Category: writing

The Beta Man: Why ‘Fifty Shades of Grey” is so successful

Before delving into the murky waters of why Fifty Shades of Gray the novel has been such an overwhelming success, I can’t help but recall when the women at the Lakota School District advocating perpetual school levy tax increases decided to gather pitchforks and torches in an effort to run me out of town because of what I said about them.  They did so with the assumption that all men in the world had been converted through the progressive feminist movement into the vile and worthless “Beta Man.” (TO REVIEW ALONG WITH THE “EXPLICIT” WLW RADIO INTERVIEW, CLICK HERE) To a large extent the levy women had good reason to believe it based on their personal experiences. I was a bit shocked that more men didn’t show their support in public, but rather approached me quietly in private, at gas stations, at local shopping areas to tell me that I represented what they truly felt and had always wanted to say. I shook their hands and consoled them with my thanks, but all the while I felt terribly sorry for them, because they had been taught by a confused society that they should be “Beta Men” and they stood before me powerless armed only with the ability to thank me for speaking on their behalf. One person that did see through the media smokescreen was the author of The Whistleblower who was the first to publicly show support for my controversial appraisal of the typical tax increase advocates in public schools, whom I termed “latté sipping prostitutes” because of their desire to sell themselves with tax increases in turn for raising their children in the nurturing arms of a government school which they were too lazy and insecure to do themselves.

http://whistleblower-newswire.com/2012/03/18/

For those who do not know what a “Beta Man” is and are requiring context Bill Whittle summed up the situation wonderfully in the video below. An example of a Beta Man as given in Bill’s video is Alan Alda and Woody Allan, both progressive “forward” leaning males. Unfortunately our society, and our women do not really want such men, even though it has been fashionable to pretend to as is in evidence by the sheer number of women who have made the recent novel released only on June of 2011 by E.L. James called Fifty Shades of Grey the bestselling book in the world. Fifty Shades of Grey has sold over 40 million copies worldwide in 37 countries outselling the entire Harry Potter series within one year. The answer as to why is contained in this video.

The definition of the Beta Male seen below can be further analyzed at: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=beta+male

Beta Men are unremarkable, careful men who avoid risk and confrontation. Beta Males lack the physical presence, charisma and confidence of the Alpha male. In the animal kingdom, the Alpha Male is the dominant member of the community. Not everyone can be an Alpha Male, but females tend to like them most over Beta Males.

Progressive politics were designed by Beta Males for their own advantage, in an attempt gain access to the opposite sex with intellectual aptitude instead of physical prowess. Feminists, a progressive creation, would have society belief that “Beta Men” are what they want, so men have adapted much to their own detriment. Socially women will proclaim that they like Beta Men—and this is a quote from the link above—“because Betas are wingmen, collaborative and conciliatory. In human terms, Betas make the best mates. They do more in the house, and probably in the bedroom, because they know how to hasten the greater good. The Beta has poetry in him, and a touch of youthful idealism. He’s sure of who he is, and not constantly trying to prove his value in materialistic terms. The Beta can earn a lot of money, or a little, but the money’s not the thing; he profits because he works well with others.” Awwww, isn’t that so cute? No wonder our society is so messed up. All of that is idealistic tripe created by idiots in the progressive movement, and has no truth to the biological desires males and females yearn for in each other’s company.

Meanwhile those same women who declare publicly their love of Beta Men, who sip their lattés and plan community group hugs so they can pass school levies to save their children from the world, are running to the book store with dilated pupils to purchase Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fifty Shades of Grey is about a 27 year-old billionaire named Christian Grey suffering from physical abuse as a child, which he manifests in the bedroom as a BDSM master. (Bondage and Sado Masiciasm.) He does not seek healthy sexual relationships built on traditional romance, but submissive women who will be totally compliant sex slaves to him. In the very, very popular novel 22 year-old Anastasia Steele signs written contracts to Grey which is a dominant/submissive agreement part of which Ana is not allowed to touch or make eye contact with Grey, especially during sex. She is often tied up, spanked and beaten with leather belts in order to satisfy the sexual desire of Grey.

For millions of women, they see themselves in Anastasia Steele. Most women have the fantasy of being able to “redeem” a troubled man through their sexuality so Ana’s journey into bondage allowing herself to be beaten badly in order to “redeem” the man who took her virginity is a common issue most women suffer from. Many women find themselves in relationships that are abusive because they gave themselves sexually to a man, and are determined to use their love and sexuality as the ultimate “mothering” device to save a man from himself, just like they believe they can “love” a child out of all life’s dangers with a simple hug. (It’s a biological thing and has nothing to do with reality.) But what makes Fifty Shades of Grey particularly enticing is that Grey is a billionaire so the trouble of income supply is solved, which women require to build their lives and families with. For most women to relax and enjoy sex, the issue of money must be removed, so for the sake of this story, the main male character is a billionaire—problem solved. It’s also convenient that Ana is a young woman just leaving her college years behind and about to enter the work place. For many women, even if they are in their 40’s and 50’s, they see the decisions they made at 22 and 23 as being those which set their lives in motion, and the “what if” scenarios constantly play out in their minds. This makes it easy for them to put themselves in Ana’s shoes which is a brilliant literary device that the author E.L. James used to make this book so much more popular, and powerful than typical pornography or romance novels.

E. L. James started this journey as a self published first time writer printing on demand with a very small publisher, very similar to my first novel The Symposium of Justice. The book took off with online sales and message boards, not through the traditional marketing channels. The mainstream media would not have allowed this book to get off the ground through their critic checks and editors. It was the will of the people, particularly women that made Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels runaway smash successes that have been picked up by film production companies. To date, Warner Bros., Sony pictures Paramount, and Universal Pictures all showed intense interest in the literary rights. It was Universal Pictures working with Focus Features who won the rights to the trilogy in March of 2012 and being produced by the makers of The Social Network. Once the film rights were secured, the mainstream media began to cover Fifty Shades of Grey legitimately. In just one year the first time author E.L. James has become one of the world’s top 100 influential people.

The reason Fifty Shades of Grey is so successful is it satisfies the deep biological desire that women have for men who are Alpha, and Christen Grey from outward appearances would seem to be everything opposite of a Beta Man. He’s rich, powerful, influential, and in bed, he is in complete control, and Ana agrees to go with him to sexual places that most women only allow themselves to think about. But consistent with the modern “progressive” teachings Christen Grey has inner problems that Ana wants to help heal; by making herself into a “sacrificial victim” she hopes to bring about his redemption through her ability to take his abuse. This paradox is the recipe for most of the world’s unhappiness.

The feminist movement not sure how to react to the lust women have for Fifty Shades of Grey have attempted to say that Anastasia Steele’s desire to be tied up and beaten by an outwardly Alpha Male, but inwardly Beta Man who needs redemption through female sacrifice is reflective of women earning the right to achieve organism by any means, which is therefore liberating. But in all honesty, feminists are horrified by the implications that so many women find the plight of Ana so appealing, because in essence, it shows that women desire not just in their roles in the bedroom, but in matters of life, to be submissive to a man, and that the Beta Men of progressive creation is resented, even despised.

I knew what I was saying when I said what I did about the women who were most vocal about tax increases for our community schools. Their own inner sickness was attempting to upset the economic balance of our district at the cost of declining business and more foreclosures for members of our community. Some of the most unhappy women I have ever known found themselves attracted to men they thought were Alpha’s, but once they married bitched into Beta Manhood through constant complaints and strings of insecure utterances, just as Anastasia Steele fears that she’s not attractive enough for Christen Grey, so too are most women afraid that they cannot keep their men as age robs them of their youthful beauty. So they tend to take on the dominate role of sexuality making their men submissives, converting them into Beta Men. After a few years of marriage the men feeling resentful of the women “robbing” them of their manhood seek younger women that they can more easily dominate and manipulate while their wives seek cerebral fantasies of themselves being dominated by a rough and tumble Alpha Male. After ten or more years of marriage the couple find themselves hating each other but keeping their relationship intact for financial reasons, and family unity. Now that Fifty Shades of Grey has hit the scene, women at least in the bedroom are starting to accept playing submissive roles to their husbands to enhance their sex lives, which might actually save a few marriages. But often the damage is too far done and the emotional baggage is too great.

But the domination/submissive sex roles are extremes driven by years of progressive politics. Human beings are not happy with these progressive role changes, and it shows in their lives. In my upcoming novel Tail of the Dragon, the sex in it is what I’d consider healthy between the man and the woman main characters even though it might be considered over-the-top and extreme to those with quieter sensibilities. The intention is to show a healthy relationship between a man and a woman who aren’t so mentally dysfunctional that they have to resort to sexual bondage to bring balance to their lives. But obviously, there is a lot of dysfunction in our modern society and it is a global problem, as indicated by the blistering success of Fifty Shades of Grey.

