Category: The Delphi Technique

Firebombs at the Agnostics: The public education fantasy

I have heard the criticisms coming from the pro levy people already who proclaim that it is easy to cast dispersions from the sideline as opposed to jumping in and helping to solve problems. These critics of course are attempting to highlight their volunteerism, or paid resolve as though they were helping to solve problems as opposed to someone like me who writes about what a bunch of fools they are. “Oh Rich Hoffman, you criticize but do not offer to help. Instead you throw in firebombs when you should move into an elected position or serve on a finance committee.”

This is a blanket statement that could cover any ground from the president of the United States, to my local school board of Lakota, but nobody can help people or their jobs if their beliefs are not grounded in reality. I have covered many topics and offered plenty of advice that I would hope some of these people might use to solve their problems. Particularly regarding the Lakota School Board, which I consider a microcosm of the federal government in general, I have identified the problem and determined that my volunteerism or even paid help will not help that body of government no matter how much money or good intentions I might invest. That is why I determined on February 13, 2012 that the school system was in fact effectively dead in its current form. It is my assessment that nothing can be done to save it because the parties involved in the process are in denial of their reality, and are therefore unable to alter it. So my involvement unless they would listen 100% to my direction would ultimately lead to their doom.

As I speak hereafter about Lakota as a school district I might as well speak about virtually all school districts and government in general, because all these public entities are suffering from the same problem. They are not functioning from a grounding in the rules of reality. I don’t mean that facetiously, but quite literally. It’s a philosophical problem that infects the very nature of civilization. And without having that philosophic problem fixed, there is nothing that can help those who do not live within the realm of reality. So with that said, the reality of the situation pertaining to the Lakota School System, and public schools in general is that they have built the entire structure not for the benefit of the students, (the product) but for the employees themselves. To exhibit this point please refer to this article on The Blaze about the Buffalo teachers union contract that has perks so outrageous that it covers plastic surgery, including liposuction.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/buffalo-ny-teachers-still-getting-state-funded-cosmetic-surgery-why/

I have been in Lakota School Board meetings where the teachers union has protested any increases in their health care benefits. I’ve seen them threaten to go on strike to drive up their wages. And their behavior is exactly in line with those of the Buffalo teachers union. The reality of the situation is that the employees of these public schools are a selfish lot who wish to loot from the community the wealth of the districts.

However, like a drug dealer tries to convince themselves that their actions do not harm people, or the prostitute who pretends they do not destroy families, or the drunk that convinces themselves that they are not a menace to their families, the public education teacher tries to convince themselves that they critical members of a community and important to a child’s life. They believe that they are providing a service that cannot be done by anybody else in society and that if they do not perform their task that our country will crumble to ash.

What teachers are professing with those thoughts are wishes, not reality. Reality says that even a stay-at-home mom without a teaching degree can teach their children better than public education can. The stats prove it. But the wish from these particular public employees is that all such evidence would be wiped away so that they can sustain their fantasy–that they are as important in reality as they are in their own minds.

This is called the Tinker Bell complex. These poor fools have been raised to believe that if they just wish upon a star, or rub Aladdin’s magic lamp that they will be granted wishes, and they wish to these invisible gods beyond reality to be important in the scheme of society. They believe that because they dream it in their small minds that reality can be bent to their wishes.

This is why they hate me, because they cannot argue against the facts that I’ve given them. They see my spreadsheets which point out reality and they react as though I just threw Holy Water on their demon infested souls. They whither in pain and protest and attempt to call me names and discredit my facts rooted in reality. They are like the small child who has just been told that the Little Mermaid is just a cartoon–that Ariel is not real. Or the Fairy Godmother will not turn their pumpkin into a magic carriage, because these are the actions of fantasy, of dreams, and wishes.

It might be fun to dream and make wishes. It might bring comfort to the mind to see a falling star and make a wish that something in our lives might be made better by asking the mysteries of the universe to help us with a problem. Or a birthday cake with lit candles where a wish is made before blowing them out. Our culture is built on wishes and pleadings to entities that exist outside of reality and this is part of our modern social problem. Too often people would resort to magic and wishes rather than hard work and wisdom, and this is the source of much social misery. So the public employee teachers are in good company, but their status in life is merely a wish outside the boundaries of reality. They wish themselves to be valuable and worth $63,000 a year because their unions have told them they have a value equitable to such a value. But the reality is that the average wage mentioned is about $20,000 more than the true market value. That entire amount of $63K per year is artificially propped up by hopes, dreams and wishes.

I know one of the daughters of a former union president locally and every time I see her she looks like she has a dead cat on her head which is intended to be fashionable, but in reality just looks ridiculous. She obviously gets her nails done frequently and is a continuous visitor to the hair salon. She always wears the latest fashion and is quite the socialite. Now none of those things are necessarily bad, but every time I see her I think of what she would have been if her mother had not been the union president who would twist the arm of a school board for everything they had in them. I’m sure this cat headed lady has a master’s degree and all the “qualifications” that the labor union deems important, but what is her real value? Is it $63K per year or $83K per year? Well, by my assessment of her talent and role in a school district I’d say it’s no more than $50K per year. She’s too young to make more than that off any pay scale and could have only arrived at a large salary by obtaining yearly increases exceeding 5% to 7% a year beginning with a very excessive starting point. Because of this inflated value this person gets to pretend they have true value and when she gets her hair done, and her other cosmetic work, she is functioning from a fantasy outside of realty. She did not earn her wealth. She stole it. Her mother stole it. Her mother stole it for all her union members, not just the daughter. The money wasn’t earned. It was gained through manipulation, extortion, and coercion by creating the illusion that all this activity somehow benefited children with the campaign slogan, “it’s for the children.” But in reality children have nothing to do with the actions or desires. The reality is that the members of the union, including the cat haired lady become wealthy off tax dollars without providing a service of real value. The real product was fear of what the world would be like without their service. Not the actual teaching of children.

This behavior is in no way exclusive to the cat haired woman or her mother. They are just playing the game of well wishers. They wish in their minds that their efforts in public education might actually be valuable, but the reality says teachers who make much less and with less experience could do the same work for equal outcome. The reality says that it is the participation of parents and the quality of them that makes all the difference in a child’s life. It is not the teacher no matter what the pay scale.

In order to fix the problem these participants have to stop wishing the world is one way when in fact it is another. Until that action takes place nothing I can do will help these poor people. They will continue to be lost in their own fantasies because they refuse to see the truth. I can place the facts right in front of their faces, but they will not see them because they are more attracted to the fantasies of their minds rather than the reality of their lives. The public employee teachers seek to cover the gap between their fantasy and actual realty with looted wealth and that is simply not acceptable. I am happy to help these poor people with their problems, but like an alcoholic, they cannot be helped till they realize that their wishes do not determine realty. And their wish is that they are indispensably important to the culture of public education. But the facts do not support this, and I am personally finished with trying to ease their minds back into reality. It is their task to get with the program, not society’s, and it’s not our burden to throw money at their fantasies in order to make them happy, so until they are prepared for the truth, they cannot be helped, and my time is too valuable to waste on looters of reality, so I will continue with the firebombs until they finally get the point. At that time when they ask, I will solve all their problems in about one month and at half the cost. But I will not be lured into playing their game their way in a land of illusion and fantastic wishes.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Attack of the Greenie Weenies: How to beat high gas prices

This is the kind of world that our current government wants us to have. Every time I see one of these stupid little cars I feel like running it over with my motorcycle.

I heard a fool the other day proclaim that they were willing to pay more Federal taxes because they use roads. Don’t they know that there is a separate tax built into the price of every gallon of gasoline? Well, of course they don’t. That’s why they’re stupid and why they don’t realize they are being looted in their pay checks. They are being looted when they buy and sell items. And they are being looted every time they buy a gallon of gasoline. When you go to the gas pump and pay almost $4 per gallon for gas, make yourself aware that you are openly being robbed, and not just in the very high taxes per gallon, as in Ohio where it’s 28 cents. The government led by Barack Obama and his imperialistic EPA is stealing from you each and every time you put gas in your car. The reason they are doing the robbing is to force you to buy one of their government-owned cars built at General Motors. The arrogant bureaucrats in Washington believe that if they force gas prices higher than you the consumer will be inclined to buy one of their electric cars or stupid little go-carts. They have artificially driven up the price of gas through their regulations in order to “nudge” Americans into giving up on their fossil fuel cars and buying “eco friendly” cars.

I’ve covered this issue before, and by reading the article below and the links attached to it, much perspective and more technical explanations about the increase in fuel costs can be ascertained.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/i-love-jimmy-mcmillian-gas-prices-are-too-damn-high/

But the essence of the scam is shown in this video which breaks down accurately the utmost thievery that is going on in the greenie weenie movement.

