One of the questions I get a lot is…………..What right do you have to say the things you do? Who do you think you are? The next is, if you’re such a great writer, why aren’t you writing for organizations like American Thinker,or other conservative publications. Well, the answer to that question is that I have. My preference however is to have creative control over my content, and when you present that material without a lot of middlemen involved, then the material has the opportunity to be more authentic.
But, for those readers here who would like to see a sample of my work from before I started this forum, here is an article from American Thinker, from back when Governor Kasich was just getting ready to run for the office in Ohio. I was reminded of this article recently, and thought it prophetic given the current battles over Issue 2 that we are all facing. So for brevity, I provide the link below to that article for your enjoyment.
Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior.
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith; 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; 3. From courage to liberty; 4. From liberty to abundance; 5. From abundance to complacency; 6. From complacency to apathy; 7. From apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage.”
With the tragedy of 9/11 occupying almost every broadcast and social event of the weekend, the common theme which came to my mind was that I felt that the tragedy of 9/11, as terrible as it was, fails in comparison to attending a memorial service for your own country while it still lives.
As the NFL did its tribute, and the firefighters climbed to the psychological heap to lift the flag high about their heads, I thought of the unions behind those firefighters, concoctions of socialism hidden behind a mask of American Pride and I could only shake my head. “They don’t even know what they are,”I would think to myself in disgust. They have no concept of history. Their rituals are only a few generations deep and keep them stuck into a ritual that reminds them of the greatest defeat inflicted on American soil, an attack that went far deeper than buildings falling in the financial district of New York City, or even the terrible deaths which occurred there. The tragedy of the 9/11 attack is that it forced America to change, to become too introspective, and to meditate on the tragedy itself in a vain attempt at recollection.
I looked at the guy shifting gears, because the memorial event was touching and my mind was on it. “Yes, that’s right. I am that guy.”
“Well, I want to tell you, I grew up with firefighters, I’m friends with firefighters, and I stand with firefighters.”
I looked out the window as he spoke and looked at the long lines of firefighters gathered around their trucks and a group of motorcycles all propping up the American Flag from the backs, the riders showing AFL-CIO stickers on their windshields and fenders. “So because you grew up with them you have to think like them?”
The man looked at me with a challenging gaze. “I’m not looking to dispute you with a bunch of ‘fancy’ words. I just want you to know where I stand.”
The firefighters at the service I was at, along with all the armed forces personnel gave me the same feeling that I thought watching the start of all the NFL games, that the memorial we were all attending was not one for 9/11, it was for ourselves. And the events which led to that death was an elusive quality that nobody even saw coming. It is like a death by cancer as opposed to a gruesome death by a visible enemy on a remote battlefield. The death by cancer just eats you from the inside out and the death just happens quietly in a bed.
The men I was looking at were good people, but they are carrying within them something that is destroying their spirit without them even knowing it. It’s rotting them using their static patterns as camouflage. Many of them have no idea they even carry it within them, within their belief patterns which govern their lives.
On 9/11 the tragedy of The World Trade Center was just the needle which injected into the body of our American Culture a disease which would topple our society with apathy. For while we attend memorials and contemplate whether or not firefighters and police should be attached to communist philosophies in the form of labor unions, the enemy moves against us. It runs through the blood of our cultural bodies and is turning the elements of our body against itself, with the aim of destroying it.
The sad thing is, such as in the case of what that guy said to me, that he “stood with firefighters,” as though the prerequisite for supporting firefighters, teachers and police means you must support unionized labor. My question is, why can’t I support those public workers without supporting unionized labor, which is rooted in socialism? I wanted to tell that guy that, but he didn’t give me the chance. He walked off too quickly, and even if he didn’t it would have taken hours of conversation to even arrive at a place where his mind could accept what I was telling him. He is functioning from a static pattern that he spent over 40+ years forming, and that wasn’t going to change in an afternoon conversation with me.
As I watched the guy and his firefighter friends, I thought of the AIDS virus, how as HIV it attacks the immune system of the human body by disguising itself as a friend, then when it is near, it destroys the body’s ability to fight it off the virus, until it’s too late.
America has been infected, and the events of 9/11 has paralyzed America’s immune system and allowed the virus of our enemies to attack us, to overwhelm us, to turn friend against friend on a premise that was a virus to begin with.
So when I want to demonstrate precision, power, effectiveness, management of resources, I often use the whip.I’ve used my bullwhips to explain to businesses how to function more efficiently, so it only makes sense to me to use a bullwhip to explain how Issue 2 can be effective in controlling the costs of communities all over Ohio. And I do it by showing that Issue 2 will allow communities to “target” their costs specifically, just as I do by targeting the flame of a candle, putting that flame out without disrupting the content of the candle. In this case it is the wax that makes up the candle and it is the flame that consumes it. If I want to save the candle from consumption by the flame, I must blow out the candle. Putting the candle out with at whip demonstrates how incredible force can be applied “precisely” without harming the rest of the candle. So the political metaphor is appropriate. See for yourself.
Who are the flames in society, the “public employees” who consume the “system?” What flames would I target with Issue 2? Well, what comes to my mind immediately is a situation we had at Lakota where a teacher Ryan Farhenkemp just plead guilty to taking inappropriate pictures of a young student while on an out-of-town field trip. That teacher had a serious case of pedophilia, where he desired sex with children, boys specifically, and should have never been allowed to teach. Because the teachers union is so radical, they prevented a proper investigation into this behavior, and did not allow any management to even investigate the matter, until it’s too late. Read more about this situation here:
Just one school district over in Mason another teacher was having sex with the football team, while her boss, the assistant principal was sending pictures of his penis to the teacher’s phone. Many people, including the Superintendent knew that things were not all well and good among his staff, but the teachers union has made investigations into this kind of business nearly impossible, so the bad teachers out there, “and there are many” are allowed to continue on with bad behavior because they are “protected” by a union. Issue 2 will allow performance based evaluations which will help root out this kind of trouble by “allowing” the discussion to initially take place, where now it doesn’t happen at all, because legally, it can’t. Read more about the Mason situation here:
And to understand how out-of-control the union contracts are, listen to Scott Sloan of 700 WLW read the Lakota Teachers Contract, the more complex something is, the more money it costs. The Lakota contract is not unique, but is pretty standard all over Ohio.
Those are examples of the kinds of “targets” that we as taxpayers must remove from our public employee system to control the out-of-control tax increases that are coming at us. Only in a community do we know what our problems are, and our school boards, city councils, and trustees are there to represent our interests. But often if you go to a community meeting, you will find that even if you speak, those elected representatives won’t listen to you, because the deals are already solidified in the chaos of Columbus. It is the union lobby power that has twisted the arms of legislators and passed legislation like the “double-dipping” provision while the tax payers were busy “working” those lobbyists and politicians, all paid for by us, were having lunch together in Columbus and writing laws to enrich themselves in the chaos they initiated.
But the video below will give you a basic understanding:
Those who are in favor of Issue 2 could provide fact after fact, after fact on why it’s a great law. Basically we have a system that is currently in chaos, and there are a lot of people working in the public sector who fully intend to enrich themselves in the midst of that chaos. What you will find is that those groups who wish to take advantage of that chaos against the tax payer will attempt to divert the attention away from the details of an argument to an emotional one. In recent radio broadcasts we have begun to call this the Wookie Defense. Click here to read all about it:
You can see supporters of Issue 2 pick apart the recent “Firefighter” ad put out by We Are Ohio here, which will demonstrate unequivocally just how the system is flawed. If these guys won’t tell the truth about things right out in the open, what will they lie about behind closed doors? The answer to that is why things in government cost so much money, and why Issue 2 is so important. The savings doesn’t come from a literal figure on paper. It comes from decentralization in Columbus so people like me can help manage the costs in our communities, where they should be negotiated.
Now, this next video which was put out by a bunch of Firefighters working with a local school is using the same tactics that most public employees use to pass new levies, shows the kind of game they want to play. Now, when I saw this video I laughed hard for a long time. In fact my stomach still hurts almost 24 hours later from laughing at it. It’s not that the people in the video did a bad job. Actually, I think it’s a good effort at a dance routine. What I laughed so hard at is the level of manipulation they are employing in plain sight. They are basically expecting the voter to vote against Issue 2 because they can dance, and that is hilarious.
