenses, inflation losses, inheritance, deficit allowance, gift, and others too numerous to mention. Estimated.

Total tax percentage paid by the above average US citizen, 2005 – 54.4%
Total tax percentage paid by the above average US citizen, 2009 est. – 57.7%

It went up 3% points in just 4 years. With that type of trend what will it be like four years from now? How about 10 years from now? What about when your children are raised and trying to start a life for themselves.

Now ask yourself what you get out of any of these services. I mean, what do you really get? What if you were able to keep that 57% of your money, and you didn’t feed the thieves that are stealing it from you and placing it where they see fit. Have you considered how wealthy you’d be if you didn’t spend over 57% of your money on taxes. How much of that money do you think finds its way to a whore on K Street or a lobbyist pocket for a vacation to the Caribbean? You don’t want to know, do you? You just want to keep paying the bully and thieves so you don’t have to think about it. So you don’t have to act or carry any guilt, because inaction is safe.

Meanwhile today in my town, the union thugs were hard at work collecting signatures to repeal S.B.5 so they can put the issue on the ballot this fall for repeal, so they can continue to extort money from all of us, leaving us without any legal weapons to protect ourselves from their greed!

So this comes back to the school systems.

A school system is something that you still can control. And if you want to get your hands around this problem, you start with the corruption that’s in your back yard and you work from there.

This is why Darryl Parks says if you vote for a levy, a levy of any kind, you’re stupid. You’re stupid because you are allowing yourself to be robbed, extorted, and manipulated to feed an evil, tyrannical monster hell-bent on destroying the American way of life. And they are doing it with YOUR money.

Taxes are legalized crime. And if you have any doubts about what I put down here, go check out Marx and his list. I didn’t write it. He did. I know about it because I read and I know history. Unlike many out there that just wants to keep watching the box score of the latest ball game, and tries to figure out how they’re going to put their kid through college without even asking if what the kids are learning has any merit or value for their life-long adventure. Most people are content to dumb down their children’s minds so they can get a good job, as if the trade-off were an even exchange.

So, if you vote for a levy………………….any levy at all…………………………you’re……………………….well, you know the rest.

Rich Hoffman

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

Earthday and Progressive Threats to Break the Law: Trumka, Obama and spring break kids want you driving electric cars

In Cincinnati gas is $3.83 per gallon for one reason, because a certain percentage of our government has listened to special interest green technology lobbyists who have prevented the use of oil in our own country. On Earthday, which is today, if you want to see where we’re going and why the economy is having trouble, and why gas prices are going up, read the book Atlas Shrugged. You’ll learn how thieves like the woman on Doc Thompson’s show have shaped public opinion to achieve the economic situation we find ourselves in. We are being “nudged” to green technology by the same tactic that government seeks to combat smoking and alcohol consumption, and that’s through increases in cost. Listen to the mind of such a person, captured here for your amusement on 700 WLW.

I’m not sure who she’s talking about, but there isn’t anybody smarter than me to make decisions off in some far away land. But that’s how progressives think, that somewhere out there, there’s people more qualified to make decisions on our behalf. No they’re not. There isn’t anybody on this planet that I I’d seek advice from, certainly not some goofy politician in Washington. I enjoy talking to other intelligent people, but they often come to the same conclusions as I do because right is right and when you know the right answers everybody that knows it can see it. They may not agree word for word with the things I do or say, but I don’t look to them to guide me in any way. The chick in that interview is a big government progressive and is useless to American society.

