The Fireworks Superstore on Exit 141 in Tennessee: a pillar of freedom

On a trip that had the main computer system of our mini-van go crazy on us while visiting a ghost town in Florida, had an accident with a crazy woman from England when she backed into the front of us at a stop light in Cape Canaveral, blew a tire in Georgia, and had the ABS system fail completely just north of Atlanta we had our share of transportation problems on our most recent trip through the south. And all day long while driving back to reality my son-in-law wanted nothing more than to stop and get fireworks from a dealer for a Fourth of July, 2011 celebration at our home when we got back. Because of all the trouble with the car I wanted to set a goal for the last really big place on our way home on I-75, a place I had taken my kids when they were very young, and it stuck in my mind as embracing everything that reminded me of just how great America is. It’s the Fireworks Superstore at exit 141 in Tennessee, a palace of patriotism!

Predictably, the place was wonderfully cheesy and had been kept up in the same manner as I had enjoyed some 20 years before. A quick glance around the store revealed many names that are rooted in rebellion and danger, because in many ways that’s that fireworks represent. And before buying fireworks, you need a general understanding these days of what they do.


Open circuit	An incomplete electrical circuit
Orange book	The United Nations publication for classification and testing of dangerous goods
Oxidant	The component of an explosive that supplies oxygen for the reaction of the product
Palm burst	A color break with palm tree core
Parallel circuit	An electrical circuit in which the current is divided between several igniters. Less easy to test for breaks.
Paste	Commonly used to cover shells to enhance their burst
Pattern shell	A shell of fewer stars that creates a pattern rather than a sphere
Pellet	See Star
Peony shell	A shell whose stars do not leave any trails
PIC	Plastic Igniter cord
Pigeon	A specialized type of firework which travels to and fro along a horizontal rope
Piped match	Raw match enclosed in a paper or plastic tube
Pistil	The central core of a shell. Often a complimentary or contrasting colour to the main burst
Plug	See Bung
Portfire	A thin walled tube filled with slow burning composition used to light other fireworks
Propellant	Composition used to produce force e.g. A rocket motor

Punk	Slow burning lighter for small fireworks
Pyrotechnic	Generic term for any item which react in a self sustaining chemical reaction and generally produces a light effect. Pyrotechnic articles are different to fireworks and generally are used for stage and theatrical uses
Quickmatch	Raw match enclosed in a paper or plastic tube
Rack	Apparatus for firing rockets or mortar tubes
Rain	Shells containing long burning stars that fall all the way to the ground.
Raw match	Black powder coated thread used for linking fireworks
Repeater shell	Usually a cylinder shell with timed bursts at regular intervals
Ring shell	An aerial shell that produces symmetrical rings of stars often have a rope tail to control orientation of the break
Rising effect	Often a tail effect on a shell but can be external attachments to a shell that break off during the rise to create special effects
Rocket	Aerial effect propelled by a motor
Rocket cone	A device for firing flight rockets
Rocket motor	The power unit behind a rocket. Typically made by pressing black powder into a choked tube
Roman candle	A cardboard tube with a stack of timed comets or bombette units
Round shell	A shell in the form of a sphere usually containing colored stars
Safety area	The area around a fireworks display site between the spectators and fireworks. Not including a fall out zone
Salute	Report or loud bang
Saturn shell	A chrysanthemum break with an outer ring of a contrasting color
Saxon	A bar with centre pivot with drivers at either one or two ends which make the bar spin on a central point.
Screecher	A whistle unit with a hole through the centre. This increases the burn speed and therefore the sound
Sequence	The pattern in which fireworks are detonated in a display

Series circuit	A circuit arranged so the current runs through each igniter in turn. This enables and breaks to be detected
Serpent	A spinning tube used in candles and shells. Usually with a report unit
Set piece	A ground firework. Generally static
Shell	The most spectacular of fireworks propelled with a lifting charge from a mortar and a bursting charge that charge to a star composition in the air after a predetermined delay
Shell delay	See Delay fuse
Shell of shells	An aerial shell that contains smaller shells ignited when the main shell bursts and subsequently produces small secondary bursts
Short circuit	The accidental completion of a circuit which causes the current to not flow through the igniter
Shot	The single functioning of a roman candle or cake
Smoke	Air suspension of particles from incomplete combustion of a composition
Smokeless powder	A powder containing nitro-cellulose and nitro-glycerine as it does not produce much smoke
Spark	Typical effect caused by incandescent particles ejected form the surface of a burning composition
Sparkler	Wire coated with pyrotechnic composition that gives off small sparks
Spider shell	A shell containing a small number of large stars producing a symmetrical burst. Sometimes called octopus shells
Splitting comet	A comet with an internal charge of flash powder which when ignited splits the comet into several pieces.
Squib	Electric igniter
Star	A pressed unit of composition usually spheres or cylinders used in shells, mines, rockets and roman candles
Storage	The holding of fireworks prior to their use. Premises must be licensed for amounts above a certain quantity
Strobe	A pulsing on off star effect fired from candles and shells and ground based effects
Tail effect	A comet star secured to the outside of a shell to give a tail to the rising shell
Tiger tail shell	A shell made up of a solid ball of composition to produce a substantial tail effect. Sometimes with a small shell break
Titanium	A silver metal used in the production of maroons and grebes
Top fused	A shell where the shell delay is lit separately from the lifting charge. Often found in large Maltese shells
Tourbillion	See Serpent
Transportation	The process of consigning a load of fireworks. Subject to heavy legislative control
TREM card	Documentation required when transporting fireworks of any quantity. Transport emergency card. Provide information for emergency services
Trunk	A large tail unit often used on palm and willow shells

UN classification	The assignment of a packaged firework into the UN classes for fireworks
UN compatibility group	The G or S of 1.3G or 1.4S. The compatibility group indicated what a particular item may and not be transported with
UN Hazard code	See UN number
UN Mark	A complicated mark assigned to a particular packing box for dangerous goods
UN Number	A four-digit number assigned to hazardous goods. Explosives always start with a 0 e.g. 1.4G fireworks are UN 0336. Used to identify a dangerous item in the event of an emergency
Volley	A mass firing of rockets or shells
Water firework	Aquatic fireworks e.g. shells or water gerb
Water gerb	A floating gerb with a weight and cork float.
Water shell	See Aquatic shell
Waterfall	A curtain of coloured or silver sparks that falls vertically. Composition is made from an aluminum alloy
Weeping willow	See Willow shell
Wheel	A rotating piece attached to a post in the form of a saxon bar or wheel with driver units
Whistle	A tube containing composition of potassium benzoate and potassium silicate. On burning the composition creates oscillation in the tube and creates a whistle effect which is amplified in the tube
Whizzer	See Hummer
Willow shell	A shell containing charcoal based stars with a long burn time which often fall to the ground

Fireworks and participating in controlled destruction is important to the celebration of any July 4^th ceremony. And cheesy fireworks stores only enhance the celebration. As I walked through the store I contemplated why that was, why one of my favorite towns of Gatlinburg, which is far from the sophisticated wine county of the Bay Area, has so much appeal to me. So much so that I feature the town in my new book, Tail of the Dragon so prominently, and the reason is, that such cheesiness is uniquely American. Shops like the fireworks store with all their contents are loud proclamations of businesses that are not subjected to state control by the government. They, like the stores in Gatlinburg Tennessee with the multitude of t-shirt shops, the large amount of Ripley’s Believe it or Not’s that line the street, are ideas in someone’s head that have been translated into reality and they are unique in the world.

There are places in the world like Niagara Falls, Canada, and areas in Hong Kong among a few others that have attempted to take a page out of the American handbook in their tourist spots to capitalize as we have, and I always find it refreshing to see. Because in such places, capitalism is trying to pop its head out and grow.