My stomach hurts again………………………………………………hold on…………Ok. How are the communities going to be weakened if we give the communities more power to handle their costs? Instead of the fire chief talking to his union people and then the union lobby going to Columbus to create a new law that then comes back to our community as an unfunded mandate, how about that fire chief talk to the people in the community about their staffing levels, their pay, and their equipment. That seems like it would create a stronger relationship, not a weaker one. If taxes needed to be increased, then the community could decide, but as it is now, the tax increases are “dictated” by the state through chaotic legislation, which is just how the union likes it. You see these emotional types won’t deal with facts they’ll instead rely on emotion to convince you to throw money at them.
However, in this next video the firefighters attempt to “look” like they are dealing with facts by letting you listen in on one of their picnics. I laughed hard at this one too but for an entirely different reason. In fact, this has been a running joke among my wife and me now for an entire day. We will probably make fun of this one for years to come.
Oh my goodness! “Our forefathers and firefighters tried to do back in the 70’s?” Thanks for that, Joe. In case you missed it that remark is at the 7:45 mark. Dude, the history of Ohio goes back a lot further than the 70’s! Also, hey, Joe you must not have met the mayor of Toledo. He’s for Issue 2. You should get out more, you’d meet more people than a bunch of bobble heads waiting for you to tell them what to think.
The next question that arises from this is, even these “honest” firefighters are not willing to address the facts, and instead peck around the parameters of truth, relying on manipulation instead of out-right presentation, then what are they hiding? Well, I published the wage rates of the police and firefighters from my community in the below article. It’s pretty standard stuff all over Ohio. As you will see, they are making very good livings, and as I’ve said before, if the public thinks that level of income is acceptable then fine. But my inclination is that these public workers are very aware that they are making approximately 30% more than the people who are paying their salaries, and they’d rather keep that bit of information out of the discussion, out of fear that the public might turn on them and actually question their actual value. See my article on what these guys make in my community: (the spreadsheet with all the costs is toward the bottom)
I have been in management for a while now so I understand this issue from many angles. I’ve worked at all levels of a company, and I have dealt with unions. I’ve been in actual fights in parking lots with shop stewards so I know the mentality of these people. Taken individually, most people are good citizens who just want to do the right thing. I once worked with a guy who was a major union supporter yet had a fascination with airplanes and considered himself very patriotic. I thought of him when I heard Joe speak in the above video. He used to say to me, “You are building those units too fast. You have a rate of 120%. You are making us look bad.”
I’d say to him, “You make yourself look bad by holding back. We have a contract deadline and you are jeopardizing it by not filling the production requirements. You could build at least three times faster than you are, but you and your friends won’t do it. So I’m picking up the slack so we don’t miss our deadline.”
“Kid, this whole union thing doesn’t work if we don’t stick together. It takes all of us, in solidarity.”
I’d smile at him, because he knew what my reaction would be. We got along in a friendly way because we both shared a love of airplanes even if we differed politically. “Now why would I want to do that when I can work extra overtime, make more money, by doing the work you and your fat ass friends won’t do?”
He’d chuckle and say, “You know back when we walked the picket line we’d call you a SCAB. In fact, I’d tell you that behind your back, they’re calling you a SCAB around here because you are up the ass of management.”
At this point I would turn down the radio and lay down my wrenches and all the guys working nearby would stop to see if a fight were about to break out. “Dude, to me a SCAB is something that heels a wound. When your body is cut open, you better pray a SCAB forms to heal it. If I am a considered a SCAB around here, because I like this company from head to toe, I like the people in management, and I like the people on the paint line, then that’s a compliment. I like them all to some extent, and I’m not picking sides to suit the needs of your unions political position, which I adamantly disagree with. If I’m a SCAB it’s because I’m here to heal all the wounds you union fools inflict upon yourselves with your adversarial relationship with management in an attempt to bleed the company dry in order to garner more money for yourselves.”
He’d put his hands up defensively as the union stewards would come in closer for a listen. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you out. They (management) will use you against us, to break down our solidarity, brother.”
“I’m not your brother or any of you other guys. I’m here to make a living for my family, and if you idiots want to produce at a 40% efficiency rating, I’ll do my work and your work and take your money in overtime so I can take my wife to nice movie, or out to dinner. It’s your loss.”
Then the union steward would step in. He was a guy who clearly didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. So confrontation was inevitable. “You jeopardize everything we stand for.”
“Then you are standing for the wrong things.”
“You are too young to know what you are talking about. We worked hard for every right the people in this company have. You are ignorant, you have no idea. Someday you’ll want us, and we won’t be there for you, because you wouldn’t stand with us, and by then we will have collapsed.”
“Is that the kind of talk you use to get your wife to sleep with you? Because you’re wrong, this contract must be met. If you make yourselves a pain in the ass to the customer, they won’t give you another one, and you’ll be out of a job and all your union bullshit won’t mean anything then. “
At this point the union steward waved me off and said, “Forget it guys. He’s a puppet for management. He’ll never stand with us.” The crowd broke up and went back to work. For that day, all the workers improved their efficiency by about 15% points on average. Then the production values fell the next day back to what they were.
The public unions are at that point. They have negotiated themselves out of value. Their services are too costly taken collectively, and they have built a system where much abuse is taking place, such as the double-dipping issues. If they were a private business, they’d be going out of business. But these are public employees, and we need those services. We need teachers, we need firefighters, and we need police, and we will have them regardless of Issue 2 or not. We will have strong communities too. But we won’t be used and abused as tax payers by greedy unions who force upon us a system that is rampant with undisciplined spoils. Ohio is at a point where we must have the ability to remove with surgical precision the trouble areas, and no politician in Columbus can do that. Only the members of the community know where the real trouble is, and Issue 2 gives our communities the tools to remove those trouble spots that are both costly financially, but also ethically.
Issue 2 will change things for the public unions. It will force them to deal with the tax payer more evenly. But this notion that Joe has…..that firefighter who thinks our forefathers are from the 70’s….. that Issue 2 will take away his “seat at the table” he is just sadly mistaken.Issue 2 puts the tax payer at the table equally with the unions, because right now, the only people at the table are the unions and their friends, the people we elect, yet they control, because of how the law was before Issue 2.The public is outside the door and when we ask to come in we get some stupid dance like you saw above. And when we ask what’s going on, we get the Wookie Defense and many of us are tired of it. Issue 2 brings everyone to the table equally, and that is what the public unions are afraid of, because once we get there, we’re going to find out just how much they’ve been screwing management, (ALL OF US). And they know that we will be mad when we find out. That’s what they are really scared of in regard to Issue 2. That is a wrath they aren’t prepared to deal with.
All week long we heard about the “jobs” speech from President Obama as he attempted to address the nation before the opening of the NFL season Thursday September 8, 2011. Obama’s speech was a silly exhibition of naïveté. I cringed watching him thinking of all worlds’ dictators; George Soros included who were also watching with hungry lust on their minds. For the imagery of a fool president speaking in generalities that are completely worthless to the political landscape, dictators will lust after those images with pornographic seduction. I am sure they were licking their lips the way a hungry lion gazes at a herd of gazelle prior to pouncing upon those passive creatures for an evening meal. President Obama is simply embarrassing in every way.
And to cover up his obvious lack of worldly knowledge, the President seemed to evoke his usual Wizard of Oz persona where he almost seems to take on the personality of that factional character from that fictional tale to represent a fictional presidency and offer America a “jobs bill” that is simply no different than a Las Vegas slot machine.
The reality of what Obama uttered in his speech was that if you pull the government lever, somehow, magically jobs will appear. That by spending more money on the slot machine, that America will receive some kind of “jack pot.”
Yet as the Great and Powerful O travels all over the Midwest in his bus, the strain of the financial structure of the whole government gambling mentality is taking its toll. When talking about Social Security, which is a ponzi scheme by design, Rick Santelli argues with Thomas Friedman over the merit of Social Security, and what Friedman fails to understand is that if Social Security were built with some level of honesty behind the premise, then it might possibly work. However, because those in government all-to-often behave as though they are in a casino, the money gets spent on games like that slot machine to pursue jack-pots which simply don’t exists, or if they do, it’s just to convince people to spend more money to get a bigger jack-pot.
When people who are in decision making positions can’t even admit to what they are doing, and don’t understand what name to even give to things like Social Security, they are no different than a gambler with an addiction.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim that the best way to save money would be not to pay any of the people who were in the room when the President gave his speech to congress, because to those people, the whole ordeal is just a game, a slot machine that will have a pay-out to some fortunate soul who manages to pull the lever and get a “jack-pot.” But before there can be a jackpot, someone must put money in the machine, and once there is money in the machine, then the Great and Powerful O can then decide how he will spend it. I believe the Great and Powerful O is convinced that by spending money in his government casino, that he is helping people. But what he’s really doing is just creating more “dependent,” and “addicted” people whom the government exploits for its own ends. Just like a casino.
