Category: Taxes

The Making of “Tail of the Dragon’ Novel: 3000 miles to Key West by motorcycle to rediscover FREEDOM

This article is Part III in The Making of Tail of the Dragon “the novel,” my latest literary endeavor.  CLICK HERE to visit Part II and Part I.  One of the needs I had while writing the book and flushing out the character of Rick Stevens and his wife Renee was an example of freedom that only pirates and other outlaws might have experienced.  I also had an intense need to explore the eastern parts of The Great Smoky Mountains as the western portion was explored extensively in Parts I and II.  In the novel the story takes Rick and Renee’s massive car chase into the mountains along I-40 and down into Ashville, North Carolina from the north, so I needed to scout that area out so I could put texture into my story.  There are several very intense sequences that take place in the novel along the I-40 corridor, so I needed to go and put my hands on those places tasting the air and see the sights for myself, taking notes along the way.  But I also needed to put myself in the role of Rick Stevens and see the world through his eyes.  For that reason I decided that while exploring Tennessee and North Carolina East of the Smoky Mountains that my wife and I would take a long trip of our own to the freest place I can think of on Earth, the ideal place where the philosophy of what America should be was easy to see – paradise – Key West.  From the driveway of our home in Cincinnati, Ohio we would ride our motorcycle all the way to Key West where U.S. 1 dumped into the ocean and there explore the mind of Rick Stevens.  Along the way there would be a lot of time to think, and observe as the distance was over 1,300 miles one way, and would involve three total campsites, one on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina, another in Kissimmee, Florida, with the final being in Key West.  The journey to the first campsite would give me the scouting report for the actual locations in the novel which is where the first stop in the video below occurred.  The remainder of the trip would be spent flushing out the character of Rick Stevens and his uniquely freedom loving mind.  The video shown documents the entire trip down to a very short documentary of only the highlights of the trip.  The vast distances were a challenge that neither my wife nor I will ever forget which proved to be the trip of a lifetime.  The second video below goes into more detail of that same trip and shows all the sites seen along the way.

It was fascinating to carry everything that two human beings could possibly need on the back of a motorcycle during a week around The Fourth of July.  I picked this date because Rick Stevens chooses to make his massive stand against the government of Tennessee and eventually the federal government on this day, so I wanted to get a good idea of the traffic patterns in the region during this time of year.  To pack food, shelter, and other necessities on a bike rack and backpack knowing that we would not stay in hotels, but live completely off the back of the motorcycle during the whole trip was a strangely independent feeling that placed in my mind a feeling of self-reliance that I have only experienced on hard backpacking trips into rugged mountains.  The sensation of being so self-sufficient while traveling with other people who were not in the same frame of mind along the highway drew out stark contrasts to me which ended up in the novel, particularly toward the end where the grand climax takes place on the south side of the Smoky Mountains.

In the book the $20 million supercar Firebird running off vegetable oil taken from waste containers at fast food restaurants travels at speeds of over 200 mph at times, so roaming the vast distances shown in Part II to the first stop in the video of Part III took only a few hours even though they are well over 100 miles apart.   I did get a good idea of where exits were and what kind of commercial establishments were located along the way for descriptions in the book which wiz by in lightning speeds.  Traveling at the much slower pace of 75 mph and facing the elements without a windshield of any kind is very punishing and toughens you up very quickly.   My wife had packed most of our food so we wouldn’t have to stop at restaurants too often, but deep in the mountains to our first major stop in North Carolina part of our lunch blew out of her backpack and splattered out all over the road.   The wind had worked the zipper loose opening up the pouch yanking a bag of Cheez-its and a couple of sandwiches out destroying them.  My wife had prepared that lunch for us from our kitchen and it depressed her a bit to have lost them on the highway because she had put great care into their construction.

The next day after a devastatingly hot ride from the top of South Carolina where our first campsite was to the Kissimmee location still sore from the previous day’s ride, it was almost too much.  Just south of Jacksonville, Florida my wife’s knees locked up on her from sitting in the same position in the extreme heat for such a long period of time using the muscles in her legs to stabilize herself against the constant punishing wind.  On my motorcycle, I refuse to use a windshield for the same reasons that Rick Stevens avoided them in the novel.  I also wasn’t using a sissy bar behind my wife so she couldn’t lean back against anything to relax.  She had to flex her muscles against the elements for the entire trip, something not even hardened motorcyclists do willingly.  But after a brief rest at a gas stop just above Daytona Beach, she thought she could walk off the pain and take another hour on the road, so I entered the I-4 corridor through Orlando for our stop at Kissimmee for a much-needed break at the next campsite.  Arriving at the Kissimmee site was like finding a puddle of water in a vast sun-baked desert.  We were scorched from the sun, beaten by the wind, dehydrated from a lack of water, and exhausted from 9 hours of solid riding across the heat of the south in July.

After a bit of rest and some long swims in the campsite pool we headed even further south down the Florida Turnpike past Miami and onto U.S. 1 across the Florida Keys.  The temperature was right around 106 actual degrees so there was no relief from the heat on a motorcycle.  The trip was absolutely brutal, but at the same time ecstatic.  It took roughly 6 to 7 hours of casual travel to arrive at our campground in Key West.  Once we set up camp, we spent a few hours in the pool bringing our body temperatures down then we headed into town at the famous Mallory Square to dine and enjoy the sunset.  Key West as I’ve written about before is the best example of what America was always intended to be, and as I watched the freedom lovers walk the streets of Duval Street I assembled my final thoughts about the essential character of Rick Stevens.  People in Key West like to be left alone to do as they please.  Crime tends to be very low on the island, but there are acts of extremism that could be considered socially dangerous, such as the all nude bar called Adam and Eve on the top floor of the Bull and Whistle, and the drag queens gathered on the south side of Duval.  The tolerance for such decadence has given rise to a large gay population in Key West, but even in the middle of the night when patrons were their drunkest; much of the debauchery that might otherwise be associated was absent.  Even in the strip clubs, guests were invited to strip down nude if they want while inside.  I noticed that all the parking lots of these establishments were packed with people, and most going into them were couples.

My wife and I stopped into Sloppy Joes for a beer just to visit the site where Hemmingway apparently spent much of his time.  I wrote notes for my own book on my hand, and on the napkin that was delivered under my beer, and that was the extent of the debauchery that my wife and I participated in, and it wasn’t hard to avoid.  My observation of Key West was that freedom to do as one pleased was the most important concern, and the evidence of what America would be like without politicians was easy to see.  In Key West, those who wish to do extremely sexually deviant acts were subdued off the beaten path not by regulation as much as it is out of economic necessity.  This is because human beings want to be able to take their children to such places without worry.  And once the taboo of such activities is removed, the appeal is greatly diminished.  This became the essence of the sex scene in Tail of the Dragon that took place on the balcony.  Once the taboos of regulation are surpassed, the true definitions of freedom can be explored.  For many, particularly those who stripped down nude in the strip houses, and Adam and Eve bar, their little act of didactic rebellion was in stepping away from social convention.  For my wife and me enjoying our margarita on Mallory Square at sunset, we had already achieved our personal rebellion with the trip down to Key West.  We had no need to break free of social convention because our motorcycle ride had moved the act to the higher chakras well beyond animal instincts.  It was that realization that I was after for articulating the motives of Rick Stevens in Tail of the Dragon.  His personal rebellion was something I understood on an intellectual level, but I needed to see, taste, and feel it in reality.  Ironically Key West didn’t give it to me, but the road on the way there did.  Key West was just the climax that allowed all the thoughts I had on the road to come hitting me one by one since the road ran out and there was no place else left to go.  I was at the end of the known Earth still under the jurisdiction and protection of The United States with Cuba only a few miles to the south.  Outside America, the world is a different place and such freedoms are not enjoyed in such a way.  They are contrived to fulfill market needs, but they do not occur naturally like they do in Key West. I attribute this to the protection of the United States Constitution and absence of political influence.  Politicians do not care about power in Key West so human beings are allowed to be free of their influence.  There isn’t much “Power of Pull” in Key West because nobody cares.

One of the grand themes in Tail of the Dragon is how public relations firms have been complaisant in ruining the concept of freedom in America by helping progressive causes appear to be bigger and better than they actually are.  At the Hogs Breath just down the road from Sloppy Joes I bumped into a couple of public relations executives from New York who were blasted in drunken bliss.  After a short conversation with them I realized what they were doing in Key West—they were in the process of evading—attempting to reset their moral compass from the evils of their daily jobs.  Their mental evasion through drunken splendor was purposeful and they were seeking to recalibrate themselves through debauchery.  The themes of my visit with them found its way into my novel.  In the story of Tail of the Dragon it is public relations that is the primary villain.  The characters involved on all sides are in constant attempts to shape it for causes specific to their personal philosophies.  The Rick Stevens rebellion is essentially against this form of public relations that has taken American Freedom and made it into raw consumerism though the subtle art of manipulation.

It was too hot to sleep in Key West as the temperature was still in the 80s at 2 AM.  My wife and I rolled around in our tent for many hours sweating profusely.  I spent much of my time in Key West sitting at the picnic table outside our tent upon the water’s edge writing my thoughts down for context later.  On the way back out of the Keys we traveled through the Everglades before stopping back at our campsite in Kissimmee once again.  Once I had written down all my thoughts in a feverish frenzy that went on for nearly 200 handwritten pages of thoughts feelings and opinions relevant to the motorcycle experience of traveling to Key West, the Eastern Smoky Mountains and the scorching trip down the East Coast from South Carolina we were ready to return home.  Compared to the heat in Key West the heat of Central Florida felt very comfortable, so we recovered from the heat quickly.

