One of the great things about Glenn Beck is that he’s spent the money he’s made off his books, his subscriptions, and his shows and reinvested it back into the message he’s been committed to. You won’t find Glenn Beck running around with some stripper in a New York hotel,or find that he has used any of his money to abuse anybody in society. Regardless of whatever mistakes he may have made in the past, I sincerely believe the person he is today is a good person who just wants the truth, the same as me, and millions of other Americans who simply don’t like the progressive direction of our country.
A sign that Beck is achieving that success can be seen in President Obama’s new Attack Watch website, which I find disgusting, but also revealing, for it shows just how juvenile politicians as high-ranking as The President of the United States truly is. Listen to Beck discuss it from the set of his new show, totally free of any editorial censoring, which I believe has triggered this move by the president and his staff.
After I saw this episode with Beck I checked out the website for myself and the very first thing that came to my mind was the way that East Berlin used to engage in similar propaganda to prevent its people from trying to escape over into West Berlin. Obama is actively looking for dissidents to his administration so those dissidents can be targeted. Of course people like Beck will be targeted, but as I read the intent of that website it became clear that the goal of Attack Watch wasn’t so much after Glenn Beck, but it’s intended to target people like me and the material I publish on this site, which I stand behind proudly. But the nature of this type of information set my blood into a boil, so I contacted Attack Watch and turned myself in with the note shown below, which is the exact text that I sent to Barack Obama and his minions running Attack Watch.
Dear Attack Watch:
I will have to report myself. I am embarrassed at this administration and his support of public unionized labor. And he has put himself on the front line of Ohio’s Issue 2 and is very responsible for his own attacks and false information. The fact that he supports this site says everything about the guy.
Rich
Shortly after I did this I heard that Doc Thompson was covering this very issue on 700 WLW so I called in at about the 11 minute mark and confessed what I had done, that I had turned myself into Attack Watch. Doc and I had some fun at the expense of the President over his Jobs Bill and this tyrannical Attack Watch website, which the President deserves. CLICK TO LISTEN:
With the recent news that Chiquita is considering a move from Cincinnati to Charlotte, North Carolina, it has left Cincinnati in a state of panic as to why Chiquita or any other business would desire to do such a thing. Doc Thompson covers this issue with Cincinnati Magazine Executive Editor Linda Vaccariello in an illuminating broadcast about what Cincinnati has to offer, then considers why Cincinnati has a problem attracting and keeping business in the city.
Well, I have a bit of experience with doing business in Cincinnati that I’ve touched on before, but this topic lends itself to a bit more detail. Well before there was ever a Paul Brown Stadium or even a Great American Ball Park I was with a group who was trying to win the design for the riverfront development project. In fact, the guy I was with presented a wonderful plan to the city council of Cincinnati of which Dwight Tillery seemed to like, (Dwight was the mayor at the time). The plan included paving over completely the various roads that connect the highway system downtown, and put them underground to connect Cincinnati’s downtown with the riverfront. On that paved-over section would be a grassy park, various restaurants, movie theaters, shopping centers, new stadiums, and a plan for including Longworth Hall as a Historic District connected to everything else which would wrap around to join with Union Terminal. The plan received a rousing applause from the people attending this meeting. I thought at the conclusion that the group I was with would undoubtedly be the lead design team which would head the development of the riverfront development.
After the meeting found it odd that none of the city council members, or the media wanted to speak to anyone from our group, after all, we just had the best presentation without question, but we also didn’t have “formal” relationships with any members of city council. By formal that means “friendly” in the world of politics. I knew every member of council through my work at city hall where a friend of mine and I were at that monstrosity every day trying to get the Cincinnati Building Commission to approve plans for a development we were working on which required a simple change of use on an existing building.
Getting information out of any member of the CBC was like pulling teeth from a 4-year-old kid. I can’t even begin to illustrate without writing an entire book on the matter of how many engineers we fired for not moving at the speed we demanded, which was the speed of business. In fact I remember vividly a conversation I had with our architect and investor at the time. This guy had liked our business plan so much he put some of his own money into the project. Then one day he gave us a call and said, “I heard you guys were down at City Hall yelling at the guys in the CBC for dragging their feet. I want you to know that I have a good standing with those guys, and I find it offensive that you’d chose to do business this way.”
Our response was, “Hey, you’re our architect, you work for us. You don’t work for the CBC. If you are friends with them, that’s not our problem.”
The architect then said, “But you guys are trying to cut too many corners. They are telling you what you need to do and you are bucking them at every issue. They told you the type of HAVAC unit you had to install. They told you what the structural improvements were going to be. They told you how many restrooms you were going to have to install and on and on, and you guys seem to want to argue every fact!” “Buddy, you are supposed to be working on our behalf. You are supposed to do this arguing for us. We’re not supposed to even be involved in this kind of thing. We’re doing it because you aren’t. Anyone can just say ‘spend more money,’ which is what you are saying, and it’s what they are saying. They want a larger fee for the cost of the project. That is all they are after. They are deliberately driving up the cost to receive the larger fee, why can’t you see that?”
“It’s the cost of doing business and you guys don’t want to pay it. It’s cheap and classless. I’m embarrassed to be associated with you guys. I’ve known those people for years and I don’t know what to tell them when you won’t follow their guidance.”
“Who are they but a bunch of pencil-pushing government workers? If we did what you and the CBC are suggesting you guys would add a million dollars to the cost of this project, and that’s just not in the budget.”
“So put it in the budget!” Said the architect. “Just go raise more money. Isn’t that easier than all this?”
That’s why nobody would speak to us after the riverfront development meeting. We were in that class as, “radicals”who didn’t want to pay off their friends around the city. The result of course was that we took our business across the river to Covington. My meeting with their building division went something like this.
“You guys want to do what? Well, Ok. Sure, no problem.”
My friend and I looked at each other. “But don’t you want to contest HAVAC units, fire escapes, access ramps, structural improvements and fire easements.”
The man laughed, “Hell no, it’s your business. We want you guys over here. Give me a call when you’re ready to move on this project.”