But don’t you see dear reader, that the Great and Powerful O, or any of those Looters of Washington have no power unless you put money into their machine. They are toothless fools with no bullets in their gun. It is you who put the bullets in their gun to use on you to force you to spend money on their casino schemes. If you don’t give them money, they have no power at all!
You have the power to stop it and I would propose that we should do so. The best way to end the corruption of the casino is not to give the casino money. Don’t give it money, and it will go out of business soon. The same with government, if you don’t like the level government which is expanding rapidly, all you have to do is starve it of what it eats, in this case it is your tax dollars. If left to their own devices, they will never stop eating. They are simply no different than this poor woman who proclaims she cannot stop eating. But consider the amount of food it takes to maintain this body. Where did she get it………her family fed her. They brought it to her when she became so big that she could no longer get it for herself. Yet this woman cries and proclaims that her situation is completely out of her control, just like government.
And study the compulsive gambler. Listen to this poor guy. How is he any different? It’s exactly the same, the compulsive gambler and the “spend happy” politician. Both believe that if they spend just a little more money, they will hit a “jack-pot.”
The government programs like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, education, all of it, are simply images similar to a slot machine dressed up to convince you to put money in their machine and give them power. As ridiculous as that first video was, with the Wizard of Oz slot machine, using images from that great movie to seduce people into putting money into it, to feed the gaming industry, is manipulative and excessively exploitive. Government does the same for exactly the same reason. It’s a game! It’s a racket!
And the Great and Powerful O is a racket also. I would say that he is simply no different than the large woman who became so obese she could no longer go into public and move around on her own. These are addictive personalities who are hiding their disorders from even themselves, and they will beg and plead to anyone to help them by bringing more food or more money.
The Great and Powerful O is determined to seduce people into spending their money on his casino like programs by taking advantage of people suffering from addictions by feeding those addictions to prop up his own power base, because that’s how a casino makes its money……..from addictions.
It’s all about fancy lights, and sweet talk with seductive music all designed to control the sign-stimuli which make a human being function.
Call it what it is……………………..a scam! The whole thing! And while you wonder why that woman’s family didn’t stop feeding her so she wouldn’t become so obese, or the gambler’s wife didn’t stop him before it was too late, ask yourself why you vote to pay more taxes when the game is simply designed to drain you for all you’re worth and when you’re done, the system will drain someone else, until they are done, then it will move on to someone else, completely consuming every part of their life, financially, and socially until there is nothing left. And all the while the government will convince even itself that it is helping its addicts by at least caring for them, which is the greatest sin of all. It’s the justification of just another addict whom is on a destructive path beyond their control, and that begs the question, why did we continue to feed it when we knew it was wrong to begin with?
The answer is of course is that we failed to call it what it was…….until it was too late.
“In the beginning of change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.” Mark Twain.
That quote comes from a friend of mine and it’s something I’ve been contemplating in some detail because it fits much of the wave of animosity that has been thrown in the direction of the Tea Party and accurately describes the elusive quality of true patriotism versus popular patriotism. Another friend of mine, Matt Clark is onto the same “elusive” threat that is perculating in our current social order. Matt addressed some of that elusive quality in a broadcast done shortly after an interview with me over Labor Day weekend.
After a recent school board meeting one of the board members, whom I have grown to enjoy speaking with, even if I don’t agree with everything they do, accurately answered for me when another person standing nearby asked me “So are you with the Tea Party? Are you a leader or something of that group?” The school board member looked at the woman and said, “I think Rich is doing his own thing. I don’t think he’s with any group. He speaks for No Lakota Levy, and at times he does for the Tea Party, but I think Rich is on his own crusade, his own personal war.”
I looked at the school board member and wondered if it was a derogatory “shot” at me, or just a general comment, and I determined that there was sincerity in the statement so it was the later assessment. So I added, “Not everyone wishes to go as far down the rabbit-hole as I am.” I then addressed the original speaker. “I believe that for an idea to be authentic, then you must remove the politics, the ‘group oriented’ portions of the argument before the truth can be seen, and once seen, that truth can then be brought to the larger organization. Those who chose to stay within the safety of the confines of a group will not explore the parts of a problem which reside outside the group. Regarding many of the problems of our day, the source of the trouble resides outside the many social groups, so to fix them one must leave the group.” I received the usual empty nod feigning understanding, which I let go because I’m used to that. The conversation was a polite one, and it simply isn’t possible to educate people in one sitting. They have to want to understand and many people just don’t want to.
When people ask me about my daughters the first question is, “What sports did they play when they were in school? Are they in any sororities now?” Often in those moments I have to deal with the conversation in the same way I did with the board member and their friend, knowing that many of the things I may say will come as a shock to them, so I generally find that I must explain it like I’m teaching someone a concept they are just now learning. “No, I encouraged my kids to stay out of organized sports.” “No, I would consider their membership into a sorority as a slap in the face to everything I ever taught them.”
“WHAT!” “WHY!” “OH MY, That’s so anti-social!” They don’t say those things of course, but you can see the words scrolling across their eyes.
My wife and I were going to dinner the other night at one of our favorite restaurants, we were on our motorcycle and we pulled up behind a mini-van stopped at a traffic light which had three stickers on the back window. The first sticker said, “FOP member,” the second “WCBO West Chester Baseball Organization,” and third was a “Masonry” sticker.
“Boy that guy is really, ‘connected’” I told my wife. “Look how proud he is of it.”
And here is the fundamental difference between me and that guy. He would look at a guy like me and say, “That guy is an anti-social, isolationist. He’s a stone thrower.” And I look at a guy like that and say, there is a coward, a person who is hiding from his personal demons by participating in group oriented behavior. Groups are to the adult what bedding covers are to a small child. The child believes that the covers will provide protection from the monsters which reside in a bedroom closet. And the adult believes that memberships will provide security to the harsh realities of daily living.
In the “patriotic movement” of the last couple of years, suddenly being a patriot has become fashionable, like wearing a popular name brand item of clothing that will come in and out of fashion. The same people, who scamper to the store to buy the latest brand of Under Armor, or Nike tennis shoe, are now joining the Tea Party because it’s become fashionable to do so. And that makes me happy to suddenly have all these new people who are interested in the things that I have always been interested in. However, I keep my distance, because I know that many of those people are only committed to the cause so long as it’s comfortable.
The reason that progressives are attacking the Tea Party the way they are is to let those people know that if they do not toe-the-line, then they will be cut-off from the established society. As I watched the Presidents speech on Thursday September 8, 2011 I was keener on observing John Boehner during the speech then the president himself. Boehner is wavering in his position. He only understands politics as usual, and the political community is threatening to cut him off if he follows the Tea Party, and Boehner likes to have a sense of “belonging.” So the threat is very real to him. His face told the whole story, and I can see that he is willing to “buckle.” The President and the rest of the progressives are about to win him over. (Check out Boehner in this clip. Does that look like someone who is willing to fight on our behalf.)
This is the essence behind “country club” memberships, political parties, sport organizations, motorcycle clubs, fraternities; all those groups exist for networking, as a hedge against the troubles of living. And in politics, even if it’s on the other party side, it is essentially a culture that provides safety to the individual, in group behavior.
Most of the Tea Party people I know are just nice people who are learning about their nation’s history. Once they learn that history, they will tend to vote differently. But I don’t see many people among them who are truly willing to “fight” the system itself, because they want the security of the “system,” flaws and all.”
In my life, I let very few people close to me. I have a lot of “friends” people whom I like and they like me. But I let very few people close to me except those who wish to exist without the security blanket of “belonging” to others in the form of a group. As I’ve taught my kids, “don’t be a follower, be a leader. Make your own path through the forest where no path exists. If you take the paved roads of life you will have an easier time, but you will not learn anything unique. You will see nothing that everyone else who has taken that same road has seen already, so your life may be mildly enjoyable, safe, but you will always have a feeling of yearning for the mysteries that reside far away from the paved roads of life. It is better to get ‘cut-up’ by thorn bushes and branches as we carve our own path in life. There will be dangerous animals and snakes that hide in the tall grass that are scary, there will be thousands and thousands of dangers that reside away from the safe paths in life, but the treasures of life are always where people do not go, for the act of discovery is in this constant push into the unknown. So if you want to play sports, play it. But avoid the mentality of the group who stays on those “paved roads” of life. Because they will not discover anything unique and they will be controlled throughout their lives by the orientation of the road. That means that the architects of their lives are those who built the road in the first place, which means that their lives are not authentic to their own experience.”