My wife and I took my daughter car shopping today and I made sure she didn’t pick some electric car that had trouble running under 100 MPH. My mind was on the recent reports on electric cars while we looked. The day before today’s Earthday show on WLW the Nissan Leaf won the 2011 World Car of the Year award at the New York International Auto Show, beating out the short list of three finalists — the Audi A8 and the BMW 5 Series. The Leaf was the first electric vehicle to win the award.
According to the jurors, Nissan‘s electric car has a lot going for it:

“The Leaf is the gateway to a brave new electric world from Nissan. This 5-seater, 5-door hatchback is the world’s first, purpose-built, mass-produced electric car. Dropped onto a unique platform and body, the Leaf’s lithium-ion battery modules and electric motor generate 108hp and 206 lb ft of torque, propelling the hatch from zero to 60mph in 11.5 seconds and a top speed of 90mph. It has a range of over 100 miles on a full charge (claims Nissan), takes around 8 hours to recharge using 220-240V power supply and produces zero tailpipe emissions. Its low center of gravity produced sharp turn-in with almost no body roll and no understeer. The good news? It feels just like a normal car, only quieter.”
Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2010/09/08/495418.html

Is it any surprise that our government, which is pushing green technology isn’t doing anything about the extortion of fuel prices, so that Americans go out and buy cars like this stupid “Leaf.”

I’ve driven for many years electric-powered forklifts. They work well enough and similar to propane powered lift trucks without the emission. The biggest downfall of electric vehicles is the battery technology. It takes too long to charge them and they run out of power too fast. And they aren’t new. It’s been over a decade with millions and millions of dollars of research done and battery technology still can’t last much longer than 8 hours with constant use on a shipping dock. And a car that only goes 100 miles per 8 hour charge is not a replacement for oil powered vehicles. Not even close!

100 miles won’t even get you from Cincinnati to Lexington. What good is that in the United States? If someone drives from Cincinnati to Columbus and they go 100 miles, do they plug in their car to their business power supply? 8 hours later, they can drive home, is that how it works? Because who is paying for the power station, the persons employer? What happens when the government nudges everyone into electric cars? With gas prices being as high as they are, I have to conclude that the government under the Obama and the gang intend for everyone in America to buy electric cars, which is why the government swept in and bought General Moters, so they could build the “Volt.” What happens when everyone plugs in their cars when they get to work and everyone has to unplug them when it’s time to leave and return home?

I currently have employees that drive over 50 miles to get to work. What if their battery doesn’t fully charge, because I’m not going to let them plug the vehicles in at work? They will have to plug them in at home. Having a fully charged battery is their responsibility. So what if they get to work but don’t have the power to get back to their house? Will they have to stop by Burger King on the way home and plug into some outside power outlet? Then will they have to wait for 8 hours to get a full charge, because if they short-cut the charge, they’ll shorten the life of the battery. If they plug-in for an hour, just enough to get home, they’ll screw up the battery capacity. Then, how do they pay Burger King for the power? Who pays for that portion of the electric bill?

And nobody has explained to me how this electric car saves emissions, because the power plant is still producing the energy of the combustion engine, it is just producing it in stored energy that is manufactured at a central location. The energy created is actually lost along the line of moving from the power plant to the outlet of your house. The energy produced in a combustion engine is more efficient because there is less lost in the drop off of an immediate explosion as opposed to the manufacture and distribution of creating electrons. The process of creating power still comes from a process of turbulent, explosive energy converted either to the force of driving an engine piston, or the creation of an electron to travel down a power line to a power outlet hundreds of miles away.

Then another problem emerges; a 220 outlet is not a typical outlet. That’s what you might run a washer and dryer off of. So to charge up the car, you’ll have to have a special outlet in your garage. A standard outlet is 110 so people won’t be able to do like I suggested at Burger King and sneak the power away secretly from an outside outlet.

All those things are bad, but the worst of all is the name of these stupid electric cars. In America we have names for cars like Mustang, Charger, Firebird, Thunderbird, that’s what American’s like to buy. What did they call this stupid car……………….a Leaf? A LEAF! Who wants to drive around a car named after a plant? Leaves are something that decays and blows away. Whose stupid idea was it to name a car after something fragile like a leaf?