The same people who won’t allow the United States to drill for oil—so that there is an oil shortage can also add more regulations through the EPA to force oil refineries to drive up their prices. The government will have you believe that the oil companies are evil for wanting to make a profit, but what they don’t tell you is that they are ultimately the organization that is driving up the cost of gas not just in regulation, but also in helping maintain oil monopolies by stifling competition.

The decision to drive gas prices up to over $4 dollars per gallon or even $5 dollars per gallon is a direct push into forcing the American public into considering alternative forms of transportation. The government is more than happy to force Americans to decide between food and gas so that the stressed out citizens will give up their fossil fuel burning car for a greenie weenie mobile.

The American economy is built upon the premise that its people will have expendable income to spend on the economy.  Oil speculators will proclaim that the cost of oil is dictated by Middle East activity and world-wide demand.  They are liars, and are serving merely as emissaries to the greenie weenies.  So when fuel costs are driven upward to over $4 a gallon the Federal government is openly stealing from the American people, the money they might spend on eating out, on movies, on buying books, video games, or participating in a hobby.  When it costs over $50 to fill up a vehicle for a tank of gas as opposed to $35 a year or two prior, that $15 dollars is stolen money that the owner does not have to spend on an activity they might otherwise enjoy. 

The point is to frustrate the consumer of oil to the point that they will accept the dialogue of the greenie weenies.  The intention is to force Americans to stop protesting the times with their large cars and trucks and buy one of these punky cars that are simply glorified golf carts.  The price hike in gasoline is looted from the American people in order to achieve a social gain politically. 

But what are we to do about it?  How can we protest such a thing?  Well, I can tell you what I do.  I ride a motorcycle every day.  I can afford to drive a car.  I can afford to drive a big, fast car every day.  But I don’t, because I purposely have cut down my consumption so not to pay the extra taxes, and the inflated costs that are politically motivated.  My motorcycle gets nearly 45 miles per gallon and I ride it all year which saves me hundreds of dollars every month.  With that money I take my family out to eat, go to movies, or give my wife more money to go shopping with.  I do not give it to the government, or the greenie weenies.  That’s one of the primary reasons I ride a motorcycle all year. 

But if a person does not want to go to such extremes, I would suggest that you stop giving the government money that they can then use to take more money from you.  For instance, do not agree to pay more federal taxes because that money will end up finding its way to further funding of the EPA.  If you want to defeat an enemy, you must take away the money that feeds them.  In military activity we call this cutting off their supply lines.  In the Civil War the tactic was to destroy the railroads that fed southern forces with food and ammunition to the front.  In World War II the D Day invasion was to sever Berlin from coastal access and step between Berlin and France.  And in our modern war against government and specifically the greenie weenies we must cut off the money that feeds them so that they may whither away under their own opulence.

Do not approve a single new tax on yourselves.  If you don’t wish to have a police state, take away the money you give to the police.  If you don’t wish to have national insurance, take away the money that fuels those agencies.  And if you don’t want government controlled schools that help propel the entire machine of greenie weenie philosophy, cut the money that fuels those schools.  It is in the public schools that the greenie weenies teach our kids about the lie that is the climate concern movement of false science.  Such a science is only designed to rob the public of its wealth and lifestyle and is purely evil. 

I say to you do not turn the other cheek and just take it from these fools.  But take an eye for an eye.  If they rob from you, rob from them back.  Take from them the needed funding for their government expansion.  Take from them the funding for their “pet projects.”  Deny them of their future ability to rob loot and steal from the American people by taking away their money.

But inaction is not acceptable and if you just blindly pay the extra money for gas without complaint then you are assisting evil and are just as guilty as they are, because you helped them bring America to it’s knees with lack of action or protest.  For confirmation to what I’ve said notice that fuel costs right around the Christmas holidays dropped down to just under $3 per gallon, so that the economy would show positive growth during the holiday season.  The American people would have the extra money to buy Christmas presents because of the saving in fuel costs.  Such a drop in the cost of gas is not because the Middle East wanted to cut the American people a break, so they could go Christmas shopping, and it wasn’t the big evil oil companies who decided to cut their profits as a present to The United States.  The manipulation is exclusively the design of the EPA and the influence of the Federal government and it’s speculators of deceit.  The market is controlled by the government monopoly and the goal of global interdependence that is purposely driven to advance the agenda of the world greenie weenies, the old hippies of the 60’s and the children raised on the green initiatives of public education programmed into believing they will save the earth if they listen to the recommendations of the EPA. 

The increase in fuel costs are an assault on the American lifestyle and until citizens’ stand up for themselves, the looting will continue.  It will not be solved through pacifism, or through silent protests around the kitchen table.  It will only be solved by taking back the money that is looted in ways that hurt the greenie weenies themselves.  Cut the supply line of the enemy, and thus you will defeat the greenie weenies, and they deserve to be defeated because they attacked first.  We didn’t ask for it, but because of the greenie weenie actions we must defend ourselves by striking back and taking away the money that feeds them so that we can expel them from further intrusions into our lives and quest for freedom.  Once we defend ourselves we can then send the plans of the greenie weenies into a ball of flame, which is where they belong.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Freedom Watch is off the Air: Censorship by the fools against the truth

Alex Jones spilled the beans on why my favorite television show, Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano is being cancelled from the Fox Business Channel. I have always enjoyed the work of the Judge and it was sad to see the decision by Fox to pull the plug on a successful show. It is even sadder to see that Fox News has been successfully undermined by the powers of control that have successfully implemented the 45 points from the book The Naked Communist. Anyone who thought that such concepts were fiction knows now that the media is dominated by those advocates of political theory, as stated in the book’s publication in 1958 and universally accepted as sacred social doctrine by the educators who taught that media. Control of the media is one of the 45 points, and with Fox News going down, it is obvious that those forces have been hard at work. Click here to read the 45 points for yourself:

I have experienced at virtually every level in my life over the last couple of weeks a push back from the progressive community of which the cancellation of Freedom Watch was simply the final act. In my school district I’ve seen it on the school board and the community at large as they attempt with a fever to suppress any negative stories so that they can make another tax request from the community using all the tricks mentioned in an article from The Blaze discussing how Saul Alinsky taught the unions to use children as propaganda tools in order to obtain funding. As I’ve been stating for years, it is now confirmed that the education unions all across the nation are using Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as a way to drive up education costs, spread a communist philosophy against private property through excessive taxation, and control the flow of leftist political ideology in the education process. Read that story at the following link:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/revealed-michigan-union-manual-instructing-teachers-on-how-to-use-children-as-propoganda/

Here is the actual manual that the Michigan Education Association uses for their teachers. Have a look if you don’t believe me or The Blaze article.

http://www.mea.org/bfcl/pdf/BFCL-CrisisPlanning.pdf

Even with the overwhelming proof I’ve provided the crazy PTA moms and their minions of latte drinking despots with diamond rings the size of car tires and asses to match, plot against me with an anger only estrogen can produce. They chant throughout my district’s neighborhoods that Rich Hoffman is their mortal enemy because I hate education and I am trying to rob from them the life they intend for their children. Yet they have no idea that they are just prostitutes to their husbands who do everything they can to be away from them aside from the occasional sex. Their husband’s roll them over at night and insert their manhood into these women of the bedroom and hundred-dollar bills find their way into their purses. The women don’t know what the man does to earn the money, nor do they care. They are busy saving the world one child at a time with howls of safety and more regulations as they rush to the polling places at election time to vote for Obama because he has a nice smile. Those women would do well to read that PDF file, but they won’t, because their minds are filled with shopping and have no room for a serious topic.

And my friend Doc Thompson lost his job at Clear Channel. The real story will be buried forever and the strings that pulled him off his job during his honeymoon are no doubt similar to those who removed Judge Napolitano from Fox Business, or even Glenn Beck from Fox News Channel. It’s not the ratings, it’s the controversy. It’s the rattling of the cage. The howls come from the same women as I mentioned above who plead with perfume still odorous from the previous day because it was stuck between the folds of their skin during showers who tell their executive husbands that the enemies of education, of labor unions, or smiling children are these men and they must be extinguished–cast out of society, which these queens control.

I’ve seen the same attempt in the print media, not by the male executives and their stay-at-home wives, but by the career climbing professional, the women who desire to prove they are every bit as strong as a man, so they too listen to these howling hoards of neurotic women and their estrogen based diatribes. “Shame on that mean Rich Hoffman. We will do more sports stories, and let’s cover the superintendent more—oh how about the new school board member. Let’s help bring the community together.” So the decision is made to put emotion in front of logic to paint a picture that supports the fantasy of the guilt ridden mothers. I speak of these things on the microcosm of my community because they are but elements of a whole that make up the macrocosm.