And that comes back to Twain. He knew as many intelligent people have discovered over time that the visionary, the patriot, the scientist who brings forth a new idea, that are ridiculed by the groups who wish to protect themselves, just a child pulls up a blanket to hide their faces from the monsters in a closet, that new “dynamic” ideas are a threat to the foundations of any group, even a simple sports organization. Because groups are built upon static patterns and the “leaders” in every group wish to remain “leaders.” So they will always attack a “dynamic” in order to preserve the “static.”
All advancement of the human race come from “the dynamic” so I see very little use from participating in the “static” except to be “friendly” with my fellow community members, because the way I see it both sides of the philosophical position need each other. But the true patriot will find the road a lonely one, so looking to your neighbor for reassurance is wrong, because it will never come.
As the real patriot explores the world away from those “paved” roads and discovers all the treasures that are hidden from the rest of the world, the patriot will soon find upon returning to the safety of civilization that there will be no shortage of “patriots” who wish to suddenly be affiliated with the patriot, and they will seek to make “patriotism” a new group in which to belong. This is the success of Glenn Beck and the rise of the Tea Party. Beck found a philosophical treasure and shared it with people at 5 pm on The Fox News Network and people clamored to that new-found truth, which was always there, but it just wasn’t lying along side the path society was on. (By the way, good luck on GBTV. I hope you blow the networks out of the water, an actual broadcast from off the path, what a concept!)
What I could have told the school board member and their friend was that I’m on an eternal “treasure hunt” always looking for new ideas from which to bring back to the safety of society. But I personally have no interest in safety, or blankets to hide my eyes from worldly dangers. Instead, I along with my daughters and every member of my family who has listened to me walk to the point wherever it is most dangerous, because it is there that the worlds treasures hide from those on the paved roads built by social groups. So it’s not that the groups of humanity aren’t nice, or the people in them aren’t just. They just aren’t looking for the same thing in life that I am. On those paved roads, I get bored quick because there is nothing there worth seeing if my aim is uniqueness.
It is in all this explanation which reveals the genius of Mark Twain’s statement and provides a key to understanding why those other patriots out there, those who wish to be truly so, feel so alone and hated. It’s Ok, the hate tells you that you are doing the correct thing, for if everyone loves what you are doing, then you are on the wrong path. The louder and more violent the hate, the closer you are to a discovery of something that has always been hidden to the eyes of everyone else, that which is buried in plain sight but far away from the paths built by human groups to protect their fixed perceptions of existence.
The anger thrown in the direction of the patriot and innovator is of two sources. First it is the leader of a group who wishes to maintain the static patterns which empowers them, so they attack any threat to their power. That much is obvious. But the second is much deeper, and psychological, it is a genuine jealousy that the attackers lack the courage to forge their own path and seek to hide that fear from themselves, so they lash out at those with the courage to live on their own terms. The root of the anger is more about what they know about themselves, and less about you, the patriot. For in that role, the patriot is but a mirror of what the attacker wishes in the depths of their souls to be, which left unfulfilled become the monsters of nightmares, where not even the sheets of a bed can protect from as sleep ceases to be a safe-haven from the realities of living. Life on the safe path after all has its cost. It may save the physical body from harm, but the mind rots during the journey.
For my national readers, I know that all this Lakota information is distracting, but the situation at my school district is essentially the same trouble you are experiencing in your own districts no matter where in the country you reside. What bothers me at the Lakota School System is that the community is already providing an adequate budget, we are heavily taxed, yet we are told that it’s not enough. So that begs the question, why?
If you look at the Yes Lakota position this time around, you will see how they avoid the hard facts of why they put themselves in financial hardship to begin with. Instead they use community testimony and their Excellence record to somehow justify why they should have more money in the form of higher taxes. (See their website here)
And that’s the trouble; their entire position is built on emotion, not rational decisions. They are in financial trouble because of union radicalism, most notably the strike attempt of 2008, and as an organization they are seeking to cover up that behavior with pictures of children and emotional testimony declaring that Lakota must move forward instead of going backwards.
Personally, I have fought wrongs of this kind before. I write books about it, and fight against misleading information even within my own family. I have taught my kids not to put up with it either, so when a giant labor organization has embedded itself into my community and tries to play the smoke and mirrors game, I am obliged to confront them which is why I’m even involved in an education issue. The excessive costs associated with education are a result of radicalism from the labor force, and a lack of managements desire to confront that radicalism. Those two things do not dictate that the community bails them out for the trouble they brought themselves.
I would not care so much if the Lakota School System presented the levy request by saying, “We need more money to support a very large obligation that we have to the union labor contract.” That would be honest and I could then vote “NO,” but if the rest of the community voted, “YES” I could live with it. But instead, the YES people tell us that if we want to move forward then we’ll vote ourselves more taxes. That if we love our children, we’ll vote for a levy. That if we want to protect our property values, we’ll vote for the levy. They’ll tell us all that without dealing with the WHY. Well, the WHY is because radical union behavior at all levels of politics, through their lobby power at the state level, and their ability to strike at the local, have driven up the cost of education in many ways, and personally I see that the bed they have made for themselves is a problem based on a failed Keynesian economics model and is not my problem, until they ask me for something. And it’s not the problem of my school district either. It’s the problem of the people who did not educate themselves properly and instead resorted to radical behavior to force through financial ideas that are completely wrong. It is for that reason that Lakota believes that they need more money. It is because of a lack of will to deal with a radical labor force and when the cost per pupil is over $9,000 per student, those costs need to be reduced dramatically, and the only way to do that is to bring reality to the union labor force and let them carry the burden of their failed philosophy, not the rest of the community and certainly not the children we are trying to teach and raise.
So for your benefit, I will put here a link to most of the articles and videos I have written or produced over the 2010 to 2011 school year so you can see for yourself the kind of game that is being played against you. It is my intention to remove the radicals from the process of this whole financial discussion so that truly intelligent minds can solve these problems. And that will not happen by appeasing the radicals (union labor). By giving them more money, you just let them believe that their radical behavior works, and you’ve perpetuated the problem. So please enjoy the links below to articles from the past year, and learn the truth of what has been happening to our district.
I know it’s a lot, but if you really want to know, you will book mark this page and visit it a little bit at a time from now to the election so that you can make the most informed vote possible. Or you can do the easy thing and just “believe” the sweet words that the Pro Levy campaign is feeding you, and you’ll regret the decision years down the road, even if you’re one of those people who will move away from Lakota the minute your children grow up, it will still bounce around in your head for the ensuing decades, because you knew they were misleading you, but you didn’t have the courage to face it squarely.
The answer is always in the WHY. Why won’t the Lakota people admit to WHY they have a financial problem? The answer is because if the public knew, they wouldn’t support the financial requirements of that demand. So they hide their behavior behind your kids hoping that you won’t push the issue too far, and allow them to continue the radical union scam that has embedded itself in public education.
ENJOY! This isn’t all of them, but a good sample of the last year.
Doc Thompson talks to Lisa Richards from Women Fighting Sexism on 700 WLW in what turned out to be a very revealing discussion that I think spills over into many other aspects of society. Ms. Richards represents a portion of the human population that has “other” problems and seeks to fix them through activism. It is evident by listening to her in this broadcast that she has a real dislike for men, who unfortunately for her make up half of the population.
My thoughts are that women like this are suffering, and I think they need help. I covered this syndrome in another article so repeating it here would be redundant. Have a look to review:
Lisa Richards is not alone, and I frequently see the footprint of her type in the radical dialogues of organized labor, particularly teachers unions and that’s where the opinion of these lost souls becomes costly. It’s not against the law to have a flawed opinion, but when you follow the origin to destructive human behavior which costs money to fix, which we find in the education profession, it is people like Richards who brought about the unintended consequences from which many suffer.
For instance, let’s look at Lisa Richards’s militant hatred of men, and her desire to prove that women can be every bit superior to men. That is the platform of her position, and has been the foundation of the women’s movement for 100 years of progressive politics. What has it given women?
I’d say women have now become every bit as disgusting and sexually driven as men. They are just as aggressive and selfish too, so from that aspect, feminists have achieved their objective which can be seen in the new football league called Lingerie Football, which airs on the progressive television network MTV. (What this has to do with music is nothing. MTV is simply the ‘progressive’ channel, designed to prepare the minds of the young in all manners of progressive politics.)