The heart of the problem is Beta Men. They have allowed themselves to be pushed around and turned into the submissives of their relationships, and that is not what women want. Feminists will say that both sex partners should be equals, but that does not agree with the biological yearnings that a man has for a woman, or a woman has for a man. The pursuit of equality like most progressive political platforms is a quest to reinvent the desires of the human being with social engineering designed by the academic élite. It has nothing to do with reality and the observations of sexual behavior. The Beta Man just by their very existence are much more damaging to society because in their inability to satisfy women, they perpetuate divorce, encourage progressive politics, and indirectly raise taxes as women who are on the hunt for anything but the Beta Men in their lives look for causes to support which range from local school levies to Obama’s Presidential campaign as a psychological substitute. The intent of these exploits are not solving social ills as these participants might attempt to convince themselves, but to keep an eye on the horizon for their own version of Christian Grey so they can save them with their love and sexuality. But what they get back in return is a society of Beta Males who cry too much, and seem too eager to do the dishes which society says is good, but leave women sexually starving. Women want a man to do as Christian Grey does everywhere and at anytime without request. It might bring some embarrassment, and regret in hindsight, but it is these images that fill most female fantasies.

To have such a relationship in their lives women do not need a contract like the one that Christian Grey made Anastasia sign in the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. All that is required is a marriage contract where the man and the woman agree to take care of those types of things for each other without all the rules that a progressive society has instructed in an attempt at social engineering. Sex should not be used as a bargaining chip, where it is given or taken away like a mother takes candy from a child in order to mold the behavior of the child. When such a thing is done to men it turns them into Beta Men. They change their behavior to make their women happy. But the women find they aren’t attracted physically to Beta Men for obvious biological and psychological reasons so they either have an affair with someone else, or they read books like Fifty Shades of Grey. The incredible sales of that book do not speak ill of the author E.L. James but of a society that has run to her material like their very souls are on fire seeking BDSM to extinguish themselves.

The anger over my comments displayed publicly in The Whistleblower was not one of impropriety on my part for speaking metaphorically about the antics of my opponents advocating tax increases upon the community for which we all live, but that they hoped I did not see what they were really all about. They hoped that their secret was well hidden because they had surrounded themselves with Beta Men and hoped the illusion was foolproof. But it wasn’t because I know many of those critics are among the many that are salivating over Fifty Shades of Grey and deep in their minds conducting their own symphonies of BDSM.

That is why hundreds of men and women thanked me afterwards, but not with boisterous appraisals, but rather quiet winks and nods of acknowledgment because I said what everyone was already thinking, but nobody dared declare because the world has been taken over by the Beta Men fashioned by women who got what they thought they wanted, until they read otherwise in a book by E.L. James. And for those who want to read how a healthy relationship should be between and man and a woman, I might suggest my new book Tail of the Dragon. It has the sex, but without the handcuffs and bondage contracts. It’s better if women indulge in such things freely without having the ability to blame thoughtless surrender as a sex slave to a domination addict. Its OK women to be sexually submissive. Have the courage to admit it and don’t bring to the world more peril at the hands of the Beta Men. The fuel that drives the outstanding sales of Fifty Shades of Grey is the suppression of human desire in a sexual context caught up in a political struggle brought about by the progressive movement. The real desire of human beings comes about in their art, and if Fifty Shades of Grey is any indication, there is a lot that is very, very wrong with the way we conduct our lives in virtually every context. And that realization does not merit more of the same, but rather drastic revision which leaves the handcuffs and leather belts under the bed, and the orgasm under the influence of free will. To learn how to do that, I would suggest reading  Tail of the Dragon.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

‘Tail of the Dragon’ Review from Joshua Charles: The “storytellers touch”

After getting to know him a bit I believe that Joshua Charles, best-selling author of The Original Argument with Glenn Beck will be the next generation David Barton. He is very scholarly, and cerebral with a firm grounding into religion. When I asked him to blurb my new novel Tail of the Dragon I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be, since he is very spiritual and the characters in my new novel are rather over-the-top with rebelliousness. But I respect Charles a lot, which was born from the wonderful book that he wrote that I think is having a major impact on literature in general and the direction of the country. When Josh agreed to do a blurb for me I had a similar anxiety that I had before the blurb that Larry Schweikart gave me. When you ask best-selling authors whose work you greatly respect to review your work, there is a serious risk of being let down if they tell you what you worked three years on is no good. Writing a book is a lot like giving birth, it becomes a child of yours, and parents often don’t see the faults in their own children. The reason that blurbs are important is that they indicate that “other” people who have “been there and done that” think your work has merit and are willing to sign their valuable names to your effort. So it is a nerve-racking experience, especially when the people you are asking are people you greatly revere

(See Josh and David Barton in the last Founding Father episode on the Glenn Beck Show at the 15 minute mark)

Josh told me back in mid-July that he would give me a blurb if he liked the book in mid-August. He was busy with his involvement in Glenn Beck’s Restoring Love rally in Dallas that drew out over 60,000 people to Cowboys Stadium so his time schedule was tight. But right on time, Josh delivered and much to my relief it was a favorable blurb, which can be seen below:

“Rich Hoffman has very skillfully, and with the obvious storyteller’s touch, expressed some of the great challenges that we face as a society today in a way that anyone can understand and enjoy within the context of a great story. ‘Tail of the Dragon’ will enlighten all who read it, young and old, and I highly recommend it.”

Joshua Charles co-author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller ‘The Original Argument’ with Glenn Beck

For more on Joshua Charles and the story of The Original Argument have a look at this article which dives into much greater detail.

http://www.humanevents.com/2011/07/26/glenn-becks-coauthor-a-poster-child-for-the-original-argument/

I have many review copies of my novel out, and there will be other blurbs coming in from multiple fields of endeavor. But personally, for my own sake, the work of Josh and Larry is at the high bar mark as these are some of the best historians working in the world today—even though they would both humbly decline that statement—their work demands such recognition. Both of them are hot sellers in book stores and online sales continue to be extremely impressive, so it is a high honor to receive favorable reviews from them. My novel Tail of the Dragon certainly deals with history and many contemporary issues, but my choice in delivery is one that I had serious concerns of offending those authors, because the storyline is so intense and controversial.

You can read Larry’s blurb of Tail of the Dragon by CLICKING HERE. It was a relief to see that Josh understood what I was trying to do in the story of Rick Stevens and his DEEP trouble with the legal system that attracts so much attention that The White House gets involved in what becomes the greatest car chase ever written or filmed. It might have seemed more logical, and easier to seek the blurbs from best-selling writers of other fiction, but personally, among the many writers I enjoy and admire, it is those who are scholars of history that I most respect. So the blurb from Josh means a lot to me on a personal level.

At one level I hope Tail of the Dragon  entertains readers and encourages people who may not have read a book in a while to start reading. But as Josh indicated in his blurb, I hope that the story will encourage readers to think about larger issues involving our contemporary society within the context of a deeply involving narrative. As a writer, you never know if it works until you get feedback from other writers and readers who don’t know what you’re thinking, but must learn it by the way the written word is placed on a page, which can be a real challenge if the intent is a multi-layered story that can be as deep as the reader wishes to take the material. According to Josh, he saw it and enjoyed it, and for me that is a high accomplishment. As I often say, advice is only as good as the person who gives it–well, so is a review. To get a favorable review from Josh Charles is a measure of the good person and great scholar that he is, so it means a lot to me to receive such kind words from the best-selling co-author of The Original Argument.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Mediscare: Paul Ryan likes ‘Atlas Shrugged’–“That’s a good thing”

Remember that RT News stands for Russia Today. And also remember that Ayn Rand escaped Russia as a young woman.  And if a person hates rich people or capitalism they have the taint of communism in them as defined by Karl Marx taught to most of society through indirect instruction.  Whenever a person speaks badly of wealth they are behaving like a communist. 

You can always tell a dishonest person by their actions, and in the case of Paul Ryan’s nomination as Mitt Romney’s second in command, the political left immediately used the strategy of fear to keep people from looking too closely at Ryan’s merits. Within one day of Ryan’s nomination leftists were calling the Ryan budget proposal “Mediscare,” because of the reforms proposed to overhaul Medicare hoping to scare senior citizens into voting for the communist Obama in a reelection campaign. CLICK HERE TO SEE RYAN’S PLAN FOR YOURSELF. Obama was correct when he said that he wasn’t a socialist. No, he’s much worse. Listen to Bill Whittle break down why Obama is a communist and a terrible president in the video below.