This is why Cincinnati is in a state of decline, because it has been overrun by these types and all the people with bright ideas and money will take it someplace else, for all the same reasons that companies don’t want to be limited with unionized labor or to deal with companies who are driven by unionized labor. It’s not because they want to hurt a worker’s rights. Most companies don’t want to worry about that kind of thing, that’s why they hire human resource managers, so they can advise the company how to take care of the employees. Because the men and women of this world with ideas and the money to spend on them do not want to be tied down to the speed of complacency and network friendships. They want to move at the speed of business, which is what drives communities and countries to greatness, and is what the looters of the world simply slow down.
It has been a difficult couple of weeks, the worst of which was the news that my editor had been particularly affected when Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast. She was so affected that she was unable to continue on with the task of editing my new book, since she needs time off to recover from the damage. So the publisher is assigning me someone else, which in the world of publishing is kind of like a “blind date,” you aren’t sure how much common ground you’ll have, and whether or not the relationship will be fruitful. But that’s the nature of business. When devastation strikes people you respect and care about, your heart goes out to them, but the objectives of business must march on.
This is why ISSUE 2 is such an important law. Diana Frey was not the first and certainly not the last union leader or politician who will take advantage of their power position to enrich themselves. And she is not the first to use the static patterns of society to hide their true intentions. In fact, many of the school levies on the ballot this year are using the static patterns of social education perception, sports, college prep, real estate value to disguise the labor union looting of the public treasury where the real intent are excessive wages and benefits for their members. It has nothing to do with the education of children. ISSUE 2 will allow the dynamic elements of society, to question things that aren’t right, and bring it to the attention of those who are stuck in static thinking, which simply can’t see it.
One of the most popular art forms which exemplify this static and dynamic tendency is the film series Star Wars. When people talk about Star Wars most people will say that they enjoy the older films more than the newer films. The complaint is that the new films are boring and discuss politics too much. Well, I don’t think that’s the real reason. The real reason that people like the older films over the newer films is by design. If Lucas had come out with the new series first, Star Wars would have never been popular.The series would have died off a long time ago. The original series, episodes 4 through 6 are all about Dynamic Quality. The rebellion is a dynamic static pattern confronting the static pattern of the Evil Empire. It’s the classic struggle, the David versus Goliath principle. Goliath did not expect David to simply launch a rock to hit the much larger man in the forehead. Goliath loses because in his static pattern thought there would be a great battle, where he would use his size against the much smaller David to defeat the little man. In Star Wars the small rebellion fires one small torpedo into the giant Death Star to blow it up and end the tyrannical super weapon of the Empire. It’s all the same stuff.
But in Episodes 1 through 3, known as the Prequels, the story is all about the rise of that Empire to power. Those films are about how the good guys, stuck in a static pattern of their own, failed to see the evil of Senator Palpatine who would become Emperor of the growing Empire in his power grabs which occurred right under the noses of the well respected Jedi.
The Jedi Council with all their wisdom and sage-like understanding rooted in thousands of years of defending the Old Republic from aggressive enemies, with the ability to even read the minds of people, could not see the actions of Senator Palpatine who had befriended the Jedi Council and used that relationship against the Jedi to hide his true intentions; the destruction of the Republic and the creation of an Empire of which he would lead.
Lucas knew from experience that the public would reject the Star Wars films if he started with the collapse of a static pattern looked after by the socially good and the evil dynamic was the actual protagonist, Star Wars would not have been so accepted and loved, so he began his story with the collapse of an evil static pattern to be replaced with a dynamic good pattern. Once he had a captive audience hungry for more, he had a portion of society who was prepared to hear his message. This is the message he tried to tell in films like Apocalypse Now, and American Graffiti as well, but never quite hit the mark until he moved the story to Star Wars, a world of his own making to create the tapestry in which to tell such a complex tale that worked at many psychological levels.
Why is it our obligation as a tax paying base to subsidize bad decisions made by politicians who have long since left office, leaving in their wake a turbulent chaos of bureaucracy, so that their puny minds could relish in the creation of a job, when in fact the merit of those jobs add little to the overall society? It would seem that politicians like Obama are so emotionally attached to certain jobs like teachers, police, firefighters, BMV workers, administrators and the like that they never measure the productivity of those positions against the taxes it takes to maintain them, and that is a catastrophic error.
The trouble with government is every time someone like Obama wants to make a name for himself, and history has produced millions of those types, they “create” a job and expand government just a little bit more. And the cost of that expansion is what drives our taxes higher and higher in order to maintain the growth. This is why politicians are in such a panic over the sudden desire from the public, of which I am a proud part, to reduce government, because those expansions are part of a politicians “legacy.” To a politician removing a government program is similar to taking away their tombstone once they’ve been laid to rest in a cemetery.
My family explored a cemetery hidden away in the hills of Eastern Ohio a few years ago which was supposedly haunted. As we sat in the dark with cameras and other recording equipment waiting for a ghost to come up out of the ground and dance with the evening mist which engulfed us, I looked at the tombstones laying all about, mostly eroded away beyond recognition. The cemetery itself was about 150 years old and the town which housed the residents had long ago disappeared. This cemetery no longer had relatives who came to visit. These people were simply forgotten by a town that no longer existed. (TO SEE SPECIFICS ON THIS TYPE OF STORY SEE MY ARTICLE ON THE GHOST TOWN KERR CITY) CLICK THE LINK:
To the people of a ghost town, all the activity of the town seemed so important while the town lived. My daughter and I looked at the tombstone of “The Brakeman” in the misty, haunted night where civilization wasn’t even remotely connected. The night air called out no hints of mankind’s existence from this place, as we waited for the ghost ofThe Brakeman to walk the cemetery at night, as legend said he does occasionally.
The Brakeman worked the railroad of the nearby town and had an affair with the wife of his card playing friend who was in charge of all the freight which left the town. When the friend found out about what the brakeman had done with his wife, he challenged his friend to a card game where he got The Brakeman drunk to the point of passing out. At that point the estranged husband laid his friend “The Brakeman” across the railroad tracks to be killed by the passing train, which happened within the hour, decapitating completely The Brakeman. Now legend has it that the ghost of the headless Brakeman roams the cemetery at night, and that’s what we wanted to see for ourselves in spite of all the reports from people who did exactly what we were doing, but suffered from being driven insane by curses that the angry Brakeman casts upon anyone who disturbs his grave. That’s the story anyway.