That is a typical government type of name for a product. These are the same type of overly specialized fools that conceived that the solution to the unemployed in Florida was to buy people who didn’t have job capes. What a brilliant marketing idea by clueless, useless people, the same type of people who came up with the name “The Leaf.”

So, what kind of mind created those types of people? What are the students that go to college and learn how to brain-storm and come up with names like “The Leaf” and capes for the unemployed like? Have a look at what students do in their leisure time to understand how they’ll behave in business when they graduate. Here are tomorrow’s keepers of the world taking a little downtime from the hard studies of university. Progressives think all this behavior is good and healthy for young people.

While you watch the gas prices go up, know in your mind the type of fool and thief that is creating policy that is hurting your pocketbook on half-baked, thoughtless endeavors suitable only for a drunk. That is what the Leaf is and the stupid cape ideas are and the nudging of American society into electric cars while we function with our hands tied behind our backs with regulation is an attack on Americanism. Meanwhile, the Obama administration will grant Brazil a deep-sea drilling license to help that country economically and distribute the wealth of our nation and allow our economy to crumble…..on purpose.
Here are those spring break kids all grown up. These are the people who stand in the way of American growth and economic development. They are parasites that loot our taxes and fill their pockets. These are the progressive groups behind the electric car push.

These are the people who are distracting us with their progressive agenda while the Federal Reserve has robbed all American’s of 21.4% of the value of the dollar over an 8 year period. Do you know what that means? That means each dollar you make is only worth .79 cents on the dollar over an 8 year period. Why? Why are we worried about unions and pensions for public employees and collective bargaining while the Fed is openly robbing us, and our government won’t let our nation drill for oil while driving up oil prices to push people to buy electric cars?

Here Obama calls people like me, that want government to be smaller, radical. This is the “soft sale” where he sits down with a bunch of kids and sells a progressive agenda, which he has no right to perpetuate. Yes, people like me do appear to be radical from the view-point of the radical left, that is hell-bent on a progressive government.

See, here’s the problem. I don’t want the world those idiots are selling us. I don’t like what Obama is doing. I don’t like the green movement for all the reasons shown in the interview with Doc Thompson. And I will not put up with union officials breaking the law to advance a progressive philosophy that they expect us to pay for with tax payer dollars all the while the Fed is lowering the value of our money to reduce the wealth of the United States to be redistributed to Brazil and China. We are at war ladies and gentlemen. Progressives against traditionalists.

So here’s how it’s going to work, and this is a note to progressives. You better respect the law because once you eliminate it, such as what the union boys of Trumka and his thugs are doing, you create a free-for-all environment where the rules can be broken the other way too.

And I’m quite good at playing that game………………………………..better than any of you.

So bring it on all you goons, punks and freaks. I will not allow you to advance a progressive agenda and you will not be able to stop me. Attack all the big media names and networks, but it won’t matter. Because you are on the wrong side of the law right now and you leave yourselves open to retaliation with your lack of legal respect and manipulation.

This kind of fight does not require armies of people, just the truth. For every cent of fuel increase, you are breaking the law more and more, because you are stealing from us all in so many ways that everyone now realizes that we’re being taken advantage of. So call us radical, but that’s calling the kettle black. I’m like many of the so-called radicals that just want you fools out of our lives while the progressives are involved in a massive social engineering experiment that I want no part of. And once you involve me, and you have, you started a fight you won’t win.

As to those silly little electric cars, 90 mph isn’t fast enough to be relevant on the highway. I’ll leave a fair warning to stay in the slow lane or I’ll run right over them with my motorcycle. Better go back to the drawing board and rethink that whole concept, because electric cars are underpowered and useless in American society and are not part of the future of this country.

Oh, and good news while I’m writing this: the book Atlas Shrugged is now number 4 on Amazon.com’s sales list. That’s great news. People are learning how the game is played, and they’re primed to take the nation back from the clueless progressive.