No, it’s not all women. There are plenty of men who have participated in pushing out entertainment personalities like Judge Napolitano, Glenn Beck and Doc Thompson. Those are the men who fear competition because their ideas are small and their brains cannot, or will not be able to keep up. They are too lazy to compete head to head with someone like Judge Napolitano, so they work to get rid of him. I’m sure Stossel is next. Those terrible libertarians are upsetting the Oprah audience, those same damn women and their brigade of latte drinkers. They don’t want a world built by the Constitution, they don’t want independence, and they want big government to take care of them like their husbands do. Or their bosses at work. Because the essence of these people is laziness, and they don’t want to exert the effort to act or make decisions, so they surrender to the parasites of control and advocate on their behalf. That’s why Soros has a contingent of willing participants to follow him on a tyrannical quest to rule the world with his billions of dollars spent to shape the culture of earth into his own image. Because it’s easy to just go with the flow that someone like Soros creates for the lazy, the timid and the mentally deficient.

Do I sound bitter? It’s an old story and I’ve seen it play out perhaps one time too many. I’ve seen it compressed more into the last 5 days then I care to, but that’s life. I’ve found myself in exactly the same position as Judge Napolitano too many times, where it is possible to do TOO good, that the apple cart gets upset and the enemies against quality come out in full force to inflict their fury. It’s because of those types that I write here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom to such an extent. It’s also why I’ve turned down entertainment venues, and other lucrative projects that have come my way in the last 5 years, because I don’t want to put myself in a position to have something taken away by looters. Like Glenn Beck, I have learned that I can do more good on my own than if I have a boss controlling my content–what I can say and when I can say it. And if I do too good, that I might become a threat to the powers that be, I might find myself fired to protect those threatened because they lack the fortitude to compete squarely on the battlefield of ideas.

The evils of the world are not all done by the mad mothers, the Opera watchers, the do-gooder, the church busy body who disguises their treachery with mountains of good tidings. It’s also done by the men of logic who turn away from reason to pursue peace in the household of vaginas who demand to be fed cosmetics and a beefed up ego so they can function day by day. The corrosion of the world is not all done by the mugger in a New York alley, the rapist, the drug addict or the child molester. It’s also done by those who see those characters coming and turn away from stopping them with broadcasts of peaceful perpetuity as displayed in the Michigan Education Association manual. As admitted in that union manual the intent is not honesty, it is not social valor. It is not spiritual sanctity. The intent is malice! The intent is manipulation! The intent is thievery! And we live in a time when millions have been taught that such things are (GOOD)!

Those millions will attack the few among us with the courage to see the activity for what it is, like Judge Napolitano, and Alex Jones, and Glenn Beck and many others. The millions believe that in silencing those voices they can continue to rob blind all of society by using those neurotic chatter boxes of estrogen as their weapons and the insolence of the men with muscle but no gray matter into drunken inaction. The belief from the vile bowels of social consciousness is that if the voices are silenced then the looting can continue infinitely.

Well no it can’t—I’ve personally fought it all my life. Before the invention of the internet I fought it in the darkness of night with bullets and bullwhips, court rooms, and police reports. For those who complain that forums like the old Fox News, or web sites like this one are doing damage to public education, to the network of looters that are out there and seek to put an end to the voices of warning that come from Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, Info Wars, GBTV or Napolitano’s Freedom Watch, I don’t think you want the result from not having that voice.

My world before this voice was one that the bad guys will not like if I and these others return to that place. Violence is assured. Because there are people like Judge Napolitano who will not be turned to the evil of “not seeing” the treachery in the world around them. The answer for the good is to remove those who wish to commit evil among us so they are no longer a threat. The best and most obvious method of doing that is through education. But if the means of education are eradicated, then the thieving fools have left violence as the only choice.

I have seen this pretentious tendency first hand for many years so I know the aspects which add up to the sum. I’ve been in the boardrooms, the political offices, the brain-storming sessions and I know the heart of the enemy, and I won’t tolerate them with or without a voice. By removing the voices of reason, the world will not go back to the sleepy carcass that it was. In every human being is the desire to be free, and when tyrants impose themselves upon that desire, war will always break out. It is not for the tyrants like the billionaire Soros to decide the course of the human race and to eradicate all dissidents to his plan. It’s not his right to turn the arm of News Corp with legal proceedings so to put an end to shows like Freedom Watch and the Glenn Beck Program because the hungry public is buying up their books with a voracity which terrifies the looters of the world. Those tyrants are just one more in a long line of fools throughout history who suffered mentally from the ability to reason with the world around them, and comprehend the nature of freedom. And silencing the voices who call for freedom will not eliminate the desire. It only continues to rob young men of their wits and young women of their honor as they grow up in a confusing world designed by the tyrant types who desire to make the globe into their own fragmented images.

Losing Freedom Watch from the Fox Business Channel does not give me pause to despair. It just confirms in me that there won’t be a peaceful end to this reign of terror, this “rule by the stupid,” which is currently the case. Instead it infected me with the desire to run my flag out onto my front porch and look west in contemplation, to clean my guns, to oil my whips, to sharpen my knives and prepare them for a day that is coming, a day the media rulers of our day wish to postpone beyond their pensions–beyond their condo leases, to a day on the far horizon. A day they hope to push beyond their lifetimes by cancelling shows like Freedom Watch.

But that day is closer than they think, and as a western wind blew in my face I had to consider how pointless it is that such tyrants will plunge our nation into war with each other before they allow ideas to fight it out in honor for all to see, and for the winners to shape society. Instead, they have elected censorship of the worst kind, the cancellation of a popular show and the forfeit of financial profits in order to appease the foolish and latte drinkers surrounding public education.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Slaying Dragons: Learning to be proud of becoming a DRAGONSLAYER

A long time ago I used to be the guy who fed the string of exploding fireworks from the top of a Chinese restaurant that I worked at while the owners of the establishment put on an epic dragon dance like the one seen below. The fireworks were coiled up in a box that had over 50,000 tied to it and I’d have to stand on the roof and feed the lit explosions just over the dancing dragon below as it performed for a massive audience. My task was to keep the fireworks about two feet above the action but to protect anything from igniting the feed box, which was very dangerous work on my end, that I loved.

As I witnessed many oriental dragon dances I contemplated the difference in how oriental cultures viewed dragons and how the Occident, (western cultures) viewed dragons. They are very different ways of looking at the same thing. In the orient, dragons are a symbol of life renewing aspects. The dragon sheds its skin, and is seen as a serpent and life-giver in many respects. In the west, the dragon’s breath fire, are meant to be feared and usually sit on top of huge piles of treasure and are sought after to be slain. But why was this?

It was that primary question that sent me on a ten-year study and provoked me to quit college three times because nobody had a satisfactory answer for me in the field of philosophy. That might not have been the case if I had been able to attend Sarah Lawrence College where Joseph Campbell taught comparative mythology, or Leonard Peikoff’s philosophy classes at Long Island University, had I known about them when I was 18 to 28. But the books of those men were available, and I scooped up the work of Joseph Campbell and devoured them for the next ten years trying to figure out what was wrong with this whole problem of dragons in human society.

I spent many late nights at Waffle Houses all over Cincinnati reading till 4 to 5 AM over breakfast omelets pouring through all of Campbell’s classics meticulously, and it was this action that catapulted me into a lifelong study of myth, philosophy, and human culture that extended beyond the realms of classic anthropological and archeological study. The study of dragons in our culture actually is the skeleton key to understanding the conflicts of our age and it all begins with the grace of that dragon dance from my youth and the hypnotic fireworks I was tasked to feed during the ceremony. And it ends with the reason why I am so excited about the new Peter Jackson film translation of The Hobbit, which I so enthusiastically support at my site here.

My wife’s birthday was last night and my daughter, son-in-law and I went to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Liberty Twp to get my wife the only food she truly likes, Chinese from Panda King. My entire family loves the oriental family who run that restaurant and we’ve known them for years. The man and woman who operate Panda King are two of the hardest working people I know and their son grew up much like the sons I knew in my teenage years, working with the family business, doing their homework between orders and displaying a fantastic work ethic. It is that work ethic that I admire so much in the people of the orient. They have no fear of hard work and cannot be stopped once set in motion. So my wife wanted food from The Panda King for her birthday dinner and nothing else.