Strange things did happen that night, but not the expected “strange stuff.” But as we sat there waiting I thought about how important sleeping with that man’s wife had been to The Brakeman. How important all their jobs had been to the people of the town, even how important the man’s marriage to the cheating wife had seemed to the killer. Now here we were 150 years later waiting for a ghost to appear from that time and show us some hint to a mystery which occurred so long ago. And all the things that seemed so important to the people of this graveyard back when they lived were no longer even relevant to the order of the universe. The people were all decayed away and forgotten. Even the tombstones proving their existence was nearly gone. In another hundred years nobody would even know this graveyard ever existed.
This is the secret behind government expansion, and what is truly behind the words of politicians like Obama. Government programs and created jobs are the “tombstones” of the politician. They hope that when they are long gone, dead to the world that society will remember that they were good people once, and that their legacy will live on in some way. Social Security is the tombstone of FDR. Medicare is the tombstone of LBJ. I am 100% convinced that when those presidents signed those government programs into law that they thought to themselves, “people will remember me when I’m gone. These programs will outlast a tombstone.”
That is what is behind almost every government program created. It’s behind nearly every law created, every building built, every bridge that spans a river; it is in the infantile mind of the spiritually cumbersome which seeks some measure of immortality in the form of something that will carry their memory beyond the tombstones of a cemetery. And this is the mentality behind the President’s Jobs Bill, and the anger of many who think like him that people would “dare” to reduce the size of government by eliminating government programs, or even entire branches of it, because to them, this would be equivalent to desecrating the grave of the dead, for the impact, is the same. The fear is to be forgotten so nobody ever knew they lived. People like Obama understand this at a primal level and will protect those who came before him in hopes that someday someone will protect his tombstones in the form of created legislation. Isn’t that what Obama Care is after all, a memorial to Obama for all eternity?
When I was a very small kid, I actually took a tombstone from a graveyard and hid it in the basement of our house. I wanted to study it. My mother was aghast and demanded I put it back where I found it, which was an old cemetery I had found deep in the woods near our house. She told me the ghost of that man would track me down all my life, that God would be angry with me for desecrating the grave of this poor man. I was confused by her anger so I drug that tombstone the 2 miles back to the graveyard and put it back the best I could, wondering why my mother was so upset about it. I found out later that she had done the same thing when she was a little girl and her parents, my grandparents had put the fear of God into her, and she never did such a thing again. I asked her if she actually believed the Earth would swallow her up and she’d be damned to hell for all eternity if she took a tombstone, a simple rock with writing on it that the process of natural erosion would destroy within a few hundred years anyway. Why did human beings think such things are actually sacred?Well, the only answer she had was that it was wrong to do such a thing. And the rationality is just as simple when speaking about reducing a government program, or a law. All those things are just memorials to the deceased when taken down to their most elementary function.
I’ve explored graveyards all over America since then and seen and done things that many would consider sacrilegious to the religions of the Earth. I have done these things with the view toward science, not just belief, and this lends itself to the proper perspective in understanding the nature of a problem. And this is the case of government. It grows and expands not out of necessity, but out of fear……..fear of the lives that make up that government growing old and dying off to be forgotten by the world. This is the fundamental error behind many of the human beings who roam this Earth. They are living their deaths by planning for it their entire lives, wondering how they will be remembered instead of living the life that is before them one day at a time and when the time comes to leave this world of the living honorably to join with the greater mysteries of existence, most of mankind clambers with the fingers of both hands dug deep into roots of the living and while they hope that there is an afterlife, they don’t truly believe it. So they seek to be remembered for “something.” And this is the catastrophe of politics. It allows the small-minded to use tax money to build memorials in their honor, and that is not the role of government. And it is not the responsibility of the tax payer to make people who view themselves inwardly as “worthless” to project an outward appearance of “worth” long after death robs them of life and confines their Earthly bodies to a cold, decaying grave.
Every politician ever known or yet created will suffer the same fate as The Brakeman, and no amount of money, of government program can protect them from the fact that they are living a death and their ghost will soon come to claim their bodies erasing their footprint from the mind of mankind forever.
One of the questions I get a lot is…………..What right do you have to say the things you do? Who do you think you are? The next is, if you’re such a great writer, why aren’t you writing for organizations like American Thinker,or other conservative publications. Well, the answer to that question is that I have. My preference however is to have creative control over my content, and when you present that material without a lot of middlemen involved, then the material has the opportunity to be more authentic.
But, for those readers here who would like to see a sample of my work from before I started this forum, here is an article from American Thinker, from back when Governor Kasich was just getting ready to run for the office in Ohio. I was reminded of this article recently, and thought it prophetic given the current battles over Issue 2 that we are all facing. So for brevity, I provide the link below to that article for your enjoyment.
Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior.
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith; 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; 3. From courage to liberty; 4. From liberty to abundance; 5. From abundance to complacency; 6. From complacency to apathy; 7. From apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage.”
With the tragedy of 9/11 occupying almost every broadcast and social event of the weekend, the common theme which came to my mind was that I felt that the tragedy of 9/11, as terrible as it was, fails in comparison to attending a memorial service for your own country while it still lives.
As the NFL did its tribute, and the firefighters climbed to the psychological heap to lift the flag high about their heads, I thought of the unions behind those firefighters, concoctions of socialism hidden behind a mask of American Pride and I could only shake my head. “They don’t even know what they are,”I would think to myself in disgust. They have no concept of history. Their rituals are only a few generations deep and keep them stuck into a ritual that reminds them of the greatest defeat inflicted on American soil, an attack that went far deeper than buildings falling in the financial district of New York City, or even the terrible deaths which occurred there. The tragedy of the 9/11 attack is that it forced America to change, to become too introspective, and to meditate on the tragedy itself in a vain attempt at recollection.
I looked at the guy shifting gears, because the memorial event was touching and my mind was on it. “Yes, that’s right. I am that guy.”
“Well, I want to tell you, I grew up with firefighters, I’m friends with firefighters, and I stand with firefighters.”