We left our campsite at 6 AM and hit I-75 about an hour later stopping at a McDonald’s to celebrate seeing once again the road that would take us directly home.  We traveled all day only stopping for fuel until we came to Chattanooga, Tennessee where we treated ourselves to a long needed meal at the Outback Steak House.  We ate like kings for a few hours.  My wife and I had lost about 10 pounds of water in just a few days, so the meal at the Outback was a real treasure.  We were planning to get a room at the same hotel where we started our journey in Part II, but after feeling refreshed from our meal, we elected to go the whole way home from Chattanooga since we knew the route from there to our home so well.  We hit Jelico Mountain which is where the novel Tail of the Dragon begins, at sunset.  We were tired, and sore beyond reason.  To make good time I was doing 110 mph going down the north side of the mountain passing cars and trucks like they were standing still.  I passed a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer who was set up for a speed trap but I was so close to the Kentucky border that he didn’t even bother.  As fast as I was going it would have taken him 14 miles to catch up to me from a dead stop so he abandoned the attempt.  I put on a bit more speed hoping that I’d get to the border before I saw police lights in my mirror.  While doing this my wife nudged me in the ribs and pointed off to the left at the setting sun.  My speedometer was bottomed out passed 120 and she was holding her arm as straight as an arrow out to her side to show me the beauty of the skyline splashed with brilliant shades of red and orange.

My wife had barely made the trip down past Jacksonville, but just a few days later she had hit another gear and showed a physical strength at excessively high speeds without any pretension of fear to enjoy a simple sunset that turned out to be the most glorious we have ever seen together in 25 years of marriage.  We will never forget that experience and in so doing I had defined the character of Rick Stevens solidified in that moment of rebellion with a police car hunting us from behind, and the open road coming at us down a massive mountain with a spectacular sunset over the rolling mountains at tremendous speeds.  We hit the Kentucky border and parked at the rest stop there in case the Tennessee cop had called into Kentucky providing our description.  We waited about a half hour before hitting the road again.  Four hours later we were in our driveway at the same spot we began.  It took me nearly a month to compile all these thoughts into the novel which was already outlined.  But the trip to Key West gave me the spirit I was looking for, and became the theme of the novel.

It was an unforgettable experience and now when readers wonder how Rick and Renee Stevens arrived at their rather obsessive pursuit of American authenticity and a definition of true freedom, they can know where those thoughts derived from.  They came from the roads of the entire south as my journey took us on a 3000 mile journey in just one week where every day was a punishing experience that defied comfort.  The literary worth is an achievement that I am excessively proud of, as the story became more than just a car chase tale.  Tail of the Dragon is the story of one man’s struggle to stand against the forces of innate human suppression, the need to manipulate, the need to yield to powerful forces, and the need to suppress inner needs to the benefit of collectivism.  Rick Stevens decided for himself that he had enough, and wasn’t going to do it anymore.  His decision is something visitors to Key West attempt to touch, but the only real way to jump into such an experience is on the back of a motorcycle with safety, security, and convention left at home and danger openly embraced not just for a moment, but for days on end.  It is in the heat of asphalt, the roar of engines, and the punishing elements of nature that Rick Stevens and his lovely wife Renee reside in the memories of legend becoming folklore to the few who admit to themselves their desires to engage in such an adventure.  For those who don’t wish to take such a journey themselves is the reason I wrote Tail of the Dragon, so that readers can engage in such an experience from the minds of Rick and Renee Stevens on an adventure that will last a lifetime.

Stay tuned for more MAKING OF videos and articles to satisfy the quandaries of curiosity coming in from the novel’s readers.  And thank you to those who have given Tail of the Dragon the benefit of your attention in the first two business quarters of its release.  CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE BOOK’S WEBSITE. 

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon and look for Part II on April 3rd.

 

“Like” Tail of the Dragon on Facebook by CLICKING HERE 

If the novel is SOLD OUT at Amazon.com try Barnes and Noble by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The U.N. International Arms Treaty: Meet the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on April 2nd 2013  to create the first treaty regulating the international arms trade, a landmark decision that imposes new constraints on the sale of conventional arms to governments and armed groups that commit war crimes, genocide and other mass atrocities which sounds delightful from a distance.

The vote was hailed by arms-control advocates and scores of governments, including the United States, as a major step in the global effort to put in place basic controls on the $70 billion international arms trade. But the treaty was denounced by Iran, North Korea and Syria, which maintain that it imposes restrictions that prevent smaller states from buying and selling weapons to ensure their self-defense.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-02/world/38208395_1_legitimate-arms-trade-treaty-humanity-or-war-crimes

In short, the new United Nations treaty is step one in an international gun ban intended to spread across the world to disarm private citizens under the guise of the generally agreed upon measures of preventing the sale of conventional arms to governments or terrorist groups.  The treaty is simply lip service as even The United States will violate the treaty within moments of having signed it.  After all, these types of events are precisely what led to the arms debacle occurring under the Obama White House with Fast and Furious and apparently the Benghazi tragedy – so even the largest supporters of this new United Nations Treaty will openly break the terms then lie about it later leaving the only conclusion about the treaty intentions to be revealed, the actual intent of the United Nations is not to regulate the sale of firearms to hostile groups, but to establish in the mind of the world that 1. The United Nations is a powerful group with global influence, and 2. That citizens all over the world will find they can be brought together on common ground to take steps of disarmament surrendering their personal sovereignty to the “wisdom” of global government.  Such an audacious declaration from The United Nations justifies a response, and for me it comes in the video below.  I would like to introduce The United Nations to my good friend the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum, the most powerful production revolver in the entire world.  It delivers an astonishing 2600 ft/lb of muzzle energy and has enough kick upon firing to dislocate a shoulder by the sheer power.  The gun is designed to stop elephants while on safari and can be effectively used to hunt the largest of big game animals, but more than that it is a wonderful self-defense weapon for protecting private property, should the tragic circumstances ever arrive.  The .500 Magnum can split the body of an attacker in two if wad cutters are used, and disable a get-a-way car by penetrating the engine block with a well placed shot into the valve assembly.  The bullets are so big they can sheer away the lug nuts that hold a tire to an axel making a rolling car’s wheels pop off upon impact leaving the escapees sitting ducks awaiting justice.  I would bet that not a single one of the pin heads who make up the United Nations General Assembly could fire the .500 Magnum with only one hand and hit a target square in the heart like I do in the video below, and it is due to their lack of skill, strength and logic that is the real motive behind their desire to ban firearms in the world is revealed.

None of the U.N. Assembly members would disclose in the light of day without the benefit of drunkenness their desire to ban firearms in the world is because they wish to be the governing force the world bows to, yet their actions deceive their intentions.  They know that so long as people like me have access to .500 Magnums that no military force, no policing force, or authority on Earth could force me into compliance to their socialist leaning tendencies.  So they must remove such tools from human civilization so that they can implement their further plans of global conquest.

For anyone who has read Agenda 21 which is a United Nations program, global control is clearly the intention even if Ambassadors reading this are saying to themselves that they have no such global desires.  The trouble with The United Nations is that they are a collective group driven by a force that is difficult to put the mind around.  CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT “THE NOTHING.”  Generally such motives where collective organizations attempt to dominate the minds of individuals would be called evil, but it’s much deeper than that.   For instance, even as The United States signs such a treaty and the U.N. General Assembly pats themselves on the back for gaining the support of America even with the staunch support of the country’s Second Constitutional Amendment, arms trade is being conducted presently with shady governments hoping to topple rebellions, appease terrorist organizations, or set off gun violence so that the world will join together in solidarity against gun violence with cleverly disguised “false flags.”   So the United Nations treaty means nothing to the governments involved as they will continue to break such treaties as it suits them.

In The United States this is why we have a Second Amendment, because it keeps governments from packing up in a Humvee and showing up on our doorsteps to arrest rebels who plot against United Nation mandates, fight Common Core implementation of socialism into schools driving a “Global Marketplace,” or desire to protect their private property which a vast majority of the United Nations General Assembly desires to banish from human practice so that Mother Earth can live fruitfully till the sun eventually blots out destroying the planet in roughly 500 billion years.   When guns are taken from private citizens, they have no defense when organized governments decide they wish to grab power for themselves, and global governments like what the United Nations is attempting to become will not be tolerated by me in the United States due to this hidden intention.  The United Nations will never declare that they wish such things as a strong central government in charge of everything.  They simply wish to believe that they are making the world safer, just like the school teacher wishes to believe they are making children “better,” in American schools.  But the reality is that they are all servants to the evils of collectivism and nothing more.  The byproduct of collectivism is personal tyranny.

That is why in America every home should have their own .500 Magnum.  Ideally every household would have at least one human being under its roof that could fire the weapon one-handed, because such strength is needed to protect families from the perils of evil which do reside in the minds of man.  Such a threat is the only governing force that works in a civilized society, something the global academics have been terribly naive in understanding.  They believe falsely that words on a paper will change the course of evil, but it has only fed it throughout history.  Academics believe falsely that if they construct one more paragraph of legislation that evil will be banished from the Earth forever, but what they miss is that such evils grow with every legislative word constructed in the minds of a bureaucrat.

The truth is easy to see when visiting a gun range like Target World in Cincinnati, Ohio which is where I was in the video above holding the most powerful handgun in the world.  With the gun it is realized that even aircraft could be brought down with such a weapon and drones would have no chance if spotted.  The .500 caliber bullet could shatter such aerial surveillance with one shot because of the extreme size of the ammunition.  Upon that understanding, the mind is brought to peace as it is realized that those who hold a .500 Magnum in their hands and have learned to use it have nothing to fear from any assailant in the world, and that is freedom from tyranny—even the tyranny brought on by good intentions from pin heads and bureaucrats.  It is also realized that the true intentions behind the gun bans advocated particularly among socialist leaning politicians is that they are physically and mentally weak human beings to start with, and hope that they can be made to rule over the strong with the stroke of a pen, or new law built behind collective ambition.  The .500 Magnum would shatter the arm of the frail boned weaklings who make up the United Nations General Assembly, so they are naturally terrified of such weapons—and they should be, because they have the power to call armies to their disposal and put down rebels who stand against their Common Core education proposals and Agenda 21 schemes.  So for people like me, the .500 Magnum is the great equalizer.  I know as long as I have it that no government in the world even through collective force can organize against my property and my rights to protect my family.  I would never surrender such a task to the bureaucrats of The United Nations, The United States or even my local police department.  Instead, I entrust that task to my own two hands and the awesome power of the .500 Magnum which can decapitate an attacker upon demand.  It is within the 2600 ft/lb of muzzle energy produced by the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum that freedom thrives, and the sovereignty of The United States can continue on into the next centuries well beyond the twenty-first.  The .500 Magnum is the tool with which freedom is obtained from the academic intentions of the dainty minded United Nations politician and their naive world view reflected in appalling constructs such as their first treaty regulating the international arms trade which is step one in a global gun ban they hope to enact within the next three decades.  With that in mind, please get to know my friend, the .500 Magnum.  And if I were you, I’d become intimately familiar and make friends with your own so that together the aims of The United Nations can be beaten back into submission from their intentions to rule over the affairs of life in America and every household within its borders.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Donna Campbell’s Fight in Lebanon: “The Power of Pull” attacks capitalism with a “Sign Czar”