Rich Hoffman

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

Birthday Presents and Angry Lakota Mothers: the cost of social kindness

I received the following note from an angry mother, upset about the kindergarten schedule at the Lakota School System. It is so audacious that I decided to respond to it with a full explanation, because I can see by the way she’s writing that there are a lot of pitfalls in her life that are of her own making. Does this make her a bad person, or a bad parent? No. But she is a victim of this modern way of thinking which has been directed by a progressive philosophy which simply does not work in the raising and daily living of human beings. So my response is one that I hope others will learn from.

Comment from bmarcum

I have a kindergartner at one school and two kids at Independence. Both schools start at the same time. She will have to take the older ones early and the process at each school will be at least 25 minutes. So she will have to take the other child to the other school and then pick her up at noon since kindergarten will NOT be a full day, and then at 4:00, she has to pick up the older ones. Thanks for the loss of income!

Ok, this lady says, “Thanks for the loss of income.” Why can’t people understand the value of a budget? This person like many others believe that if our budget is 160 million, which is what it has been, then the residents of Lakota should increase their budget to 167 or 175 million to meet the increase in budget demands without question. And we are supposed to do this because this woman needs to get her kid to kindergarten?

This leads me to some obvious questions that she should ask herself. Is it my fault she has kids so close together? Why isn’t she home during the day? Does she have to work because she and her husband bought too much house, too many cars, or ran up their credit card debt too high? Is she a single woman and if so why did the marriage not work? What is she doing about finding someone to help her with her family burdens? Is there a mom that can help, a dad, a brother or a sister? If not why? Do they live in another town? If so, why does she live away from them? Are all three of these children from the same man? Are all three of these children from her, or did she obtain a few of them from a new marriage with a man who has kids from a previous marriage? If so, why did she marry a man with kids from another woman? Didn’t she think that she might have trouble raising them?

I’m sure some of that doesn’t apply to her, and I’m sure that some of it does. But as a tax payer, none of it is any of my business. It’s her life and her decisions………………….until she asks me for money. Or until the school system has to engage in a program to help a woman like her by supplying buses or schedule deviations to accommodate her busy life. In fact, the school issues where the school attempts to be everything to everybody for every possible circumstance is the microcosm of the macrocosm to the federal problems. Every program created to help women like her is money, it’s expensive, and it plays to the weaknesses of our population by pandering to them. So I do not support it. I do not want to pay for behavior that will perpetuate the destruction of our population psychologically. And I don’t want my personal property taxes to go up just so she can get her three kids to kindergarten. That’s her job to figure out. Not mine and certainly not the school system.

Now I can read your mind dear reader. I see the stir in your soul from the coldness of my words and attitude toward my fellow-man. Well……let me tell you something about human nature and I’ll use my children as examples because they represent my own form of success and proof of my theory.

Human beings like to be challenged. Competition is a natural process that cannot be engineered out of evolution. You can see it in young people when they play video games. In the video game world, all things are equal. Strength, speed, agility, it is the mind that guides the characters, and if you have ever played a game online, you’ll see that human beings are a competitive species. So to make the most of the human race, competition must be a part of the society. This is why capitalism is the economy that produces skyscrapers and communism produces village huts. And we are teaching our children to create village huts. That is the direction of our current society and I do not support it without question. It is not important whether or not it’s inconvenient for a mother to get her three kids to kindergarten. What’s important is that she thinks of a way to do so. The competition and will to survive is the key to making a prosperous human being. So to my mind I would help that woman best by giving her the challenge of figuring out the problem. Not throwing money at more convenience, because that makes people lazy. It’s the “I can’t find the remote” syndrome. You know, where you keep the TV on the same channel even though you don’t want to watch what’s on that station, because you can’t find the remote to change the channel. You could still get up and change the channel manually on the cable unit itself, but often that isn’t even an option in the mind of the lazy TV viewer. When I was a kid, before TV remotes we always had to change the channel by hand. It is with the invention of the TV remote that such a task seemed laborious.