But in the United States, we take it for granted that our nation’s highways are filled with these types of things, and while the progressive high brow, European lover may frown down on this activity, it is because they fundamentally embrace socialism, and they know such places are a threat to their attempt to manipulate the United States into a country of their vision. For me, such places as the Fireworks Superstore on exit 141 are the epitome of freedom and the polar opposite of progressive vision, so they are like temples of independance.

John Stossel understands this too, and did a wonderful segment recently exploring this topic.

Gaudy flashing lights are wonderful and I enjoy them wherever they exist. I may not enjoy the moral position behind them, but I do enjoy the freedom of the entrepreneur to have the opportunity to come up with and implement an idea, no matter how ridiculous it is.

That is what we celebrate on the Fourth of July, freedom to come up with an idea no matter how gaudy, and the freedom to explode stuff and pay homage to our past rebellion which allowed us to form the greatest country on Earth, the United States of America. So when you pass a fireworks stand on the highways of America, salute them for the freedom they represent. They are an important reminder of just what America is and what it can be, and are a part of that thin line that exists between tyranny and freedom.

Rich Hoffman

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

Being a Hero: The greatest gift you can give to a child

I will make some people very angry with what I’m about to say, because as we’ve discussed at this site on many occasions, the education bubble is bursting, the housing bubble has burst, the tolerance of federal police powers is bursting, and another bubble, a much larger bubble is about to not just burst, but will explode, and that bubble is the value of family and the ability of third parties to fill the role of a strong parent or family mentor role.

Human beings have a gestation period of growth that extends well beyond their time in a fetus. Human beings do not just plop out of their mothers like a small calf, find their footing and start eating. Human beings are complex creatures that require at least 13 years of constant parental nurturing. And in many cases it takes even more than immediate family members to contribute to those children’s success in life, because being a mentor is what young human beings need more than even water.

In our family, I am that uncle that every kid wants to be near, because I know what being a mentor is all about. In life I am a lot of things, a professional businessman, a writer preparing a manuscript for a national release, a political watch dog, a commentator, a Wild West Arts advocate, an adventurer, my list could go on for some time. But what I am most and my kids know this, my wife understands this, and all my nieces and nephews and brother and sister- in-laws have come to expect, is that I am a family mentor. I am that person who when those young people are out there in the world doing whatever, they think of to bounce what they are doing against what they want to achieve.

One of my nephews wanted me to be the Best Man at his wedding recently because I had a tremendous impact on the young man growing up. For me it was an odd experience because with him it was as if he were grown up and graduating from life close to an equal, while in the audience of my best man speech at the reception were many other young people who I am currently just as important to and I take that role very, very serious.

I’m writing about this on the 4th of July for a reason. Our society has come to believe that public education, college, day care, neighborhoods, sports, and many other social programs can give young people what they need to become successful adults. They can’t. The progressive dream of “it takes a village” will only make a village of idiots and followers. Psychology and psychiatry are such new fields that they have been recklessly incorporated into society with incredible relevance, and have contributing to that expanding social bubble that is about to burst. The reason that social bubble is unstable is because it was built with flimsy, careless ideas and not supported with the value of heroes.

One of the greatest faults of the progressive is the notion that “I’m not perfect.” Or “I am no expert.” Progressives, for their own vision of social order desire a world of socially trained experts in a particular field of endeavor, just like in a village, where there are hunters, basket weavers, people who build the fire for cooking, those who cook, that kind of thing. In our society we have lawyers, doctors, teachers, fireman, police, accountants, and we teach people to move into one of those fields of endeavor and to know everything about their learned field, but those same people are expected to not know anything about other people’s responsibility. This is why unions get so mad at people who can see through their scams, like with public education. They are the professionals and the society at large is supposed to take everything they say without question.

Well, if you’ve ever studied the way young people learn from adults, they learn by copying. This is such a powerful tool that kids born in the south will develop a southern accent purely on copying the speech patterns of the people around them. When you throw a child into education methods, and child care, then deny them an adult to look up to, you’ve doomed that child to a life of misery. There will always be exceptions of course, but most children if they are surrounded by adults who refuse to be mentors to their children, will doom those children to a miserable life when they grow up. If a child grows up to become a bad person, where they don’t know how to balance a check book, they can’t maintain a stable relationship, where they turn out neurotic and psychologically flimsy it is the fault of their parents.

Parents these days have bought into the lie that they can be bad, shallow people and still raise good kids, because those parents have bought into the lie that the village can raise their children better than they can. They cannot.

A young man wants the men in his life to be the best, the strongest the fastest and smartest at everything. The young boy has an innate instinct that this is important to their development because a young person knows that the value in learning something should come from the best so they have the best chance at success. Young girls want to know that their mothers are the, prettiest, and wise creations that have the answers to everything. Moms must be experts on everything. And fathers must always know what’s best. This is the key to the successful raising of children.

A child does not want to hear from his parent that they are incompetent fools who are scared of something in life. Children want to believe their parents are immortal, larger-than-life, supermen and women of high quality because that is who the child is going to copy and the child wants the chance to be all those things themselves.

At the wedding mentioned, as is the standard for my involvement in any wedding, I do not attend bachelor parties. I do not indulge in drunkenness. I do not sit with strippers in Vegas, even when my own brother was married and every male member of my family went to see naked women, I did not. I didn’t because I would ask the young people who look up to me not to do such things, and if I want for them a good life, I must do my part and stay away from any kind of mortal revelation that indicates weakness. You have to lead by example. You can’t send children to public school and hope you can “cheat the system,” while you’re off doing bad things. Kids will see through it. You cannot have a “do as I say, not as I do approach.”

Children expect their parents to be living gods on Earth. They expect parents to know it all, this is why when children hit their teenage years, and the parent has given them a mundane outlook on life and the teenager gravitates to their friends, to spite the parents who let them down with low expectations, the child will go through an excessive rebellion phase. The parent is expected to have high expectations in their children, but the parent is expected also to lead by example. If the parent does not lead by example, the child will lash out in a last-ditch effort to save themselves, which will most often accelerate the failure.

On our way to Kerr City last week, a ghost town in the middle of Florida’s rugged interior, far away from the tourist spots, my niece was with me, my daughters, my son-in-law and my wife. She received a phone call from a friend of hers that was upset that my niece was spending the day with us instead of wanting to do something with the caller.

“You want to hang out with your family? That’s weak,” said the caller in a frustrated voice. “I thought you were my friend?”

My niece tried her best to appear conciliatory, “My family is cool, and we’re looking for a ghost town. I’ve lived in Florida for 7 years and I didn’t even know there was a ghost town and my Uncle Rich is taking me to see it.”

“You sound like my mom,” the caller retorted. “You’d rather hang out with your family than your friends. You’re becoming just like my mom.”

The call ended as my niece looked out the window for a moment. I watched her through the rear-view mirror for a moment until she regained her composure.

“She’s just jealous that I have a good family and she doesn’t,” my niece said finally.

My wife looked at me from the passenger seat then turned around to address my niece. “That’s right honey, if your friend was given the same chance, to go with us, she’d become suddenly very supportive.”

And that’s been my experience with young people. When my kids were growing up, our house was always filled with their friends who preferred to come to our house and spend time because at our house those kids were getting what they were looking for, someone to emulate.

Family is very important, much more so than progressives want anybody to believe. So as we celebrate the Fourth of July, it is important to know that enjoying freedom today is good, but it will evaporate tomorrow if there aren’t people who believe they are heroes entrusted to guard it. And those people are our young people today. They need adults to look up to so desperately, they need to believe in something and that belief must come from their family.