In male football, the men are well-built, they show their assets anytime they can, and they behave the same way. Football is meant to be attractive to the opposite sex. With women, they are attracted to small waists with narrow butts of men, as I pointed out in my article on sign stimuli:
Women like large shoulders and narrow hips because in the role of sex, these are the parts of the mating ritual that will hold a woman down and allow the man to enter without difficulty. A man with large hips just doesn’t fit so well, and makes sex less desirable for the woman. So women like these things, the shoulder pads and uniform of men are designed to be appealing to women as much as ad protection in the game play. That’s one of the reasons the NFL is successful, it appeals to men’s aggression, and the sign stimuli of women, so men and women can share the game together.
The Lingerie Football League must do the same if it wishes to elevate women to the same level of game play and public approval as the men in the NFL. So the LFL has learned what the WNBA never learned, and that there must be some sexual attraction to the players for people to accept the sport, because sports are a primal activity rooted in sex. At a subconscious level, sports is a way of determining who wins, and that determines the best genes which indicates who is suitable to reproduce with, so without those elements, sports loses much of its appeal. For a sport to be successful, it must appeal to both men and women to have market value. So feminists have achieved equality, because men in the NFL market their game exactly the same way.
Women are hitting each other just as hard as men do, but yes they must wear less clothing because if they are to appeal to men’s sign stimuli, which they must to be successful, the women can’t cover up their sign stimuli. So the breasts must be exposed as well as the entry points for the penis in the woman’s pelvic region. For the women, the feminists the get the satisfaction of knowing they are just as fast, just as strong as men, that they can hit hard and be respected just as men are. But for men to stay interested the costume designers for the LFL knew what they were doing and applied scientific reason to the process.
That’s how the men do it. In fact if these women didn’t look like women, I think I might even forget that they are women, but just gladiator warriors in the arena of battle. That means they have achieved social equality. The LFL is smartly marketing itself with this in mind and in just two short years it is taking on the qualities of legitimacy from its origins as a publicity stunt.
The LFL game looks like football and the pace is the same. Without the big hits, the LFL would never get away with “equality.” Flag football attempted for years to achieve what the LFL has achieved, because women can’t respect themselves as equal unless they are willing to take or give a big hit, or even fight brutally, the way men do.
So to women like Lisa Richards, you have achieved your success, you have brought women down to the same level of men, instead of goddesses to be aspired to, you and the feminist movement have made them equal to men, and your march to exceeding that mark is well on its way.
You can hear the same feminist wrangling in the labor movement, and there can be no question that much of the perceived value, and cost along with the budget breaking pay increases that society has thrown at feminists for years to help them feel “equal” in society have not placated them. They just keep asking for more.
These are the results of the feminist equality as launched by progressive politics. Like many progressive policies, there are unintended consequences. I’m sure Lisa Richards and her kind despises the LFL Football games, but it is they who made the LFL possible. And the whole process of “man hating” which launched the feminist movement and has brought women down to the level of men, and actually wrecked budgets because financial decisions are made collectively toward women as a whole, and not as individual performers. I’ve seen these feminist types littered with abundance in the Pro School Levy advocates I’ve had to deal with in many political fights. They fully expect that because they are women, that logic should not apply to them. Most of them sound just as off their rockers as Lisa Richards did. It is their psychological problems at that point that they become social pariahs, because logical discussions are no longer within reach with these broken women.
People are often shocked when they learn that my wife and I have been married for over 20 years. While most of the time it wasn’t easy, much of the trouble we have had in our marriage was due to the fact that when we were married, we made a decision to reject progressive politics, and that meant everything related to feminism. My wife has never had to work, she raised our children and when I came home each day my dinner was waiting on me. We share our household obligations in the traditional sense completely, because it is my observation that feminism doesn’t work, and deep down inside, most women don’t want it to work either. Most of any trouble my wife and I have had in our marriage were a result of family members attempting to impose upon our marriage the progressivism of the age, which I rejected as destructive very early in my life, and I would not budge, and at times those expectations from family members was very overwhelming. They did not see as I did, what the whole movement added up to, and that’s creations like the LFL. So when I raised my two daughters, I taught them the same thing, don’t listen to progressive politics even if it comes out of the mouths of treasured family members. Just look at them as sick, or senile concoctions of regressing social evolution, it will lead you down an unhappy life of unfilled expectations. I told my daughters that one of the reasons so many men are selecting women from other countries to marry and not America is because women from other countries, especially economically impoverished countries, are that foreign women tend to still believe in traditional marriage responsibilities.
I explained to my daughters that men want a partner in their life, not some radical short-haired vigilante. Men want to be pampered; they like to be cooked for. And they like a woman who stays interested in sex, and not some social “equality” thing. Once equality takes place among the sexes, a man would just as soon have sex with another man because if the whole activity of sex for them is simply ejaculation, they can do that with a man the same as a woman. But it is the woman who is the traditional “goddess” figure in culture, who thinks of the things men don’t and encourage the man to be a better human being, that challenges a man to always improve that drives society. The feminist movement has turned that whole social structure upside down and ruined it in America. That’s why men are looking for wives in other countries, where those women still believe in a traditional family structure.
So I’d say the same thing to Lisa Richards and almost every woman who chants for “equal” rights in the labor movement, what I told my own daughters, that men don’t want the kind of woman the feminists want to be. And guess what, because of this new globalism, you will have to compete with “other” women from other cultures who still believe in traditional values. In fact my oldest daughter had to go to England to find a man who still thought the way I do about family, valor and being an honorable man, because the United States isn’t making them anymore.
Ultimately, that is the anger you hear in Ms. Richards voice, that her beliefs have led her down a path of loneliness, and her life will always have a lack of fulfillment in it. Her only real option will be to find companionship in another woman, which will always lack real sexual fulfillment because even with sex toys and other techniques, the experience just isn’t the same. And she will never find a man of any real passion because men who have passion are either already taken by another woman, or a man will simply grab a plane and fly to another country to get a nice looking woman who doesn’t have a bunch of stupid hang-ups.
Meanwhile, as America finally achieves “equality” in the 100 year war of feminism, men who just want to have sex with other women, it’s never been easier, so they are happy. They can now watch football and see plenty of the fine attributes of a woman without even having to do any work to see it. And this cheapens the whole ritual of sex for men, which makes them lazy, and less of a man. I would never advocate an age where men were free to beat on a woman with impunity like what happens in the Muslim culture, which these same feminists are advocating mysteriously due to their beliefs in progressive politics. There was a time where men in American culture played straight into the feminist hands with binge drinking and treating their wives badly, which is a crime in and of itself. But the baby in this case was thrown out with the bath water. Feminism has been terrible for American culture and the people who advocate feminism are extremely expensive as public servants because they expect to use money to fill aspects of their lives where a penis is missing. And that’s a shame, because every woman should have the honor of experiencing the wonder of sex with a man who truly loves her. And every woman should witness the benefit of watching a man work all day and all night just to have the honor of pressing himself and his pheromones upon her, and to know that he had to earn that right and does not take it lightly, which brings added meaning to the entire ritual, and actually elevates the consciousness of the human race in the bliss of an enchanting evening.
The most accurate emotion to articulate when schools ask for more tax money is one of humor and can be seen in the following video.
Before I get into the details of last my recent debate with the Pro Lakota Group remember our buddy Ryan Fahrenkamp, the Lakota teacher busted for child pornography and being a pedophile? See my article that I broke back in January here, the one that all the Pro Levy people accused me of being such a “rush to judgment,” “unfair,” and “inaccurate.” Read what I said……………..way back then.
Now read what happened on September 1, 2011 while I was preparing for a small debate with Sandy Wheatley of the Yes Lakota Group at the Lakota West Freshman building.
I will deal with Fahrenkamp in a separate article because the debate with the Pro Levy faction at Lakota deserves an extensive mention here. I only bring up the Fahrenkamp case because Sandy Wheatley chose not to deal with facts and figures in her debate with me, but with bible quotes, taking the high moral ground, as though money spent equaled quality. As she spoke I couldn’t help but wonder why she was placing the entire teaching profession on such high moral ground when one of Lakota’s ex-teachers had just confessed to taking “inappropriate pictures” of a child during an out-of-state trip.
“Ryan Brant Fahrenkamp, 42, of Mason, plead guilty to child pornography charges in U.S. district court, according to court records. Fahrenkamp was arrested at his home by FBI agents and local police in January. Fahrenkamp was a teacher at Lakota Schools for 14 years, most recently teaching at Endeavor Elementary School in West Chester Twp.
Fahrenkamp admitted to keeping child pornography on his school-issued laptop and also to taking inappropriate photos of a former male student during an out-of-state trip, according to court documents.”