This is what has happened to people with the busing of students and the offering of various electives which create options for possible scholarships which are dangled in front of parents as a kind of lottery ticket to financing their children’s college tuition. What is never asked is whether or not that college education has become cost prohibitive, or whether it’s even needed for that particular child. It is just accepted at face value that it’s a useful enterprise no matter what the cost. That kind of thinking is insane.

With my kids who are both girls, I let them find the hard way through most everything. When they learned to ride their bikes, I let them wreck. When I took the rappelling, I let their hair get caught in the line. When they were learning to walk I let them fall down and didn’t pick them up with every bump of the head.

And those rules don’t just apply to them. I lead by example. In the past, when my wife needed the car to drive the kids to school I rode a bicycle to work, every day rain or shine for 12 miles or more. I did that for over 10 years, because my wife and I didn’t want the expense of another car. I seldom go to the doctor unless it’s very serious. In fact it was just the other day that I was playing with my oldest daughter’s dog and his teeth opened up my finger all the way to the bone while I was trying to rip a dog toy out of his mouth. It would have required about 8 to 15 stitches, but instead I pulled it together tight while my son-in-law poured Superglue over the wound to close it up. See, I didn’t have time to go to the doctor. I had a meeting that night that was of urgent importance, so there wasn’t time to sit in a waiting room. There weren’t any ligaments torn and the nerves were ok. As long as no major blood vessels were torn, and they weren’t because I could see them, patching up the skin wasn’t a big deal. And I wasn’t going to cancel my meeting. So I fixed it myself. Now, a week and a half later, it’s all closed up and looks good. I was able to grip a basketball yesterday for the first time in over a week, and throw a football.

My kids are used to this kind of thing and they understand how to bounce through life’s tough spots. For my birthday my oldest daughter made me a work of art that is displayed on the wall over my small library I have in my living room. It is a collage of all the things she thinks of when she thinks of me.

Now, as a father it was my job to make sure that she has things to think about on such a day. It means a great deal more to receive a gift like that, which she made by hand, as opposed to some manufactured item produced by someone else. Because there is value in her production, and her production is a reflection of how she feels about me. And if I didn’t give her anything to feel, that would make me a bad parent. And if I had just done what everyone told me to all my life, I would have been a crappy parent.

As I look at that collage of images it looks all jumbled from a distance, just like life does. So it is an accurate metaphor of my life which is her point in the piece. But up close, if you take the images individually, the tapestry of images becomes much more defined. The theme is one of adventure and always pushing the boundaries of things. Which is the greatest gift she could give me, because as a 21-year-old married woman, I see that the things I spent so much time and energy teaching her, she understands, and is applying it to her own life in her own unique way, and what could be better than that?

But when my kids were growing up, I didn’t follow the rules of society. I took what I valued, and rejected the rest as tripe. I picked the path I wanted instead of the one provided. I do that at state and national parks too. I seldom ever stay on the trail. I break the rules often, proudly.

So what do I say to the woman who believes that she is owed transportation for her children? I’d say, where is your husband and why doesn’t he solve the problem for you. Why are you relying on a bus or a school schedule for your success? And if Lakota cuts too many programs, take classes online. I did that for my kids. They graduated at 16 and 17 years old so they could visit Europe for their senior years. It was their idea. They learned more in the British Museum and the streets of London than they would have in some library at Lakota East. I’d also ask why she and people like her believe that the school budget should just continue to increase without any reason. When it is known and proven that the results of the money will not make her children any better. And that pandering to convenience will make them social liabilities later in life. Those kids are future voters. Toughen them up so they have some perspective on life. And relax. Take control of your life. Don’t look to someone else to fix your problems. That costs money and doesn’t work anyway. It only makes people feel good for the moment, which is the spectral menace of charitable behavior.