I looked out the window as he spoke and looked at the long lines of firefighters gathered around their trucks and a group of motorcycles all propping up the American Flag from the backs, the riders showing AFL-CIO stickers on their windshields and fenders. “So because you grew up with them you have to think like them?”
The man looked at me with a challenging gaze. “I’m not looking to dispute you with a bunch of ‘fancy’ words. I just want you to know where I stand.”
The firefighters at the service I was at, along with all the armed forces personnel gave me the same feeling that I thought watching the start of all the NFL games, that the memorial we were all attending was not one for 9/11, it was for ourselves. And the events which led to that death was an elusive quality that nobody even saw coming. It is like a death by cancer as opposed to a gruesome death by a visible enemy on a remote battlefield. The death by cancer just eats you from the inside out and the death just happens quietly in a bed.
The men I was looking at were good people, but they are carrying within them something that is destroying their spirit without them even knowing it. It’s rotting them using their static patterns as camouflage. Many of them have no idea they even carry it within them, within their belief patterns which govern their lives.
On 9/11 the tragedy of The World Trade Center was just the needle which injected into the body of our American Culture a disease which would topple our society with apathy. For while we attend memorials and contemplate whether or not firefighters and police should be attached to communist philosophies in the form of labor unions, the enemy moves against us. It runs through the blood of our cultural bodies and is turning the elements of our body against itself, with the aim of destroying it.
The sad thing is, such as in the case of what that guy said to me, that he “stood with firefighters,” as though the prerequisite for supporting firefighters, teachers and police means you must support unionized labor. My question is, why can’t I support those public workers without supporting unionized labor, which is rooted in socialism? I wanted to tell that guy that, but he didn’t give me the chance. He walked off too quickly, and even if he didn’t it would have taken hours of conversation to even arrive at a place where his mind could accept what I was telling him. He is functioning from a static pattern that he spent over 40+ years forming, and that wasn’t going to change in an afternoon conversation with me.
As I watched the guy and his firefighter friends, I thought of the AIDS virus, how as HIV it attacks the immune system of the human body by disguising itself as a friend, then when it is near, it destroys the body’s ability to fight it off the virus, until it’s too late.
America has been infected, and the events of 9/11 has paralyzed America’s immune system and allowed the virus of our enemies to attack us, to overwhelm us, to turn friend against friend on a premise that was a virus to begin with.
So when I want to demonstrate precision, power, effectiveness, management of resources, I often use the whip.I’ve used my bullwhips to explain to businesses how to function more efficiently, so it only makes sense to me to use a bullwhip to explain how Issue 2 can be effective in controlling the costs of communities all over Ohio. And I do it by showing that Issue 2 will allow communities to “target” their costs specifically, just as I do by targeting the flame of a candle, putting that flame out without disrupting the content of the candle. In this case it is the wax that makes up the candle and it is the flame that consumes it. If I want to save the candle from consumption by the flame, I must blow out the candle. Putting the candle out with at whip demonstrates how incredible force can be applied “precisely” without harming the rest of the candle. So the political metaphor is appropriate. See for yourself.
Who are the flames in society, the “public employees” who consume the “system?” What flames would I target with Issue 2? Well, what comes to my mind immediately is a situation we had at Lakota where a teacher Ryan Farhenkemp just plead guilty to taking inappropriate pictures of a young student while on an out-of-town field trip. That teacher had a serious case of pedophilia, where he desired sex with children, boys specifically, and should have never been allowed to teach. Because the teachers union is so radical, they prevented a proper investigation into this behavior, and did not allow any management to even investigate the matter, until it’s too late. Read more about this situation here:
Just one school district over in Mason another teacher was having sex with the football team, while her boss, the assistant principal was sending pictures of his penis to the teacher’s phone. Many people, including the Superintendent knew that things were not all well and good among his staff, but the teachers union has made investigations into this kind of business nearly impossible, so the bad teachers out there, “and there are many” are allowed to continue on with bad behavior because they are “protected” by a union. Issue 2 will allow performance based evaluations which will help root out this kind of trouble by “allowing” the discussion to initially take place, where now it doesn’t happen at all, because legally, it can’t. Read more about the Mason situation here:
And to understand how out-of-control the union contracts are, listen to Scott Sloan of 700 WLW read the Lakota Teachers Contract, the more complex something is, the more money it costs. The Lakota contract is not unique, but is pretty standard all over Ohio.
Those are examples of the kinds of “targets” that we as taxpayers must remove from our public employee system to control the out-of-control tax increases that are coming at us. Only in a community do we know what our problems are, and our school boards, city councils, and trustees are there to represent our interests. But often if you go to a community meeting, you will find that even if you speak, those elected representatives won’t listen to you, because the deals are already solidified in the chaos of Columbus. It is the union lobby power that has twisted the arms of legislators and passed legislation like the “double-dipping” provision while the tax payers were busy “working” those lobbyists and politicians, all paid for by us, were having lunch together in Columbus and writing laws to enrich themselves in the chaos they initiated.
But the video below will give you a basic understanding:
Those who are in favor of Issue 2 could provide fact after fact, after fact on why it’s a great law. Basically we have a system that is currently in chaos, and there are a lot of people working in the public sector who fully intend to enrich themselves in the midst of that chaos. What you will find is that those groups who wish to take advantage of that chaos against the tax payer will attempt to divert the attention away from the details of an argument to an emotional one. In recent radio broadcasts we have begun to call this the Wookie Defense. Click here to read all about it:
You can see supporters of Issue 2 pick apart the recent “Firefighter” ad put out by We Are Ohio here, which will demonstrate unequivocally just how the system is flawed. If these guys won’t tell the truth about things right out in the open, what will they lie about behind closed doors? The answer to that is why things in government cost so much money, and why Issue 2 is so important. The savings doesn’t come from a literal figure on paper. It comes from decentralization in Columbus so people like me can help manage the costs in our communities, where they should be negotiated.
Now, this next video which was put out by a bunch of Firefighters working with a local school is using the same tactics that most public employees use to pass new levies, shows the kind of game they want to play. Now, when I saw this video I laughed hard for a long time. In fact my stomach still hurts almost 24 hours later from laughing at it. It’s not that the people in the video did a bad job. Actually, I think it’s a good effort at a dance routine. What I laughed so hard at is the level of manipulation they are employing in plain sight. They are basically expecting the voter to vote against Issue 2 because they can dance, and that is hilarious.