Why is the Tea Party always fighting for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets?  Why is the Tea Party categorized by thugs, goons, government looters, despots, scum bags, rent-a-cops, union leaders, progressives, Fabian socialists, communists, school teachers, scandalous judges, kangaroo courts, money grabbing attorneys, left-leaning reporters, Obama supporters, and greenie weenies as being a terrorist organization?   Because the Tea Party wants to do the right thing in government, they want to stop the corruption and otherwise scandalous behavior that normally is associated with government and return America to a time of mythical honesty conceived by The United States Constitution.  Thus begins the story of Donna Campbell, one of the founding members of the Lebanon Tea Party, entrepreneur of the Liberty Tax Service for 7 straight years and area developer who has been so successful that her aggressive marketing strategies have allowed her business to out produce her local rival H&R Block which has been in business for more than 50 years and is a much larger company.  Donna has found herself in court on and off for over the last year not because she robbed a bank, or urinated on a police car—but because she has been successful, and there are powers in the City of Lebanon who wish to see her put out of business and crushed because she’s a threat to them.

Not that a rival company in Lebanon would put money into the pockets of the political machine to set in motion the story of Donna Campbell, but it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened under similar circumstances.  Such happenings are difficult to prove and most of the parties lie under oath in a court of law anyway, so there is no way to bring such information to the light of day.  But the evidence speaks for itself, and is incriminating enough to paint a picture of how government colludes to pick winners and losers using their power and influence to put people like Donna out of business if they discover that she is not part of the power structure they wish to support.  The unspoken rule among many business owners is that they feel they must contribute to politicians in some fashion or another through charity events or direct campaign funding so to keep the parasites off their backs in some future time.  In the case of Liberty Tax Service the success of her business has caught the eyes of power in a negative way, and they have come after her in a very aggressive manner.  The story you are about to read happens all the time.  It has happened with Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who invented a cure for cancer and has had to fight for 15 years against the FDA, it has happened to car companies who go up against the Big Three auto manufacturers, it has happened to Microsoft.  What has happened to Donna Campbell has happened to just about anyone who comes up with a better way of doing something where more established organizations who contribute more money into the political machines of local, state, and national politics use their power and influence to crush their rivals because they can’t compete directly.SAM_0423

I have written about Liberty Tax Services before as the West Chester location was recently pulled across the coals for violating the sign ordinance in that community, a case that ended up being the topic of much debate on the Scott Sloan show with trustee George Lang defending Liberty Tax Service.  The issue was that Donna’s businesses have been using human billboards to dress up and engage motorists at the roads urging them to file their tax returns at her establishments.  The method worked as Liberty Tax Service has enjoyed thriving results.  In West Chester the zoning commission determined that Liberty Tax Service was violating their signing regulations by using human billboards.  Click the link below to review that case and listen to the WLW broadcast.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/west-chester-trustees-hurt-a-business-george-lang-speaks-out-in-defense-of-capitalism/

Well the same thing has occurred in Lebanon, which is roughly 15 miles to the east of West Chester, Ohio, only to a much more aggressive extent.  Lebanon as a small city still enjoys the political pull of small town America as most everyone in political office knows each other, so collaborations are common in such places.  It didn’t take long after Donna’s Liberty Tax Service Lebanon location caught the ridicule of the city’s “Sign Czar” after posting more tax returns than H&R Block according to IRS data, to begin to feel the heat of city government.  Lebanon actually employs a retired police officer with the full-time position to regulate signage within the city complete with a car, computer and lots of time to take pictures and send out certified letters regarding violations of sign ordinances.SAM_0420

The Sign Czar began engaging in harassment of Liberty Tax Service by exchanging dialogue with Donna’s marketing employee who did not show the retired officer much respect, according to court documents.  The Sign Czar took it upon himself to deliberately target Liberty Tax Services marketing strategies for reasons only the Czar can understand leading to the exchanges with the Liberty Tax Service employee who boasted at times how successful their efforts were.  This made the Czar even more vigilant.  The Sign Czar under the authority of the City of Lebanon began to confiscate Donna’s signs all over town and dispose of them.

The final straw occurred when Donna had a sign maker print up 100 signs which went out over night before the Sign Czar began his shift at 7 AM.  This angered the Czar and he used the offices of politics to execute his desires convincing the City to proceeded attacking Donna with a summons to municipal court for sign violations and a fine of $500 per day.  This left Donna to hire the legal services of Eric Deters to defend herself along with the support of city council member Matt Rodriquez who informed her that Lebanon City Hall was awaiting the outcome of the West Chester/Liberty Tax case concerning the sign wavers.  If West Chester Township was successful in removing the sign wavers from Liberty Tax Services, then Lebanon intended to follow.  But the harassment of Donna did not stop as the Sign Czar intensified his efforts without a care for the 10-15 employees who directly worked for Donna.  The intention by the Sign Czar was to put her out of business, his actions made that clear.  The Sign Czar over the last year determined to confiscate any sign put out by Liberty Tax Services any time anywhere.  Even when Donna had permission from other business owners to put a single sign in front of their buildings, the Sign Czar determined that it went against the city code.  This same Sign Czar allowed H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt and other non-competing businesses in Lebanon to have signs out that were not directly in front of their businesses as can be seen by the photos.  The city has kept the case alive to monitor what Donna did for the 2013 tax season.  Donna attempted to legally comply with the unusual restrictions by saying “Aaron’s Rent recommends Liberty Tax” and place the signs in front of Aaron’s place of business.  The City called Donna’s attorney and stated they wanted those removed also.  The city also notified Donna’s landlord in a direct attempt to manipulate the landlord’s relationship against Liberty Tax Service.  The City of Lebanon appeared to stop at nothing to put Donna out of business in their city, and West Chester has shown nearly the same animosity………but why.SAM_0429

This is why there is a Tea Party and why they stand for the kind of things that they do.  Donna should not have to butter the bread of city officials in either Lebanon or West Chester to do business in those communities.  If her signage is a turn-off to her customers, then she will go out of business, it’s as easy as that.  Yet her sign wavers standing in costume out in front of her businesses have worked, making Liberty Tax Service exceed the filings of her rivals which is what productive businesses should always endeavor to do.  But Donna didn’t grease the gears of the political machines, and for that she has paid dearly.  To her credit, rather than cave under the pressure and offer the Sign Czar some extra money on the side, free tax services, or any other type of activity that might be considered bribery, she instead helped start the Lebanon Tea Party to help combat these kinds of evils which stand in the way of free markets where better ideas like hers can thrive under a capitalist system serving as the cornerstone of the American economy.  This activity has made her an enemy of government instead of an asset.  The government using the Sign Czar as the public mask of civility targeted Donna for elimination for the simple fact that she did not share in the beliefs of their brand of kangaroo court justice, where winners and losers are picked by the gods of government and the puny brains of retired police officers who do the job not for money, but the thrill to impose their will of enforcement upon the lives of innocence to fill the personal void of character for which they seem to lack.SAM_0433

In America, people like Donna should be celebrated, not drug through court with fearful arm twisting and threats of $500 a day fines because she didn’t try to go out of her way to make the Sign Czar happy.  The public servants in the case of Lebanon and West Chester against Liberty Tax Services forget that it is they who serve Donna, not the other way around.  Donna creates real jobs with real worth by offering a service that her customers truly desire.  The young people who dress up in costume to advertise with dances and other vigorous ambition to direct business into Donna’s establishments are paid by their performance.  On the other hand the City of Lebanon can only offer a job paid for by the tax payers to create jobs that are not needed, such as in the Sign Czar who has nothing to do but collect a pension from his years as a cop, and make more money from the government by harassing independent business people whom he decides he does not like for whatever reason.  It is because of stories like this one that the Tea Party exists, still—and stands strong against the kind of anti-capitalist behavior exhibited above.  People do not exist for government to live, thrive and enjoy lives of liberty under the toils of entrepreneurs like Donna Campbell.    Rather, it’s supposed to be the other way around.  The Sign Czar if he wanted to make himself useful should help Donna put out her signs and if the marketplace decided that she did not use discretion and restrain herself, then her business would fail as a result.  It’s not up to some pin head bureaucrat to decide if Donna fails at business or not, which is the case in the City of Lebanon.  It is for this reason that the Tea Party is still strong, and actually growing because people like Donna are sick of being pushed around, and they just aren’t going to take it anymore.  And they shouldn’t have to.  Government does not dictate to the people who elect them, they are not divine leaders with infinite wisdom.  They are public servants and nothing more.   If they do not help people like Donna they are an immoral impediment to the health and well-being of any economy, therefore marking themselves as threats to human civilization.    For that reason, the Tea Party strives to crush such opposition to capitalism and return America back to an era where freedom is enjoyed, and the best and brightest can succeed in a marketplace not controlled by government sloths, but by the will and limitations of the individual and their private ambitions to drive the engines of society ever more toward horizons only imagined in the entrepreneurial activity of Americans always looking for a competitive edge.  Building a better mousetrap that can succeed where before there was nothing but an empty building and a landlord who needs to lease the space to a brilliant mind willing to forge a path through the labyrinth of red tape known as the modern age of doing business, is what makes unemployment figures decrease.  It is in this that America is successful or individuals like Donna are flourishing.  The City of Lebanon instead evoked The Power of Pull to determine success or failure, and that is a violation to logic that cannot be tolerated.  (CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON “THE POWER OF PULL”) Thank goodness Donna Campbell has decided to fight back, because it is due to people like her that the America Flag still is red, white and blue with fifty stars and stripes instead of a red hammer and sickle evoked from a long vanished enemy that never went away after the Berlin Wall fell in Eastern Europe during 1989.  Rather, they moved to Lebanon, Ohio in an attempt at a new regime against capitalism—but instead ran into an immovable force in the spirit of Donna Campbell and her Liberty Tax Service.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Agenda 21 Attacks Butler County, Ohio: Freedoms lost by ignorance, greed, and arrogance