I’ve always thought these things, but now that I’ve seen my behavior translated over a twenty year period in open opposition to the progressive movement which I’ve fought against for longer than that, the evidence is coming out dramatically in favor of my beliefs. And when my nephew who was now 26 wanted his Uncle Rich to be his Best Man when he had plenty of options, particularly from people his own age, I consider it a high honor, and even more telling, just how important all the things I taught him were. My teachings endured through all the hard teenage years, the drinking years, the girls, the friends, the social propaganda, to the most valuable foundations the young man wanted to remember before embarking on the adventure of marriage. That’s how important being a mentor is to young people.

So before you busy people reading this scurry about your lives in selfish pursuits, going to that gentleman’s club while on that business trip while your wife drops the kids off at day care so the two of you can make really good money, play golf with your friends and go out to eat every weekend, think about what you’re doing. When the young people in your family ask you a question, they expect an answer, and if you aren’t confident enough to live up to their expectations, they will resent you because you are their gateway to adulthood and if you give them crap, they will grow up and become crap, and it will be your fault, not theirs.

The future is in the hands of each and every one of us, and when the bright eyes of a child looks up to you and asks a question, make sure you have the answer. The fate of our nation depends on this very trait, the extended gestation period of the human child continuing to grow outside the womb so it can observe the world around it and adapt however required to the conditions of its survival. If the child is surrounded by fools, it will grow up to become a fool. If it is surrounded by heroes, then it too will grow up to become a hero. The choice is yours…………………….

Rich Hoffman

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

The Real America: Thinking of the Fourth of July from the beach!

Ocean waves are the perfect metaphor for how corrupt politics erodes away at our freedom. I had spent much of the night at our condo working on an editorial assignment for my new book Tail of the Dragon, which is a about a rip-roaring car chase through the heart of the south at speeds over 200 mph. It combines two of my passions, politics and fast cars. Without sleep, I was up at the crack of dawn summing up my latest writing project.

When I think of politics and racing together I think of a moment around this time of year in 1984 where President Reagan flew into Daytona Speedway, which is just an hour north of our condo, to witness the race and see Richard Petty win his 200th victory.

When people ask me what Tail of the Dragon is about, it’s hard to explain in modern terms because for me, even though I was a young guy, the book was born on the day when the two people I admired most back then were both having big days at the same time. This race, the Firecracker 400 with the iconic Ronald Reagan speaking in his usual way and Richard Petty winning with a cliffhanger solidified in me what America is all about.

Whenever I feel the need to get back in touch with what America is, in a modern sense, I think of this race when I was a young man staring at a static laced television set in a sweaty un air-conditioned house waiting for family to come over to my parents house to set off fireworks and grill hamburgers on the grill.

When I finally got my own drivers license I drove so fast that I earned the nickname Richard Petty, and other NASCAR names. One of my first jobs out of high school was a car salesman, which gave me access to the fastest cars built at the time. When I wasn’t selling cars to customers, I was taking cars out for lunch and test driving how fast I could make them go. Richard Petty to me always represented what winning was supposed to look like, and his casual attitude represented the best of what America had been and could always be.

So as we celebrate the 4th of July, the Founding Fathers are the first thing that should come to mind. But for me, memories of a more recent past percolate to the surface. And as I walked the beach this morning and looked north up the coast to where the Daytona Speedway waits for the famous Fourth of July race, which they call the Coke Zero 400 these days, I see the spirit of America alive and well.

When I finish the Tail of the Dragon, I hope to share that spirit with the rest of the nation so they can relearn everything that they’ve forgotten about American Pride, and as you can see from this clip compared to the exchange between Reagan and Petty, America as forgotten a lot.

My goodness………????????????????????????????????????????????????

We have a long way to go. The waves of corruption have been beating on our shores for a while now leaving us with hungry, patriotic yearnings for a president like Reagan. The first step is in realizing that the erosion has taken place, then we have to figure out what to do about it. Because left alone, the waves will continue to beat on us till there is nothing left but a sandy beach where once brilliant ideas existed and courage was commonplace.

Rich Hoffman

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

Senator Bill Coley Protects S.B.5: Ben Dribble of the Lakota School Board sticks his foot in his mouth

Over the last couple of days I have received dozens and dozens articles, comments from newspapers, video reports from news stations all over Ohio and Kentucky over this crazy school funding issue. Members of the Ohio Education Association seem baffled that voters are not interested in their rhetoric, as they have been in the past. People like me are not impressed with the silly stunts the OEA is trying to pull off with their 54 contracts signed this spring as S.B.5 goes into effect today, July 1st to attempt to appear that they are working with communities……..finally. With the unions, it’s all smoke and mirrors, as usual.

Unions don’t understand where the cost savings is in S.B.5, according to them. They don’t understand because those same OEA members believe they should be paid extraordinary amounts of money for teaching positions when new options such as electronic courses that could drive down the costs of education and are being resisted by the union. Now the OEA is trying to downplay S.B.5, as if they were nonchalant to the bill, even though they have aggressively gathered 700,000 signatures of their members and their families and friends to get the bill repealed.

Senator Bill Coley was on the Doc Thompson show on 700 WLW talking about some of the ways that school s can drive down their costs, and he also discusses how even with the 700,000 signatures the unions won’t be able to repeal the S.B.5 Bill, enabling unions to continue to drive up the cost of education in uncontrollable ways. Bill explains how Ohio is the first state in the nation to advance a program that will allow teachers to still make good money, but will also drive down the cost of education. But it’s competition that the teachers will have to deal with, and that’s why the union resists anything new.

A nasty email came to me the other day saying, “Mr. Hoffman, you won’t be happy till teachers are making 35K per year.” Let me say that people who think like that have gotten on my last nerve. They are fools who have played the system for years and brought all our budgets to the level they currently are. They have taken advantage of state and federal money that was passed out like candy on Halloween, and now that the governments are broke, schools and their unions believe that the budget gaps are supposed to be paid by tax payers.

Here’s the problem…….taxes are already too high. They always have been, but now that the money isn’t there from external sources, the local taxpayers are being asked to cover the difference; it is showing just how out of control the spending always has been. In schools, too much is when the budget exceeds your income. If you are losing state and federal money, then the school has to cut its costs to fit the budget. If the school has too many teachers and administrators that are making above 60K per year then it will have to dump some of those expensive employees to meet their budget. It’s pretty simple really. You don’t ask tax payers to cover the difference, because that difference is unrealistic.

I also hear quite a bit that schools are the pinnacle of a community, and that if tax payers don’t pay extraordinary amounts of money to public education then that somehow means the community doesn’t support it’s schools. This is nutty thinking by people who are grossly out of touch. Who says that money makes something good? Why can’t we have a great school at half the cost? And who says we need union labor to teach a kid to read? I’ve worked with union labor plenty of times and they always over exaggerate their importance. The typical union employee would make watching TV sound like they were making a sacrifice.

I don’t care if the labor is union or not, only if it is too expensive or correctly priced when it comes to an organization. I personally don’t want to pay money into a union because they have their roots in socialism and I don’t like socialism. But if a union wants to get together and play cards or whatever, they are free too. But they don’t have a right to collective-bargain for my money taken from my property. Whenever there are cost over runs, it’s most always because there isn’t any management controls.

I read the other day that Ben Dribble of the Lakota School Board mentioned that one of the requirements of a superintendent was to pass a levy………………………..what? So that is what a member of the school board believes? That costs just go up uncontrollably by some mysterious force and that taxes must therefore increase to meet those cost increases? People like Ben Dribble won’t know what to do with S.B.5 which actually gives school boards management control over their costs. So it may take some time for districts to find school board members that can actually manage costs, but eventually, these cost overruns will be dealt with.