My stomach hurts again………………………………………………hold on…………Ok. How are the communities going to be weakened if we give the communities more power to handle their costs? Instead of the fire chief talking to his union people and then the union lobby going to Columbus to create a new law that then comes back to our community as an unfunded mandate, how about that fire chief talk to the people in the community about their staffing levels, their pay, and their equipment. That seems like it would create a stronger relationship, not a weaker one. If taxes needed to be increased, then the community could decide, but as it is now, the tax increases are “dictated” by the state through chaotic legislation, which is just how the union likes it. You see these emotional types won’t deal with facts they’ll instead rely on emotion to convince you to throw money at them.
However, in this next video the firefighters attempt to “look” like they are dealing with facts by letting you listen in on one of their picnics. I laughed hard at this one too but for an entirely different reason. In fact, this has been a running joke among my wife and me now for an entire day. We will probably make fun of this one for years to come.
Oh my goodness! “Our forefathers and firefighters tried to do back in the 70’s?” Thanks for that, Joe. In case you missed it that remark is at the 7:45 mark. Dude, the history of Ohio goes back a lot further than the 70’s! Also, hey, Joe you must not have met the mayor of Toledo. He’s for Issue 2. You should get out more, you’d meet more people than a bunch of bobble heads waiting for you to tell them what to think.
The next question that arises from this is, even these “honest” firefighters are not willing to address the facts, and instead peck around the parameters of truth, relying on manipulation instead of out-right presentation, then what are they hiding? Well, I published the wage rates of the police and firefighters from my community in the below article. It’s pretty standard stuff all over Ohio. As you will see, they are making very good livings, and as I’ve said before, if the public thinks that level of income is acceptable then fine. But my inclination is that these public workers are very aware that they are making approximately 30% more than the people who are paying their salaries, and they’d rather keep that bit of information out of the discussion, out of fear that the public might turn on them and actually question their actual value. See my article on what these guys make in my community: (the spreadsheet with all the costs is toward the bottom)
I have been in management for a while now so I understand this issue from many angles. I’ve worked at all levels of a company, and I have dealt with unions. I’ve been in actual fights in parking lots with shop stewards so I know the mentality of these people. Taken individually, most people are good citizens who just want to do the right thing. I once worked with a guy who was a major union supporter yet had a fascination with airplanes and considered himself very patriotic. I thought of him when I heard Joe speak in the above video. He used to say to me, “You are building those units too fast. You have a rate of 120%. You are making us look bad.”
I’d say to him, “You make yourself look bad by holding back. We have a contract deadline and you are jeopardizing it by not filling the production requirements. You could build at least three times faster than you are, but you and your friends won’t do it. So I’m picking up the slack so we don’t miss our deadline.”
“Kid, this whole union thing doesn’t work if we don’t stick together. It takes all of us, in solidarity.”
I’d smile at him, because he knew what my reaction would be. We got along in a friendly way because we both shared a love of airplanes even if we differed politically. “Now why would I want to do that when I can work extra overtime, make more money, by doing the work you and your fat ass friends won’t do?”
He’d chuckle and say, “You know back when we walked the picket line we’d call you a SCAB. In fact, I’d tell you that behind your back, they’re calling you a SCAB around here because you are up the ass of management.”
At this point I would turn down the radio and lay down my wrenches and all the guys working nearby would stop to see if a fight were about to break out. “Dude, to me a SCAB is something that heels a wound. When your body is cut open, you better pray a SCAB forms to heal it. If I am a considered a SCAB around here, because I like this company from head to toe, I like the people in management, and I like the people on the paint line, then that’s a compliment. I like them all to some extent, and I’m not picking sides to suit the needs of your unions political position, which I adamantly disagree with. If I’m a SCAB it’s because I’m here to heal all the wounds you union fools inflict upon yourselves with your adversarial relationship with management in an attempt to bleed the company dry in order to garner more money for yourselves.”
He’d put his hands up defensively as the union stewards would come in closer for a listen. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you out. They (management) will use you against us, to break down our solidarity, brother.”
“I’m not your brother or any of you other guys. I’m here to make a living for my family, and if you idiots want to produce at a 40% efficiency rating, I’ll do my work and your work and take your money in overtime so I can take my wife to nice movie, or out to dinner. It’s your loss.”
Then the union steward would step in. He was a guy who clearly didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. So confrontation was inevitable. “You jeopardize everything we stand for.”
“Then you are standing for the wrong things.”
“You are too young to know what you are talking about. We worked hard for every right the people in this company have. You are ignorant, you have no idea. Someday you’ll want us, and we won’t be there for you, because you wouldn’t stand with us, and by then we will have collapsed.”
“Is that the kind of talk you use to get your wife to sleep with you? Because you’re wrong, this contract must be met. If you make yourselves a pain in the ass to the customer, they won’t give you another one, and you’ll be out of a job and all your union bullshit won’t mean anything then. “
At this point the union steward waved me off and said, “Forget it guys. He’s a puppet for management. He’ll never stand with us.” The crowd broke up and went back to work. For that day, all the workers improved their efficiency by about 15% points on average. Then the production values fell the next day back to what they were.
The public unions are at that point. They have negotiated themselves out of value. Their services are too costly taken collectively, and they have built a system where much abuse is taking place, such as the double-dipping issues. If they were a private business, they’d be going out of business. But these are public employees, and we need those services. We need teachers, we need firefighters, and we need police, and we will have them regardless of Issue 2 or not. We will have strong communities too. But we won’t be used and abused as tax payers by greedy unions who force upon us a system that is rampant with undisciplined spoils. Ohio is at a point where we must have the ability to remove with surgical precision the trouble areas, and no politician in Columbus can do that. Only the members of the community know where the real trouble is, and Issue 2 gives our communities the tools to remove those trouble spots that are both costly financially, but also ethically.