Agenda 21 has been injected into the daily business of virtually every American for many years and can be seen most directly in conservative communities like Liberty Township and West Chester Township in Butler Country, Ohio. Within one week apart the Board of the Trustees from each township met to discuss applying for a new federal grant intended for bike paths and sidewalks.  Out of those two small government organizations only two of the trustees seemed to understand what Agenda 21 was even though many speakers showed up to voice their concerns and opinions.  George Lang from West Chester and David Kern from Liberty Township voted against the proposed federal grants.  Both men were witty enough to have done their homework on Agenda 21 which is a set of mandates created by The United Nations way back in the early 90s, at that start of the Clinton Presidency, to impose itself on United States sovereignty.  When any local government takes federal money of any kind whether it is for a school or even a sidewalk what is not understood by typical politicians is that they surrender management control to the federal government which in turn answers to The United Nations.  The federal grants are simply camouflaged power grabs by the U.N. to bring the entire world under their legislative influence which is the essence of Agenda 21.  It starts with a sidewalk and ends in totalitarianism.  For politicians hungry to do something meaningful with their political lives, the temptation of money dangled before their eyes is too lucrative.  In spite of the parade of public speakers which can be seen below from the West Chester Township meeting, the vote was 2 to 1 in favor of applying for federal grants in both townships leaving David Kern and George Lang to cast the sole votes against the measure.  Watch this meeting carefully.  This is how freedoms have died in America for nearly a hundred years, one small grant at a time, and federal aid for public schools.

Both Liberty and West Chester Township share the same school district of Lakota and have three trustees each, all of whom would consider themselves conservative.  West Chester is so conservative that it is the home district of House Speaker John Boehner so the residents unless they are radicalized school teachers or federal employees in some way or another tend to vote conservative.  The trustees who voted against Lang and Kern are not bleeding heart hippies and wrung out liberals as they wouldn’t do well in the political structure of Butler Country, Ohio.  Yet as could be heard in the video above, Agenda 21 is a plan from a far away land that does not directly affect the trustee’s hometown communities—or that’s what they believe.  They are unable to conceive how Agenda 21 is embedded to the federal money that they wish to take, and that’s how the disease of international control is let in the back door of their community and allowed to erode away the management of their financial resources.

The typical argument given in favor of politicians wishing for such federal grants were the same as those given by Cathy Stoker and Lee Wong shown in the video.  They understand that there is money on the table which the federal government took from tax payers and placed into a federal grant.  If they as a governing body would like the money all they must do is comply with a few federal regulations.  What Cathy and Lee do not understand is that those federal regulations were shaped by sympathizers to the United Nations, and that the members of the U.N. who created the parameters for establishing those regulations are sympathizers to a global group called Socialist International.  The intent of Socialist International, the United Nations, and all governments in general is to bend to submission of collective aims by default.  Since politics in any country tends to be a popularity contest, socialism is the means for politicians to retain their seats.  This is why governments always migrate toward socialism—and the more government there is, the more socialism shapes the policies of that government.  Local politicians like those seen in the video from West Chester are simply unable to see the big picture of how their actions help feed the monster of socialism.  Typically they are short-sighted personalities who simply want to rub elbows with business interests in their communities, and generally want to do good for the people who elected them.

Lee Wong said during the West Chester meeting that he has spoken to other people in the community and they do not agree with the speakers who showed up in protest of the federal funding.  Wong has a collective ideology that does not enable him to understand what the speakers were talking about, so he spoke to a few of his neighbors who thought the way he did and concluded that taking the federal money for a sidewalk was morally righteous and that the people who actually showed up to speak against the issue were wrong.  He arrived at the meeting with the predisposition of evading the facts in favor of easy money.  His bubble of reality is the few people on his street that he associates with, who lack a worldly understanding of what Agenda 21 is.  To them the mention of Agenda 21 is regulated to conspiracy since they are too lazy to think too deeply about the inconvenient reality.

There are elections coming up in both Liberty Twp and West Chester for the trustee positions in 2013.  David Kern and George Lang could use some help in protecting their communities from the United Nation power grabs and shortsightedness of their peers who serve as trustees.  The situation is difficult for many to understand, because the reality is inopportune.  But that was the plan from The United Nations when they put Agenda 21 in place.  They knew the weaknesses of world democracies and they sought to exploit those weaknesses indirectly by infiltrating the national governments of many countries, then using the natural greed of local politicians to break down the barriers of resistance to their world-wide power grab—destroying the sovereignty of entire countries in the pursuit of a one world government where the United States would simply be one state in a family of global influence.  Most can’t wrap their minds behind such a devious plan to understand that the root of evil driving this erosion of sovereignty is behind such fiscal devices as a simple side-walk in a rural community seemingly detached from Geneva, Switzerland or any other palace of United Nation conglomeration.  To learn more about Agenda 21, CLICK HERE to begin that journey and watch the video of a man who is very knowledgeable on the topic.  Prepare to be surprised by how much Agenda 21 is already in all our lives, and learn what can be done to stop it.  

Read more about David Kern’s statements in Liberty Twp along with Kathy Dirr’s crusade to protect the township from Agenda 21 by CLICKING HERE.  

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The History Behind “Romantic Love”: How the Troubadours became the foundations of capitalism

For those who have been raised in public education with confused messages of individual achievement suppressed against desires of collective ambition, they are living in very confusing times.  When socialism is discussed as it is so often today, many people do not understand that all forms of collectivism are the remnants of civilization’s primitive past and that the world is undergoing a revolution that will forever advance the human mind toward individualism.  In America the concept of individualism has been attacked by European influence so to bring the entire world back in line with the same type of collectivist philosophy—which is presently attempting to return the mind of man back to those of the Dark Ages, where sacrifice, altruism, and social peaking order were the primary determinations of success.

As even the staunchest Marxist, communist, greenie weenie, unionized school teacher and left leaning old hippie might cite the aims of collective causes as the highest human endeavor, the basis for all basic human relationships points away toward the kind of freedom that was invented primarily in America through capitalism as an economic philosophy.  But the aforementioned freedom actually started in the south of France and northern Italy many years ago starting as a flash of ideas that would change the world.  Few today can even fathom the type of collectivism celebrated in most of the world from Asia to Europe prior to the 13th century in the slow march all human beings have endeavored to escape.  Yet the fact that few can remember such a time or even imagine the ridiculousness of the times is accepted in modern America even in regard to same-sex marriage.  The freedom, the first among any human being on planet Earth which occurred well before the famed pirate age in the Caribbean, (CLICK FOR REVIEW) is one that we all take for granted in the present day.  Someday even the claims of modern communists will fall in similar fashion as the tradition which had occurred before it, and still does in primitive places in the world, the concept of the “arranged marriage.”

All societies which practiced, or currently practice “arranged marriages” are collectivist oriented societies.  The idea all through human history prior to the 13th century was that families would pick spouses from one family or another to join together in matrimony.  In so doing the family would then become united as a collective unit.  In collective cultures it is not uncommon for a father to give away their daughter to the youth of another family as a way to strengthen their family’s influence politically though the “power of pull.” (CLICK TO LEARN MORE) To some extent this still goes on even in the United States every time a parent tells their daughter, “You should marry that guy, because he has a nice family and he’s going to be a doctor, so you’ll always have money.”  This is a collectivist stance on marriage and societies who practice such things are naturally drawn to various forms of socialism as their governing influence.  This is how things were done in the world until the troubadours rocked the world of romance with the crazy, maniacal idea that couples should join together because of their “shared values.”  This idea of “romantic love” and marriages built upon it is an idea that most in the Occident would consider barbaric when openly advocated in 2013, but was highly rebellious when first conceived by the troubadours.

 

Troubadours and Trouvères, were lyric poets and poet-musicians who flourished in France from the end of the 11th century to the end of the 13th century. The troubadours were active in Provence in southern France. Written in the Provençal language, the lyrics of the troubadours were among the first to use native language rather than Latin, the literary language of the Middle Ages. The earliest troubadour whose works have been preserved was Guillaume IX of Aquitaine (1071-1127). The majority of known troubadours were nobles and in some cases kings. Troubadour music gradually disappeared during the 13th century but their impact would resonate through European culture for centuries thereafter.

trou·ba·dour (tr¡¹be-dôr´, -dor´, -d¢r´) noun

1.    One of a class of 12th-century and 13th-century lyric poets in Provence, northern Italy, and northern Spain, who composed songs in langue d’oc often about courtly love.

2.    A strolling minstrel.
[French, from Provençal trobador, from Old Provençal, from trobar, to compose, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *tropâre, from Late Latin tropus, trope, song, from Latin, trope. See trope.][1]

The verse forms included the canso (stanza song), tenso (dialogue or debate), sirvente (political or satirical canso), planh (complaint or dirge), alba (morning song), and serena (evening song). The musical accompaniments were generally played on stringed instruments such as viele (medieval fiddle) or the lute.

The trouvères were court poet-musicians of northern France. Their songs were strongly influenced by those of the troubadours. The northern poet-musicians eventually developed their own genre, which placed more emphasis on heroic epics. The trouvères wrote in the northern French language. The most famous trouvère was Adam de la Halle.[2]

The Middle Ages, a period of European history spanning roughly a thousand years, has not been well represented in most high school history curriculums, and indeed is frequently neglected in undergraduate history programs as well. It is because the Middle Ages are so poorly studied, even in European education, that many of the influences that shape the world today are lost as to their original meanings.  Many modern students of history assume that romantic love was always the primary motive of marriage, but it wasn’t. Marriage unions prior to the troubadours had collective social concerns as the primary motive.