I would have thought that Mrs. Wheatley would have taken some sort of position on this activity since she showed her extensive knowledge of bible verses, but instead she focused her whole speech on attempting to use the Bible to disqualify the “facts” she knew I would present. I was extremely disappointed by this approach, because taking the high road and using the Bible for some sort of political advantage seems cheap, but then not attempting to separate the levy campaign from Ryan Fahrenkamp on the day of his admission seemed either naive, assuming she didn’t know the news yet, or manipulative in that she attempted to talk around it. Because when the statement is made that we need to invest in our schools, someone on the Pro Levy side needs to articulate a plan for how to detect and remove people like Fahrenkamp in the future. Because there are others out there, just look at the Stacy Schuler case in Mason, the district next door.
You can see that debate between Mrs. Wheatley and myself here:
Sometimes the only way to see the clowns of society is to go to a circus, and in a lot of ways these kinds of political forums are just that. People often think that they are worthless exchanges, so intelligent people tend to stay away from the circus of politics. But like I’ve said recently to a friend of mine who was questioning the validity of these types of events, you go to the circus to see the clowns, and that’s how you learn what they’re up to. If intelligent people don’t get involved and actually go to the circus sometimes that leaves the clowns free to not even put on a show, so they come up with other schemes to fill their time. The game in the circus act is this, when a politician doesn’t have an answer, they seek to attack the data and inject emotion into the argument, and this can be seen by the efforts of the Pro Levy group. This is precisely why education is so expensive, because many of the decisions are not based on facts, but on emotion. We are asked to suspend all logic and not apply the same rules that we might apply to paying our electric bill or some other serious matter. We are just supposed to pay the increased tax but not question how the money is spent.
My biggest rage of the evening came from Jamie Green one of the school board candidates during the Q&A phase. (I’ll have video up of that soon.) Jamie, a former school board member from back in 2005, attacked my data too. I submitted a question to ask her how, but there wasn’t time to get to it in the forum. “You have to be careful what information you get out there,” she said of my material.
So Jamie officially eliminated herself from my support, in fact I’d say that if Lakota had someone like Jamie Green on the school board that would be the event which what would take Lakota backwards. It’s certainly not my charts.
Why is Jamie Green and Sandy Wheatley upset with my “FACTS,” those elusive numbers that speak some strange language from a far-away land called “reality.” Why did they sit in the audience and huff and puff as I spoke flustering about like fish out of water, well, because those facts show that more money does not make a better school. As shown in this spreadsheet, which came from the presentation shown in the video, money spent does not amount to quality. Here is a list of many school districts in Southern Ohio all with different rates of spending per pupil and of many different ratings.
This next graph is the same date but shown differently, it takes away the names but instead plots their position in relation to the cost spent and the results gained. As shown, there is no behavior which indicates more money is justified. If what Jamie and Sandy are saying is true, then Princeton who spends $15,922 per pupil should easily be an Excellent with Distinction district, because they spend the most money. But they only rank at “Effective.” On the other hand Bethel-Tate Local spends $7,167 per pupil but they have the same ranking as Lakota. Lakota spends $9,806 to get that same rating. By the logic of Jamie Green and Sandy Wheatley all the schools at the top of their per pupil cost should be Excellent with Distinction, yet many aren’t. Look at Winton Woods who is spending $12,636, they are spending a lot of money, near the top of the list, yet they are at the bottom of the category rating.
Instead, Jamie Green and Sandy Wheatley will say,“don’t pay any attention to Mr. Hoffman’s facts. It’s all a matter of ‘interpretation’” and graphs can be made to say anything. Really? What these apologists are doing is hope that they can capture people’s minds with Bible quotes and some kind of former school board “experience” where the typical behavior is to bow to a labor union who behaves like a bottomless pit in funding demands. They are doing the same thing with this levy issue that they did when Ryan Farhenkamp was busted for child pornography. They talk out of both sides of their mouth. When a child pedophile, who worked 14 years in the school system, ironically under Jamie Green’s watch while she was a board member, pleads guilty to the charges, the Pro Levy people say “you can’t assume all teachers are bad because of the actions of one teacher!” Then they turn around and say, “Teachers need to collectively make ‘X’ amount of dollars to qualify your school district to be an ‘Excellent with Distinction’ school.“ They will then say that all teachers should be taken as a collective unity of quality. So which is it, independent assessment or collective altruism, because they can’t have it both ways?
As Sandy Wheatley basically said in her presentation that anybody can take selected sections of some information and paint it anyway they want to, which is what she was accusing me of doing with my “mysterious” graphs and “technical data.” She picked the story of when “Judas hanged himself,” from Mathew 27 then another quote of the “go and do likewise” portion of the Bible which is from Luke 10:37. She picked totally unrelated parts of the Bible to make her point, but she also sought to use that body of work to claim a moral high ground which is traditionally beyond refute. Well, I’ve read Biblical Archeology Review for over thirty years and I have about 21 volumes of the Biblical Encyclopedia of the Holy Bible, so I know a bit about the Bible myself. I read the actual book about 5 times before I was out of high school, and I have seen this kind of thing done many, many times by politicians, even within the Bible itself, where they think they have a right to use a Holy Book to shield some kind of truth, and that makes me VERY angry. Of course those stories aren’t even related to each other and that was her point. This is great insight into how the Pro Levy people and the school system in general operate. They do just as Sandy Wheatley did, they select the stats they like and ignore all the rest, just like those completely unrelated sections of the Bible, and they assume that I am doing the same thing, which I would consider unspeakable. This is precisely what they did with Ryan Fahrankamp, news that broke the same day they were pleading their case why they needed another tax levy. Instead they gave an emotional appeal that just dealt with the facts they are prepared to deal with. I would think that anyone who wishes to use the Bible in a political position would also take a hard stand against the extreme “sin” of one Ryan Fahrankamp. But in this circus of politics, that’s not what the show is about.
I would say further that it is this very tendency that gets Pro Levy Supporters into trouble with the labor unions and puts the district in a weak position with those labor negotiations. The union does deal with facts and employee mass and they routinely out-maneuver the more emotion Pro Levy types every time and to hide their sins, the Pro Levy people resort to words like “morality” and “good for the community” without ever defining how throwing more money at an obviously broken education system ran by a public union empire can somehow be redeemed through the sacrifice of yet more tax dollars.
The reason is because their foundation arguments are corrupt with the premise that the school itself is the guiding light in a child’s life, instead of just an important social and cultural aspect. If you go back to that chart and see which schools are failing, even with extraordinary amounts of money spent, you will see districts that are statistically high for single parent households,welfare recipients, and other “entitlement culture victims” and the children coming from those communities cannot be saved by the school. That is the real crime and the solitary fact that the Pro Levy people do not wish to answer. Just like they can’t face themselves in a mirror and take responsibility for not detecting that a pedophile was allowed to take a child on an out-of-state school sponsored event which put the child in danger, because the school itself failed to recognize the danger. There was not a value system put in place to assess teachers by merit, so administrators didn’t even bother with the frustrating task of posing the question to the labor union. The mountain is too steep to climb, so everybody avoids it. That’s how someone like Fahrankamp falls through the cracks.
The failure in all of this is not being able to diagnose the problem, because the Pro Levy people have a system of belief which rejects hard data in favor of emotion, because it is emotion which allows them to overlook the hard data that is all around them to detect the Ryan Farhankemp’s of the world before the danger ever happens. For the same reason they won’t look at the data I present, because the reality of what that data tells them is something those people are not emotionally equipped to deal with, so they hide their beliefs in the scattered quotes of a Bible without understanding the meaning of the whole body of work, and they’ll insult the intelligence of those of us who know better by suggesting that nobody look at the man behind the curtain. They want you to stay focused on the image, not the content and that would be fine if this were all just a visit to a movie theater where we are supposed to suspend belief for a couple of hours. But this is millions of dollars, and the lives of many, many people and such seriousness requires detailed analysis and honesty, even when mistakes are made, so that the entire community can move forward without the infantile desires of former school board members to have once again a “name plate” which bears her name in some illusionary honor.
All this amounts to is that you are not supposed to ask any hard questions or even look at the facts. But you’re supposed to sit quietly and watch the clowns in the circus do their silly tricks and not question the motivations of the personalities behind the face paint, or even why so many of them are packed into one car in some comic diatribe. Because what the real show is truly about is money, and protecting that money with some mild entertainment to keep the audiences placated as to the bona fide show that is going on behind the scenes. Such behavior has been the act for decades, so it won’t change overnight, but for me personally, I’m tired of all the clowning around that has been going on, and I’m ready to see the school walk a tight rope instead, and display the ability to balance themselves in a more serious portion of the show that is ultimately a circus.