Issue 2 will change things for the public unions. It will force them to deal with the tax payer more evenly. But this notion that Joe has…..that firefighter who thinks our forefathers are from the 70’s….. that Issue 2 will take away his “seat at the table” he is just sadly mistaken.Issue 2 puts the tax payer at the table equally with the unions, because right now, the only people at the table are the unions and their friends, the people we elect, yet they control, because of how the law was before Issue 2.The public is outside the door and when we ask to come in we get some stupid dance like you saw above. And when we ask what’s going on, we get the Wookie Defense and many of us are tired of it. Issue 2 brings everyone to the table equally, and that is what the public unions are afraid of, because once we get there, we’re going to find out just how much they’ve been screwing management, (ALL OF US). And they know that we will be mad when we find out. That’s what they are really scared of in regard to Issue 2. That is a wrath they aren’t prepared to deal with.
All week long we heard about the “jobs” speech from President Obama as he attempted to address the nation before the opening of the NFL season Thursday September 8, 2011. Obama’s speech was a silly exhibition of naïveté. I cringed watching him thinking of all worlds’ dictators; George Soros included who were also watching with hungry lust on their minds. For the imagery of a fool president speaking in generalities that are completely worthless to the political landscape, dictators will lust after those images with pornographic seduction. I am sure they were licking their lips the way a hungry lion gazes at a herd of gazelle prior to pouncing upon those passive creatures for an evening meal. President Obama is simply embarrassing in every way.
And to cover up his obvious lack of worldly knowledge, the President seemed to evoke his usual Wizard of Oz persona where he almost seems to take on the personality of that factional character from that fictional tale to represent a fictional presidency and offer America a “jobs bill” that is simply no different than a Las Vegas slot machine.
The reality of what Obama uttered in his speech was that if you pull the government lever, somehow, magically jobs will appear. That by spending more money on the slot machine, that America will receive some kind of “jack pot.”
Yet as the Great and Powerful O travels all over the Midwest in his bus, the strain of the financial structure of the whole government gambling mentality is taking its toll. When talking about Social Security, which is a ponzi scheme by design, Rick Santelli argues with Thomas Friedman over the merit of Social Security, and what Friedman fails to understand is that if Social Security were built with some level of honesty behind the premise, then it might possibly work. However, because those in government all-to-often behave as though they are in a casino, the money gets spent on games like that slot machine to pursue jack-pots which simply don’t exists, or if they do, it’s just to convince people to spend more money to get a bigger jack-pot.
When people who are in decision making positions can’t even admit to what they are doing, and don’t understand what name to even give to things like Social Security, they are no different than a gambler with an addiction.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim that the best way to save money would be not to pay any of the people who were in the room when the President gave his speech to congress, because to those people, the whole ordeal is just a game, a slot machine that will have a pay-out to some fortunate soul who manages to pull the lever and get a “jack-pot.” But before there can be a jackpot, someone must put money in the machine, and once there is money in the machine, then the Great and Powerful O can then decide how he will spend it. I believe the Great and Powerful O is convinced that by spending money in his government casino, that he is helping people. But what he’s really doing is just creating more “dependent,” and “addicted” people whom the government exploits for its own ends. Just like a casino.
But don’t you see dear reader, that the Great and Powerful O, or any of those Looters of Washington have no power unless you put money into their machine. They are toothless fools with no bullets in their gun. It is you who put the bullets in their gun to use on you to force you to spend money on their casino schemes. If you don’t give them money, they have no power at all!
You have the power to stop it and I would propose that we should do so. The best way to end the corruption of the casino is not to give the casino money. Don’t give it money, and it will go out of business soon. The same with government, if you don’t like the level government which is expanding rapidly, all you have to do is starve it of what it eats, in this case it is your tax dollars. If left to their own devices, they will never stop eating. They are simply no different than this poor woman who proclaims she cannot stop eating. But consider the amount of food it takes to maintain this body. Where did she get it………her family fed her. They brought it to her when she became so big that she could no longer get it for herself. Yet this woman cries and proclaims that her situation is completely out of her control, just like government.
And study the compulsive gambler. Listen to this poor guy. How is he any different? It’s exactly the same, the compulsive gambler and the “spend happy” politician. Both believe that if they spend just a little more money, they will hit a “jack-pot.”
The government programs like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, education, all of it, are simply images similar to a slot machine dressed up to convince you to put money in their machine and give them power. As ridiculous as that first video was, with the Wizard of Oz slot machine, using images from that great movie to seduce people into putting money into it, to feed the gaming industry, is manipulative and excessively exploitive. Government does the same for exactly the same reason. It’s a game! It’s a racket!
And the Great and Powerful O is a racket also. I would say that he is simply no different than the large woman who became so obese she could no longer go into public and move around on her own. These are addictive personalities who are hiding their disorders from even themselves, and they will beg and plead to anyone to help them by bringing more food or more money.
The Great and Powerful O is determined to seduce people into spending their money on his casino like programs by taking advantage of people suffering from addictions by feeding those addictions to prop up his own power base, because that’s how a casino makes its money……..from addictions.
It’s all about fancy lights, and sweet talk with seductive music all designed to control the sign-stimuli which make a human being function.
Call it what it is……………………..a scam! The whole thing! And while you wonder why that woman’s family didn’t stop feeding her so she wouldn’t become so obese, or the gambler’s wife didn’t stop him before it was too late, ask yourself why you vote to pay more taxes when the game is simply designed to drain you for all you’re worth and when you’re done, the system will drain someone else, until they are done, then it will move on to someone else, completely consuming every part of their life, financially, and socially until there is nothing left. And all the while the government will convince even itself that it is helping its addicts by at least caring for them, which is the greatest sin of all. It’s the justification of just another addict whom is on a destructive path beyond their control, and that begs the question, why did we continue to feed it when we knew it was wrong to begin with?
The answer is of course is that we failed to call it what it was…….until it was too late.
“In the beginning of change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.” Mark Twain.
That quote comes from a friend of mine and it’s something I’ve been contemplating in some detail because it fits much of the wave of animosity that has been thrown in the direction of the Tea Party and accurately describes the elusive quality of true patriotism versus popular patriotism. Another friend of mine, Matt Clark is onto the same “elusive” threat that is perculating in our current social order. Matt addressed some of that elusive quality in a broadcast done shortly after an interview with me over Labor Day weekend.