The way the troubadours envisioned romantic love threatened the entire family structure of organized society and the collective aims of surrendering individual happiness to the needs of a family, a region, or even a nation dominated social concerns.  Yet after seven centuries in Occidental cultures, romantic love is now expected – even mandated.  It is because of the troubadours that Hollywood’s most successful products are romantic comedies as the yearning in America and Europe for authentic love relationships – relationships built from the shared values of two people in “love” otherwise known as the chemical reaction produced in the brain desiring to bring the sexual organs of two people together with the added spice of common likes and dislikes in a mating partner drive the motivations of relationship forming.  Sex or the promise of it is the basis behind such “romantic love” and is wholly inspired by the need for pleasurable gratification.  In such relationships if the self-interest of one party is not fulfilled by the other, the relationship tends to disintegrate if more aspects of the relationship are not introduced into the more complicated union, such as children, real estate, or mature friendships which bloom from the satisfaction of shared values.  Most of these relationships begin as the primary desire for sexual gratification which is not sacrificial, but pleasurable.

In arranged marriages, or marriages where attractive females marry men many years their senior for what such arrangements may do for their career or financial well-being the woman will allow her body to be used for sex in a similar way that a prostitute sells her body, but is unlikely to enjoy the experience herself since she is not attracted physically to her mate.  In Europe this led to the Victorian Era promiscuity that has become so well-known to the period where affairs were rampant, but suppressed for fear that the Church might look poorly upon the behavior.  It was these same Victorians who settled New England from the period of the War of 1812 to the Red Decade Period and brought with them the work of Karl Marx and progressive politics.  The ghosts of these Victorians are in every mother who says to her daughter, “Marry him because he makes a lot of money,” meaning the marriage partner will have the kind of “political pull” to bring success to her family.  It is unlikely that the women in such “arranged marriages” will enjoy or sympathize with individual endeavors since they have sacrificed their will to the collective desires of other influences.  These types of families tend to look toward political socialism to bring attempts at happiness to their lives.  If they can’t be happy, or didn’t fight for their right to be happy in the most basic aspects of their lives which is their sexual relationships, then they will seek government that will eliminate other options of free will so that the limited choices in they have made won’t be so obvious.

Yet such advancement in individuality cannot be undone.  Romantic love is here to stay and with it over many years the traces of collective oriented government will eventually fail totally as human beings come to realize that they wish in their governments the same options that they have in their sexual relationships.  Currently, many people who grew up on romantic comedies are the same people desiring socialism or at least aspects of it because they don’t understand how the two things are connected.  People today expect to pick their spouse of their own free will, and if the lover does not fulfill their needs, then the relationship ends and a new lover is typically found until the right fit occurs.  The premise behind the “romantic love” is the alignment of values with another individual which acknowledges that the happiness of individuals is more important than the happiness of collective groups.  The same debate is currently happening economically and politically; the socialist and communists are at war with the capitalists and Constitutional purists.  The idea of capitalism is the “romantic love” of finance and it was invented in The United States by the mythical Americans who like the troubadours have made a move against at least 10,000 years of human history and the economical means of exchange that have occurred during that time.  The result has been explosive, which is why America has so much current wealth.  Just like the arranged marriages from the 13th century, there was a lot of resistance to the “romantic love” proposed by the troubadours.  Capitalism like “romantic love” is opposed by collectivists and the established order of yesterday who desire communism and socialism as the way to quell threats of free will in means of government and national management.  But such governments are moving out of fashion, and will eventually be as rare 200 to 300 years from now as arranged marriages are rare in the modern age.  America as an experiment rocked the world with its radical new ideas regarding capitalism, and the world closed up around it hopping to squeeze it dead with progressive politics, but they are too late.  Human beings have tasted such freedom as “romantic love” and now “capitalism” which are one and the same.  Mankind will not be happy until the two systems are in harmony in the light of daily life where “romantic love” rules the bedroom and “capitalism” rules the means that such couples make their livings.

[1]Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition  © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.

[2]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Making of ‘Tail of the Dragon’ Part II: The Roads Less Traveled

This article is Part II of the Making of Tail of the Dragon, the novel.  CLICK HERE to review Part I.  Many have asked me regarding my most recent novel how much of it is real, and how much is fiction.  In regard to the fiction, the story is what I intended to be the greatest car chase ever told in any format, so much of it is fiction.  Yet the foundations of the story are rooted in reality–in actual places in and around one of the most dramatic examples of capitalism and adventure anywhere, joined in a ménage à troist with nature – The Great Smoky Mountains.  The Tail of the Dragon is one of the most dangerous and spectacular roads in the entire world featuring 318 curves over an 11 mile span, and in Part One I showed how the approach to The Dragon looked from the East with the point of origin beginning in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as it was when Rick and Renee Stevens began their first journey in a similar fashion.  However, later when Rick returned to The Dragon after his stint in the Blount County jail with his $20 million dollar restored Firebird to exact revenge on the Tennessee Highway Patrol he arrived from the West.  This would of course take Rick and his wife across the famed Cherohala Skyway known as The Mile High road, since portions of it reside above 5000 feet above sea level.  From atop the Mile High Road motorcycle riders find themselves above the clouds and well above the airplanes that can be seen flying around Knoxville to the North and Chattanooga to the South.  It was from a small hotel room just north of Chattanooga on I-75 that my kids joined my wife and me on a research gathering expedition by motorcycle while I was writing Tail of the Dragon.

The path taken in the video by our small research team was virtually the same used by Rick and Renee Stevens in their souped up 700 HP armored Firebird fulfilling their destiny to become the modern version of Bonnie and Clyde.  The descriptions that ended up in the novel were derived from the journey seen above as we sought to see, feel and taste the environment that feeds the Tail of the Dragon by the only access from the West there is, the snaking, twisting, oxygen depriving monster called The Cherohala Skyway.  I love the road so much that I made sure that the famed car chase from my novel began on this road from a rest area similar to those shown in the documentary footage.  Many bikers die on this road routinely.  It is uncompromisingly beautiful and dangerous at the same time.  The views make it impossible not to look around, but any mistake can send you straight off the edge to meet death in an instant.

On the way up, our crew took frequent breaks to photograph the various levels of topography for the benefit of my written words.  I took many notes along the way and focused on capturing the roguishly independent nature of the typical visitor to the region.  The politics of the area is to the right of a proclaimed libertarian from suburbia.  The independent steak evident in the motorcyclists is rebelliously self-determined and weary of any organization or institutional control.  Meeting some of these people up close and personal at our various stops, most of them live normal lives wherever they came from, but once they climbed on their motorcycle and hit the Cherohala or The Dragon, they become the staunchest freedom fighters in America.  This mentality tends to be the byproduct of embracing such dangers with the gift of leisure time.  It’s not difficult to understand this trend once the motorcycles are parked at the highest points of the Cherohala well above the cloud line.  It is something to behold sitting quietly with ones thoughts and eating a packed sandwich from civilization which feels millions of miles away as clouds blow around you.  Being one with the clouds in this fashion is even more empowering than flying in an airplane, because stopping in a cloud layer is not possible any other way.  Only mountain climbing, or high altitude motorcycling can give that sensation.

This time around our visit to The Crossroads of Time was not encumbered by heavy downpours of rain, so I was able to spend more time capturing the area the way it typically was on any given weekend throughout the year – particularly the summer months.  The culture at The Dragon is one that is fiercely independent and openly embraces danger, even death the way tribal warriors used such threats to their personal safety to prove their manhood.  This is why there is a Tree of Shame where wrecked motorcycles are exhibited not so much as a disgrace but as tokens of pride.  Inside the Crossroads Bar and Grill area there are also pictures showing the grotesque accidents that have occurred on the Tail of the Dragon where victims proudly display their injuries and deformities caused by near fatal wrecks on the area’s infamous roads.  It’s all part of the mystic and the participants openly welcome fate and whatever it brings.  In my novel Rick Stevens would evolve into an Übermensch (overman) type of character becoming a legend to the people who frequent the Tail of the Dragon.  That meant Stevens would have to have more guts, recklessness, outrageous courage, skill, wit, and sheer determination than the average Dragon rider – which is to say a lot.

Our team intended to take the Foothills Parkway over to Townsend, Tennessee as discussed at the hotel, but discovered The Dragon was closed near Tabcat Bridge due to a rock slide.  So there was no way to travel further into Tennessee from the Tail of the Dragon, (RT 129) with the road closed.  With our hotel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee this meant that we had to go back through The Dragon the way we came in Part I approaching Gatlinburg from the South instead of the West.   Because of the good weather conditions I was able to capture more of the wonderful views through the Smoky Mountains from the perspective of a motorcycle, which many people do not give themselves the pleasure to experience.  There really is nothing like it.

That night at the hotel I recorded my notes for the day, pages and pages of notes thoughts and feelings that eventually ended up in the novel.  The total sum of that 200 mile journey only makes up roughly 5 pages of material in the novel so there was much more information that needed to be gathered which will show up in future articles.  But the hard-core essence of what makes Tail of the Dragon and The Cherohala Skyway such uniquely American places was captured on the back of a motorcycle with death looming by closely waiting for a mistake to be made.  It is because of the character in such places that Rick and Renee Stevens go to such extremes in a car chase that ends up being resolved in The Oval Office of The White House.  The spirits of the people who visit these places is unfathomably independent, and share a love of rugged individualism that is simply lost to modern life’s luxury vehicles and climate control systems.  This is how the Tail of the Dragon novel came to be such a libertarian oriented story.  It was not politically intentional at the time, but an observation of reality that could not be ignored.  That reality deserved a voice, one that I was able to give it in Tail of the Dragon the novel.

 

The book is doing what I hoped it would.  I originally thought of it as a populist endeavor, but the more I got into it, I realized that the audience would not likely be the masses driving their kids to soccer practice, or thriving to pass school levies – but would be those who have long suppressed in themselves a love of liberty, life, and danger swelling to escape.  I enjoy the messages from my publisher when they complain to me that Amazon.com is having a difficult time keeping the book stocked.  My response is to print more books so they are always available.  I have my doubts that this work will ever end up on a New York Times Bestseller list due to the nature of the story.  It is an uncompromising analysis of American philosophy shaped from the perspective of a motorcycle and achieves its aims by the roads less traveled.  But for every copy sold I feel pride in knowing that roughly every five pages of text in that book was created with roughly 200 miles of travel upon such roads in an epic journey that put a dot at the end of my personal philosophies and set me on a new personal journey which readers here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom are enjoying on a daily basis.  I am extraordinarily proud of my work in Tail of the Dragon, especially now that the book has been out for a few months and people are buying it, enjoying it, and sending me emails asking questions.  These articles and videos are my attempts to answer those questions and explain that the pride I feel is not from the monetary or sales figures provided by Tail of the Dragon as a novel, but in the roads less traveled which went into its construction.  Those roads are an experience I can share through literature what 20,000 miles of motorcycle travel while writing the novel afforded me through sweat, sunburn, hunger, cold rain, punishing wind, excruciating heat and a thousand possible deaths provided as my mind worked through problems of philosophy that can only be solved living by the seat of one’s pants.