Lakota like all schools must realize that even with the decrease in state and federal funding that property tax revenue will decline even further as more people move out of the district because of foreclosures or decreased property values once they go through property reassessment. Homes that were bought on the top of the housing bubble need to be devalued and should not be taxed at the higher rate. And when that happens, Lakota will lose even more tax revenue.

Apparently people like Ben Dribble and the OEA believe that it is feasible for property owners to cover the budget gap no matter how big that gap is. They believe that because they don’t understand the value of money, which is why the cost of education is so high to begin with. They are out of touch and are elements in education that need to be removed before any budget decisions can actually be discussed.

Thank goodness S.B.5 is now effective. Now let’s see if anybody has the guts to use it. Because the task of education is to get better than it is now, and also more effective without driving up the cost, anything less is not acceptable. The changes that are needed won’t happen without S.B.5 remaining intact, because it requires those changes to meet the new challenges presented. And so far, unions are standing in the way of that change and that makes them a detrimental force standing in the way of progress.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Ghost Town of Kerr City: a metaphor for planet Earth

I have always had a fascination with civilizations that have eroded away into nothing. When I was a kid, I explored old grave yards, and dilapidated homes that were abandoned. I particularly enjoy exploring old cars that are rusting away in the middle of a field far away from civilization. The questions, where did it come from, and where did the people go always must be asked. I have also found entire cities like Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula and Cahokia outside of St. Louis particularly fascinating. With Chichen Itza we know it fell from power around 1000 AD about 412 years before the Spanish ever showed up. But Cahokia is a complete mystery. That entire city of over 20,000 people just vanished around 1200 AD for no apparent reason.

Society does not continue on forever, as much as people wish to believe. America is just a society like any other. Like any culture, the roots of the society are in their foundation. In America, the first 100 years set the course we all see today, and were built off the foundation documents of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. The second half, the last 100 years or so has other ideas that have entered into the American experiment, ideas imported from Europe and the east. Those ideas will change the longevity of our culture for good or bad. To be able to tell which one is to be able to study history and see how factors add up to push a society one direction or the other.

That’s why my family and I were scouring the backwoods of Florida through lush vegetation and natural springs searching for a ghost town that was only 90 years removed. We had taken a similar journey before where we were studying the lost town of Moonville, Ohio, which is now haunted.

Moonville was a mining town that rose and fell around coal mining and was formed in 1856 but by 1947 the last family had left Moonvile and to this day, all the buildings are gone, and foundations are very difficult to see. This is a fairly new town that had risen and fell within a few generations, so those types of places are fascinating and a lot can be learned from them.

When I learned that the ghost town of Kerr City, a town that had started in 1884 on 205 acres and consisted of 26 city blocks was still somewhat intact on the north shore of Lake Kerr, we had to go check it out. But it wouldn’t be easy; most of the town had abandoned their homes by 1941 when the post office finally pulled out after the winter freezes of 1894 and 1895 destroyed the citrus crop that had been a bulk of the town’s economy. The town had died because the economy of it had never recovered.

When my wife and I travel to Cancun to visit Mayan ruins the Mexican people supporting the town know that they have nothing to offer but tourism. They aren’t making anything substantial; they have no feasible export, so they rely almost exclusively on tourism, and are very kind to their guests, because people to Cancun are like the citrus trees to Kerr City. The Mexican people know that if the United States tourism dollars dry up, so will their economies. So they treat people well and offer them services they may not find in their home country. Most of those services revolve around decreased social regulation, which is why Cancun is a popular spring break destination.

My wife and I also travel to Cape Canaveral often, and it is easy to see that a majority of the economy of Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach are built around the Space Industry of the Kennedy Space Center, which is only a few decades old, 1958 to be exact. NASA is one of the only government programs that work. The amount of money that NASA creates in American wealth cannot be minimized. With an annual budget of $19 billion dollars it produces hundreds of billions of wealth in return. But politics doesn’t think in those terms. It is easier to pander to the poor, to the lazy, to the distraught because those voters are looking for someone to rescue them.

Instead of continuing to develop the Ares 1 and Orion rockets, the Obama administration wants to invest $6 billion over five years in a commercial space taxi to carry astronauts into low Earth orbit. The budget would also funnel billions of dollars into developing new space technologies, such as the ability to refuel spacecraft in orbit. What isn’t in the budget is a specific target for exploration. All that sounds fine from a distance, but when the Shuttle Program ends in July, the Space Center will lose 7000 jobs, which in the term of government money, the budget cuts proposed by the president are ridiculously short-sighted. More money is wasted each year in just Medicare according to Attorney General Eric Holder, “Although today marks a critical step forward in combating and deterring illegal activity, our work is far from over,” Holder said. Fraud has accounted for as much as an estimated $60 billion a year in the Medicare program. Wow, think what NASA could do with $60 billion dollars if somehow Medicare fraud could be controlled. Obama is reducing NASA to a support role where other nations build the actual space craft and the United States will ferry staff to them and refuel the craft. How exciting!

The Federal government spent a small fortune on the General Motors bailout, yet there is little desire to even maintain the budget of NASA. Why? Well, I believe that under the current form of government there is a desire to dismantle NASA so other countries can have the job of developing technology, just as those same types wish for America to not drill for oil, yet allow Brazil to perform the task. Those government types do not believe in the sovereignty of America, they are globalists, and elitists. I believe that these globalists don’t like the idea of setting up colonies on the moon because their focus is in on the political agenda of worldwide unification and planetary colonization does not exist in the progressive platform, so they are not certain how to deal with it, so they cancelled the plans.

As my family and I walked around the ghost town of Kerr City, once we found it by using latitude and longitude coordinates on our GPS unit, it was easy to see even among the ruins, that the city was overly reliant on its citrus groves. There were without a doubt people in the town back then that declared that Kerr City needs to develop other types of economic activity. But as is the tendency among human beings, the majority of the societies are followers, and if the leaders say to grow citrus, then citrus is what the town will grow. Just like today in the United States if progressives say global unification is important, and preserving the Earth are paramount concerns, then the followers in society will tend to accept such ideas without question. However, such people, like the farmers of Kerr City, believed that if they did everything right, planted their groves, or take care of the planet, that life will always be as it is in their short lifespan. But as seen in the video below, Earth is and will always be in a state of fluctuation.

This will of course continue until Earth as a planet comes to an end, which it will.

That’s not to say that human beings should purposely trash the planet. But, the context of survival must be understood. Earth is not a stable, eternal environment. If mankind wishes to continue as a species, it must continue to push the frontiers of space. It is that space technologies developed in those pursuits that will help our society become a master of our own fate.

The good people of Kerr City did not do that. They were happy to live off their citrus crop until a few hard winters wiped them out making all the hard work they spent building homes, buying cars and keeping them running, and generally doing the business of running a small town useless, because without an economy, there is nothing for anybody to do. And without their citrus crop, Kerr City was useless.
As sweat ran down my face, and ticks crawled up our legs, I stood on the shore of Lake Kerr and noticed what wasn’t there any longer. Only a few buildings still stand. This ghost town wasn’t like Moonville where that place was certainly haunted. Kerr City was only haunted in its lost potential as a town. The remaining buildings had been kept up by a person who had bought the property and rented out the homes to lake visitors. The dirt road leading to the site was prohibitive and far from inviting. But the owner’s endeavors had at least kept a shadow of the town alive, even if that shadow was fading as the encroaching forests were taking the town back, soon to erase it from memory all together.