After a recent school board meeting one of the board members, whom I have grown to enjoy speaking with, even if I don’t agree with everything they do, accurately answered for me when another person standing nearby asked me “So are you with the Tea Party? Are you a leader or something of that group?” The school board member looked at the woman and said, “I think Rich is doing his own thing. I don’t think he’s with any group. He speaks for No Lakota Levy, and at times he does for the Tea Party, but I think Rich is on his own crusade, his own personal war.”
I looked at the school board member and wondered if it was a derogatory “shot” at me, or just a general comment, and I determined that there was sincerity in the statement so it was the later assessment. So I added, “Not everyone wishes to go as far down the rabbit-hole as I am.” I then addressed the original speaker. “I believe that for an idea to be authentic, then you must remove the politics, the ‘group oriented’ portions of the argument before the truth can be seen, and once seen, that truth can then be brought to the larger organization. Those who chose to stay within the safety of the confines of a group will not explore the parts of a problem which reside outside the group. Regarding many of the problems of our day, the source of the trouble resides outside the many social groups, so to fix them one must leave the group.” I received the usual empty nod feigning understanding, which I let go because I’m used to that. The conversation was a polite one, and it simply isn’t possible to educate people in one sitting. They have to want to understand and many people just don’t want to.
When people ask me about my daughters the first question is, “What sports did they play when they were in school? Are they in any sororities now?” Often in those moments I have to deal with the conversation in the same way I did with the board member and their friend, knowing that many of the things I may say will come as a shock to them, so I generally find that I must explain it like I’m teaching someone a concept they are just now learning. “No, I encouraged my kids to stay out of organized sports.” “No, I would consider their membership into a sorority as a slap in the face to everything I ever taught them.”
“WHAT!” “WHY!” “OH MY, That’s so anti-social!” They don’t say those things of course, but you can see the words scrolling across their eyes.
My wife and I were going to dinner the other night at one of our favorite restaurants, we were on our motorcycle and we pulled up behind a mini-van stopped at a traffic light which had three stickers on the back window. The first sticker said, “FOP member,” the second “WCBO West Chester Baseball Organization,” and third was a “Masonry” sticker.
“Boy that guy is really, ‘connected’” I told my wife. “Look how proud he is of it.”
And here is the fundamental difference between me and that guy. He would look at a guy like me and say, “That guy is an anti-social, isolationist. He’s a stone thrower.” And I look at a guy like that and say, there is a coward, a person who is hiding from his personal demons by participating in group oriented behavior. Groups are to the adult what bedding covers are to a small child. The child believes that the covers will provide protection from the monsters which reside in a bedroom closet. And the adult believes that memberships will provide security to the harsh realities of daily living.
In the “patriotic movement” of the last couple of years, suddenly being a patriot has become fashionable, like wearing a popular name brand item of clothing that will come in and out of fashion. The same people, who scamper to the store to buy the latest brand of Under Armor, or Nike tennis shoe, are now joining the Tea Party because it’s become fashionable to do so. And that makes me happy to suddenly have all these new people who are interested in the things that I have always been interested in. However, I keep my distance, because I know that many of those people are only committed to the cause so long as it’s comfortable.
The reason that progressives are attacking the Tea Party the way they are is to let those people know that if they do not toe-the-line, then they will be cut-off from the established society. As I watched the Presidents speech on Thursday September 8, 2011 I was keener on observing John Boehner during the speech then the president himself. Boehner is wavering in his position. He only understands politics as usual, and the political community is threatening to cut him off if he follows the Tea Party, and Boehner likes to have a sense of “belonging.” So the threat is very real to him. His face told the whole story, and I can see that he is willing to “buckle.” The President and the rest of the progressives are about to win him over. (Check out Boehner in this clip. Does that look like someone who is willing to fight on our behalf.)
This is the essence behind “country club” memberships, political parties, sport organizations, motorcycle clubs, fraternities; all those groups exist for networking, as a hedge against the troubles of living. And in politics, even if it’s on the other party side, it is essentially a culture that provides safety to the individual, in group behavior.
Most of the Tea Party people I know are just nice people who are learning about their nation’s history. Once they learn that history, they will tend to vote differently. But I don’t see many people among them who are truly willing to “fight” the system itself, because they want the security of the “system,” flaws and all.”
In my life, I let very few people close to me. I have a lot of “friends” people whom I like and they like me. But I let very few people close to me except those who wish to exist without the security blanket of “belonging” to others in the form of a group. As I’ve taught my kids, “don’t be a follower, be a leader. Make your own path through the forest where no path exists. If you take the paved roads of life you will have an easier time, but you will not learn anything unique. You will see nothing that everyone else who has taken that same road has seen already, so your life may be mildly enjoyable, safe, but you will always have a feeling of yearning for the mysteries that reside far away from the paved roads of life. It is better to get ‘cut-up’ by thorn bushes and branches as we carve our own path in life. There will be dangerous animals and snakes that hide in the tall grass that are scary, there will be thousands and thousands of dangers that reside away from the safe paths in life, but the treasures of life are always where people do not go, for the act of discovery is in this constant push into the unknown. So if you want to play sports, play it. But avoid the mentality of the group who stays on those “paved roads” of life. Because they will not discover anything unique and they will be controlled throughout their lives by the orientation of the road. That means that the architects of their lives are those who built the road in the first place, which means that their lives are not authentic to their own experience.”
And that comes back to Twain. He knew as many intelligent people have discovered over time that the visionary, the patriot, the scientist who brings forth a new idea, that are ridiculed by the groups who wish to protect themselves, just a child pulls up a blanket to hide their faces from the monsters in a closet, that new “dynamic” ideas are a threat to the foundations of any group, even a simple sports organization. Because groups are built upon static patterns and the “leaders” in every group wish to remain “leaders.” So they will always attack a “dynamic” in order to preserve the “static.”
All advancement of the human race come from “the dynamic” so I see very little use from participating in the “static” except to be “friendly” with my fellow community members, because the way I see it both sides of the philosophical position need each other. But the true patriot will find the road a lonely one, so looking to your neighbor for reassurance is wrong, because it will never come.