Stay tuned for more MAKING OF videos and articles to satisfy the quandaries of curiosity coming in from the novel’s readers.  And thank you to those who have given Tail of the Dragon the benefit of your attention in the first two business quarters of its release.  CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE BOOK’S WEBSITE. 

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon and look for Part II on April 3rd.

 

“Like” Tail of the Dragon on Facebook by CLICKING HERE 

If the novel is SOLD OUT at Amazon.com try Barnes and Noble by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Making of ‘Tail of the Dragon’: The philosophy of an Übermensch from the back of a motorcycle

When I was writing Tail of the Dragon I envisioned that I was working on a populist oriented novel that would be a throw-back to the kind of films I enjoyed as a youth like Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper complete with wild antics, car chases galore, and nonstop action.  I can proudly report that those elements were successful.  Yet while I was writing Tail of the Dragon the thought did cross my mind I was doing something unique that wasn’t quite so populist resulting in early reviews comparing my work to that of Ayn Rand which prompted me to go and read her novels to understand why.  It was my publisher that made those first comparisons and informed me that my title wouldn’t be listed under general fiction, but philosophy due to the nature of the story.  In hindsight I understand what they were getting at.  Tail of the Dragon essentially does with car chases what a book I greatly admire did as a work of philosophy called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance did as a travel story—it explores concepts of philosophy in the context of events occurring on the back of a motorcycle.  In Zen, the author Robert Pirsig traveled with his son on a cross-country motorcycle trip to discover aspects of himself that were otherwise obscured by day-to-day reality.  In my Tail of the Dragon Rick and Renee Stevens do something similar except they find themselves locked in a liberianesque type battle for their very lives at speeds of over 200 miles an hour in the greatest car chase ever told.  I suppose that if I had just wrote a story in a populist fashion that my results might have been as intended—a modern homage to The Dukes of Hazzard or virtually any Burt Reynolds film.  But I did extensive research in writing the novel putting my wife and I on several long distance road trips to scout out the locations I would write about in telling the story of Rick and Renee Stevens and their super human struggle to live their lives authentically against a rules based society locked in sacrifice to the many systems of existence.  For the many readers who have read Tail of the Dragon and wondered how many of the locations mentioned in the novel were real, I invite at this time for you to ride on the back of a motorcycle as we did the research for the book and see for yourself how Rick and Renee Stevens came to life by watching the short documentary style video below.  Part I is a series of videos retracing the steps that put life into the Tail of the Dragon novel and made it a story more akin to Ayn Rand’s Übermensch novels than Burt Reynolds classic action/comedy, which turned out to be a natural byproduct of motorcycle riding in harsh weather conditions.

Rick and Renee began their journey as a middle-aged couple with a grown child and an intense desire to do some of the things they had suppressed for many years.  The novel essentially starts at the hotel Park Vista in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  In the sequences leading up to their arrival at the hotel, the descriptions of them arriving at the hotel in the pouring rain can be seen for their origin.  When my wife and I visited this site looking for a plausible way to get the main characters into the action of the story with proper motive, it rained on us the entire time.  In the video the unique features of the Park Vista can be seen clearly—and the views out every window are extremely dramatic, each complete with their own balcony.

Leaving the Park Vista for the actual Tail of the Dragon which is over 70 miles away by road, but less than 30 miles as a crow flies, it is impossible to arrive at the mouth of The Dragon in North Carolina without climbing the mountains nearly a mile above sea level putting us easily in the clouds.  This is essentially the same route that Rick and his wife took in the novel their first time to the Tail of the Dragon which is a mystical road located on the western frontier of the Great Smoky Mountains.  The road and terrain changes from Gatlinburg, Tennessee where the Park Vista resides to the Cherokee reservation town in North Carolina are some of the most extreme on planet Earth.  In a very short distance particularly on the back of a motorcycle in the pouring rain like we experienced it, the plant life and atmospheric changes were extreme.  As seen in the video once we crossed through the mountains and arrived in Cherokee we were able to pull off at a rest area and cross a unique suspension bridge that extended across a small river that runs through town.  We sought shelter from the rain for a bit in a gift shop before resuming our journey just a bit more to the south then directly west for our destination.

The Crossroads of Time is a motorcycle resort residing at the corner of what has become known as the Moonshine 28 and the Tail of the Dragon respectably RT 129 and RT 28.  This is where Rick Stevens has the race with the Lamborghini and makes the bet with Killboy to make a speedy run up the dangerous and winding road known world-wide.  By the time my wife and I arrived at The Cross Roads of Time we had been on our motorcycle for many hours in the pouring spring rain and were freezing from the chilly air of late April.  In the video my wife could be seen drying out and eating chicken strips at the bar and grill located at the Crossroads.  It was from that seat where the first elements of the novel began to come together in my mind as I scribbled notes on my hands since all the paper I brought with me was soaking wet.  Later back at the hotel I would more formalize my observations after the hard day of riding around the entire national park of The Great Smokey Mountains ending our long journey much later from the Crossroads at a wax museum at the very start of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Since the rain was so intense I kept my camera packed away and didn’t get much footage while riding the motorcycle, a situation that I was able to correct in my Part II video coming up in the next article.

Motorcycle riding in the Smoky Mountains is a uniquely American thing to do especially under adverse conditions.  In my novel Tail of the Dragon, it was the perfect backdrop for my story of two people who decide that they are going to rebel against a system of living that has threatened to crush them mentally their entire lives—and dare to break away from the invisible chains that bind us all day by day slowly from cradle to grave.  I did not intend to move away from the populist plot I had worked out in my head, but when on a motorcycle pushing your own limits and stepping out of all personal safety zones, stories begin to tell themselves and as an author the task becomes in plucking such events from the air and capturing them in a bottle for others to enjoy—or learn from.  Thankfully, many have which is all I ever wanted.  Every time I get the reports from my publisher of the book sales I enjoy knowing that readers are sharing in that captured magic residing in that bottle discovered on trips like the one seen above.  I am happy to share a little bit about how the book came to life in reality with footage collected during the research phase of the novel, and provide nourishment to the inquisitive minds of the book’s growing fan base.  In Part II, I will get into a bit more footage as my daughter and son-in-law were able to join me which provided the opportunity to capture some rather spectacular footage on the back of a motorcycle and show how the words that ended up in my novel Tail of the Dragon came to be the work of the Übermensch (overman). 

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon and look for Part II on April 3rd.

Visit the website for the novel at:  www.tailofthedragonbook.com

“Like” Tail of the Dragon on Facebook by CLICKING HERE 

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

 

The ‘Cold Dead Hand’ Video From Lost Thoughtless Brains: Hypocritical ideas from those “comfortably numb”

The Jim Carrey satire against Charlton Heston, southern culture, and the Second Amendment titled Cold Dead Hands is a blessing in disguise for those of us on the more conservative side of politics.  It is good to see the mind of opponents for what they truly are without the public relations facades that often conceal the true activist nature of the subject in question.  The radical goof balls on the left expect conservatives to take it when they dish out character assassinations, but they don’t expect it in return.  In Carrey’s case he took a shot at a majority of America and their love of freedom guaranteed by The Second Amendment.  The public knows Carrey has made a living off violence in his films, namely his use of guns in the film The Mask and a film career that really got off the ground when he appeared as a drug addict in the fifth Dirty Harry film with Clint Eastwood titled The Dead Pool.  Guns have been good to Carrey, and watching him turn against them speaks openly about the hypocrisy of the left and the current culture of progressive Hollywood and the types of things they believe.  The left will never attack Carrey’s radicalism shown in his video or the disgraceful rendition of asserting that Charlton Heston is trapped in some eternal purgatory because he is still holding onto his guns.  Even when progressive leftists attack members of the conservative right, the right is attacked even further when they express outrage.

Over the last couple of days I received two emails from people who frequently read my work here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom and took note of some of my recent articles where I expressed outrage of my own.  In both cases, they feel that indignation on my part is misplaced—and uncivilized, and that I should just suppress my thoughts for the ridiculous common good.  Here are those emails along with my response.

C’mon Rich,

Looked at a recent blog of yours and found this
———
As a reader here, and casual participant, you can trust that I will not disappear into a void of oblivion because I set out in this war to win it, not to come to a drawl, or shake hands and make a deal.  I set out to destroy my enemy—those who openly exploit children for their own selfish progressive desires.
———-
Why so violent?

And quit crying over the “Kroger survey” and stick with arguments that have some logic.

Maybe Kelly Kohls gets so much flack from friends of educators because she aligns herself with you.  She loses me in her presentations as soon as she looks to you, manning the video camera, for backup facts.

I do think you need  to change the tenor of your rhetoric.  You seem to begging for physical confrontation and the search for educational solutions needs to avoid that.

William Schmidt

————————————————————————————————————–

I told you I am done with public education.  I see them as a threat to our next generations because of the left leaning tendency of what they teach.  If there were more balanced world views, I’d feel differently.  But that’s not the case.  Profit based strategies need to be the future of education as it tends to root out the good from the bad.

Since people have the memory span of paper clips, I have to remind them of the Kroger Survey for context.  You are likely to see and read it at least 100 to 200 more times in the months to come.  That was my bench mark of the type of people who support public education where I realized who supported the education system as it is and why.

You seem to ignore the comments of Becki in the Kelly Kohls incident.  You pick what you want and paint things up the way you wish them to be.  I don’t like to see people pushed around, and I see that happening a lot in public education from employees who forget that the tax payers are their boss.

Kelly or anybody else has their choice whether to align themselves with me.  Obviously you are used to dealing with other types of people, because I don’t have a shortage who wish to do so.