It must be terrible to exist in a political party that can only maintain itself based on the fears of the public. It must be terrible to have a complete political platform based exclusively on lies and manipulation. But that is in essence what the Democrats—communists—on the political left are doing in order to even look like they are staying in the current presidential race. They have no ideas, only more debt. They do not advocate national strength, only human weakness. And they drag their feet on everything because their political philosophy only works in theory, not in practice. For the communists in the Democratic Party their view of political solutions are to defer the issue to the depths of time and hope magically the problems solve themselves. Their world view is equivalent to wishing one could walk on Mars, but to do nothing to get there. Their plan is to simply wish for the task to occur, and in their minds, they will arrive on Mars to walk about at will. At best, they are out-of-touch with reality and that is not inflammatory rhetoric. It is a fact based on their actions.

Already Ryan is being labeled an “extreme” conservative and Democrats have used his love of the classic book Atlas Shrugged as a way to make him appear radical. This is very disingenuous, as I never heard conservatives during the last election criticize any Democrat because of a book they enjoyed. It was only after the 2008 election that Glenn Beck started looking into the kinds of people Obama put into The White House and found out that many of them loved Chairman Mao, and Karl Marx—known communists, but nobody in the press corps outside of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity would pick up the ball and run with it so the stories died with talk radio only and blogs. But already, I have heard from three different media outlets in just 24 hours that Ryan is an “extremist” because he happens to like the second most popular book in the Library of Congress behind The Bible which is Atlas Shrugged.

There is no question Ryan was the right pick for the Republican nomination because it has turned fear back around on the political left. Democrats are using fear to keep millions of people from listening to Paul Ryan who now has a national stage, and is more than capable of answering any question members of the media can throw at him. People will be able to see for themselves that it is not Ryan who is the radical, or Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, but the goofballs on the political left who are screaming “foul” because they know they cannot match the facts that Ryan will put forth.

The progressive machine I’ve spent so much time exposing at this site along with others who are all considered “extreme” right winged commentators will be exposed for what they are in the coming weeks. Their fear and attacks on Ryan will show the cards they’ve been hiding from the American people. In this poker game of politics, it will be discovered that all along the people who call themselves Democrats are actually communists in the extreme, and have all along sought the outright destruction of America as a land of prosperity. It will be discovered that the only reason people like Ryan and Ayn Rand are considered extremists are because the communists have such a philosophy that they have managed to pull America so far to the left people like Ryan and Rand appear extreme in comparison. But that is why the political left is now afraid, because to maintain that radical left political trend they must keep people afraid. Democrats hiding their communist intentions cannot match wits with the truth, because they will lose an argument if emotion is not the driving force. The facts are not on their side. Their intentions will be exposed in their actions as they will not be able to debate with Paul Ryan. He is smarter than anybody on the political left. He works harder, as he has often slept in his office because of his long hours. He has no dirt in his background. He is well read and is used to intense criticism and is not afraid of anything anybody can throw at him. He will be able to do to the political left what Scott Walker was able to do in Wisconsin. The truth will show itself because Ryan will not be swept under a rug. When the smoke clears, it will become clear to millions that all along the fear the political left used to advance their vision for America was simply a bluff in their poker game against The United States. The bet in the game is the elimination of capitalism from the American economy. For the Democrats the replacement is open communism and they hope that enough Americans are already so addicted to the money they’ve slid under the table that they’ve purchased their victory. But they haven’t, and now they are in deep trouble because they do not have an answer for Paul Ryan. And no matter how much they wish, they will not be able to defeat him in a debate in any theater because Ryan holds all the cards containing the facts, which the Democrats detest.

The only card Democrats have is fear to keep people from looking too closely at the game they are playing. If American society keeps their eyes on the game and not the fearful distractions, they will see what cheaters and liars these same Democrats have been since the Clintons were in The White House. When it comes to Paul Ryan, they will never win a debate now that he’s on a national stage, and it will be devastating to their intentions of communism. The facts finally have a spokesperson who can articulate the truth without apology, and that will end the game that communists posing as Democrats have attempted to use as a measure to remake America from the land of the free, into the land of the slave, bound to government handouts and bankruptcy perpetually.

The communists have much to fear from Paul Ryan, because they have always been up to no good. As far as Paul Ryan being a crazy radical I find that odd. Ryan is as far to the left of me as Obama is from Romney. And I’m no radical. What does that say about Obama?

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Allen High School Spends $60 Million on a New Stadium: The truth about school sports

Keep in mind before I say what will surely infuriate many that I spent much of my previous Friday evening listening to the pre-season football game between my favorite NFL team The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and The Miami Dolphins. I enjoy the combat of a football game. I understand the drama of sporting events. I have known, and currently know many people who memorize sports stats and pour a lot of personal time and energy into sports as their premier entertainment. I know many people who spend their Friday nights going to football games for their local high school in the fall; have block parties in their cul-de-sacs on Saturdays when Ohio State plays Michigan, then tail gate on Sunday down at Paul Brown Stadium for The Cincinnati Bengals. These same people will rattle off statistics of sport players with great conviction, but couldn’t begin to tell you who Rob Portman is–the State of Ohio Senator who has been a potential candidate for Vice-President of The United States. They drink a lot, and take great pride in losing their senses to drunkenness, and in spite of those human faults, I still enjoy the fanfare of sports.

In Texas, as displayed to the outside world quite wonderfully in the film Friday Night Lights, high school football is the centerpiece of small town entertainment, and it does bond the community together in ways that defy logic. I could write books on why this is destructive in that it shows a tendency toward collectivism that is ultimately disparaging, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say that small town politics in the state of Texas loves their Friday night football. It’s an obsession really, so much so that tax payers in Allen, Texas passed a bond package with 63.66 percent of the vote from the booming suburb of north Dallas worth $119.4 million dollars, $60 million of which was designated to building a state-of-the-art stadium for their high school football team.

For the kids who play football in Allen they will play under the Friday Night Lights for their community in a stadium that rivals what many of the stadiums for professional teams play in. 8,252 people signed up for season tickets ranging in price from $40 dollars a game to $8 and they plan to sell out several of their games in the 18,000 seat arena in a town that has a population of 84,236, which is smaller than the Lakota School District in Cincinnati. The demand for football in Allen is so intense that 1 out of every 4 people plan to attend football games at the new stadium.

The residents of Allen have a median household income of $100,843, which is about $10,000 more than the wealthy area of Lakota due in large part to all the businesses that are locating to the area because of Texas pro-business attitudes. Many of the jobs that aren’t in your town because of intense regulation and high taxes are probably in Texas or thinking about it currently. And when people have plenty of money in their pocket they tend to be generous by passing tax increases on themselves without a thought of future sustainability. The people of Allen have the money and they wish to spend it on a football stadium for their local high school, and that’s that. This has led to severe criticism from people outside of Allen who don’t understand why the people of that Texas town will spend so much money on a football stadium when the state of education is so poor in America. Well, the answer is rather harsh, but must be understood in order to be truthful about the real nature of support a community has for their local schools when discussions of tax increases arise. People like to watch violence and mayhem. They love to see gladiators on the battlefield punishing other players in a quest to score a point. Those same audiences do not show up to watch some kid take a math test.

All public schools and all large college campuses use their sports programs to drive their funding models for their education institutions. “Jocks” are treated as special in schools because the school acknowledges the gladiators as the life blood of their existence. Without the Friday Night Lights, without football, schools are boring places of history, art, math and science. Only a few kids in each grade class excel in those categories and go on to become esteemed world-wide scientists or mathematicians. Most parents would rather give birth to the next Payton Manning rather than Albert Einstein and it shows in schools by what parents support. In Allen, Taxes they are just being honest about their priorities. They are not functioning from illusion. When it comes down to it, people do not care about educating a bunch of inner city kids on how to bake a cake in home economics. They don’t care if a 1000 nerds score a perfect 2400 on their SAT scores. But they do care if a kid is 6-4 and weighs 280 pounds in his junior year and can play as a guard on the offensive line protecting the team quarterback. In essence, they care about their own entertainment on a Friday Night, because once the game is over, they are back to their own lives looking forward to the next game.