As we placed the order I showed my daughter the new preview to The Hobbit on her cell phone which she hadn’t seen yet and we mauled over the idea of how cool Peter Jackson’s version of Smaug the Dragon would be from that literary classic. As we spoke about it I looked all over the walls of The Panda King at the dragon decorations and thought about the dragon dances again. The difference between the eastern view of dragons and the version from the west displayed so vividly by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hobbit is quite astonishing. The only thing the two cultures share in their view of the animal is the category of dragon as a mysterious creature.

About that time a young man who I had fired from his job about 7 months ago came in to order food and appeared to recognize me. There was that tension where words cannot cross a void and nothing is said as a result. He didn’t know what to say to me, and there was nothing I could say to him to bring comfort. Asking how he was doing would have been inappropriate under the conditions of his termination, and asking for an appeal to me would have been degrading. So he avoided eye contact with me, ordered his food and left unceremoniously, as my daughter and I continued to talk about Smaug from The Hobbit.

Running into former employees that I’ve had to terminate happens a lot. It happens when I get gas, and at various shopping complexes as I am out and about, so I’ve learned to shift into the proper gear when those encounters happen. Firing an employee or letting them go as a reduction-in-force is difficult, but the situation is always in their control. It is a failure in job performance that does them in, and they either accept that fact or they don’t. So the choice to be angry is entirely in their control.

This guy in Panda King chose not to be angry and took responsibility for his actions, so his lack of desire to be confrontational to me earned some respect that he had won back just a little bit from how I felt about him upon termination.

When the food was done cooking the owners put it all in a giant box that it took to carry it all home. I joked to them about coming home with us to eat it all. The couple gave me an odd look not comprehending what I was saying as the thought of leaving their work in the middle of the evening was not even a consideration, even joking. And there-in-lies the fundamental difference between the east and the west, as much as I admire the oriental work ethic and their very dedicated preservation of strong families in their culture, they do not function very independently. Independence is not important to them culturally. The people of the orient think in terms of collectivism, as a complete organism of which they are but a single cell. They are naturally altruistic by their cultural heritage and as much as I admire them as a social organism, they think very different from the way I do. This is why their dragons are revered as life-sustaining, because the dragon to them is the state. This is why oriental cultures tend to fall toward communism. This is the case certainly in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and if the politics is not literal communism, then it might be monarchy, feudalism such as what is found in Japanese cultures or an out-right dictatorship. The people of the orient are prone to sacrifice their individual lives for the benefit of the collective whole.

When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings he set out to bring Great Britain a proper mythology for their culture, which England did not have. England through their reign of empire had a hodgepodge of many cultures as they imported the King Author legends from France, which had its roots in the troubadours of romanticism. But England lacked an authentic myth to unify its people, so Tolkien set out to give it one with his characters in the literary classics of Middle Earth. As a professor at Oxford he saw firsthand the spread of socialism throughout London society and as a veteran of World War I he had some very unique perspectives into the progressive conditions that spread after the Treaty of Versailles. Tolkien the intellectual kept his mind free from politics like many creative people and instead delved into creating his own world mythology which reflected the concepts of our actual life. Walt Disney and George Lucas have done that in the United States and in England Tolkien was taking his observations of human behavior and painting them against stories such as The Hobbit in 1936.

Tolkien was so prone to withdrawal from contemporary politics that he lashed out in anger at those who declared his Lord of the Rings as an anti-communist parable comparing Joseph Stalin to the Dark Lord. Tolkien saw his work as reaching beyond the politics of the day even though he was clearly reacting to the events through the mechanism of myth.

The Hobbit is in essence a treasure hunt, not too unlike that of Disney’s beloved pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean. Bilbo Baggins was conscripted from a group of treasure hunters led by Gandalf seeking to take back their kingdom and the treasure guarded there by the dragon Smaug. This takes the home-loving Hobbit Bilbo on an adventure of the lifetime and lead directly into the events that become Lord of the Rings, which is a much more sinister story about evil and the nature of its influence. In The Hobbit, Smaug is the perfect embodiment of the classic occidental dragon motif as seen in this clip from the 1977 cartoon adaption of The Hobbit.

Notice Smaug is a pompous, arrogant creature who uses brute force to guard his treasure taken from the surrounding kingdoms. And he sleeps atop it guarding each and every item. Bilbo the Thief, the (pirate) has been tasked to steal an item from the dragon’s lair. The dragon in these stories represents The State, the institutional control of an organization that takes and steals by force the wealth of the people who have their rights to their creations. So the dragon is the villain in occidental mythology where the creature represents a destruction of individual liberty, and the right to their personal wealth. The dragon does not have a right to hoard the looted wealth of the people in its lair. This makes the dragon slayer, the thief of Bilbo Baggins a hero in this case.

However, if the same story were told in China, Bilbo would be the villain and it would be the dragon who would be the hero. Because in that culture the dragon is the revered creature, the state and the survival of the culture is the paramount concern. But in European post renaissance mythology, before Karl Marx spread his disease across Europe, it was the individual desire for conquering one’s personal dragons that become the concern.

I put the quality of J.R.R. Tolkien’s thinking in line with the Founding Fathers by way of intellectual capacity in what he was trying to achieve. Tolkien had the ability to behold very large ideas much the way Ben Franklin did, and was able to see beyond the political trends of his day to tell very powerful myths in an attempt to hold his culture together. Tolkien was creating a mythology which directly leads to philosophy, two ingredients that are paramount to holding a culture together.

Political science and other feeble attempts to bypass the process of myth always lead to social decay. Mythology is needed in order to form complicated social concepts which give context to large ideas. This is why the new documentary called Finding Joe, which is about the power of Joseph Campbell’s scholarship in creating a new field of endeavor called comparative mythology which will soon become a major field of study like anthropology, sociology, and even physics is now, because there is power in myths and the words that form them. So much so that societies will rise and fall based on the strength of their mythological messages.

But that is the difference between the east and the west and these ideas are in open conflict with each other. The hippie movement of the 60’s and into the modern-day sought to study the east as the premier mode of thinking using examples of India, Tibetan Buddhism, and Japanese Zen to challenge the thinking of western thought. It was even Jane Fonda who basically made love publicly with communist North Vietnam using her sex appeal to win over millions of American’s into communism.

But it cannot be disguised what lingers in the heart of mankind. And all the open conflicts of our day could be seen in Panda King where my daughter and I were buying my wife dinner for her birthday. My friends who run the place genuinely enjoy seeing me when I come to place an order and our friendship exists completely in respect. But they do not understand my motorcycle riding, my cowboy hats or my outlandish dress on occasion. They do not understand my strong desire for individual liberty. And I do not understand their blind obedience to collectivism, or their selfless natures. I admire it in some respects, but I do not, nor do I wish to understand it. When I see a dragon I wish to slay it and mount it’s head on my wall so I can hang my bullwhips from its teeth. When they see a dragon they want to do a dance and celebrate its nature.

And the fellow who I fired was a young fellow who was confused by all this stuff. He thought that work was optional, that he could show up when he wanted. He often wore symbols of the Yen and Yang on his jewelry and had a fascination with the Peace symbol. He thought that he could make up his own hours and that if he lost his job he’d just collect unemployment. So I gave him directions to the unemployment office and told him to get in line because he was now on it. He huffed and puffed and bragged on Facebook about how was going to stick it to me and what a bad guy I was, but in the end he had lost his job because he did not perform the tasks he was hired to do. He was functioning from a faulty philosophy. He wanted the collectivism of the east without the hard work, yet he still wanted the individuality of the west, again without the work. That young man is a victim of no mythology, but rather a grouping of broken symbols that had lost their meaning leaving his mind vacant of resolution. This gives him little social value in that he cannot even be hired like Bilbo Baggins to steal treasure from a dragon resting atop a pile of gold.

If you want a long sustaining society that will always hold itself together, the orient has the problem licked. They are a stable people who can have a continuous society that lasts for generations, but they are willing to give up individual liberty to have it. The Occident, (the west) tends to burn itself out quickly in the absence of strong family values since the innovations of one generation to the next die out as the great minds of one age find the descendents of the next one much like that guy I had to fire. Without the work ethic to sustain an idea, they quickly die out and the culture disintegrates. But, it is in individual endeavor that innovation thrives, and it is in the Occident that we developed aviation, computers, the internet, electricity, and virtually all technological marvels. Because the keys to a good life, the treasures of mankind are underneath the dragons of society and those dragons must be killed to gain those treasures. You cannot dance around them and throw sacrifices at those dragons and expect the dragon to give you treasure. Instead the dragon will only ask for more. So the dragons must be killed, so that society can prosper and advance with each slain monster.