You can speculate on my aims, but you can bet that there is a reason for everything.

Thanks for writing and showing me your mind.  There is a lot there; I can understand your frustration.

Have a nice Easter,

Rich

————————————————————————————————————–

Dear Rich Hoffman, (as written spelling errors and all)

I do empathize strongly with Gen X.

1.But you people claim to have manners whilst minimalising racism?

2.You claim to have class while bashing on LITERALLY ENTIRE GENERATIONS?

3. You claim that Gen Z is the end of humanity, based on what? Your interpretations of the potential of a bunch of >10 years-olds?

4. You mock science for modern warnings about global disaster, but you long for the days of the cold war when nuclear annihilation was imminent?

You’re a bunch of jackasses.  For a guy who mocks younger generations for being weak, you seem to have some pretty strong “mommy” issues. Newsflash, your generation was neither the first, nor the last generation to have broken families in it. Pussy.

  • Jason Ibanez

———————————————————————————————————————-

Who me? I am what I eat.  And you are a snot nosed punk.

Rich

There are a lot more of those types of emails, but they happen to have come through within a short time of each other the other day while I was thinking about the Jim Carrey video.  They are derived from the same kind of culture where the progressive left steps up and punches the conservative right in the face then runs off not expecting to be hit back.  In the case of those emails when I am called derogatory names, or a union representative uses the word “war” to describe their plight against the tax payer it makes me angry, and I direct the anger where appropriate.

The Carrey video and the video above where progressive analysis is given praising the anti gun message, the commentator is happy and dancing on the grave of Charlton Heston because Carrey represents the progressive beliefs of that particular pundit.  So it is only fair that those of us with conservative beliefs do the same when necessary and beat on the war drums ourselves when provoked.  In that regard it is healthy to give progressives back what they dish out and then some, to teach them that it is not appropriate to use force, or coercion of any kind to advance a political agenda, which is what progressives are adamantly committed to.  However it is not my fault that the generations before me who happened to be conservative were as Jason Ibanez declared above, allowing progressive to punch them without getting it back.  Those days are over.

Jim Carrey probably does believe what he says about The Second Amendment.  He does not connect the dots of his career with the rights of the First Amendment to play characters that speak out of his butt (literally) and to use guns like he did in The Mask to boost his career.    The Hollywood culture which has been consumed by progressive Democrats, just as Ayn Rand warned about with Walt Disney and many others (CLICK HERE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF) is awash in hypocrisy in much the same way that public education believes they are on the moral side of goodness by teaching forced collectivism and anti-private property instruction against community tax payers.  Most of the time the activists like the two email writers above, or Jim Carrey in his attack against the image of Charlton Heston fail to see how their actions in the microcosm are shaped by events in the macrocosm.  They only look at their small piece of the pie and expect all of society to adhere to their viewpoint even if the cost is a loss of personal freedom, Constitutional revision, or the destruction of a movie legend’s memory.

When Hollywood attacks itself, as Carrey is doing against the recollection of Heston, the battle lines are clear.  The difference is that now conservatives have learned that taking the abuse and mockery from the progressive left will not be tolerated.  Carrey may not see the immediate impact of his actions against his next couple of films, but he has changed the way people see him.  Before this incident I was a fan of his.  I doubt I’ll ever watch another one of his films just as I haven’t seen a George Clooney film in about 10 years.  I cannot watch those types of actors anymore knowing that they stand against the personal beliefs that I have, and when they remind me of it in such a glorious fashion, they dig their own grave—because I’m not alone.  Many people think the way I do; they just don’t speak their thoughts.  And if I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t even bother with this site.

The flyover states that Jim Carrey insulted in his video made him the star that he is today and those people will reject Carrey in the future.  It will have an impact on his box office totals.  Jim Carrey has successfully taken himself as an A List actor and put himself in the mind of America as an activist equivalent to Sean Penn, an actor that is impossible to watch without thinking of his communist oriented politics.  For the same reason, Jane Fonda will always and forever be known as Hanoi Jane because of her support of communists in North Vietnam—no matter what she may have done in the rest of her life from playing in On Golden Pond with her father, to her workout tapes.   In the history of her legacy, she will always be known as a communist, which most Americans reject when the word is not hidden behind the mask of progressivism.  70 percent of Americans have a genuine mistrust of government.  About 20% of those people are willing to overlook that mistrust because government pays their paycheck—and pays them quite well to remain “comfortably numb.”  Because the government cannot be trusted, The Second Amendment will always be needed in case the tragic worst case scenario should ever reoccur, which is another American Revolution.  The Second Amendment is not for hunting, or target shooting, it is for warding off the government if government imposes itself too arrogantly upon the personal liberty and freedoms of the American people.  It’s a unique concept in the world, and progressives in love with Europe find it appalling.  In Hollywood where European culture is so revered and noticeably out of step with the rest of the country, Jim Carrey is just another activist showing off for his liberal friends so he can stay relevant.  But in so doing he created his own legacy that he will come to regret.  He won’t be known as the actor for the Truman Show, or even Ace Ventura.  Rather, he’ll be known as the progressive stooge who danced on the grave of a Hollywood legend and took aim at the heart of America with a blind attempt to appease the extreme minority in Hollywood who holds the purse strings of the Hollywood money machine.   In the end, Carrey will wish that he had said something as bold as Charlton Heston did, and that some future loser would attempt mock him in death with a song titled Cold Dead Hand, because when Carrey is no longer on earth, it will go as un-noticed as a fart lost in the wind of a career built of childish jokes and frail beliefs.


That is the legacy of Jim Carrey, throw him a fish–he’ll perform.
Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Secret Service Alien Program Cut Due to Sequestration: The outrageously overpaid federal employee

When The White House addressed last week the conspiracy theory accusations that a member of the President’s Secret Service detail was a shape shifting being of some alien race, which should easily have been explained away be saying the agent was a burn victim, or some other reasonable explanation, the radicals at The White House used the same methods of drama as we see in typical public education strategies where higher taxes are the aim.    For those curious to see the video for yourself, it can be seen by CLICKING HERE.  It says a lot about the Obama White House when people are looking so far into conspiracy in order to discover the truth behind this modern American president.  Even so, the response by The White House regarding the footage of the strange Secret Service agent prompted this response:

The White House dismissed the alien bodyguards as too costly in this era of budgetary austerity. “I can’t confirm the claims made in this video, but any alleged program to guard the president with aliens or robots would likely have to be scaled back or eliminated in the sequester,” Caitlin Hayden, the chief spokeswoman for the National Security Council, e-mails Danger Room. “I’d refer you to the Secret Service or Area 51 for more details.”

Obviously a smart assed answer in response to a hoard of speculative theories thrown in Obama’s direction, but the attempt to connect it to the sequester cuts is particularly telling.  For those who have been mystified in the past when public schools have illogically cut busing from children and made sports programs pay for play along with other extortive measures it is even more interesting to see the exact same types of strategies utilized in regard to the sequester cuts.  The sequester at the federal level amounts to nothing in regard to the debt or deficit in America. CLICK HERE FOR PERSPECTIVE.  The cuts coming from it are hardly a blip on the radar, yet it has soaked up nearly all the talk by big government supporters who are kicking and screaming about the very minor cuts in nearly an identical fashion that public schools use to wrestle more tax money off the backs of property owners.  CLICK HERE to review my personal situation at Lakota where the public school in my district cut busing after their second levy defeat.

The White House in response to the sequester cuts has been toying with other highly visible social inconvenience measures so to convince the public that they need tax increases to keep the government growing, just like public schools do.  Isn’t that amazing?  It never occurred to anybody that the federal worker may be making too much money, which currently stands at a $130,000 average in compensation.  Instead The White House chose to cut self-guided tours in The White House itself taking a page out of the book of Saul Alinsky to manipulate the public with nuisance, stating:

“Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013 until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours,” the White House said in an email.

These strategies are endemic with anything involving government.  The employees of government cannot be trusted to manage their affairs properly and if left alone, they chose to give themselves outrageous raises off the public dime.  There are very few jobs in the federal government worth six figures, yet it’s the average.  It is no wonder that the Washington D.C. area is one of the richest in the world as far as real estate values.  Its entire economy is built off the looted money of the American tax payer for jobs that have little, if any value.  When it comes time to engage in management of their financial resources as is customary in anything involving payroll, the federal government chooses to cut White House tours, blame Marine accidents on lack of funding, and even jokes that the Alien Secret Service program has been cut because tax payers don’t want to fork over any more money.

The compensation level with all government positions is never analyzed, just as they aren’t in public schools.  It is just assumed that wage levels will never be an issue.  No wonder so many people are willing to work for big government, and support big government politicians—because the pay is so outrageously high.  There are no management mechanisms in place to keep the wage levels reasonable in government because virtually everyone is ripping off the system.   And when they get caught, they chose radicalism over logic as seen in the belly aching over sequestration cuts.  The behavioral characteristics are common from the local school all the way to The White House and at every level in between.

Why should any American have to pay for sports fees at their school because teachers refuse to have a “normal” salary?  Why should Americans have to be denied access to their house because Secret Service agents had to be cut due to sequester?  With the tax rates that Americans currently pay for virtually everything why should it be acceptable to ask for more money so that an average compensation package of $130,000 can be maintained for federal employees?  Yet, it is expected by all members of government from the school teacher to the President himself, that taxes should be raised so that federal workers can continue to live in a fantasy land of employment compensation where they almost always tend to vote in a representative republic for the elected candidate who supports more government expansion, higher wages for meaningless jobs, and will cancel the alien Secret Service details before asking overpaid federal workers to take a hair cut of 30% to 50% of their compensation packages to bring the value of their jobs back to reality.