On a typical Saturday during football season most men will sift through the political section of a newspaper and read intently the sports stats from the game on Friday. On Monday morning he will be able to go into his workplace and impress his co-workers with his vast knowledge about the tackles that 6’, 4” 280 pound kid had in Friday’s football game. He might even claim to know the boy’s father hoping that such a revelation will impress his co-workers with is access to celebrity. But nobody sits around the water cooler talking about how a kid from their public school won a spelling competition, or won an academic scholarship to Yale due to academic excellence in high school physics.

Schools are very aware of this leverage they have over the community. Locally, around the Cincinnati area the closest thing we have to the Texas Friday Night Lights experience is Colerain Football. Already, the band leaders in that town are letting it be known that if residents don’t pass a school levy this November that there will be cuts to the football program, and the band that plays for them. They know as school officials that the community cares about sports, but not about the positions of assistant art teachers, so the threat is directed and quite intentional. At Lakota in my home district, after three failed levies, the district cut off its nose to spite its face threatening to hurt the parents of the district by charging players $550 per sport for each player in order to force levy passage which has ended up backfiring. Lakota isn’t Allen, Texas; people are more indifferent to their Friday Night Football. If it’s there, fine, if not, they’ll go to a movie and out to dinner instead. The only parents who really feel passionate about football like they do in Texas are the parents who are hoping their kid wins a scholarship to college which will save them tens of thousands of dollars in college tuition. Lakota took bad advice from the classes the school board attended at Levy University in Columbus, Ohio that the OSBA puts on every year. In that class they learned that to pass tax increases that public transportation and sports are what motivate voters to throw more money at a public school. If those things don’t work, then nothing will. At Lakota, to make up for picking the wrong strategy in winning the hearts of the community, they have had to spend $160,000 on public relations to attempt to win back community support, which they won’t get as long as 1500 kids are being charged $550 to play sports.

Penn State covered up the sex crimes they all knew about because they understood that it was Penn State Football that drove new enrollment, and therefore revenue to their university. It is sports that drive education, not academics. In Allen, Texas at least they aren’t trying to deceive themselves in being so high-brow to not wish for the blood lust of violent impacts under the Friday Night Lights of their new $60 million dollar stadium. Nobody really cares about “education.” This is well-known, it’s just not publicly acknowledged. The people of Allen are not going to pour $60 million dollars into a program to help the poor and needy. They are not going to give it to a bunch of fools who want to build solar panels and wind mills. They are not going to give it to a bunch of socialist teachers who want to save the world with world peace. In polite conversation the tax payers will utter support for such things, but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, they spend it on blood, broken bones, and drama on a fourth and goal. Everything else is a waste of time and that is the key to the education funding structure. Without the Friday Night Lights, public education is just another stale experience that could easily be replaced with online classes.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Using Conroversy to Find the Truth in Public Education: ‘League of Wisdom’ Rises

I know this is a long article but complicated themes require advanced explanation, which is why I provided you with a little music to listen to that sums up the content you are about to read.  For ease of review I have linked many of the supporting articles to show clearly the path that brought us to this point in time.  If it hasn’t been obvious by now my premier strategy in fighting the Lakota School Levy has been a gradual increase of social controversy starting off small, and increasing with each levy attempt until something snaps. That will continue until the district makes drastic pay cuts in an honest attempt to balance their budget. The reasoning is an admission I came to years ago that the term “political correctness” was created by leftist extremists used to shackle the good manners of millions of conservatives. By holding conservatives to the impossible standard of living by “political correctness” rules, social parasites have been able to advance their own cause with great effectiveness. They often break their own rules while conservatives wither in paralysis by their sheer politeness. I decided not to play by those rules so to show others that what was holding conservatives back was not the superior philosophy of the political left, but the fear that conservatives have of controversy. By embracing controversy, I hoped to show thousands that the way to beat progressives was by not playing by the rules “they” created—and to not fear calling things by their real names.

If I had to do it again, I would home school my children during all their school years instead of just for a couple of years as my wife and I did. I never felt public education was teaching my children the dynamic aspects of life that I thought they should be exposed to. Instead, I always felt public education was teaching them to be “mediocre,” which was not what I desired as a father for my children. So to me, public education at its absolute best is a dismal failure.

Many haven’t figured it out yet but over $110 million Americans receive some sort of welfare, which can be seen on this chart released on The Blaze.com. This chart does not include Social Security, Medicare, or public education, and yes, to me public education is a form of welfare.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/this-chart-showing-welfare-dependency-will-ruin-your-day/

The sharp increase in these numbers shows the goal of the Obama White House which has been the goal of all socialists who have been operating in America and that is to buy votes. Currently with all the trouble Obama is in with legal issues and a dismal economy, he still has 50% of the vote, because more than half the nation gets some sort of check from the government as shown by the chart.

Public education is one of the largest socialist scams ever perpetrated on the American people. It in essence attempts to teach socialist values to young people while selling the service to the parents and the adult population as essential to a child’s well-being. If I had to raise a child today I would teach the child at home using the K-through 12 online computer course shown at the link below. This is a much more efficient method of teaching young people instead of attending an expensive brick and mortar school full of socialist union thumping teachers’ hell bent on the destruction of The United States. If any proof were needed that public education is a terrible travesty just look at the welfare numbers. When half the population is on welfare public education has failed to produce self-reliant individuals who are productive with entrepreneurial thinking. Instead, public schools make wishy-washy liberal leaning young people who take too long to grow up. Many of them don’t begin to see the light until their late 30’s these days and by then they have already started to raise misfits of their own, and the damage is already done.

http://ohio.connectionsacademy.com/oh/geosearch?_kk=30c52765-c100-4245-97c8-60ab998809f1&_kt=7267941824&gclid=CP2R09Sm27ECFYLb4AoduwMAkg

When I first began my journey on this education reform path that I am on, it began by simply pointing out that the labor contracts for the public school unions were inflated. Since I had experience in my family after raising my own children that much of the education claims public schools were making toward a child’s well-being were inflated, because I had taken a very active role in teaching my children, I felt it was only fair to challenge the union position. Back on September 20th of 2010 I went on 700 WLW to talk about the real reason that my school district of Lakota needed a school levy, was to pay for the excessive wages of its employees. As I was doing that Kyle Olsen was putting up billboards around Cincinnati exposing the scam of public education. The Ohio Education Association responded to this statement by me and Olsen with a typical response at the time from the union, which can be seen below from the Pulse Journal. To listen to my original report on 700 WLW click here. The response from the OEA shown next made me so angry that I decided after the Lakota Levy was defeated to not take my foot off the neck of public education controlled by the labor unions. After the assault by David Little, a progressive activist, I decided that I had enough of these thugs who had taken over a school where I pay an enormous amount of money in personal taxes—all so people who wanted a quality “free” education for their children could pretend they were being good parents by spending a lot of money on homes to live in a school district that was highly sought after in the real estate market. The goodness of the district was being built by my property value which is in essence wealth redistribution because it was being consumed by value to fund the welfare system of public education. Click here to see the attack from David Little against me shortly after the first WLW radio spot. You can see the entire article from the Pulse Journal at the link below.

By Lindsey Hilty
Staff Writer

LIBERTY TWP. — Representatives of the Lakota Education Association say they hope voters will listen to facts given out by the school district rather than “rhetoric” from a group advertising in the area on bill boards.

“It has become the trend during election campaigns for anti-levy and anti-public education groups like (Education Action Group) to surface, speaking out against public education, and then to retreat again once the elections are over,” according to a statement from the OEA.

“We think that, first of all, it’s an outside group that is anti-public schools and anti-union,” Rodney Bird, labor relations consultant for the OEA said. “We believe the voters in southwest Ohio and in Lakota are intelligent enough to make their decision on a local levy based on the facts given by the district.”

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/news/local/lakota-union-leaders-respond-to-area-billboard-c-1/nNcxd/

 

That’s how it was back then; the unions were quoted all the time in the paper because nobody challenged them. People were afraid that the union would vandalize their homes, or that they would be publicly ridiculed within their communities. The force of the unions and the monopoly of their education empires deserved to have their asses kicked. So I started this site, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom to contrast what the OEA said about people like me during levy elections. When the election was over, I did not go away. To this day, the union has been exposed for what they are, crooked thugs hell-bent on socialist destruction of America. After three years of very public battles the unions hardly have instigated a peep, they haven’t threatened to strike in the entire Cincinnati area primarily because of the constant coverage on 700 WLW.