American society will thrive once it stops feeling guilty for the dragons it kills, because we are not like those in the orient. We are unique, and it is our task to kill dragons and steal their treasure for our use. That is the mythology of the west, and one that at a subconscious level, we all understand.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Thank You John Kasich: Shining a light on the darkness of human trafficking

John Kasich must be applauded for taking a very controversial stand against human trafficking in the early months of 2012. Human trafficking is modern slavery and it is an epidemic that I have covered extensively here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.

It is always a good thing when a high-profile personality like John Kasich puts light on an issue that has been purposely kept in the dark for many reasons. To review my other articles about this very important issue, please refer to the following links:

Sex Trade Puppets and Pawns

Sex in Rio

Sex trafficking is not a victimless crime. It is 100% modern slavery and is every bit as evil as the slave trade in the 1600’s through the 1800’s here in the United States. No group should point at that time in American history as a sin while all the while letting it continue in the modern age.

I believe so much in this issue that I opened my novel The Symposium of Justice with a form of sex trafficking being broken up by a vigilante.  My editor at that time was so upset with me for refusing to take this scene out of the book that it cost me my relationship with that editor.  Few people realize just how wide-spread this modern human slavery penetrates our social network, but it is an epidemic without measure.


 

Thank you John Kasich for putting yourself out there to bring this very important issue to the front of people’s minds.

P.S. shortly after I posted this story, the Governor sent me an email.  It is as follows:

Dear Rich:
 
Thank you for your words of support. Human trafficking is a horrific crime and we are going to take strong action to stop this from happening.
 
I am proud and humbled to be serving as the 69th Governor of Ohio. As your Governor I will work to unite all Ohioans, and work towards the common purpose of creating new jobs and improving Ohio’s economy.
 
Ohio is a great state. I believe in the future of Ohio and have faith in the people of Ohio. We invite your continued input on the journey. If there is any way my office can assist you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.
 

****************************************

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Who Wants to be Greece: Listen to your local teachers union

Oh, I’ve heard the complaints, “Rich Hoffman hates public education. He’s a big ol’ mean guy. He never has anything nice to say. He won’t stop till public education is destroyed forever. Well, there may be some truth in that thought. My aim is not to stop my rants, raves, and diatribes until the idiots who are trying to take The United States into the direction of Socialist International are no longer a threat. (CLICK TO SEE MY ARTICLE ON THESE GUYS) I don’t like socialists. They have the wrong political philosophy and I don’t want anything to do with their method of thinking. It is not my fault that the NEA, and the OEA teacher unions have decided to teach our youth socialism and take our country into the glorious direction of those fantastic European countries—like Greece.

So for those who wonder why I’m such a mean guy who hates so many teachers, and their unions, have a look at this wonderful segment by Glenn Beck on the condition of Greece right now, since they are the result of many of the politics from Socialist International. It is to avoid becoming a future Greece that I fight so hard, and criticize so ruthlessly. It’s to eliminate those in our public debates who wish to take us down this road that are my intended targets.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

The Day Lakota Died: February 13th 2012–the decision to be taken off life support

When Mike Schell of Fox 19 met me in the hall at Lakota East to get a few comments for his story on the epic school board meeting held at Lakota East’s auditorium that was packed to the ceiling with concerned Lakota residents, he asked me why I was there since I have been such a staunch advocate against the tax increases. I told him I was curious as to what the administration was going to do, that they had some time to get things right since the election, and I was coming to the meeting with an open mind hoping that Mantia and the gang of administrators were going to do something bold, and good for the future of Lakota. Mike then told me the cliff notes version of the meeting which he had in his hand. The proposal was 69 teaching positions cut and reducing the teaching day from a 7 period day to 6. I shook my head and told Mike I was disappointed. You can see the rest of the interview at the Channel 19 site and what I said next.

http://www.fox19.com/story/16927607/phase-ii-of-proposed-cuts-for-lakota-schools

I was disappointed as I sat with my wife in the top row of the large auditorium and watched the proceeding with growing revulsion as the meeting began at 7 PM. To me, the school boards choice was an easy one. After the defeat of the levy in November, they had a mandate from the community with over 18,000 voters turning down their third levy attempt to ask the teachers union to take a 5% pay cut, which isn’t a big deal since the average pay at Lakota is $63K per year. That simple request would have put Lakota’s budget in line with the revenue stream coming to it where residents pay around $1,140 per 100K of property value on their businesses and residence. That tax is already high. So much so that it does discourage existing businesses and prospective businesses from coming to the Lakota district. That number is the breaking point, so from my vantage point and many who support the NO LAKOTA LEVY group, the tax burden needs to be decreased, not increased.

At the school board meeting the only way to describe my nausea at the obvious scheme to launch the district into a FOURTH tax levy attempt was to compare it to the visitation of a funeral. That’s how it felt. The participants on that large stage in front of a vast audience fumbled about like an episode of the Three Stooges. These buffoons had the audacity to attempt to attract this large crowd to the biggest venue in the district so they could show a PowerPoint presentation on a very large screen to look good for the cameras. I instantly recognized the tactic by Superintendent Mantia, because she used almost the exact same forum up in Pickerington when she lobbied for a levy passage that passed just this last August. The goal of the meeting, (THE REAL GOAL) was not to announce any real cuts. It was to say that the Lakota School System was going to go to state minimums and do only what they had to do to get by. In fact, the teachers are going to teach one less class a day since they are getting rid of the 7th period! So they are doing less work than they do now! How is that beneficial?

Hidden in the dialog throughout the evening was the reminder that if the community did pass a levy, that some of what was being taken away could come back as a kind of Plan B. The entire event was a page ripped right out of Saul Alinsky’s The Delphi Technique. The school board batted around comments like tennis players hitting a ball and a bewildered audience watched waiting for a score. A woman in front of me took vigorous notes until 8:30 as her three kids started getting restless. The meeting began with a lot of energy, but by 9 PM the energy had died and people started to look at the exits. The entire goal of the meeting was to drag out a large audience, complain about how little money the board had to work with, and then use a lot of terminology that the audience would think sounded impressive to appear efficient.

The only strategic option the school board had was to force the union to take further concessions and if the union refused, to use that against them in a public relations campaign. That is if the school board wished the future solvency of the district and not just some short shot in the arm from a tax increase by a levy passage. Increased taxes are not an option. It will cripple the growth of the Lakota district not only in families moving to the area, but also the commercial business that is prevalent in the community. Yet the school board showed at this latest meeting without any doubt that they are completely on the side of the union labor and lack the resolve to meet the budget crises head on and actually solve it. After several months of work after a failed levy, our triple dipping superintendent Karen Mantia from Pickerington, Ohio who makes nearly a quarter of a million dollars in overall compensation can do nothing more with her budget than cut teachers and services as an extortion racket to set up another school levy attempt in 2012.

I witnessed from the top row the funeral of public education, which I’ve never been a fan of, but saw it die right in front of my face. Any hope that public education could resurrect itself was beyond doubt gone from that stage at Lakota East on February 13, 2012. Lakota is the 7th largest district in the state of Ohio; it’s been excellent with distinction for over a decade. Lakota is the best of the best when it comes to public education, and it is a scam. So if Lakota is a scam, then what are all those schools who aren’t as good as Lakota? Lakota is a scam because there was never any intention to balance their budget no matter what combination of personnel was put on the board, because the system itself is on life support and what the audience has to do is decide whether or not to pull the plug or not.

As I watched a parade of parents plead with the school board to find ways to reach out to those of us in the NO LAKOTA LEVY so that some common ground could be found to pass the next levy, I saw a group of people addicted to money like a dying patient might be addicted to morphine. The public school of Lakota is comatose because its employees lack the will to make any hard decisions. They think the school exists so that their employees can make healthy incomes, double-dip in their retirements, have great insurance benefits, and have all summer off. And they are willing to feed off kids to achieve their goal. Their very lives require vast sums of money to feed their addiction and once that money is cut off it is clear that their collective minds lack any direction, imagination, or leadership to exist on their own. So the moment they are taken off that supply of money they become sick and are ready to die.

I’ve joked about it here, I’ve ranted about it on these very pages, but public education is in all essence dead. Tax levies are the life support that keeps them living, and they are in such a condition because they are money addicts. Their philosophy is essentially wrong and this has led to the addictive behavior that they don’t even understand about themselves. It was obvious to me and to others in the audience who see that the body is already dead even as that body attempts to put on a big show to pretend they are in fact alive and well. They aren’t. Because the moment there isn’t any money to keep them alive, they are ready to die, unable to break themselves of that addiction. The school as a whole would rather cut off parts of their body in labor reductions and reduce their offerings to the community as a service than adjust their bloated bodies with the hard decision of restructuring their lives to what the community is supplying them with in funding.