As the real patriot explores the world away from those “paved” roads and discovers all the treasures that are hidden from the rest of the world, the patriot will soon find upon returning to the safety of civilization that there will be no shortage of “patriots” who wish to suddenly be affiliated with the patriot, and they will seek to make “patriotism” a new group in which to belong. This is the success of Glenn Beck and the rise of the Tea Party. Beck found a philosophical treasure and shared it with people at 5 pm on The Fox News Network and people clamored to that new-found truth, which was always there, but it just wasn’t lying along side the path society was on. (By the way, good luck on GBTV. I hope you blow the networks out of the water, an actual broadcast from off the path, what a concept!)
What I could have told the school board member and their friend was that I’m on an eternal “treasure hunt” always looking for new ideas from which to bring back to the safety of society. But I personally have no interest in safety, or blankets to hide my eyes from worldly dangers. Instead, I along with my daughters and every member of my family who has listened to me walk to the point wherever it is most dangerous, because it is there that the worlds treasures hide from those on the paved roads built by social groups. So it’s not that the groups of humanity aren’t nice, or the people in them aren’t just. They just aren’t looking for the same thing in life that I am. On those paved roads, I get bored quick because there is nothing there worth seeing if my aim is uniqueness.
It is in all this explanation which reveals the genius of Mark Twain’s statement and provides a key to understanding why those other patriots out there, those who wish to be truly so, feel so alone and hated. It’s Ok, the hate tells you that you are doing the correct thing, for if everyone loves what you are doing, then you are on the wrong path. The louder and more violent the hate, the closer you are to a discovery of something that has always been hidden to the eyes of everyone else, that which is buried in plain sight but far away from the paths built by human groups to protect their fixed perceptions of existence.
The anger thrown in the direction of the patriot and innovator is of two sources. First it is the leader of a group who wishes to maintain the static patterns which empowers them, so they attack any threat to their power. That much is obvious. But the second is much deeper, and psychological, it is a genuine jealousy that the attackers lack the courage to forge their own path and seek to hide that fear from themselves, so they lash out at those with the courage to live on their own terms. The root of the anger is more about what they know about themselves, and less about you, the patriot. For in that role, the patriot is but a mirror of what the attacker wishes in the depths of their souls to be, which left unfulfilled become the monsters of nightmares, where not even the sheets of a bed can protect from as sleep ceases to be a safe-haven from the realities of living. Life on the safe path after all has its cost. It may save the physical body from harm, but the mind rots during the journey.
For my national readers, I know that all this Lakota information is distracting, but the situation at my school district is essentially the same trouble you are experiencing in your own districts no matter where in the country you reside. What bothers me at the Lakota School System is that the community is already providing an adequate budget, we are heavily taxed, yet we are told that it’s not enough. So that begs the question, why?
If you look at the Yes Lakota position this time around, you will see how they avoid the hard facts of why they put themselves in financial hardship to begin with. Instead they use community testimony and their Excellence record to somehow justify why they should have more money in the form of higher taxes. (See their website here)
And that’s the trouble; their entire position is built on emotion, not rational decisions. They are in financial trouble because of union radicalism, most notably the strike attempt of 2008, and as an organization they are seeking to cover up that behavior with pictures of children and emotional testimony declaring that Lakota must move forward instead of going backwards.
Personally, I have fought wrongs of this kind before. I write books about it, and fight against misleading information even within my own family. I have taught my kids not to put up with it either, so when a giant labor organization has embedded itself into my community and tries to play the smoke and mirrors game, I am obliged to confront them which is why I’m even involved in an education issue. The excessive costs associated with education are a result of radicalism from the labor force, and a lack of managements desire to confront that radicalism. Those two things do not dictate that the community bails them out for the trouble they brought themselves.
I would not care so much if the Lakota School System presented the levy request by saying, “We need more money to support a very large obligation that we have to the union labor contract.” That would be honest and I could then vote “NO,” but if the rest of the community voted, “YES” I could live with it. But instead, the YES people tell us that if we want to move forward then we’ll vote ourselves more taxes. That if we love our children, we’ll vote for a levy. That if we want to protect our property values, we’ll vote for the levy. They’ll tell us all that without dealing with the WHY. Well, the WHY is because radical union behavior at all levels of politics, through their lobby power at the state level, and their ability to strike at the local, have driven up the cost of education in many ways, and personally I see that the bed they have made for themselves is a problem based on a failed Keynesian economics model and is not my problem, until they ask me for something. And it’s not the problem of my school district either. It’s the problem of the people who did not educate themselves properly and instead resorted to radical behavior to force through financial ideas that are completely wrong. It is for that reason that Lakota believes that they need more money. It is because of a lack of will to deal with a radical labor force and when the cost per pupil is over $9,000 per student, those costs need to be reduced dramatically, and the only way to do that is to bring reality to the union labor force and let them carry the burden of their failed philosophy, not the rest of the community and certainly not the children we are trying to teach and raise.
So for your benefit, I will put here a link to most of the articles and videos I have written or produced over the 2010 to 2011 school year so you can see for yourself the kind of game that is being played against you. It is my intention to remove the radicals from the process of this whole financial discussion so that truly intelligent minds can solve these problems. And that will not happen by appeasing the radicals (union labor). By giving them more money, you just let them believe that their radical behavior works, and you’ve perpetuated the problem. So please enjoy the links below to articles from the past year, and learn the truth of what has been happening to our district.
I know it’s a lot, but if you really want to know, you will book mark this page and visit it a little bit at a time from now to the election so that you can make the most informed vote possible. Or you can do the easy thing and just “believe” the sweet words that the Pro Levy campaign is feeding you, and you’ll regret the decision years down the road, even if you’re one of those people who will move away from Lakota the minute your children grow up, it will still bounce around in your head for the ensuing decades, because you knew they were misleading you, but you didn’t have the courage to face it squarely.
The answer is always in the WHY. Why won’t the Lakota people admit to WHY they have a financial problem? The answer is because if the public knew, they wouldn’t support the financial requirements of that demand. So they hide their behavior behind your kids hoping that you won’t push the issue too far, and allow them to continue the radical union scam that has embedded itself in public education.
ENJOY! This isn’t all of them, but a good sample of the last year.
The Overmanwarrior 