I went on to do dozens and dozens of radio spots against the unions in Ohio and never were they able to come on the air and combat me, because they could not fight the truth. Instead they attempted to use the PTA organizations and the “real-estate cartels” to do their dirty work. Everyone knows that most of the pro levy supporters on an organized front are real-estate agents because they use the quality of the free schools to help sell homes, while passing the bill on to residents who already live in the community. Heads rolled and people lost their jobs on all fronts. I had a right to get angry when I discovered that volunteers supporting the union cause were camping outside the doors of a local Kroger and trying to smear my name to my friends and neighbors as they entered on a Saturday afternoon to buy groceries. Such thuggish behavior deserved an answer—it required an answer. I called them “latte sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires,” which is how I see the kind of people who support school levies. Click here to review. Yes it made a ruckus all over Cincinnati and I knew it would. The husbands of some of those real estate agents took offense and sided against me. But they didn’t do it because I was wrong, but because they knew I was right, and they didn’t want to face the music. They wanted instead to continue on with the illusion that education was free and that so long as everyone bent over for the union, that there would be peace in the community. They were angry with me because they needed my unquestioning compliance to their welfare use of public education to keep it quiet, and seemingly honorable.

Meanwhile reform is coming to public education even as the unions are standing in the way of progress, and much of that progress can be seen in the online programs that are beginning to explode everywhere. When I started this fight against public education it was with the knowledge that I was able to do a better job at teaching my children than the public school I sent them to could. So my wife and I home schooled them for a while and let them graduate early with online classes in high school, so they wouldn’t have to waste their time. I still had to pay taxes to the local school, even though I was able to do a better job, and that didn’t seem fair. Why should I be forced to participate in a system I think is dysfunctional, socialist, and completely inept? Why should I be forced to pay several thousand dollars a year to a public school that won’t even let children make the shape of a gun on the play ground, but will teach them how to put a condom on a fake penis in the fourth grade? The reason is because the government has a cozy relationship with organized labor to make education a monopoly in America and to take the value of property in the form of taxes to fund it in order to fulfill the local requirements of Agenda 21. Click here for review.

Ladies and gentlemen if my actions seem extreme at times over the last three years it is because you have not yet come to realize what I realized after reading those obnoxious comments from the OEA in the Pulse Journal all those years ago. We are not fighting to prevent socialism from taking over our country. It has already happened. Instead, we are fighting for our freedom once again, just as we did in at the start of the country. My beginning in that process is to fight the monopoly that dominates the minds of our youth, in public education. It is simply a form of welfare to the parents who use it for a babysitting service while they are busy with their careers. Public education is welfare even to the idiots who pay over $5000 a year in property taxes so their little child can receive a “free” education. In reality, the $5000 is cheaper than most private schools which is why parents who claim that their property tax bill is something they are glad to pay for the benefit of their children are neglecting to report because they are simply counting on public education welfare to make them appear to be better parents than they actually are while saving a tone of money on private instruction in the process.

As it can be seen, a lot has changed in the last three years, and what used to be boisterous dialogue on behalf of the unions now is seeing residents fighting back with boisterous dialogue of their own. In three short years we have changed the argument, and in three more years the brick and mortar schools will be forced to adapt entirely new philosophies. More and more people will begin to take part in the K-through-12 programs online and those people will be much less inclined to pass school levies since they aren’t using the public schools. The unions will be forced to come to reality, because people for the first time in a century are sticking up for themselves and fighting back.

If the unions had shut their mouth after my visit to 700 WLW on that September 20th day in 2010 and not attempted to come after me personally, and not went after Kyle Olsen just for speaking the truth, they may not have pissed me off so much to start this website. But they did, and because of their desire to suppress any opposition I will see this through to their end. It moved from a level of civil discussion to thuggish attempts at intimidation, which is a big no, no. If I believed that the stake of our children were truly better off in the hands of public education I would leave the matter alone. But because I did teach my children at home and do know better, I know that public education is a scam, and it’s social welfare for the young, pretentious parents who are most of the time kids themselvs—or real estate agents trying to sell a house.

Now, as opposed to the date of that Pulse Journal article shown here, much has changed. There are more people than ever who have joined our little “League of Wisdom” that have gathered at this website and taken the argument to their own districts to achieve the same results. The heart of the argument is not what is good for kids. If it were, the answer would be for all parents to home school their children—because statistically, those children are learning at a much improved rate over public school children. Instead, government schools are just another welfare program designed to tie up the wealth of a school district in a complicated United Nations program agreed to by many politicians in Washington under the advice of The Department of Education created in 1979. For the politicians who make such agreements their intention is to use education as another welfare meal ticket that paves the way for their own re-elections. Free education to the politician has the same effect as food stamps, and other government programs that are given to citizens in hopes of buying a vote. Jobs under the same system are created to support the welfare system which adds proportionally to the 110 million people on welfare already. Add to that welfare number all the people using Social Security, Medicare, and hold jobs that are government sponsored, such as teachers, police officers, fire fighters, IRS agents, ATF agents, Homeland Security personnel, GAS employees, FBI agents, CIA agents, military personnel, TSA employees, postal workers, EPA workers, BMV workers, court-house workers, General Motors workers and on and on and on, it will be discovered that well over 80% of our country is dependent on government in some degree or another. Most of those jobs were created with the same intentions as welfare was, done under the mask of goodness and safety; the real intent was to create dependence, and bloc voting. Ultimately, this has placed before America the quagmire of freedom. We’re not fighting to keep socialism from our lives, it’s already everywhere in American society and has been for so long that nobody would know what to do without socialism. We are now fighting for a freedom that founded the country, because it has already been lost, and must again be recreated in the minds of our society. That will not happen by calling things like public education by names that don’t belong to them. Currently socialists will declare that public education is a “human right.” It is not. It’s a benefit to a society that decides it wants to do something nice for the citizens of their community. That niceness is cheapened when people are forced to participate in a system they see is a failure but can’t change it because so many people have come to depend on the government service, nobody can escape the obligation any longer. When that happens politicians have already bankrupted the system beyond repair, because it’s no longer appreciated, but is expected by a society that’s addicted to welfare not always by their own doing, but simply because they held their hand out to government and discovered that shackles were placed about their wrists which tied them forever to the greedy claws of government for all eternity, or the meager duration of the individual life to be consumed like wood on a campfire.

In the end public education consumes the lives of society and leaves behind only ashes. The memory of a once burning flame is all that remains, that is eventually lost in the darkness of a cold night. That cold night is the shroud of socialism that lingers always on the outskirts of freedom. And it is that socialism that is wrapped around American thought and has placed in the minds of most the shackles of a hand-out sold as a crutch, but intended to be political paralysis. From public education the paralysis migrates into the rest of our society and will continue until freedom fighters learn that by “playing by the rules,” is to handicap success on the battlefield of ideas. It is time that those of us in this new “League of Wisdom” stop worrying about hurting the feelings of the social parasites from the political left because in so doing, we are losing our country. Playing the “high” ground will not win the war of ideas, and it’s time to get down into the trenches and fight them where they hide—which is behind the masks of truth. And it starts by not being afraid of a little controversy.

Get ready for the new conservatives……..the old ones were a lot more passive. That won’t happen again, I promise.  And Monroe, the ‘League’ has your back. 

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120810/NEWS/308100115/Monroe-schools-returning-ballot-Nov-6?odyssey=nav%7Chead

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Giving Voters an Early Christmas Present: Monroe School Levy Fails

If this thing fails, what the heck does that say about us as a community? I’ll tell you…..we totally suck. Any community that doesn’t support its schools isn’t a community that anyone is going to want to live in. Housing values will take yet another nose dive (We’ve invested a ton of money in our house and the value STILL isn’t what it was when we bought it 10 years ago).

I get the economy is tough, and that some mistakes were made in the past, but what is the goal of this negative levy campaign? To punish the school board for the past mistakes? The only people who end up being punished are the kids in the schools, the teachers who have to teach them, and the rest of the community (i.e. ALL of us) whose home values will continue to NOT be what we paid for them over a decade ago. Wake up folks!

I do wonder what would have been “Achieved” if your no votes win.

there will be another levy….more money spent….so really..what did you achieve?

Sure you would have succeeded in your finger pointing campaign, but your wallet won’t end up being any fatter in the long run.

That quote came from:
http://www.mainstreetmonroe.com/voice/topic.asp?topic_id=26714

I would like to congratulate the Monroe School District for holding strong and voting down their off-season school levy that was designed to pass with low voter turnout in August. Predictably, the Monroe School Board has voted to put the levy right back on in November of 2012, which is a welcome attempt since the voter turnout will be much more intense as conservatives in Monroe will show up in droves to vote Emperor Obama out of office. Conservatives tend to vote down tax increases unless they wish to believe they can be conservative and still receive free government education that is socialist in its design.