That’s just some friendly advice. At the bare minimum, don’t ask for more money at Lakota or any school system. Because as my good friend Darryl Parks utters often, “If you vote for a school levy……………YOU’RE STUPID!

Rich Hoffman

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

Glendale Tea Party Rally and the Opening of Atlas Shrugged: the film averaged $5,608 per screen, GREAT JOB!

What you see above is the back cover of The Coming Insurrection written by The Invisible Committee. It’s in the philosophy section of my second favorite book store in town, the Barnes and Nobles at Newport on the Levy. I have read that book in two trips to that store. I started it on a trip to Newport about 5 weeks ago where my wife was looking for an exotic cookbook, so I had some time to knock out about 50 pages, then I finished it on Friday night.

I didn’t buy the book because it is what I’d consider evil. I wouldn’t want to put a dime into the pocket of its publishers. I don’t believe in banning books, but fear nothing in reading the mind of my enemy. And that’s what those people, and any who wish to think like them, are. Let’s be clear about that. But fighting with guns and knives and sticking the decapitated head of my enemies on a pike is getting a bit ahead of things. After all, we are still able to attempt a diplomatic approach where the rule of law still has some weight, and as long as it does, I’m happy to participate in the battlefield of ideas with superior thoughts. But the threat from these fringe leftist groups is looming, and they intend to break down that diplomacy which will be to their detriment. For when and if they succeed, they will find that the only protection they had from people like me was that precious law they sought to overthrow and rewrite in their image. I feel such a warning is only fair; after all, they started the threats of violence. Richard Trumka has insinuated as much and given his connections to the White House, I can only conclude based on the arrogance of President Obama that a violent insurrection from those fringe groups is coming. And when it does, they won’t find complacent participants to steamroll over.

Part of that diplomacy and avoidance of some violent future is in the Tea Parties all across the United States. It’s laughable that many in politics consider the Tea Party group extreme, because as far as Tea Partiers go, they are a lot more peace-loving than I am. On April 15th 2011 it was a particularly important day for those of us that hope for a peaceful resolution to the growing tendency of a new kind of civil war within the United States, this time over class warfare. I was full of exuberance on this particular rainy evening as my wife and I attended the Cincinnati Tea Party Rally in Glendale, Ohio where Doc Thompson was the master of ceremonies.

It was a wonderful event set up in the town square that reminded me a lot of Glenn Beck’s rally in Wilmington, Ohio just a few months ago. Seeing people attend these meetings, hearing speakers like Doc and Mike Wilson, and meeting Senator Shannon Jones it gives me hope that intelligence may actually get our nation under control from the types of people who are openly seeking to rob us all with our eyes wide open, and avoid the future I hinted to above. Does saying such a thing make me an extremist? Hey, gas prices are headed toward $5 a gallon, and government seems to be accelerating the problem pushing us to electric cars. Public employees are threatening to repeal S.B.5 in Ohio with a rally of their own in downtown Hamilton on Saturday April, 16 2011. The people in that crowd were led by people like David Pepper. Look into the faces of freedom’s adversary. Here the Hamilton County Commissioner advocates his narrow view of the world with those like him, conspirators in the economic decline of our nation.

Here are those same types of people at a Seattle Tea Party Rally showing themselves in action and the contents of their minds.

This is the kind of guy our President is. I see his Health Care Bill as a direct assault on my country, and my personal sovereignty. I think his union support is an alliance of thieves, and I don’t appreciate him speaking to my representatives the way he does in this back-room meeting. If I were in that room and he spoke to me like that, I would have smashed him like a bug. That’s no threat, I’ve done it before to people over less, and his tone is “fighting words” by any definition. Very disrespectful.

That tone is no different from an invitation to a parking lot fist fight and I would have obliged him instantly. I can’t believe this guy is our president. I don’t have any tolerance for his “Chicago” style politics. Obama, Bill Ayers, Trumka have openly threatened violence, and I’m the type of person that will meet that blow for blow. I can beat people like that any way they want to play. They don’t have the intellect to rely on, so if violence is their game, fine. Big mistake on their part.