I couldn’t shake the thought that Kerr City could easily become planet earth if we continue to listen to all the hippies, college professors, and politicians that simply can’t understand why space is important to the human race. These same fools will complain about coal production being devastating to the earth while pushing for electric cars to replace the combustion engine, forgetting that the energy for the electric car came from a coal-burning power plant. It is pathetic that America has not returned to the moon to mine it, to set up economic opportunities, to push transportation technology even further along. It is sad that those who are progressive leaning citizens look to high-speed rail which is the old technology of Europe instead of the efforts being created from those innovators of NASA. Those short-sighted visionaries who look at a village in Africa and wish it to be equal to the United States are the same types that only planted citrus trees in Kerr City, which led to the town’s eventual demise.

While the do-gooder environmentalists save the planet from the combustion engine, from oil technology, and from the human race, idiots who follow the misguided at Moveon.org and other George Soros funded organizations pushing for green technology, are planting the seeds to mankind’s end. Because green house gasses, and mass extinctions have no bearing when the earth is pummeled into a 100,000 year-long ice age after the next meteor impact blocks out the sun from the equator for centuries which freezes over the ice caps. Or the next ice age occurs and kills off most of the earth’s population. Or the sun burns out and becomes a red giant completely consuming the Earth as it expands outward and destroys at least the first four planets in the solar system.

Progressives, who are supposedly the scholarly among us can’t seem to get their minds around the concept that in 5 billion years the earth will not be here. Instead, they figure that they won’t be here, and prove that they are only concerned with their lives, because progressives in spite of all their concern for the environment and world peace are inherently selfish. Just like the people in Kerr City, who thought that the town would always be there, before an environmental disaster took the town by force leaving the humans to flee for their lives everything they had ever built.

The heart of the town was Beulah Avenue. Now, Beulah is a dirt street with four houses left on it with a Texaco gas station. I couldn’t help but look at our Town and Country mini-van parked next to a makeshift sign of Beulah Avenue to think how our vehicle looked like a space ship that had landed in the town to visit from some far away land only to return to that world when we had our fill of inquiries satisfied, which we did when had enough of the ticks and the sweat. And that’s where the whole planet is headed eventually, a future ghost planet leaving behind just small remnants of our existence. Future explorers will wonder why we all confined ourselves to progressive villages and stopped exploring space and using the natural resources available while we let our civilization go extinct out of well-intentioned, but limited understanding.

Nobody ever sees it coming, the extinction of a town, a civilization, or even a planet. The best way to prevent that stagnant extinction is by constantly leaning forward, by taking the reins off human kind and letting the explosion that created America continue as it did for the first 100 years, where no political power stood in the way of fresh ideas and advanced the world culture in ways never before realized on planet earth during this relatively calm stage of life of which all of human existence rose, hopefully not to just fall away into extinction like most of the species have met fate in a similar fashion. And like the winter freeze destroyed the town of Kerr City, politics is destroying the uniqueness of America, and the culture that can actually reach the stars and put fate in human hands instead of a passive submission to mother earth which the hippies of a thousand broken homes look to for psychological reassurance as a solid parent when the reality is far from so. Extinction is the path of the tyrant who is selfish with only their life spans in mind. Extinction is the path of the hippie, the greenie weenie, the hemp smoking loser holding up the peace sign. Extinction is the path of the 22-year-old girl who goes to a night club with a handful f her friends and allows a bar tender to pour “jelly shots” into her belly button to let strangers suck on in a sexual ritual resembling defiance to orthodox. Extinction is for the globalist that suckles to the breast of mother earth for all the same reasons that a youngest child seeks to undermine their older siblings for attention of the mother to fill a psychological void in their minds. Extinction is for those who seek security before adventure, for those who look to protect their pension, their income, before accepting a new adventure which would bring new experiences to their mundane lives of slow decay. Extinction is for the socialist and the elite bosses that dictate to the flock just who, what, and where to think as their promised utopia becomes a prison of constant supervision. The proof of these ideas can be seen in the buildings of Kerr City, once thriving with life, but within just a few years, all hope was extinguished because the town couldn’t see it coming, and when they did, they failed to act accordingly.

I see it coming from my visits to Cape Canaveral as 7000 NASA employees are about to lose their jobs while the Obama administration pours billions and billions of dollars of aid into his union brothers and sisters whom elected him in the position of a “social elite.” Extinction comes when the fools rule because they give away resources to the masses without tangible return on investment. And those fools sabotage a superior competitor such as the United States so that other nations can flourish in the world and will be thankful to those fools later when the world becomes globally united and one step closer to mass extinction because the society looked inward at a time that it should have looked to the stars.

Rich Hoffman

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

Progressive Roots: The liars are calling the truth a lie, which is normal

Progressives don’t know history, nor do they care about it. All they seem to understand is that their bellies are full by some mysterious event called a job, which they seem not to know anything about how the jobs are created, just that they are there. Like ants when they realize that a human being has just accidentally crushed a nest they had spent a lot of time building, progressives are seeing their dreams established by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights, erode away. Van Jones has been hired by some of those ants to attempt to hold their dream of America together.

These ants are now fluttering about in frantic fury, attempting a new way to present their old message as millions of Americans are beginning to finally reject the infestation that the progressive has created into the fabric of the United States.

Labor unions rooted in socialism and progressives trying to create a European Utopia, as envisioned by Sir Thomas More 1478-1535, have planted so many seeds into the United States quietly, that many people just blindly accepted that all these big government desires were the way it was always supposed to be. More was an English politician, humanist scholar, and writer who refused to comply with the Act of Supremacy, by which English subjects were enjoined to recognize Henry VIII’s authority over the pope, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded for treason. His political essay Utopia (1516), speculates about life under an ideal government. More was canonized in 1935. Progressives love Thomas More. Notice that he was canonized during this progressive period where in the United States; Franklin Roosevelt was imposing his own form of Utopia on America through the New Deal. It was in this spirit of More, that progressives sought to rebuild society. 400 years later, the man who had been imprisoned and killed in England was suddenly a hero.

FDR had no right to impose on America his New Deal. Roosevelt endorsed numerous new federal programs and agencies to reduce unemployment and restore prosperity, resulting in increased government involvement in the lives of Americans. The intent was good, and at the time, people wanted the relief. Yet this was a moment that the United States Constitution was trampled with disrespect. It is this America that is being destroyed because it was a false America to begin with, brought to us by a president who was playing with socialism, but calling it, “The New Deal.”

(2) The stock market crash of 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression. Unemployment increased and economic security was threatened. Farmers lost their land, workers lost their jobs, and many Americans lost their savings as thousands of banks closed. Campaigning on promises of a new deal for the American people, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential election of 1932.

Upon taking office in 1933, Roosevelt immediately supported a flood of new legislation. Laws established federal inspections and insurance for banks and mandated regulations for the securities market. Several bills provided mortgage relief for farmers and homeowners and offered loan guarantees for home purchasers. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed thousands of young men, while the Agricultural Adjustment Act helped raise agricultural prices. Congress established the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to develop the Tennessee River region. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) provided for a vastly expanded public works effort and a program to regulate American business.

Hopes for early recovery proved illusory, and a second flood of legislation began in 1935. Sometimes called the Second New Deal, its measures included higher taxes for the rich, strict regulations for private utilities, subsidies for rural electrification, and what amounted to a bill of rights for organized labor. Guided by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the National Labor Relations Act gave workers federal protection in the bargaining process and established fair employment standards. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act mandated maximum hours and minimum wages for many workers. The Social Security Act of 1935 created a retirement fund, unemployment insurance, and welfare grants for local distribution (see Social Security). After 1937 opposition to extending the New Deal mounted, and by 1939 public attention had become focused on foreign policy and national defense.