To listen to the Monroe School District reasons for the tax increase it was to get them out of state control and pay back the money they were forced to borrow from the state to operate. If Monroe truly wished to balance their budget they would use the state control option to void the union contract and cut their labor wages by 5% to 10% which would instantly balance their budget. But there is no desire from the school board or state management to even attempt such a thing, even though it is a legal option, because the entire school system is set up to protect those union contracts which use collective bargaining to pay all teachers too much money with benefits that are entirely too generous. If Monroe wanted to balance their budget, they would attack their labor costs, not ask for more money to throw at inflated wages and benefits.

At Lakota, the district next to Monroe, after three levy defeats I proposed that the employees of the school district take a 5% cut in pay, which would have easily balanced their budget but instead the district looked for ways to remove me from the levy argument by playing manipulative politics behind the scenes which I found personally insulting. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. They chose personal attacks rather than dealing with the trouble of their labor costs because the education system from the top to the bottom eats out of the hand of the labor unions. By the way, I would like to give the Pulse Journal’s reporter Hannah Poturalski credit for doing an article about Lakota for spending $160,000 just on public relations going into the upcoming school year because the Lakota School System is trying to cover up their reluctance to force their union to take a 5% pay cut to balance their budget. So they spent $160,000 tax payer dollars to hide their lack of management of labor wages. It’s nice to see a mainstream reporter covering the issue. Most don’t have the guts.

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/news/local/school-dedicates-160k-to-community-relations/nQC4W/

Monroe arrogantly announced before the vote on Tuesday August 7, 2012 that if the levy failed, they would put it back up for a vote in November. The implied threat from the school board to the community was that if it did not pass the levy they’d come right back with another attempt so the community might as well vote their way. The school is using the threat of force in an inadvertent way to point out that a “NO” vote is pointless. They are basically stating to the community, “Resistance is futile. We will take our money one way or the other.” Of course they don’t come right out and say it, but instead chose to use polite language to disguise the sinister intentions.

Monroe can say things like that by siding up with their unionized labor work force because the system is rigged against the taxpayer. Schools can legally attempt to place a levy on the ballot 4 times per year, so districts like Monroe if their levy fails can go right back at the voters 3 months later till they get their money by wearing down the resistance. The Little Miami School District went to the voters 9 times before the NO voters finally gave up and the levy passed preserving the union contracts without harm. But times are changing. Up in Westerville near Columbus, Ohio that school district barely passed a 6.71 mill emergency levy on March 6th. District officials there said they needed a levy to raise $16.5 million to balance their budget. The levy costs taxpayers in Westerville $205 per $100,000 of property value and that amount is not limited to only residential homes, but each and every business in the district. The levy is a huge tax scam and residents were angry that it passed so they are using an obscure part of the Ohio Revised Code to fight back against that levy by repealing it. The same day that voters went to vote on numerous school levies including Monroe, Westerville turned in well over 5000 signatures to have their levy repealed this upcoming November. Click here to learn how to do this. If Lakota ever passes their levy I plan to use our database of NO voters to easily collect the signatures we’d need to do the same. All Westerville needed was 5000 signatures to place the repeal on the ballot. In Lakota, over 18,000 people voted against the last levy, so it shouldn’t be hard to collect our signatures if needed, it would just take a little effort, but it would be worth it. This means that even when school districts fail to listen to the voters there is a recourse that can be taken against them, and Westerville is going to vote in November not to pass a levy, but to remove one. The campaign for that during a presidential election will be fantastic, “would you like to save $205 per $100,000 of your property value? Vote to repeal the Westerville School Levy!” That would allow Westerville School District residence to spend $200 to $1000 more on Christmas presents for their loved ones this year instead of flushing that same money down the toilet for inflated union contracts negotiated under collective bargaining.

Locally Fairfield, Lebanon, Little Miami, and Forest Hills all recently passed levies that could be repealed in the same way as Westerville is doing, and this is a serious blow to the public sector labor unions in Ohio who are used to getting everything they want, including the kitchen sink. So even if the residents of Monroe find themselves suffering under yet another tax increase, they do have a recourse to remove that levy if it ever does pass. I would advise the people who worked the No Levy campaign in Monroe to keep track of all the people who make contact with them in support of the “NO VOTE,” because those names may be needed later when it comes time to repeal the Monroe School Levy.

The assumption of these public schools is that teachers are worth infinite amounts of money and that the schools are sacred to the development of our children, and neither is true. Teachers are not all worth the same amounts of money. Some are worth $65K per year, but most aren’t worth $45K per year. And administrators are not worth $90K to $100K per year. Some may be, but most aren’t. It is collective bargaining that drives up those costs and that has only been around since 1982, and it has bankrupted education in Ohio. It is foolish to throw more money at a broken system, and the system is broke if it produces children that can’t find India on a map, and costs more than $7,000 per pupil to operate. The whole system needs to be reset and that will never happen if communities allow themselves to be extorted by school boards and state officials who are afraid of their labor unions. The proper management of the education funding problems is for the unions to either take pay cuts or to dissolve all together with more competitive options being presented. The old way is not good for anybody, except the teacher and administrator who make more than $65K per year for only working 7.5 hours a day, 9 months out of the year while tax payers struggle to pay the bill of loyalty to their community schools.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

A Criminal, a Liar, a Communist, and a Terrorist: Barack Obama Insults America

When President Obama stated on July 13th 2012 in his now infamous “you didn’t build that” speech, I was so infuriated that I couldn’t even write about it. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the audacity of his socialist utterances. Like many, I believe that Obama is an open communist behind closed doors, but the evidence was never so obvious as it was on that day. Obama declared to all of America that he was equal to the type of communism that America fought during the entire Cold War and was no less of a communist than Fidel Castro of the 1980s. I was so furious at the obviousness of Obama’s communism that I had to take a chill pill for a few weeks just to calm down. And I wasn’t the only one. Bill Whittle of PJ TV had similar thoughts as I did and as usual conveyed well his frustration and anger at this severally deranged American President in Barack Obama. Be sure to watch this video clip completely and pass it around.

As if the comments alone weren’t bad enough, Obama realizing that he wasn’t speaking to a crowd of welfare recipients, union workers, and general social miscreants, attempted to lie about what he was recorded saying to millions of people. It was obvious that Obama had gotten caught up in the moment when he was speaking to a crowd of blind supporters and didn’t think or care what the rest of America would think of his real, unfettered opinions. Being caught right out in the open, Obama attempted to do what he has done with virtually every issue in his 4 year presidency, he tried to blame someone else for twisting his words around on him which is really quite amazing.

Obama attempted to erase from the mind of America words that were openly broadcast to millions of people and replace them with a different idea. The audacity of his attempt says a lot about his level of integrity and definition of honesty. I can only imagine what Obama would attempt to twist out of the truth on issues that were well concealed from public view. Obama is clearly using the Saul Alinsky methods of manipulation to conceal his real intentions. These same methods are used by public education and other unionized organizations to manipulate the masses off the key topics of villainy which they openly commit.

In essence Obama and his attack dog Eric Holder of the DOJ have utilized the exact same methods of concealment to hide their involvement in ‘Fast and Furious’ which caused the murder of over 300 innocent human beings all in a quest to push more gun legislation. The timeline again is shown well by Bill Whittle at PJ TV and it cannot be ignored. These are criminals and they hide their crimes behind the polite benefit of doubt given by the American people.

The argument in the video is right. The crimes just over ‘Fast and Furious’ are every bit as dangerous and corrupt as Watergate, but they are concealed behind a veil of politeness, and orthodox politics created by extreme activists under the devious methods devised by Saul Alinsky. Obama is so certain of the effectiveness of his manipulation methods that he will lie about a situation even when millions of people heard exactly what he said and there is tape to review it again.

The followers of Saul Alinsky and all the other insurrection artists of the 20th century know that because of the expansion of government which umbrellas so many Americans, that they are conquering an already defeated people. When Obama stands in front of his fans who support him because they hope the president is going to give them some of his Obama money, he knows that the audience who was cheering him on did not have the wits about them to probe into the merit of his declarations, and he doesn’t care, because the goal of government expansion is to make the citizens fat, dumb, and happy. Obama and his gang of thugs that have come before him see the complacency that the population in general displays. It is not the more intelligent members of American society that is the lazy and politically uninterested. It’s the people who do not read the news but simply watch TV and play video games. It’s the type of people who do not read books, but will browse through a magazine to see what celebrities are sleeping with whom. In other words, they are not very sophisticated, and are therefore defenseless to see a lie when they hear it if the person presenting the information is smiling and wearing a suit representing authority. Their minds are simply too lazy to ask an inconvenient question, “is my president a criminal, a communist, or a domestic terrorist?” The answer might cause them to miss the next episode of “The X Factor.”