The rally at Glendale was very metaphoric. As I stood in the square filming and taking pictures there were three trains that passed by the station there, each at least 20 to 30 cars each. That meant there were 60 to 90 train cars going someplace coming from somewhere and that made me feel happy. The reason was that I had butterflies in my stomach over the premier of Atlas Shrugged Part 1 down at Newport on the Levy and I had read a lot of bad reviews from the Hollywood establishment and I loved the book and really wanted the movie to be good. The reviewers criticized the film for not adopting to the modern age by getting rid of the train oriented story line. And here I was watching three trains roar by in a half an hour from the CSX Line. Trains are a sign of an economy where things are happening. So it was my first inclination that the reviewers were missing the point of the film and were wrong about it. I had promised the booking agent for the film that Cincinnati would be a great market and I promised a sellout at the Newport on the Levy location, so all during the rally with the Cincinnati Tea Party I was thinking of our next destination which was the 8:20 PM showing of Atlas.

My wife and I left the rally to arrive at Newport in the drifting rain. The lights were on at Great American Ball Park across the river as the Reds were playing the Pirates. We arrived at around 7:45 and much to my relief, Atlas Shrugged was SOLD OUT! I have never been so glad to not be able to buy a ticket. We picked up tickets to the 10:45 show and headed to the Claddagh Irish Pub which is a favorite of ours when we go to Newport. We had a few beers, and watched the Reds game on the big screen while a major storm rolled in across the river outside. We like Claddagh because it’s a medieval looking place full of cubbyholes for the kind of meetings I attend a lot, where your neighbor can’t listen to what you’re saying. If offers the good kind of privacy for passing time, especially with your wife.

But that only went so far and after an hour or so, we went over to our favorite book store where I finished reading The Coming Insurrection. I became angry at the tone of that book, especially what was on the back cover shown in that picture.

We went to our movie; I was relieved that it was good. I already put up a review, so there isn’t any reason to repeat it here. Needless to say the weekend numbers were reputable. The film made a respectable $1,676,917 gross, averaging $5,608 per theater. The producers are considering expanding to over 1000 screens for the next weekend so that’s great.

I went to bed with hope that a violent future can be averted. If enough people become educated, watch movies that aren’t controlled by radical left-winged filmmakers which is just about everyone, and reading books that pander to a liberal publishing industry, while liberal unions are pushing for even more taxes to pay for their very expensive public wages, if the Tea Party continues to do its work and films like Atlas Shrugged are shown to people who haven’t or won’t read the book, this country has a chance.

The voice of reason has been quiet on the front of small government types and the loud mouthed big government types have had the microphone for way too long. John’s work on Atlas Shrugged is encouraging. I hope it goes a long way to waking up enough people to hold off the looters, and leaches attached to public service.

We are not a democracy. We are a republic. Union jobs are not middle-class. If they are public jobs, they work for the tax payer and the tax payer is not required to increase their budgets just to pay for labor we don’t need for a government that just wants to keep growing and infringe itself upon us. For too long we’ve let these big government types have their way with running our government and it’s time to stop. They can stop with reason and of their own accord but if they have in mind violence, they’ll get back more than they can imagine because they don’t have a right to steal from the rest of us. And they don’t have a right to a job. And they don’t have a right to over-regulate our states and nation just to create a job. Just visit your local BMV to see them in action. And on a Friday night, the cops with the checkpoints to issue out speeding tickets and DUI’s in order to drum up business for the courts, and god forbid the tax looters of all kinds.

If there is anything that one must reflect on tax day it’s, why do we pay so much in taxes, and why are there so many that want us to pay more!

I like the trend and I hope that the pendulum will continue to swing to the right and bring things more to the middle, because the radical talk I’m hearing from the left are fighting words that can only lead to one end, and that’s not what they want, believe me.