I left the meeting at a quarter till 10 PM as a slow boil of anger swelled within me well into the next day that finally erupted halfway through the following afternoon during a contentious conference call on an unrelated matter. As my wife and I left, it had the same feeling that we’ve had as we’ve left the visitation of a family member at a funeral. The school board members and supporters of public education are so far out of touch that they didn’t know they were already dead. Instead they reside like ghosts who refuse to move on hovering over their bodies in confusion as if somehow they would spring back to life.

It was sad to see, but also revolting all the same. It’s an insult to be told by a ghost how to live life, yet that is what the Lakota School Board did at their meeting. It’s like taking advice from an alcoholic how to avoid drinking too much; it’s an insult to listen to the slurred speech of the drunkard lecture on the evils of drinking. The school board instructed the audience of the need for cutting money while at the same time asking for more, so they could live just a few minutes longer, just one more year. Once 2014 hits the pay freeze will be lifted and Lakota will have an onslaught of employees expecting 3% to 6% increases to make up for their losses during the three-year pay freeze designed to get a levy passed.

Public education is a joke. The employees of the system are a joke. And the administrators are a joke and in bed with the employees. The whole system is a failure of money addicts lost in a reality of their own making. And they have committed their own suicide by their actions and lack of realism. When residents of the nearby neighborhood of Four Bridges are paying over $5000 a year on their homes, as both parents work hard to just keep their property as their value plummets and job opportunities are restricted, the idea of a further tax on homes like that are unbearable, not to mention the senior citizens on a fixed income or the businesses that are barely getting by and thinking of leaving their leases for a cheaper district. The Lakota School System under the leadership of the Ohio School Board Association in Columbus and the Ohio Education Association and its parent organization the National Education Association of socialists have painted themselves into a corner and expect to be rescued with life support to sustain their addiction to money. But the money isn’t there anymore and the community must now decide whether or not to pull the plug on a loved one in order to ease their own minds to the terminal patient that will never get better on their own.

To me the thing is already dead. It might look like its breathing; it might even look into your eyes. But it’s the drugs talking. In this case it’s a $160 million dollar plus budget that somehow isn’t enough. And given that fact, I’m prepared to pull the plug and leave the hospital. Because the death is inevitable—it’s just waiting for someone to make the hard decision.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

An Indroduction to Objectivisim: The Power of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy

Since it is obvious that our culture has been virtually destroyed through public education, then the task before us is to rebuild ourselves so that intelligence can once again become a foundation within our society. After viewing a recent school board meeting for my local school system and countless trustee, city council, and commissioner meetings, knowing many legislators, participating in countless hours of conference calls, audits, and general business relations, I see there is a clear need for society to step up and perform at a new level of interactivity. Wisdom and intelligence needs to be a part of human interaction once again, because what’s going on today isn’t working.

As I listened with patience for probably the last time, parent after parent speak to the school board hoping to raise taxes yet again to cover their budget short falls I realized that the minds of these poor souls are simply broken. I was not angry at them. My feelings were no different than one would be angry at a child for falling down because the child was learning to walk. The feeling was pity in hoping that they might someday learn to walk and comprehend the world in a similar fashion as I can so that I might be able to have a conversation with them at some future time.

It is in that spirit that I offer the following. I hope with this post to teach those who are stumbling how to walk, how to think, so that we might someday have a conversation and actually achieve something productive.

For my readers here who are fans of the great book Atlas Shrugged you already have the foundation to crawling back into a society that is built on reason. If you understand Atlas Shrugged, then you have the first brick in place for rebuilding your life and society at large. If you have not read that book, then you should. If you want to understand the problems of our day and how to fix them, you should start with that book.

However, that book alone will not do it. We know as human beings that there is an inherit truth in Atlas Shrugged, but we do not know why. We just sense it. Well, Ayn Rand actually had the details of why Atlas Shrugged as a philosophy called Objectivism worked and she constructed her novel as a way to display the mechanisms of her philosophy. That leads the next book that should be studied which is the Leonard Peikoff classic Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, which I’ve referred to on a few occasions. That book would be the next step in understanding how to fix the problems that are in front of us as a nation.

But to more easily understand some of the ideas portrayed in that book by Peikoff, The Culture of Reason Society has produced several lectures to help introduce the ideas discussed in Objectivism. You can see them at their home web site.

http://thecultureofreasoncenter.com/

 

For the ease of my readers though, and for use in understanding some of the things I discuss at this website, I am putting the entire lecture series offered by The Culture of Reason Society here for easy study. So grab some popcorn and give yourself some time. What follows while be the equivalent of a semester of college level philosophy and you can have it for free so that you can learn and share with your friends.

Enjoy the lectures and take plenty of notes. And make sure to send this link to someone you care about. This stuff is very important and required for correcting our lopsided society. It’s powerful stuff. If you find some of this difficult, that’s OK. It may challenge your beliefs. I agree with most of it, not all of it, but in essence the goal of the material is designed to make you think which is the primary goal of reason. So keep an open mind and relax and let the material soak in. Don’t try to learn it too quickly, but a bit at a time. If you want it in MP3 form, they sell the material which can be downloaded onto an iPod or similar device which I’d recommend in addition to this format.

Hearing the same material a second or third time with a different media device is the best way to absorb the material before jumping into the ultimate goal which would be to read Peikoff’s book found in the philosophy section of your local book store.




















To understand why this objectivism is important for modern society to learn read David Deming’s paper called “The Noble Savage.”  It is how we arrived at this place in time where we must relearn how to be thinking beings, and not the result of a primate progressive marketing effort.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/deming8.1.1.html

 

To learn what a Overmanwarrior is CLICK HERE:

More Tricks from Lakota: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools

As the Lakota School System attempts to paint a picture of efficiency and community awareness by putting their troubled school board members into the back ground and promoting their former levy advocates to the forefront in a publicity campaign of competence, there is a sinister wave of reality that is sweeping the nation regarding the trouble with labor unions in education.  Have a look at the latest attempt by the Lakota School System to advocate their need for another levy in 2012 by showing the public how hard they are working, as if such measures would earn them the trust of the Lakota residents.

 

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120210/NEWS/302100191/Lakota-board-member-brings-unique-perspective

 

Reading this Enquirer article about Julie Schafer brought my mind to a Marty Steer review of the new book called Special Interest: Teachers unions and America’s Public Schools that is worth mention.  So I have included Marty’s review below in its entirety.  The specifics of this review are that the union element is completely corrosive to the public school system, and this is detrimental to any discussion of school funding.  This review by Marty validates much of what I have been saying about public sector unions, and I will go further than Marty does by stating that no further public funding increases should be provided to any government school until the unions are dismantled.  Because only then can correct assessments of the true cost and value of public education be ascertained.

Lakota in their lack of admission to their labor union problems believe that highlighting the sacrifices of their new star, Julie Shafer exhibited in the Enquirer article will successfully hide all the negatives engaged by the Lakota Education Association in driving up the labor costs to unreasonable levels.  The how, why, when and where of how this has occurred are shown wonderfully in this review by Marty Steer seen below.  Enjoy! 

 

SPECIAL INTEREST: TEACHERS UNIONS AND AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Terry M. Moe

 

In January, 2010, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gave a speech to the National Press Club that electrified proponents of school reform sending a surprising promise of hope. She called for sweeping changes in how school districts evaluate teachers, agreed to standardized tests, and favored a plan to get bad teachers out of the classroom. Even the New York Times headlined the breaking news, “Union Chief Seeks to Overhaul Teaching Evaluation Process.” Only problem: this doesn’t compute – especially given her staunch union track record. Today there’s pressure being put on unions that is threatening their survival, but they know how to play the game.  Whitney Tilson, founding member of Teach for America, hit the nail on the head. “You know the saying. When you’re being run out of town, get out in front. Make it look like a parade.” (Pg. 269) And she did.

Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, was written by Terry M. Moe,StanfordUniversity professor and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. His book is exquisitely researched and highly praised by formerNew York City and Washington D.C. Chancellors, Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee. He begins with a description ofNew York City’s “Rubber Room,” the place where incompetent teachers go to relax while they draw full-salary, full-benefits and time to plan their paid vacations. But he ends with a ray of hope that reform will come, but not immediately. Taking you inside the operation of the teachers’ union, Moe reveals the details of their agenda and the consequences of their power. If the general public knew the truth, they’d be outraged and just maybe next time we’d do a little better at the ballot box.

Before digging into Moe’s book, I’d suggest Googling “A Nation at Risk.” Since Moe refers to it often, it would help to be familiar with this 1983 report to the Dept. of Education that addressed the alarming decline of American education. 25 years later, it had not improved, nor has it since. For the first time in history, they concluded that students did not receive as good an education as their parents, and we are now into the second generation of further decline, soon to be the third. That also just happened to be the time when teacher unions were forcefully on the move.