The very fact that the government doesn’t expect to be managed says everything.  They expect run away budgets and tax increases to constantly flow in their direction as though the American people should live in slavery to the level of comfort the federal employee enjoys.  And when taxes are not increased and cuts are demanded, like children the first thing the government does is attempt to close National Parks, White House tours and training supplies to soldiers in the same fashion that public schools cut sports, busing, and band electives.  All government workers are using the same radical handbook to make their case for outrageous salaries, and ever-growing government with no accountability at all to reality.  And they expect it audaciously by making jokes as though everyone outside the Beltway should understand.  Instead of offering a reasonable explanation for the alien looking agent discussed The White House chose to make fun of those who were left to speculation, and blamed their explanation on the sequestration not wasting even that opportunity to promote their radical behavior.  The situation we are left with is a dire one, where the eventual management that must come will be painful as Americans appear to have finally hit their limit leaving the greedy federal employees who have never been told “NO” to wonder what to do next, as their lives have been constructed upon an eroding beach and their jobs are in a sand castle that is being whipped about by an encroaching tide.  By the time the tide recedes, there won’t be much left standing so the pain for the federal worker is just getting under way.  The scam is no longer working……………thankfully.  But the time for painless management of tax payer resources has already passed when the first thing that goes are things the public truly values teaching them to despise the entire system, like what has been happening in public education all across the country as those thresholds have been reached.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Messages of Doom and Communism from Protect Ohio Middle Class: The pot calling the kettle black

They are either completely stupid or openly deceitful but the new group most vocally standing against Workplace Freedom in Ohio is attempting to convince voters that the right-to-work movement is driven by communist interest.  Now, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black!   The group called Protect Ohio Middle Class is putting up billboards along Ohio highways with the title Workplace Freedom accompanied by the hammer and sickle from communist Soviet propaganda to place in the minds of the mushy middle class and ill-informed that Workplace Freedom is a communist sentiment.  THAT IS HILARIOUS.

http://protectohiosmiddleclass.org/

That just goes to show how manically deceitful these radicals of progressive policy are willing to embark to preserve their corrosive achievements.  With that said, there is no special interest behind my desire to pursue Workplace Freedom in Ohio.  I have never taken nor will I ever take money to write an article favoring Workplace Freedom.  I support it because it’s the right thing to do in Ohio and unlike the collective endeavors of the typical union worker who believe in the ridiculous concept of “all for one and one for all” nonsense, I think for myself.  I don’t wait for a memo from some union leader to tell me how to think, how to vote, or what union revised history states.  So I know the real story behind the unions in America, and they are not organizations dedicated to capitalism or freedom.  They were created by communism for the aims of soft socialist introduction of governing to mass populations through union membership.   Unions are not products of the free market, and their existence is a threat to freedom in America.

The union apologists will utter that they have a right to “collectively bargain,” that they are entitled to sit across the table from management as a collective unit of force and demand higher wages, and if they don’t get them then “striking” is the next option—which means work stoppage until the unions get what they want.  However, striking is unproductive, and if work is not being done, then productivity is not creating wealth—therefore nobody makes any money.  This union type mentality in America has crushed the car companies, steel mills, and a multitude of other businesses as frequent strikes have destroyed productivity forcing manufactures to produce in countries or states where such threats are not legal.  In forced work states like Ohio, a company has no protection against a strike but to yield and increase wages whether or not it can afford to or not.

The union argument framed in the mind of Karl Marx is that the bourgeois always has enough money to “share” with the “worker” and that money will be taken by force if needed.  Unions therefore developed the strike as the way to extract that money.  In the private sector this has bankrupted many companies.  In the public sector such as teachers, firefighters and police officers it has caused budget breaking deficits and tax increases.  All this is the plan of global communists who stand against private property, and ownership of any kind.  In this communist mindset which came to America through labor unions they changed the name of the bourgeois class to simply naming them “the rich,” and the proletariat class have now become called the “middle class.”

“Middle Class” is a derogatory term intended to suppress a heard of mindless human beings under the collective rule of communism.  The creation of the middle class in America by labor unions is to advance the concept of the proletariat as defined by Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Union groups like the one mentioned above in Protect Ohio Middle Class knows that if Ohio becomes a right-to-work state as Indiana and Michigan now are, that they will lose the communist push to spread the efforts of the proletariat toward the progressive aims of global socialism/communism.  Ironically, in the video above this group mentioned communist China as one of the countries where there are no unions—yet they ignore that the proletariat there had long been defeated by the communist push coming out of the biggest union in the world at the time, the Soviet Union.  The future of Ohio and of The United States is in what happened to the Soviet Union under union membership, and it can be seen in any community that once had strong union presences in companies that are no longer there.  Their arguments in favor of unions are typically as follows with my rebuttal in blue.  (If you are a union member reading this, the word “rebuttal” does not have anything to do with butts, asses, anal orifices, or any semblance of passing gas.  It is a term used to offer the other side of a debate.)

On Union Membership…(as found on the Protect Ohio Middle Class website)

  • Since 1935, Congress has guaranteed the rights of workers to collectively bargain, and since 1947 has protected the rights of workers to refrain from union membership if they choose.  What the unions don’t say is that Congress passed this law under what was known as the “Red Decade” where influence from the Soviet Union was heavily affecting policy in America during the Great Depression.  The pressure to cave under communist influence was intense, and this is how collective bargaining began in America.  When it comes to forced membership, it means that teachers, auto workers, steel workers, etcetera must be in a union or not take the job.  It’s their choice if they want to work in a union job or not—which really isn’t a choice.  It’s deceptive marketing of the union product.
  • Unionized employees are 19% more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than non-union employees.  True, and because of the crushing costs of health coverage many employers under union rule have elected to go out of business.  In Southern Ohio drive through towns like Middletown, Hamilton, Norwood, Dayton — anywhere where large union manufactures have dominated and empty buildings will be seen everywhere.  Those empty buildings are no longer providing health insurance—at all. 
  • Unionized employees are 25% more likely to have an employer-sponsored pension than non-union employees.  Again, this is why companies go out of business.  Not all employees are “good” and employers are forced due to the unions to compensate all employees “equally.”  This is a stupid idea that only communists would construct.  The value of one worker over another is completely ignored in union shops and this strategy kills competitive enterprise one way or the other bankrupting businesses, or forcing tax increases in public sector endeavors.   

On “Workplace Freedom” states vs. free-bargaining states…

    • The average annual pay for workers is 14.1% higher in free-bargaining states than “Workplace Freedom” states.  This is because the value of worker pay is artificially too high, as market forces cannot be driven down through union coercion.
    • The average employee in a “Workplace Freedom” state takes home over $5,000 less per year than their counterparts in free-bargaining states.  This is the same as the topic above; the extra $5,000 on average comes out of the true value of the business in question.  Over time the extra amount is like a slow bleed of blood out of a body.  The body will die when the blood runs out if the body cannot manufacture new blood to replace the lost blood as quick as it runs out the body will die.  This is why businesses die.  Their profits cannot overcome their legacy costs and other aspects of running a business. 
  • Workers in free-bargaining states are 4.5% more likely to have health coverage and a pension than workers in “Workplace Freedom” states.  Unions are so good at saying the same thing over and over again to make something sound better through repetition.  Health coverage is the decision of a company.  If they can afford it, they will provide such coverage which is an incentive to get the best workers.  The problem with communism is that ALL workers are treated equally, so there is no attempt to figure out if one worker is better than another, so everybody gets great benefits.  This is like a football team trying to put the best team on a field of play without ever trying to figure out who the best players are.  Good companies who are profitable and desire the best employees will offer health coverage.  Those who can’t afford the coverage will simply cash in and abandon a business because the operating costs are too great. 
  • Due to the inability to negotiate for workplace standards, construction industry fatalities are 40% higher in “Workplace Freedom” states than free-bargaining states.  Yet another faulty claim.  States with Workplace Freedom have more economic activity meaning that their rates of occurrences are higher because people are actually working.  So of course they have more accidents.  A full building with employees working in them will have more accidents than buildings that are sitting empty because the unions sucked the life out of the business.    
  • Most of the states with the highest unemployment rates in the country are “Workplace Freedom” states.  Many states that have accepted Workplace Freedom have to recover their faltering economies due to union activity in the past – such as Michigan and Indiana.  Michigan has the tragic situation of absorbing the cost of Detroit which has been decimated by unions.  Their decision to move their state toward a right-to-work status is due to their need to recover from their cancerous labor unions.  Their high unemployment was caused by the unions and poor economic activity from companies not wanting to deal with the threat of union workforces. 
  • Workers in “Workplace Freedom” states make less money, have fewer benefits, and suffer more on-the-job fatalities than workers in free-bargaining states.  This again is the way unions repeat over and over and over and over and over and over again the same thing over and over and over and over and over saying the same thing again and again and again and again like mindless drones hoping that voters are too stupid to see through their charade.  The value of a worker is determined by the employer.  The employee sells their services and the employer decides if they wish to purchase.  Unions take away the idea of value from one employee to another which is why they always fail.  Unions are a communist idea rooted in collectivism and does not work anywhere in the world. 

I could go on and on forever arguing against unions but needless to say, the organization called Protect Ohio Middle Class is a wolf pretending to be dressed in sheep’s clothing.  Unions are communist ideas and every union worker who rides a Harley Davidson with an American flag on their riding vests are hypocrites because they do not know the history of their unions.  Their unions are working against the American capitalist system, which is the blood of the economy that made The United States the most powerful country in the world.  Unions came from Europe and have destroyed everything they have touched.  It is because of unions that states like Ohio are seeking to free themselves from them with Workplace Freedom.

The Protect Ohio Middle Class group has been deceitful in attempting to label Workplace Freedom as a communist idea.  They count on voters to be just as “educated” as they are, which is equivalent to most 2-year-olds.  Just as ridiculous is the idea that the push for Workplace Freedom is driven by “special interest.”  It’s as stupid of a statement as the idea that the Tea Party would support anything resembling a communist idea.  Workplace Freedom is being driven by logic and understanding of what market forces are needed for Ohio to have a thriving economy, not one supported by federal Medicaid dollars, Teacher unions demanding more federal money to fulfill inflated labor contracts to teach progressive education to innocent children, or money from FEMA every time a shingle blows off the roof of a homeowner by a springtime tornado.  Government has not shown a will to do the right thing, so Workplace Freedom is a citizen initiative driven by logical, well-informed people.  The perceived villains of the proletariat – the infamous bourgeois are not behind Workplace Freedom in Ohio.  Workplace Freedom is the creation of people who really want jobs in Ohio, and not lip service from a governor who has been consumed by a pussyopolis.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com