When I think of Progress Ohio I think of people like Darryl Hanna who was just arrested protesting a new oil pipe line into Canada. When I listen to her speak, I wonder how she knows to pick up food on a dining utensil to place it in her mouth. Her thought process and values don’t make sense to me.
I truly don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I don’t understand what those types of people are thinking. They are obviously lacking in a fundamental understanding of how the world works and they are primarily ruled by just emotion and a limited understanding of history.
As August closed I was wondering if I was going to hit 80,000 views by the end of the month on my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom site, and as it turned out, by the time I learned about Darryl Hanna being arrested at the White House for her protest, I saw that my numbers had easily went over that number, to something like 82,000. That reminded me that there are a lot of people stopping by and reading what I put down here. Many of them are on the right side of things, yet there are many others who aren’t.
I have been aware that Progress Ohio is one of those groups making up part of that 80,000 who thinks the exact opposite about most things as I do. So it isn’t a surprise to me that they’d attempt to take something I do here and twist it around to suit their purpose, after all that’s what they do. They mislead, manipulate, and make a lot of noise in a way similar to a child. The purpose is to achieve their objectives, at any cost.
Before I break down below how ridiculous their notion of compromise is I must deal with their attempt to be misleading. The labor movement types are so focused on this whole “compromise” issue in relation to S.B.5 and John Kasich that they can’t see anything else. So they look for evidence of “others” who agree with them so they can make their argument. One of those “others” I would have never dreamed would be Bill Cunningham of 700 WLW, a person I would have thought would be their arch nemesis. But as the reality of what was happening with S.B.5 unfolded, there are a sector of society who love politics and S.B.5 is essentially an anti-politics bill as much as it’s a reform of collective-bargaining, leaving Cunningham not sure how to deal with it. After all, the guy has built his life around politics, so as Kasich has said many times in the last 6 months, his goal isn’t just to pass laws and balance the budget, but it was to bring a fundamental culture change to how politics operates. So Progress Ohio suddenly found a friend in Bill Cunningham which they attempted to expose by using this clip of video from one I created.
My original video was over 15 minutes long, and I put it below for reference. Progress Ohio took only the section where an argument broke out between Kasich and Cunningham over how to deal with the union. Progress Ohio doesn’t ask if the idea of discussion or compromise is right or wrong. They simply move along with the assumption that if a majority of the people feel a certain way, then it’s “good.” So they take the fact that Bill Cunningham is on their side to validate their claims, and used it to their advantage.
Here’s the complete interview. They left a lot out. Kasich said he’s heard their concerns, and this was after two weeks of testimony. He said it’s time to do some things and to stop talking. I’ll cover this issue in greater detail below.
Kasich and Cunningham have been close friends and Bill appears to have assumed that Kasich was planning to participate in politics as usual, so the breakdown of their friendship that has occurred on the air has been interesting. This first interview of two since Kasich has been governor was the one that Progress Ohio used and Kasich seemed to feel betrayed by Cunningham during the conversation so many of his comments were taken in the defense of that betrayal. Kasich had after all told Bill on an interview in January exactly what he was planning to do, and Bill seemed to be on board. So a few months later Kasich came to the studio to try again to make amends with his friend, and again Cunningham took the union position which put Kasich on the defensive. This broadcast was in April.
This whole premise of “compromise” is a flawed one. Kasich apparently thinks much the way I do on this issue and being a man of action, and not one of political talk is something Bill Cunningham was not prepared to deal with psychologically. So there’s a lot going on here. See my article about Static and Dynamic patterns to understand my references in this explanation. CLICK THE LINK:
Cunningham is stuck in a Static Pattern of accepted politics and that is obvious. He’s certainly not alone in this matter, so he is facing a Dynamic Static change in what Kasich represents, and it’s a painful process. Eventually, Cunningham will come to understand what Kasich is trying to do, just as many others will too. Kasich is bringing permanent changes to the Static Pattern of politics which will result in a culture change of politics in Ohio. Any group or individuals that are clinging to the Static Patterns of current politics will of course be threatened by the changes being implemented by S.B.5.
However, people like Darryl Hanna and Progress Ohio are people suffering from being stuck in a Static Pattern that is fundamentally flawed. They believe that just because things have always been a certain way in their lifetimes that they deserve to always have those things for all time in the future. Such a notation is rooted in selfishness, a sense of Freudian ID that is short-sighted.
I recognize that labor unions are a part of American life, and my attitude is that if they can survive in a private business, like in sports, or entertainment, then fine. But if they ruin your manufacturing capacity as a country, state or city, as they’ve done in places like Pittsburg, Akron, and Detroit then unions are terrible.
I enjoyed the film by Michael Moore called Roger and Me where he stumbled around Flint, Michigan wondering where all the jobs went. Moore represented a segment of the population that just can’t seem to think beyond raw emotion by asking the question “is it fair.” Moore blamed the loss of jobs in Flint, Michigan on the CEO’s of General Motors and their vast wealth and his solution was to have those CEO’s give up their wealth so that the “working man” could share in that wealth. But this premise is flawed because if all that wealth was put in the hands of a “working man” they would tend to spend that money on alcohol, marijuana, strippers, and other destructive behavior. I’ve seen that behavior first hand. I’ve personally seen $10,000 dollar bills placed into the hands of “working men” on Friday only to have that money gone on Monday, all of the money wasted on lap dances and orgies in strip joints. And I don’t base this whole issue on just one or two people, but many, many people over the years. The reason for this is that the minds of these people do not think the same way as those CEO’s. While it’s true that the CEO may hire “high class escorts” they won’t do it till they have invested their money first to generate a replacement of what they spend on women, boats, cars and expensive vacations for their mistresses.
The fundamental difference between the CEO and the “working man” that Moore was screaming at in his film is that the CEO is planning for tomorrow where the “working man” is just thinking about the next pay check. This is a fundamental difference in the behavioral Static Patterns of the two groups and there isn’t a “collective entity” on this plant that can change this fact because the flaw is in what creates the Static Pattern’s of those two groups.
Unions came to America as vehicles for communism. That is a fact, it is indisputable. It is also indisputable that Ronald Reagan the great Republican had applied to become a member of the Communist Party of America when he was young and idealistic and infected with the same spongy mind as Darryl Hanna and the Static Pattern belief system of Hollywood. Reagan was in fact a union leader and the unions were in fact communist organizations and to this day communist sympathizers reside in these groups.
I’ve been on motorcycle runs with other bikers who are “big labor lovers” and I’ve felt sorry for them because they wear shirts and bandanas with American flags on them and believe that their participation in a union makes them American, unions are in fact the complete opposite of everything America was intended to be, and those poor people are stuck in a Static Pattern rooted in a belief system created by out-right communists. So their entire foundation, their entire belief system is essentially flawed, and now that many of these people are “entitlement babies” they know of nothing else. To change the Static Pattern of these people it would require them to go through a violent personal crises, much like Bill Cunningham is going through. Kasich is the Dynamic Pattern colliding with the Static Pattern in Cunningham. Neither is wrong, but one is stuck and one is moving.
So when Progress Ohio demands that there should be compromise, I am reminded of all the times in the past that there were opportunities for this so-called compromise. I haven’t seen it. I’ve seen teachers go on strike for just asking them to pay $5 more on their health care. So when the intention is to change this culture of consumption, which the unions tend to represent, where the reputation is one of “it’s our way or the highway” then I don’t blame Kasich for his attitude. He did speak with them, but like me, he knew the strategy of the union would be to drag this whole culture change out for years and in turn that would take the edge off the need for a change, to preserve the Static Pattern. Kasich knows that if he doesn’t hit it hard and fast that it won’t happen. He knows this because he’s the Dynamic Pattern trying to merge with a Static Pattern that will do everything in its power to resist any change.
I would say that public unions shouldn’t even be legal to begin with. It is an insane concept to have public officials funded by tax payers represented by a union. By John Kennedy was the one who signed that Executive Order in 1963 and it was Kennedy who was a Dynamic Pattern colliding with the Static Pattern that resisted the growth of unions to begin with. That’s what the entire sixties were, an assault on Static Patterns by a Dynamic one, and in order to fix the error of that time it will take the same kind of effort to return to a period before these mistakes were made. This is why Darryl Hanna and Progress Ohio seem so similar, they are focused on preserving a Static Pattern established in the turbulence of the 60’s, and they have no reference in their lives that tells them their position is incorrect because they don’t have minds grounded in history. Their beliefs are in the collective beliefs of the current Static Pattern which is destructively incorrect and built on a foundational philosophy that is fundamentally un-American.