The New Deal expanded the role of the federal government— particularly in economic regulation, resource development, and income maintenance— and created a number of agencies that remain in existence. Although the New Deal failed to stimulate full economic recovery, it helped the government develop policies to limit the impact of later recessions. Where Roosevelt left off in domestic policy, trampling all over the U.S Constitution, Lyndon Baines Johnson picked up.

Johnson (1908-1973), 36th president of the United States (1963-1969). He became president on November 22, 1963, hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Texas. Johnson’s domestic program, which he called the Great Society, was an extension of the New Deal enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s.

Within three months the new president had the satisfaction of seeing a new civil rights bill pass the House and a new tax cut bill get through the Senate. In February he asked for two further measures: a law to protect consumers from unsafe products and deceptive packaging; and a program known as Medicare, an extensive scheme for hospital and nursing-home care for the elderly through social security (see Medicare and Medicaid). The president’s greatest legislative triumph was the passage in June of a sweeping civil rights bill outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations and by employers, unions, and voting registrars.

All these presidents were well-intentioned, just like most progressives are. However, there are plenty of thieves willing to take advantage of those political positions for their own quests for power. People like George Soros without question have plans to build their own social utopia, and they will use people like Richard Trumka, and Van Jones to get it. If you ever want to know the truth, always follow the money. Then it will become obvious what the motives are.

And now that those utopian dreams are in jeopardy, there is frantic movement hoping to pull everything back together again. Progressives are attempting to put on a kinder, gentler face now, where in the past they used extortion and protests to impose themselves on presidents like Johnson and Roosevelt. And the Constitution was trampled upon with well-meaning audacity and now those who reside in power fear losing that power to the strength of the Constitution, because that is the current trend.

This leaves progressives with car salesman like Van Jones to put on a good face to the movement and hope that Jones can sell America back onto progressivism by convincing them that lies are the truth and the truth are the lies. “We aren’t broke,” Jones says. “Just take money from the rich, and everything will be fine.” Such irresponsibility is the last resort of the insect that has spent its whole life building a nest for the security of society with the secret desire to being the king. Such is the desire of all propionates of any utopian culture, which brings to my mind the words of William Goldring.

“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. . . . We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?”

William Golding (1911–93), British author. “Utopias And Antiutopias,” address, 13 Feb. 1977, to Les Anglicistes, Lille, France (repr. in A Moving Target, 1982).

Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © & 1996-97 Microsoft Corporation
All rights reserved.

Yes, Van Jones, yes, Richard Trumka, we need to take a wrecking ball to the world you are defending, because it is not American by the definition of America. Progressive views do not belong in the America I want to live in. The America you built belongs in the Soviet Union and Europe at large. The promises and rights progressives like Jones and Trumka talk about are simply the Ten Planks of Communism. Those are not part of America. They are the wonderings of humorists like Thomas More and Karl Marx.

But as the ant house is destroyed, and they all run around in anger, it is important to know that it’s good that they are so upset even if we feel sorry for them. They had no right to set up an ant colony in a capitalist system with the intent to wreck our lives. Their demise is purely their own fault and no amount of kind words and manipulation can cover up what they really stand for, an America that trades freedom for security, and independence for a big brother to hold our hand as we cross the street filled with dangers created by that same big brother in order to make their presence appear useful. It’s coming to an end in a battle that is about to end their experiment of destruction.

Rich Hoffman

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

Eating Alligator: The Circle of Life, and progressives don’t understand

There was some debate before my family went out to eat at the BallyHoo Grill in Gainesville, Florida about whether or not to eat alligator. I had declared that I wanted alligator for dinner, where my wife and kids were dismayed by the thought. “But dad, alligators are an endangered species. We can’t just eat them for no reason.”

I contemplated the resistance and shook my head at the years of liberal propaganda that had been marketed at such causes. It is true that alligators have been heavily hunted, and without some recognition of the animal, they would probably be hunted into extinction, maybe, only to be over hunted, or used in tourist locations as stuffed caricatures of danger.

But there is something more symbiotic going on with mankind’s relationship to the alligator, which stemmed from my desire to eat one. I thought about why I was craving alligator. I love dinosaurs, and the alligator is one of the few animals on the face of planet earth that is a reflection of that period, the Mesozoic Era which lasted about 150 million years and by eating the animal I wanted to participate in the spirit of the animal, even if in a small degree. I wanted to be part of the alligator essence. I wanted the cells in my body to identify the flesh of an alligator and mimic the structural contents of the tough meat and raw muscle. Animals like cows and chickens are passive animals, and my body is used to such creatures, and takes them for granted. So I wanted my body to digest a dangerous predator and to mimic its contents.

The next morning, after my meal, I got up well before sunrise and went to nearby lake from the hotel where we were staying at, and set up my camera hoping to see some alligators swimming, and even perhaps eating. As I hiked through the woods teeming with insects, even in the morning mist, to the lakes edge, the surface of the water was inundated with tiny insects plucking the facade, some being eaten by fish. Thus, in turn, there were alligators swimming about in the lake stealthily approaching their pry. As the alligators would get close to where fish were eating the insects, the alligators were eating the fish.

Much of the alligators consuming the fish were happening underwater leaving only ripples of splashed water on the surface to indicate the struggle. This would happen for a moment, and then it would be done. Yet, I continued tracking alligators with my camera as they purposely sought after pry.

Near my tripod, where I had set up under the canopy of a grand oak tree draped in Spanish Moss a bird had landed on the shoreline to eat small creatures that had made homes in the soft mud. I didn’t take the time to identify the bird because my eye was on a 7 foot alligator coming my way, with its eye on the bird. The result of this predatory dance can be seen in this video of that event.

As seen the alligator came on the shore to eat the bird, and it was so quick that the bird didn’t stand a chance. The alligator ate the bird right in front of me and we contemplated each other. Competition in nature had orchestrated this symphony of pain, radiating between pitches of survival and death. The alligator had just eaten so it wasn’t hungry, plus it knew that I was a predator that posed a danger to it, so conflict with me wasn’t to its advantage. I continued filming without moving away.

The alligator was a swift and cunning warrior, and that’s why I wanted to eat one the night before. Once my family tried it, they all enjoyed the experience once they got over the initial feeling of betrayal in eating an endangered animal. As I explained to them the night before it’s the circle of life at work here, and we are at the top and shouldn’t be ashamed of it. I reminded them of our mutual love of dinosaurs, that life had lived on this planet for millions upon millions of years in this fashion, with the strongest eating the weakest, and life would continue on like this for eternity, because this method was built under a universal model of understanding. Species would rise and become extinct regardless of interference and regulation. And if the alligator wanted to survive, it would have to figure out how to beat humans as the superior animal. Or, if humans wanted to continue to have alligators to eat, or make belts out of, then they’d find a way to farm them much the way we do chickens and cows. If they go extinct it will largely be up to nature not the pathetic audacity of the human being.

There is another destination in Florida that is by our condo down there, it’s one of my favorite stores, and it’s called The Dinosaur Store. In it you can see the ancestors of the alligator, and buy replicas of full dinosaur skeletons, which I think is fantastic. It’s a truly magnificent store, unique in the world. If you love dinosaurs like I do, this store should be your second home. Humans are making themselves extinct with this hippie socialism that is unnatural in any realm but the human mind of a flower child. It’s a fantasy built around protecting the weak by cutting the legs out from under the strong and it simply makes no sense. In the modern progressive view of the world, humans are regulated from being the predators to protect the species of alligator. Using the same logic, the alligator would be regulated by the human do-gooder to protect the fish, and of course the fish regulated to protect the insect.

http://www.dinosaurstore.com/dinosaur%20store%20home%20page.htm

The hippie progressives that so disgust me do so because they are attempting to engineer all existence with their immature understanding of nature, rather than joyfully participating in the experience of living, both life and death with the same enthusiasm. As I visit my favorite store from time to time, and look through the fossils, books, and statues that are for sale there, some species of dinosaur did go extinct, by way of a giant meteorite or just by natural selection. But not all dinosaurs went extinct as shown by the dinosaur swimming in the lake eating a bird right in front of me.