History:  In 1857, the National Teachers Association (NEA) organized as a professional association of educators. Their mission was to meet high standards, attract well-trained teachers that were paid a professional salary and protected by tenure. It was controlled by superintendants, principals and other administrators responsible for making the key decisions. They were also in the business of removing schools from the clutches of party machines and patronage. This worked well for the first 100 years. Throughout the 60s and 70s NEA made a nationwide presence. They didn’t formally declare themselves a union until 1969, but acted like them, as did their union competitor, AFT. By the 80s membership soared and unionization and collective bargaining had now become the norm. (Pg. 44-48)

The Union’s Job: According to unions, they’re only doing their job: represent the special interest of the teacher by negotiating higher salary and benefits, protect them from job loss, issue seniority which protects bad teachers, guarantee a single-pay policy which disregards teacher performance, oppose accountability and school choice. Since the unions now replaced principals, superintendants and administrators with union control, they effectively run the show through the tool of collective bargaining. What follows are some of these “bargained” rules: (pg.174-175)

  • Teachers can make voluntary transfers to other schools based on seniority.
  • Senior teachers can take junior teachers’ jobs requiring junior teachers to be laid off first.
  • Principal is required to give advance notice to teachers before visiting their classroom to do an evaluation.
  • Use of standardized student tests for evaluating teacher performance is prohibited.
  • Unionspecifies rules for improvement, mentoring bad teachers, procedures to be followed in any effort to dismiss a teacher, and more.
  • Unions determine the number of faculty meetings and their duration.
  • They determine the number of parent conferences and other forums in which teachers meet with parents.
  • They determine how many minutes teachers can be required to be on campus before and after school.
  • They determine class size, number of courses, periods, or students a teacher must teach.
  • They determine non-teaching duties that teachers can be asked to perform such as yard, hall or lunch duty.
  • They allow teachers to take paid sabbaticals and give liberal options for personal leave days.
  • They control decisions about school policy, assignments, transfers, and put non-instructional duties in the hands of committees on which teachers participate and may have a majority.
  • Teachers are allowed to accumulate unused sick leave for years and to eventually convert it into cash windfalls.
  • Unions control grievance procedures that teachers can invoke if they feel their rights have been violated.
  • They give union official teachers time off to perform union duties (which requires school to hire a sub)
  • And they have access to school mailboxes, bulletin boards, classrooms, etc. to use for its own purposes.

Though collective bargaining doesn’t apply to all teachers unions, it is an accurate example of rules taking place within our public schools. The question is, does any of this have to do with what’s good for the kids? Who benefits?

Power, Politics and Reform Unionism: Together the NEA and AFT have over 4 million dues-paying members and collective bargaining is still the norm. That’s not to mention forced unionism which helps getting the legislation they want. They do it through the politics of blocking. Unions overwhelmingly support Democrats only with campaign donations and give more than any other organization, including SEIU. Democrats, in turn, feel obliged to support them. So even if a Democrat candidate genuinely does want reform, they’re between a rock and a hard place. There are organized Democrats who genuinely want reform and engage in what is called “reform unionism.” They ask for account-ability, teacher evaluation, school choice, etc. but here’s the rub. The union agrees with all of the above as long as it’s THEY who set the rules! In other words, they’re forced to buy something that isn’t going to work anyway. Enough said.

Has anyone tried REAL Reform? Yes.  Has it worked? No. Why?

  1. New Orleans: Quite successful but happened only as a result of tragedy: Hurricane  Katrina. Because so many schools were destroyed, all the teachers were dismissed and the “local unions and its formidable power was essentially wiped out.”  So free from the constraints of union power, guess what they built? Charter schools. Children in New Orleans now choose their school. 61% of them choose charter and most of their teachers are products of the revolutionary new real reform organization, Teach for America program. (pg. 215)
  2. New York: When you read about theNew York “Rubber Room” you’ll know why theNew York school district is in deep trouble. Mayor Giuliani tried using his mayoral influence to achieve serious reform in the 90s, but failed. Mayor Bloomberg also tried with a little more success. His Chancellor – Joel Klein was good but his success also came at the price of a “buy-in” that ultimately didn’t work. Albeit a genuine attempt, they also failed. (pg. 220)
  3. Washington D.C.  D.C. has long been known as having one of the worst school districts in the country. It’s not from lack of money. In 2009, reported current-spending was $17, 542 per student. Including estimates on school construction, more like $28,000. Yet in terms of academic progress, they came in dead last. Parents were fleeing to charter schools. In 2007 newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty, a serious reformer, gambled on hiring Michelle Rhee as Chancellor. (pg. 230-231) The unions didn’t know what they were up against. Rhee cleaned house. She even made the New York Times front cover pictured as a witch with a broomstick. Facing a union that had been weakened, she did more than anyone could imagine yet ultimately lost the battle when Fenty lost the 2007 Democratic primary to Vincent Gray. Moe writes” Rhee spent nearly three years bashing her head against a wall of union power, and for what?  To bring about changes that are simply common sense and should never have been needed in the first place. They were needed because…the teachers unions have used their power to impose a labyrinth of onerous work rules that prevent the schools from being effectively organized.” (pg. 237)

Two Major Reform Projects

  1. No Child Left Behind (NCLB Act), signed into law in 2001. was set to improve performance while ensuring that no child would be trapped in a failing school. The idea was to increase accountability, allow school choice, and flexibility in the use of Federal funds in exchange for strong accountability for results. While well-intentioned, “some of the most critical flaws arose because their designs were influenced by the unions and their allies – who don’t want educators held accountable and were using their power to purposely create a kind of “accountability” that would be weak and ineffective,” said Moe. Through collective bargaining they succeeded in eliminating private school vouchers and used their powers to ensure that NCLB was almost devoid of serious consequences when districts and schools failed to do their jobs. To date NCLB has been relatively toothless. (pg. 323)  
  2. Race to the Top was the work of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, Obama’s appointment for the Dept. of Education. In a speech on education he reinforced his commitment to basic reformist ideas when he said “States and school districts need to take steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom…I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from consequence.”  (pg. 359)  Though his words were strong, action was weak and he, too, left with a “buy-in” option on the table which effectively stopped any real reform. The only good it did create was an explosion of reform activity that if kept alive can work to dismantle the power of these unions.

Other Significant Observations and Facts:

  • Teacher Benefits: Average teacher salary most likely in the $60,000 range – in the $40,000s for newer teachers and can easily become six figure for administrators and more. Add to that an attractive guaranteed pension and health benefits which for many is free.  Not bad for a nine month job with seven or less work hours per day.
  • Union Strength: Massive membership, and politically massive money speaks.
  • Undoing a union: Not likely because you can vote out a bad politician, but you can’t vote out the unions. Reality: Unions are here to stay.
  • School boards generally stand in support of the unions. Critical to know candidates’ stand when you vote. 
  • Mayoral support in your community reaches more constituents than does the school board. Important to know.
  • The Dance of the Lemons  Description for bad teachers who are routinely given an unsatisfactory evaluation then passed around from school to school. (190) which of course is because they can’t be fired.
  • Hillary Clinton Think she’s a better option? Better think again!  AFT’s Pres. Weingarten supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. (pg. 268)  When it comes to education, Hillary’s worse. Hillary has been the union’s candidate right down the line. (pg. 369) Her record shows she opposes any and all attempts for school reform.
  • Teach for America is a privately funded organization that recruits, trains and places thousands of college students to teach in the most disadvantaged public schools. Though TFA has proven to be a gold mine of talent for the schools, they are trashed by the unions and obviously pose a threat. (pg. 313)

My Own Observations

In 1983 “A Nation at Risk” concludes that students did not receive as good an education as their parents and we are now into the second generation of further decline, soon to be the third. In 1998 “A Nation Still at Risk” found that “American 12th graders scored near the bottom on the recent Third Int’l Math and Science Study. U.S. students placed 19 out of 21 developed nations in math and 16 out of 21 in science. Our advanced students did even worse, scoring dead last in physics. This evidence suggests that compared to the rest of the industrialized world, our students lag seriously in critical subjects vital to our future… if we continue to sustain this chasm between the educational haves and have-nots, our nation will face cultural, moral and civic peril…. We should be able to rely on our schools to fortify students with standards, judgment and character. Trashy American culture has spread worldwide; educational mediocrity has not. Other nations seem better equipped to resist the Hollywood invasion than is the land where Hollywood is located.” (A Nation Still at Risk by William J. Bennett…) http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6310 

If we allow even one more generation of children to be subjected to the abysmal state of affairs in our public educational system, I think there’s no question we will lose this great country. Today we are at the crossroads in education. Based on growing realization by outraged parents, citizens and communities about the truth of the union agenda and reality of our academic failure, teachers unions have never before been as threatened as they are today. Moe feels confident that “we stand at a critical juncture today that can undermine the unions and put the system on a new and radically different path, and make reform a reality.” (pg. 345) He does see a light at the end of the tunnel, but we all need to own that knowledge and spread it. Now!