It’s not radical to not accept threats issued by these radical leftist groups, unions and public officials. It’s not radical to demand that government shrink. It’s only radical to the people foolish enough to take public jobs thinking that government was the way to build a career. The clash is inevitable with these people because they built their livelihoods on the backs of those that supply all the money and are tired of carrying the extra load.

Some of my personal critics have said about me, “you don’t work well with others. You don’t collaborate.” No……I don’t. When I’m hired for a job, I am the dictator that functions as the sole decision maker. Why, because to me, it is a wasted effort to carry around everyone else. I compare collaboration to hauling around a wheel barrel full of rocks, the minds of co-workers and other management being the sluggish rocks that do very little but slow you down and add weight to your load. My view of government is the same. Most of them are just dead weight that doesn’t contribute anything productive to the world around us. We throw money at them just to give them a job, and to me that is a tremendous waste. And the same thing applies to this whole big government versus small government issue. Government is not there to give you a job. Anybody that thinks so is sadly mistaken, and you should do yourself a favor and start looking for another line of work. It’s fair warning from fair people. Don’t make the transition any more difficult than it needs to be. But don’t make threats. And don’t play Chicago politics………………it’s a fair warning.

The Coming Insurrection might work in Europe where their minds are soft and their hearts are softer, but you can forget about it in the United States. Don’t even try it.

Rich Hoffman

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

Kasich’s Epic Clash with the Voice of the Common Man

It is rare that any state, locality, or federal entity runs into a politician that is competent and intelligent. It is rare to find a politician that is a self-made man not looking at politics as a stepping stone to career advancement. It is rare that a politician actually puts the honor of their office first, before anything else. It is rare to meet a politician that has the guts and fortitude to endure the criticism of special interest.

It also is rare to see a politician that will take on an old-time friend and conservative that prides himself as the conservative voice of the common man, and in the times when it really counts between those two old friends, it is obvious who meant what they said over the years and who was all talk.

That’s what the State of Ohio has in Governor John Kasich and it’s evident in this video shot at 700 WLW when Kasich was on the Bill Cunningham show for a fiery showdown of ideas over the casino issues, retirement and the controversial stance the governor has taken on “collective bargaining” specifically the S.B.5.

I’m not one that tosses praises around easily. So it is with great merit that I say that I can’t recall a politician in my lifetime that matches the passion of their mouth with actual action. John Kasich is a rare person that has greater ability in management than he does in his ability to speak, which is exceptionally good. I was deeply impressed with this exchange between Kasich and Bill Cunningham.

I suspect that Kasich is like many in Ohio and he doesn’t want casinos in the state. That would explain his behavior toward the casino deal that Cunningham is so against. I can remember when Cunningham in the mid 90’s was completely against the casinos so that would explain why Kasich is so surprised in Cunningham’s defense of a socially liberal concept, such as casinos are.

Kasich should be representing the position that all businesses have an equal opportunity even if he doesn’t like them. There is a Hustler of Hollywood store near my house that I can’t stand. I think it ruins the small town of Monroe, Ohio with its presence. But, every time I drive by it, it’s full of people looking for their pornography fix and all the tax collected through each sale is paying taxes. I don’t agree with the pornography, but I vote by not going, and I won’t be going to a casino in Cincinnati for many of the same reasons. If the business model fails, it fails. I’d be happy about it, but I won’t do anything to bring it about either, because it’s a business that has the right to attempt. If it finds a market, even if that market is evil, so be it. It’s not for me to decide what’s evil for someone else.

Kasich needs to have the same position on the casinos. You can’t expect to tax them out of existence like we attempt to do with cigarettes and alcohol. Those are all anti-business stances. But, that does not ruin the great banter that Kasich engaged in. It was refreshing to see such a person in the position of a governor.

This clash of ideas is something that will resonate for quite some time because of the truths revealed. And we are better for it.

Rich Hoffman

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