I’m glad I ate an alligator that night, because for me, it was the highest tribute I could pay to a creature of such magnificent quality. I ate the animal because I wanted to feel closer to it. I wanted to think a little more like the alligator, because I respect it, a sentiment confirmed when I watched an alligator spring forth with such quickness from a lake to eat a bird. This did not happen in a zoo, or a park of any kind, but in raw nature, where a prehistoric beast through sheer quickness and strength beat a bird to flight for the prize of one more day of life. And the alligator become such a dominate species because of competition, through fighting for survival. That’s why I wanted to eat one.

This balance of life between the alligator, the fish and the birds has been in place hundreds of millions of years. All of human civilization has come about in a relatively temporary period between ice ages where a mass extinction of dinosaurs allowed a cerebral creature called man to emerge without being eaten, so that man could build tools and become the dominate species within just a few thousand evolutionary years. Understanding this balance is necessary before ever speaking about extinction, or even right and wrong. The modern progressive is a simple-minded creature that has not matured enough to understand that their existence in the scheme of the earth is meaningless; much like a child thinks its whole world is the domain of its parents. The alligator does not care about global warming, pollution, or the cities of mankind. It was here before the human being, and it will be here after, because it knows how to survive.

Rich Hoffman

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

Top Twenty Useless College Degrees: Why are we paying so much for college?

Here’s a great little article; the top twenty useless college degrees. Click on the link for the source article. http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/04/27/20-most-useless-degrees.html

I’ve put them all here for your convenience. Special note, look how many graduates each year graduated with these degrees, each spending 50K to 100K for their educations only to find out there aren’t jobs in those fields of any value.

Just think about the number on the chart, over a million kids entering these fields that are virtually useless degrees. There are either an over-abundance of jobs in these fields, or the jobs don’t pay enough to justify the cost of the education. In same cases it’s both issues.

1, Journalism

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Median starting salary: $35,800

Median mid-career salary: $66,600

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -4,400

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -6.32

Undergraduate field of study: Communications

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 78,009

2, Horticulture

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Median starting salary: $35,000

Median mid-career salary: $50,800

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -15,200

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -1.74

Undergraduate field of study: Agriculture and natural resources

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 24,988

3, Agriculture

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Median starting salary: $42,300

Median mid-career salary: $59,700

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -9,100

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -0.88

Undergraduate field of study: Agriculture and natural resources

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 24,988

4, Advertising

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Median starting salary: $37,800

Median mid-career salary: $73,200

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -800

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -1.71

Undergraduate field of study: Communications

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 78,009

5, Fashion Design

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $37,700

Median mid-career salary: $72,200

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +200

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +0.81

Undergraduate field of study: Visual and performing arts

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 89,140

6, Child and Family Studies

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Median starting salary: $29,500

Median mid-career salary: $38,400

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +36,100

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +12.33

Undergraduate field of study: Family and consumer sciences

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 21,905

7, Music

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Median starting salary: $36,700

Median mid-career salary: $57,000

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +19,600

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +8.16

Undergraduate field of study: Visual and performing arts

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 89,140

8, Mechanical Engineering Technology

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $53,300

Median mid-career salary: $84,300

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -700

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -1.45

Undergraduate field of study: Engineering technologies

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 15,112

9, Chemistry

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Median starting salary: $42,400

Median mid-career salary: $83,700

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +2,100

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +2.48

Undergraduate field of study: Physical sciences

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 22,466

10, Nutrition

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Median starting salary: $42,200

Median mid-career salary: $56,700

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +5,600

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +9.24

Undergraduate field of study: Biological and biomedical sciences

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 80,756

11, Human Resources

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $38,100

Median mid-career salary: $61,900

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +12,900

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +9.61

Undergraduate field of study: Public administration

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 23,851

12, Theater

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Median starting salary: $35,300

Median mid-career salary: $59,600

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +16,900

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +10.88

Undergraduate field of study: Visual and performing arts

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 89,140

13, Art History

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Median starting salary: $39,400

Median mid-career salary: $57,100

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +500

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +11.46

Undergraduate field of study: Liberal arts and humanities

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 47,096

14, Photography

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $35,100

Median mid-career salary: $61,200

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +17,500

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +11.54

Undergraduate field of study: Visual and performing arts

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 89,140

15, Literature

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $37,500

Median mid-career salary: $65,700

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +30,900

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +9.37

Undergraduate field of study: English language and literature

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 55,462

16, Art

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $33,500

Median mid-career salary: $54,800

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +88,100

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +10.57

Undergraduate field of study: Visual and performing arts

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 89,140

17, Fine Arts

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $35,400

Median mid-career salary: $60,300

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +25,800

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +11.62

Undergraduate field of study: Visual and performing arts

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 89,140

18, Psychology

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $35,300

Median mid-career salary: $62,500

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +19,700

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +11.59

Undergraduate field of study: Psychology

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 94,271

19, English

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $37,800

Median mid-career salary: $67,500

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +30,900

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +9.37

Undergraduate field of study: English language and literature/letters

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 55,462

20, Animal Science

AP Photo

Median starting salary: $34,600

Median mid-career salary: $62,100

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +500

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: +13.15

Undergraduate field of study: Biological and biomedical sciences

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 80,756

Rich Hoffman

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

The Scam of College: The Great Society isn’t so great.

I am not a subscriber to the college experience. I have spoken against it for years, many years. I think it’s too expensive, ineffective, and politically manipulative. I went to college three times each occasion realizing that the professors I had were not the best in their fields, otherwise they’d be doing the jobs they were trying to teach, and were money traps taking advantage of hopeful people, helplessly gullible.

One of my articles here, Most Successful People Who didn’t go to College; (click here to read) is the most popular of all my work. It has had many thousands of viewers over the last couple of months. But the essence of it coincides with this Glenn Beck show from June 22, 2011. Take your time and watch this several times, because it reflects my own opinion almost verbatim.

This whole college scam was built as part of the Franklin Roosevelt view of the world; where the very educated were part the most elite social classes in Europe. These college roots go back to Europe and the social classes from that place. Americans have been caught copying off that dismal old country, and over time, as progressives moved into and overtook education the perception became that college was essential formulated into American consciousness.

Once that perception was created, colleges were able to drive up their prices due to a monopoly status which has the full backing of the federal government. What was created between progressives and the government was the urgency that parents were complacent if they did not send their children to college and pay into the whole system.

This clip is from Beck’s radio show where a caller from Columbus challenges Glenn about the hour-long show he did on Fox.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/06/23/is-college-worth-it/

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I will go as far to say that a majority of the kids going to college come away with nothing useful. Much of what they learn there will have to be re-taught once they get a job. College is only worth the entrance to a job. After that, the kids are on their own. Much of what people are paying for in college tuition is the “college experience.” It’s not what goes on in the classroom, but more what happens everywhere else of a social nature.