The audacity of Obama’s open lies displays that he expects there are more stupid people in America than intelligent ones because his programs and political philosophy have already implemented the destruction on more than 50% of the population of breeding stupidity. He knows the audience like the one he spoke to on July 13th did not have the capacity to think because not only did Obama and his politics rob the rich of their money to give to the masses of democracy in the form of mob rule, but he has robbed the poor of their very minds by making it so they don’t even have to think in order to get up in the morning. With such a complacent and lazy electorate, there are no minds to challenge a liar as he declares that socialism is the way of America and always has been.

The only success Obama has managed in his presidency of which the seeds were planted during the Clinton years was that extremism is now the law of the land, and people like me who expect truth, justice and the American way are considered the radicals. It is considered extreme to even question the criminality of a sitting president, which was the criminal intent of the progressive party all along. By putting Obama in office with his loose morality and welfare mentality he was led to the Oval Office by the very hand of evil involving crimes against mankind that were hidden in plain sight and beyond investigation. In this upside down world it is OK for Harry Reid to question the tax records of Mitt Romney but not OK to demand the birth certificate of Obama even though the one that The White House produced was a forgery. The latter are called “birthers” but when Reid does the same extremism against Romney, it is endorsed and accepted by all, because the minds of man are already defeated, and the criminals in government know it.

Obama does not care if there are people who see what he’s up to, because he knows through the power of democracy that if he can get the mob on his side, that there is no stopping him politically, because he has an army of dim-witted people who is growing with every new government program that will carry him like a pharaoh to the presidency. Never has such disrespect for the backbone of America ever been so evident than in the comments of July 13th 2012. Obama, the functioning communist, audaciously declared to the mob that he would steal on their behalf if all they did was vote in his favor. He pandered to them as if they were equals to the productive in society, but the real goal was to remove from them the guilt of their ineptness so that they would pass on those traits to a new generation of progressive youngsters who embrace open communism.

This situation is extremely serious, and if Obama does not pay for his crimes, our society will crumble. The mentality of his looting nature is dangerous, but even worse is his disregard for those who are truly intelligent. He knows the mob outnumbers the wise, and he is openly challenging his detractors. The intentions of those who put Obama in office are nearly complete. Their battle plan against America is obvious. But few have the courage or intelligence to challenge that plan. For myself, I do not acknowledge a criminal as my president, and if the law were allowed to work, I believe Obama would be convicted of many crimes. But we live in an age, and a land where more and more often President Obama leads a nation of the destitute to open looting of the rich for a cause of communism born in the mind of his childhood mentor——Frankie. And he and his fellow attackers no longer feel they need to hide it.

A terrorist is not just someone who straps bombs to themselves to blow people up.  A terrorist is anyone who uses fear to conceal the truth, and President Obama is certainly guilty of that.  Because the truth indicates that Obama is the worst president in the history of America and may very well be remembered among the emperors of Rome who were most tyrannical. 

____________________________________________

 

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

The Real Ellsworth Toohey: Anthony Lane Reviews ‘Dark Knight Rises’

I am very happy that the movie Dark Knight Rises stayed on top of the box office rankings for three weeks in a row in spite of the terrible shooting at Aurora, Colorado. To date the worldwide sales for Dark Knight Rises is at $750 million and continuing to grow. After three weeks of running at the top it beat the opening of the Total Recall remake by more than $10 million dollars. Dark Knight Rises made $36,440 million in domestic sales during a weekend of heavy competition at a run time of 2 hours and 45 minutes, which defies logic in Hollywood terms. Dark Knight Rises is only $40 million dollars behind the domestic total of The Dark Knight–the previous Batman film in the Nolan trilogy–at its 17 day total mark, which is quite incredible considering the blanket of horror that shrouded a very good film on the opening weekend tragedy.

But Why?

The why is the reason I sat in the Regal Theater long after the movie credits ended and only silence in an empty arena looked back at me with a blank screen white and motionless. I know damn well why Dark Knight Rises is so successful and there are factions on the progressive political side that fears that reason, because they know it too and work to prevent it. The movie is fantastic not because it has any particular realism to the story line. Some might find parts of it unbelievable as the heroics might sometimes defy logic. But Dark Knight Rises is not about realism, it’s about what lives in the human heart and why. It is about what works in society and what doesn’t, and it holds up the confusing messages of our current world and takes viewers on an incredible journey into topics that baffle us in the light of day. Read my review by CLICKING HERE.

I will have to give Christopher Nolan credit; he played the ultimate Don Diego. Only people who know me well will understand what I mean by that, but Nolan pulled off a miracle that critics should have seen coming in the previous two films. I suspected it was coming, but I had no idea that he would be able to pull it off with a 2 hour and 45 minute movie without Warner Brothers cutting the film down to an even 2 hours, because the extra 45 minutes contain all the important messages that progressives have managed to suppress for many years of film making. Dark Knight Rises is the movie that Ayn Rand would have put her support behind, along with Walt Disney, and John Wayne. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHY. Nolan working within the framework of a progressive town wore the mask himself and did the impossible delivering to the world a film they needed to see.

And the world is HUNGRY for it. Once critics saw the film and realized the heavy anti-collectivist message Dark Knight Rises contained they tried to back out of their gushy support for Christopher Nolan, which up to a few weeks ago could do no wrong. But it was too late.

You see, the battle for the heart of mankind is at stake, and progressives want to posses that heart. They want control of the media in virtually every way and they do not want competition in thought, because their ideas cannot compete directly with a philosophy of freedom. If you are familiar with the great novel The Fountainhead there are a million Ellsworth Toohey’s working today as newspaper reporters, newscasters, and film critics. Dark Knight Rises directed by the critically acclaimed Christopher Nolan turned out to be a work of Howard Roark and the critics didn’t catch it till after the film hit theaters and a gush of anxiety rippled through progressive communities like an earthquake.

To see an example of what I’m talking about here are a couple of reviews from Anthony Lane of The New Yorker. The New Yorker is a progressive publication in the extreme. They were progressive well before there was ever a Huffington Post, a Daily Show, and Bill Maher. They were progressive when George Soros was still making his fortune as a capitalist on Wall Street. I have read The New Yorker for years as a way to hone my writing skills, because they often publish very good short stories and I enjoy their articles. They’d never publish anything I’d write because my politics is way too conservative for them, but I do appreciate good literature even if it’s progressive. But it cannot be ignored that they are attempting to paint Dark Knight Rises as unsophisticated tripe that should be ignored by popular culture. Below are two links from The New Yorker so you can see for yourself what is being said by them and how. Read these reviews intently. The gap between what the general public wants and what the progressive desires for mankind is absolutely clear by looking at the words of the reviewers who have come out against Dark Knight Rises.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2012/07/30/120730crci_cinema_lane/
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/the_dark_knight_rises_nolan

It is in such pretentiousness that many Victorian well wishers hold much sway. For the leeching progressive who desires human weakness, ever-growing government, and perpetual debt they fully endorse films and other art that supports their cause. They do not want characters like Batman to inspire an entire generation of young people toward the cause of inner strength and valor. Valor to the progressive is the Holy Water of political exorcism. Hollywood fears these types of progressive critics because they are perceived to be the intellectual elite and don’t want the intellectual elite to alienate Hollywood from cocktail conversation.

But it’s OK Hollywood to turn the progressive opinion loose. The numbers from Dark Knight Rises should solve the question once and for all. Dark Knight Rises will make well over a billion dollars for Hollywood, much, much more than Slumdog Millionaire. Making the kind of movies that make people like Anthony Lane happy will not make Hollywood money. But making movies like Dark Knight Rises will. And it takes more than dressing up a guy in a bat suit to pull it off. The movie has to have the correct message that audiences respond to, and Dark Knight Rises has it, and they put it up on the screen without apology.

To understand the intention of The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane all one needs to do is read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Ellsworth Toohey is a character in the microcosm of that classic novel that many of today’s critics and newspaper journalists play similar roles. In media circles, the New Yorker is considered to be the top rung of social thought, and out of all the journalists who wish to become great novelists, or work for a big news organization, they read the opinions of The New Yorker, where writers like Anthony Lane help shape the parameters of society in the exact same say that Ellsworth Toohey did against Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, written in 1943. So the tricks are not new, but if left unchecked will play out perpetually forever and to great destructive effect.