For those of you stuck in that Static Pattern and read this scratching your head and wondering what I’m talking about, I sympathize. I watched my dog observe me the other day laughing at something that happened on TV. The dog was completely oblivious to the events going on inside the television screen. The dog does not have a mind to see or understand anything outside of its present reality. It simply reacted to my laughter, not what I was laughing at. I patted the dog on the head and felt sorry for the fact that the poor creature could not understand such things, and I throw him a dog treat so that at least the animal could share in my joy even in some remote way. I’ve attempted to do the same with people in the labor movement, until I realized that like the dog, they never seem to get full, and will always ask for a new dog treat because they are trying to compensate for all the things happening in the world that they don’t understand, so they look to money to fill them in a similar way. I sympathize; it must be terrible to have such a limited perspective.
I have contained here a sneak peak of my Letter to the Editor article that will be published in Thursday’s Pulse Journal. In context of my statements I supposed that the realization that the deeper you dig in this whole education quagmire, the more you learn that many of the educators are clearly in the business only for the money. Not only are these people paid well, as they should be, but they are getting wealthy in these professions. So to provide that context I’d like to reference a couple of superintendents who are realizing ahead of their peers that they are participating in a corrupt system, even if by default, and they are making sacrifices.
This past week I learned about the extraordinary pay cut that Larry Powell, the California superintendent of the Fresno County School System who asked the school board to impose on him an $800,000 give back from his salary and benefits. He’s offering to work as superintendent of 325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students which had been paying him $288,241 a year for $31,000 a year.
At first I thought this was an extraordinarily generous offering until it’s realized that Larry is already technically “retired” and was in fact a double-dipper making an extraordinary amount of money. It looks like Larry was simply recognizing that the system was wrong, and he is taking the cut to provide leadership in preserving the programs in his district that mean something to him as an educator. By his own admission he decided that just “stockpiling” the money wasn’t the best thing to do while his district was facing major cuts. He is secure for many years and more money simply doesn’t have much value to him. Larry Powell is an example of just how much money is at play in his profession, where he doesn’t consider $800,000 to be detrimental to his retirement.
But Larry isn’t the first superintendent to do this. A Michigan superintendent, Ron Ferrell last year took an $80,000 pay cut Montebello Community Schools in Michigan. He was scheduled to make 95K during the year. His reasons were similar to Larry Powell. Listen to this news report.
In my district of Lakota I have seen so many exaggerated numbers, so much manipulation from the educators that it is nearly impossible to tell reality from an out-right scam. If I thought business was on the up an up, I wouldn’t be so angry, but at Lakota, they just spent a lot of money on a superintendent they proved they didn’t need and the rating for the school actually went up after major cuts were implemented. This makes me feel like I have been lied to, which I’ve always suspected, so my comment in the paper shown below reflects that betrayal.
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I would like to congratulate Lakota for doing such a fine job on obtaining an EXCELLENT rating for the 10th year in a row! That is quite a feat, and the administration is to be commended for doing such a fantastic job! In fact, they did such a great job that their rating went from a 104.9 rating to a 105.9 rating, and they did it while cutting over 12 million dollars from the budget and without a fulltime superintendent!
Being one of the people who voted NO against the last levy attempt, I was a bit nervous that all the warnings from the Pro Levy people that if we didn’t pass the levy, then Lakota would fall into decline never to be respected again. Well, since the levy did in fact fail, and Lakota did not fall off the side of the world, but actually did better, it seems the crises has been somewhat averted. We are now talking about a levy to help with financial issues in the upcoming years, not next month.
But there’s always room for improvement. Since the school board did such a good job of cutting and working with minimum resources just think how much money the district could save if there was actual management of the union labor contract, we wouldn’t even need a school levy. And I think they could have saved the quarter of a million dollars in expenditures that the new superintendent costs, because they showed that they didn’t need such expensive service. That money should have been spent on restoring busing to all the poor parents that are now extremely inconvenienced by the busing reductions, a cost that is less than 5% of the total budget. That doesn’t make much sense.
Those are just minor issues though, this last year with all the trials and tribulations proved that money doesn’t buy excellence, good, hard work does however, and Lakota dug deep and actually improved, and that makes me proud. Everything was going well until the school board decided to ask for more money. You guys were doing so well………
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I don’t mind providing a good school for the children of my district, and I don’t mind paying the people in that business a respectable income. But don’t play games with me; don’t attempt to twist the facts around, because if you do, you’ll bring my mind to the situations in these next two reports, one from Cleveland, the other from Atlanta; both showing the level of greed and personal selfishness exhibited in public education. The ironic part of these stories is that they are not regional, but are in fact endemic to the profession of education itself, and I know that Lakota and the rest of the public schools in the Cincinnati region are not exempt. They just haven’t been caught.
Read this article about Cleveland teachers who have retired at the end of a school year, then turn right around 60 days later and started again as a rehire so they can draw two pay checks instead of one. The situation is so bad that they can’t even start on the first day of school because the teacher has to wait 60 days. This is that whole double-dipping issue again, a way of payment that looks to be grossly abused. Just think about how much money education would have flowing into its use if just the process of double-dipping was outlawed. Because double-dipping, is a problem because the retirement age to qualify is set way too low, which invites abuse of the system, which is rampant.
And for anyone who thinks that it’s not all about money with educators consider this case In Atlanta, which exploded just last month in July, where there was a major scandal in the Atlanta Public School System where nearly 200 teachers and administrators were caught cheating to improve test scores so they can receive better bonuses. Go ahead, CLICK TO VIEW:
To see more on the issue at Lakota read my recent article on the whole grade improvement at that school for detailed analysis.
The bottom line is that I don’t trust much of anything that anybody in this current education system says. Even in a very nice school like Lakota they have said that if we don’t pass a levy that their performance standards would be compromised, then they turn around within a year of that failure and get an excellent grade, then send out thousands of pamphlets in the mail taking credit for the rating increase as if this somehow justified more money for the upcoming levy that the community will vote on in November. The whole thing seems like a carnival act to me, and is an absolute joke.
I would begin to take things more serious when the educators started doing what Larry Powell is doing in California and that’s admitting that enough is enough, and they are prepared to admit it and give some back to the community so that the community can then make a decision on how much to fund. But the way the system is now, throwing thousand dollar bills at a simple image in a funhouse mirror only to be lost in the twisted corridors of a carnival maze is simply foolish. The profession of education deserves to be met squarely in seriousness and not open deception, and until then all levies for all public education must fail, because only in the constricted revenue is the truth coming out on just how much money has actually been lost to outright greed and manipulation.
The problem is not specific to Lakota, but as shown is epic, sweeping the entire nation, and it must be corrected before any talk of federal funding is even explored and what all schools have in common from each and every district across the nation is that they are all represented by a labor union.
Oh, one more thing, something just couldn’t be overlooked when I thought about Lakota’s new superintendent Mrs. Mantia in comparison to Larry Powell out in California. I have heard it justified that Lakota should have paid almost $300,000 when they were looking for Mantia, whom they eventually paid at $165,000 in straight salary, but up to a quarter million dollars in the complete compensation package. Again for more details see my article linked above for that breakdown. Mrs. Mantia must manage 2000 employees, 18,000 students and over 22 school buildings. My question is how is her salary comparable to Larry who was making $288,241 managing 325 schools over 35 school districts and managing 195,000 students! I’ve often said that the superintendents are incredibly overpaid, because Mrs. Mantia is currently making more than the Governor of Ohio. But I was told that I didn’t understand how “education” works. So here is a comparable “educator” with a much larger work load, but only making $120,000 more than Mrs. Mantia. All other things being equal, both Mantia and Powell are both double-dippers, both superintendents, but one has a lot more school buildings to manage and the other doesn’t. So why are their wages so closely related?
Hmmmmmmm, I wonder why? Welcome to the funhouse of distorted mirrors that is public education where reality is warped into funny shapes and twisted beyond comprehension, to hide the real intention behind the whole enterprise, and that’s to make money………..a lot of money. The funhouse may be painted with the faces of children holding hands to lure people in, but the result is simply to empty their pockets and leave them with a sense of being entertained, but always somehow feeling depleted. Such is the state of modern education in America. Thank goodness some like Larry Powell are starting to develop a guilty conscience.
The Overmanwarrior 