Marty Steer

Dec. 29, 2011

RecommendedReading:

“Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools”                         by Terry M. Moe, followed by

“The Beekeeper: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation’s Worst School District”     by Richard Whitmire.

Note:  (If you haven’t already seen “Waiting for Superman” Michelle Rhee plays a role in that documentary and I believe the “union master” Randi Weingarten, makes a pitiful appearance as well.) This movie will rip your heart apart but needs to be seen.

To learn what a Overmanwarrior is CLICK HERE:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/the-overmanwarriors-eating-fighting-and-philosophizing-the-keys-to-a-good-life/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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Lakota’s Sports Billboard: Darryl Parks writes a letter–read it and pass it along

Look at the mighty billboard advertising Lakota Tomahawk football and cheerleading registration. Doesn’t it look expensive? Considering these types of extracurricular activities are now pay to play sports at Lakota because of the levy failures, the advertising of on this billboard seems misleading, even audacious. That is because anyone can see the hypocrisy just in looking at that billboard. The Lakota School System needs its sports programs to keep busy parents occupied on something easily measured like sports to justify the extraordinary cost of public education. Sports unite a community under school pride that causes regular thinking people to forgive many of the flaws inherit in any school system where education methods simply fall short most of the time to the expected results.

But even deeper than that, the government schools know that they need parents to buy into the pride of their sporting programs because it is a proven formula into gaining additional revenue. Mike Brown mastered this art when he constructed his stadium deal with Hamilton County in the mid 90’s which have led to nearly bankrupting the city of Cincinnati today, even though the warnings were sounded by many beforehand. Cincinnati did not want their Bengals to leave for another city, so they did whatever they had to do to make Mike Brown happy.

Labor unions and school boards have figured out that the same formula works in their education institutions for obtaining additional taxes. They use sports and a parents pride in their child’s participation to increase their budgets and obtain increased wages and benefits for the employees. It’s a nice little sleight-of-hand that has been going on for many years now. Parents have shown they will support higher taxes to give their children an opportunity to be a part of a winning team, or even the possibility of a scholarship.

The other side of this issue is that once the school marketing has successfully created in the mind of the parents and the community the need for sports to fill the community newspapers, the school sports programs are part of the cultural significance of an entire district. This of course gives schools leverage over voters when it comes time to ask for increases in taxes, because the community overwhelmingly wants sports from the schools to entertain them. For many parents it is more fun to root for the kids in their neighborhood rather than those at a professional level, because they can relate to the local athletes. So if a school like Lakota does not get their funds, they can then make the sports programs pay-for-play programs, which is just a fancy way of extorting the public into voting in favor of higher taxes. This is where Lakota is. They want parents to sign up their children into sports programs and they’ll spend the money on a sign to advertise the openings, then they’ll turn right around and demand $500 per sport for a child to play. What gets missed in the discussion is that the employees of the district are already being paid an average salary of $63k per year and many of the teachers would happily donate their time so that the kids could be coached. And uniforms and other costs are already covered by other fees that the parents must commit to. And at football games there is admission revenue, concessions and other streams of money that come back from the community and go to the school. So why the $500 fees? Where does it go and who gets it?

The fees are to force a community to pass a levy, to increase the taxes on their property and its raw extortion that is very destructive to the sustainability of neighborhoods everywhere. Such a practice is incredibly short-sighted and brings to question the merit of the entire educational institution when reason cannot be seen by them, yet they insist they are qualified to teach our children.

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW and I have been at this levy fighting thing for a long time. He is currently gearing up his fight against the Forest Hills Levy in his district. One of the great fights of our time is the realization that we have seen what tax increases do. We’ve seen over time what tax increases have done to Cincinnati Public, Reading, Princeton, Mt. Healthy, and Fairfield, those with means and money move away. Currently the wealth band of affluence is around the I-275 loop most notably Sycamore, Mason and of course Lakota. Darryl and I know that this trend will last for a few short years and once taxes become too great, residents who now have grown children will simply move on to a cheaper home that is taxed at a lower rate. This brings down the demand for homes since a disproportionate amount of homes hit the market in a given area as average home values decrease.

Growing up, I used to work on Chester Road just down the road from Princeton High School. That was the days when many of the Reds players lived on the west side and in Blue Ash, so Chester Road was the main strip in all of Cincinnati. It was where everything happened. Restaurants like the Wind Jammer and Bombay Bicycle club where the destination dinning centers in the city and I was right in the middle of it. Because of all this Princeton City School dominated sports as many involved parents made their home around the Princeton District to be near this hot spot of activity. Today Princeton has an average per pupil cost of $15K per student and it’s a district in decline simply because many of the successful home owners have moved away and now reside in Lakota and Mason. Today Chester Road in Sharonville is only a slim reminder of what it once was, a victim of high taxes that push away property owners and businesses.

The church I always attended all through my life in Fairfield used to be the heart of community. Playboy Magazine in the 80’s listed Fairfield as having the most attractive high school girls in the country because it was a rising star of economic activity–so attractive, successful parents moved to Fairfield to be near the great schools and great shopping on RT. 4. My church always had lots of very attractive girls looking for a date, and had a very active youth group that was mainstream back then. Most of the kids who went to Fairfield High School went to church because the girls had to be home around midnight on a Saturday to get enough sleep to go to church the next day. When you picked up a girl for a date you had to meet the parents. There were always two of them, as a divorced woman alone in a big home was still not considered normal. So in other words, there was a culture in Fairfield that aimed to produce some sort of quality in the family unit.

I went back to that church a few weeks ago and there was no youth. All that was left were gray hairs from my parent’s generation. The nice homes 20 years ago now had public housing residents filling them with single mothers caring for two to three children per home and those kids weren’t going to church. The culture in and around that church was dying and all you had to do to see it was look at it in the parking lot of the old church. It was spreading like a disease.

The reason I brought up Darryl is because he was speaking to a neighbor of his earlier in the week and they reported they were moving, because of the Forest Hills levy request. They had simply had it. You can read what Darryl said about this situation at the link below. I also have the broadcast by him discussing this during his Saturday show below the link.

http://www.700wlw.com/pages/onair_parks.html?article=9719712

Darryl is dealing with the microcosm of his neighbor leaving which is similar to what communities are dealing with in the macrocosm. When we fight these tax levies we are not trying to hurt kids, hurt the schools or the parents who move to these districts to attend the great schools. We are fighting to keep the costs low so that the cancerous destruction that we’ve seen happen in our lifetimes does not destroy our own homes and the communities they reside in. It is not our fault if the types of people who so easily vote themselves tax increases don’t understand the basics of economics. Or that they don’t care what happens to their communities 20 years from now because their plans are to sell their home and move any way.

Taxes do not incentivize people to stay in a community. Higher costs make them leave. It doesn’t matter if it’s a business or a residence. Anyone who governs money with a loose had and perpetually thinks that taxes can always increase is a fool who does not understand economics, and it is not the job of the wise portions of the public to give these people educations they should already have as adults. Those who believe in tax increases simply do not value money and that is a failure of their personal philosophies. They will not be allowed to destroy communities without opposition. Darryl is fighting for his community from his home district and I am from mine. I know of hundreds all across Ohio who are joining us in this endeavor, and they are all doing it for the same reason—they wish to preserve their homes and not see them destroyed by reckless tax increases initiated from a looter mindset.

The billboard in Lakota says it all. It’s an elaborate display designed to show off the wealth of the district and increase enrollment. But it’s also designed to advance the cause for further tax increases. Such a sign to me reminds me of the kind of gloating that went on in the days of Chester Road by Princeton High School, in glory days long gone, and at Fairfield. If the taxes continue to increase, the fate of all the poorer districts of Hamilton County are in the future for Lakota and it’s our responsibility as citizens to use our knowledge of history to prevent that treachery. Because without opposition, there will be more and more neighbors like the ones Darryl Parks mentioned leaving for land that is less restricted by taxes and allow the residents to keep the value of their hard-earned wealth. They won’t do it because they are mean, or selfish. They’ll do it because they are wise.

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Rich Hoffman
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