If college were just a place to learn, that would be fine. People could pay their money, try to use their degree to get a job, and their success or failure wouldn’t be a problem. The problem with college is they are idealistic institutions that have been given false authority, built on false theories, and backed by legitimacy from the political machine. We talk about teacher unions in public school, but seem to forget that college professors are some of the highest paid employees in any statistic, and the cost of higher education is driven up by their wage levels. Tuition increases all have in common the higher costs associated with professor’s labor costs. Because of the college monopoly, a service people generally believe is absolutely essential for the success of their children, labor cost increases are completely ignored, and tuition hikes just increase, just like school levies for public school. Because the perception is an emotional one, rationality is ignored. It’s easier to ignore all the problems with college and just root for the sports team from that school because it gives empty people a sense belonging.

This is creating a nation of young people who start off their lives uttering the political garbage they hear from their professors. This lasts until these young people have children of their own and grow up, and learn to think like an American Conservative. It may take 10 years, but most people move more to the political right as they put distance between their college years and their adult lives. But worse than the politics, are the debts. I know young people with over a 100K in personal college debt where they hope they can get a job that will pay them back on that investment. But unless they work for government, which makes approximately 30% more in wages than the rest of us, the chances of the college graduate making A LOT more than everyone else isn’t very good, even if they are in a science field.

I spoke to a huge college supporter recently. This guy is a fraternity type, and holds a master’s degree in finance. He tried to argue with me that all the low-end jobs were going overseas and that America was only going to be doing technical jobs here, and that my opinion of college was wrong. “Is that so,” I said to him through gritting teeth. I was angry because it is people like him who have helped spread the lie. “Why did McDonalds do most of the hiring in the United States in May?” According to the Weekly Standard, Morgan Stanley calls it the “McDonald’s Effect,” according to Market Watch’s Washington Bureau Chief Steve Goldstein — an estimate that as many of the 30,000 of the 54,000 jobs added in May 0f 2011 were the result of a hiring binge by the hamburger chain. Where are the technical jobs he was talking about…………China, Germany, Brazil? Because they are not here and they aren’t coming here because regulation, and NAFTA have opened the door to leave the United States.

So all those ambitious young people with $100K in debt are coming out of college to work where? At McDonalds? Yes!

In my experience people go to college hoping for a silver bullet that will kill all of their future financial worries. But this is not the case. College cannot help young people get a job if the jobs aren’t there, and jobs are not created by government. Government jobs are not productive jobs, unless it’s the military or NASA where technology is actually produced. To create a job, something of use must be created and the job is to sustain that creation. America needs to get back into the business of making jobs instead of hoping a degree will lead to a life of eternal security with very little work involved. Such a thought is truly ridiculous and is the direct fault of presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnston. Those two presidents saw college as a way to advance the progressive agenda in American society, and they tricked the people of the United States to pay for their own demise while propping up the union supporters of their political antics. In the end, it’s been a massive scam that has left our youth bankrupt, both morally, but financially. And it has drained our nation of creativity and job creation.

I consider the college experience an absolute monstrosity, of unmitigated failure. I’m just glad other people are finally starting to talk about it.

Create a job. That’s the way every American should be thinking. If you want to become a scientist of some kind, go to college. But if you just want a good job, college is a scam full of false promises that will take your money and leave you empty and in terrible debt. It’s a creation designed to drain people of financial assets and replace the traditional thinking given by a child’s parents with a progressive mentality that will support the politics of madmen and their audacious world vision.

Rich Hoffman

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

HUD Power Grab: The Intent behind entitlements

They try at every turn to embed themselves into your life any way they can. Government’s latest attempt is in the expansion of public housing in Cincinnati.

Doc Thompson covers the HUD issue that is being imposed on the city of Cincinnati which is a detrimental power-grab instigated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Doc covers some of the flaws in this plan from a social stand point on his 700 WLW radio show.

Channel 9 also did an article on the fine details of this situation listed below.

______________________________________________
Posted: 06/06/2011
• By: Tom McKee
CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) will know by the end of the week how much it will expand its public housing in Hamilton County to settle a discrimination finding with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

A Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA) is expected to be signed between CHMA and HUD that will stipulate where some of the housing will be located.

HUD found that CMHA failed to put public housing units that it owns in numerous Hamilton County communities, including Green Township, where the agency’s former board chairman lives.

Green Township currently has 27 CHMA-owned units within its borders, but may be required to add more as a provision of the settlement.

Also this week, Hamilton County Commissioners are expected to approve a Cooperation Agreement with CMHA that will add 375 public housing units to the 482 already in suburban communities.
Scheduled meetings include…

MONDAY – June 6
–11 a.m. – Hamilton County Commissioners staff meeting
– Cooperation agreement to be discussed
–11 a.m. – Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority special board meeting
– Executive session to discuss voluntary compliance agreement
WEDNESDAY – June 8
–11 a.m. – Hamilton County Commissioners regular meeting
– Cooperation agreement approval expected
THURSDAY – June 9
–9 a.m. – Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority regular board meeting
– Approval expected on voluntary compliance agreement

The cooperation agreement does not affect the City of Cincinnati, which has 5,269 public housing units.

_________________________________________________________

Public housing is one of those topics where government has exceeded its reach. It has no business in creating housing for citizens, because to do so, it must take resources from productive people and give them to people who are not productive. Government can only do this as a kind of theft.

Listen to this professor in the clip below. I can’t believe people pay him to teach, because he has a lot to learn.

The mentality is similar to the type of government that is bankrupting Greece, where their retirement age of 55 is drowning the country with expectations which is collapsing the country. I have friends in Europe that have 4 plus weeks of vacation and are working under this assumption of a retirement age. When they travel the world, even though they have moderately low-level jobs, I ask them “who does your work when you’re gone?”

They just give me the deer in the headlights look. “That is not my concern,” is the reply. That answer continues to baffle me every time I hear it. How can a country like Greece, England, pick your European country, subsidize vacations and retirement plans. Who pays for it, because while these people are on vacation, or retired, they are unproductive citizens? They are citizens of their home country, yet they are doing nothing to contribute to the positive growth of the nations GDP.

Nobody is arguing that people shouldn’t be able to take a vacation. But the amount of vacation or the retirement should be contingent on how much that citizen has saved up to be able to give themselves a break. Because if they can step away from their jobs so easily, then they are not productive enough, and in government, this is very often a case, the idea of a job is one that is created so that a worker can clock into their position, do their time, productive or not, then go home to their regular life. If they want to take a day off or go on vacation, they do so without a drop in performance from their employer. This is totally wrong, this whole entitlement culture.

That is the kind of mentality behind HUD. Government is in a business it should not be in, giving out Federal dollars as contingencies to implement their policies that don’t belong to them. And because the housing is provided and not earned, it is not respected. This leads to abuse of the property, and it leads to the decline of the citizens that live there. Crime runs rampant in such communities; drug sales and prostitution are the norm.

Public housing is something that we should be cutting back on, not expanding. It is a road that leads to one place, utter failure both financially and socially. It does not catapult people back on their feet, but more often than not, flattens their tires in life keeping them from advancing themselves. Because it pays to sit still and collect the check, the housing and the food. The entitlement concept is rooted in foolish European socialist ideology. It has appeal because it basically provides something to people for nothing but what doesn’t get discussed is that something comes from a nation’s wealth, or potential wealth. No society can function sufficiently when people just retire at 55 and stop being productive, relying on a workforce that is under 55, which might only be a fraction of the employed citizens to support everyone else.

The entitlement culture is a lie……it was a scam to get politicians elected into power, and the check is due but nobody wants to pay. People naturally want the free ride that was promised to them from people who didn’t have the right to make the promise in the first place. Entitlements are a premise based on nothing, and they are undeniably wrong and must be removed from the vocabulary of human beings……….All entitlements.

Rich Hoffman

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

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