In The Fountainhead, Toohey was furious that Howard Roark was able to build the type of architectural designs that authenticated Roark’s individual existence. So Toohey used his influence at the newspaper he worked at to shape social thought away from Roark’s designs even though the public enjoyed the originality, and strength of them. Toohey being the gatekeeper of what was “cool” in society or “uncool” attempted with all his effort to bring Roark to his knees in complete destruction for the sole reason that Roark functioned outside of the influence of Toohey. For an example, below is a short line from Toohey from The Fountainhead. Then compare what Anthony Lane says about Dark Knight Rises in the linked New Yorker movie reviews above with the Toohey quote in mind. If you know the Rand work, you will understand immediately. If you are still being exposed to this work, then it might take a moment of thought to behold.

• Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.
o Ellsworth Toohey, p. 636 of The Fountainhead

Now, The New Yorker quote from the July 30th 2012 film review.

• Be honest. How badly would you not want Bruce—or Batman—to show up at one of your parties? He has no small talk (and Bale, as an actor, has charisma but no charm), although ask him about fear, anger, and other large abstract nouns, especially as they relate to him, and he’ll keep you in the corner all night. He doesn’t eat or drink, besides toying with a flute of champagne. Basic human tasks are beyond his reach; direct Batman to the bathroom, and it would take him twenty minuets of hydraulic shunting simply to unzip. On the rare occasions when Bruce, fresh from his helicopter or his Lamborghini, enters a reception with a girl or two on his arm, he looks deeply uncomfortable, and Nolan, as if sharing that unease, tends to hurry him through the moment. The point—and, after three installments, it seems a fatal one—is that the two halves of our hero form not a beguiling contrast but a dreary, perfect match. Both as Wayne and as super-Wayne he seems indifferent, as the films themselves are, to the activities of little people and to the claims of the everyday, preferring to semi-purse his lips, as if preparing to whistle for an errant dog, and stare pensively into the distance. Caped or uncaped, the guy is a bore. He should have kids; that would pull him out of himself. Or else he should hang out with Iron Man and get wasted. He should have fun.
o Anthony Lane from The “esteemed” New Yorker.

If you understand the media network and how it works from the top where Anthony Lane writes from to the bottom, where the local 22-year-old journalism major is trying hard to impress editors at large publications so they can advance their careers by mimicking the type behavior exhibited in The New Yorker, you can begin to understand why I did not want to leave the theater at the end of Dark Knight Rises, because the way the system is set up, such movies hardly ever get made to the epic scale shown in the latest Batman film.

Yes, there is a war for the heart of man, and too many writers trained in colleges and film schools have been taught to bend their will to the Anthony Lanes of the world. The writing pool in Hollywood has been watered down with progressive tripe, in spite of the hunger for American audiences to witness the exceptional. So Hollywood has turned to comic books, not destroyed by progressivism for new material to put on the big screen, because comic books have not been destroyed by the Ellsworth Toohey’s of literature. The American public wants exceptionalism. Children want more than mediocrity, and much of their anger as young people approaching adulthood is the realization that the world they live in is mediocre, shaped in large by people like Anthony Lane. Because when an example of exceptionalism shows itself, progressives attempt to crush them before they have a chance to encourage others to also rise above mediocrity.

I appreciate exactly how difficult it was to bring a movie like Dark Knight Rises to the big screen, and it is now obvious that like Nolan’s film Inception, the concept of delivering Dark Knight Rises was a dream within a dream within a dream. The motive was well-kept and hidden from people like Anthony Lane behind the performance of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight to set up this well conceived comic book masterpiece that arrived intact to millions of fans in a unique exposé of valor, honor, and inner strength exemplifying the plight of the individual against a parasitic attack by collectivists.

In this case, fans are voting with their wallets. But the progressive wishes for the vote to never take place, which is why more films like Dark Knight Rises does not see the light of day off a film executives desk. The process for which such restrictions occur were written by the former screen writer Ayn Rand in her masterpiece The Fountainhead. For me, to see Dark Knight Rises was equivalent to reading about Howard Roark’s construction of the Wayland Building. The journey is very similar and to see it happen is an act of wonder that I won’t soon forget.

Toohey in the novel The Fountainhead embraced socialism as a political philosophy because he was a weakling in his youth. He knew he could never be exceptional, so as he grew into an adult he used his natural manipulative abilities to bring down the world around him with aspirations of collectivism in an attempt to eliminate his own anxiety about a world that would always outpace him—as he would always be condemned to a life of mediocrity. Without knowing Anthony Lane personally, his views of the world are without doubt very close to the fictional views of Ellsworth Toohey and for the same reasons. They fear that stories like Dark Knight Rises might push society to reach for exceptionalism and are a direct threat to their meager, boring lives.

However, as the evidence at Comic Con testifies to, most people do aspire to become more than mediocre. The fan geeks and other Comic Con nerds are at least in their minds attempting to behold the heroics of exceptionalism even if their bodies cannot rise to meet the cause. It is in the act of embracing the idea of a superhero where magic actually happens, and this is to the peril of collectivism. No child at 5 years old yearns to the toy aisle at Target to search for the newest toy that will allow them to pretend they are at a New York dinner party impressing people like the snooty Anthony Lane. Instead kids look for fast cars in their Hot Wheels, action figures from The Dark Knight, and Star Wars light sabers because in such play is the attempt to be more than social yielding wants for us. Hidden deep in the mind of Anthony Lane is a concession that fantasy should be abandoned in favor of realism which falls under the spell of political control where magazines like The New Yorker set the standard of quality. But the box office results do not lie. Nobody waits in line to read The New Yorker and nobody would scammer to the theater 3 to 4 times to see the same movie like they are doing with Dark Knight Rises, if the movie was about collectivism. It is exceptionalism that audiences want and in the case of Dark Knight Rises, Director Christopher Nolan found a way to work around the system to give everybody but the progressive what they wanted. Warner Brothers get a smash hit that will help carry their studio through the rest of the year without worry. And the fans received a film that will fill their imaginations with a yearning for greatness, even if the closest they ever get is in a darkened movie theater.

The truth is in the box office take, because in spite of the progressives who wish to shape society with gentle nudges, the fans have put their money where their mouth is. This is devastating news to all the Ellsworth Toohey’s who are quite stunned at the box office take in spite of all their efforts. So it brings me great pleasure to see Dark Knight Rises continuing its path to a billion dollars. Because film studios must take note of what not just American audiences want, but the entire world. The world wants Batman, and they want their heroes uncorrupted, unafraid, and larger than life. And these days, the modern heroes’ ride the musical wave of Hans Zimmer as it is his music that most plays from my iPod hour by hour week by week on a quest for valor and hope of what can come from fearlessness.

Behold—the superman! What every young person should strive to emulate without apology!

To place in perspective just how important those box office numbers are for Dark Knight Rises consider that popular summer film geared exclusively toward older women, Magic Mike featuring male strippers was released on June 29th and to date has only made $110,894 million total, and has not been released to international markets. Magic Mike would be considered a progressive film as it plays to the feminist movement. The movie did very well the first couple of weekends as all the “liberated” women flocked to the theaters to see a movie that gave them revenge on men for all the “sexist” films they’ve watched over the years like American Pie and the Hangover. Opening that same weekend was Ted directed by the makers of the cartoon Family Guy which to date has made $203,414 million with a production budget of only $50 million, both movies could be considered a financial success, but not even in the same category as a film like Dark Knight Rises.

In the same arena however would be the latest Spiderman which is not considered a success and insiders are disappointed. Opening right before the 4th of July it had the benefit of a holiday week with a rare Tuesday midnight opening, then a following weekend to make a ton of money, but for the month of July it only made $250,640 with a production budget of $230 million, not exactly a runaway success. The only film that looks to beat Dark Knight Rises in the year of 2012 is The Avengers which opened in early May and to date has a worldwide box office take of $1.6 billion dollars after three months of release. Dark Knight Rises is already halfway at that point, and it still hasn’t opened in China or Italy. But what those last mentioned films have in common as opposed to the more progressive films like Ted and Magic Mike is that they are superhero movies—movies about individuals doing big and glorious things. Critics like those who write for The New Yorker and other so-called prominent publications seem to dislike money, so to them all the movies are on equal footing. But in a world where fans of movies vote with the price of a ticket, the differences are extremely clear. In the end, the ones left standing in the corner talking to themselves won’t be Batman at the dinner party but the pretentious socialite that wants to talk about feelings and how to save the poor which global socialism created. Everyone else will be at the movies watching Batman kick the crap out of the kind of people who write for The New Yorker.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Speed Traps and the Police: What a traffic citation is really about

Matt Clark was supposed to have The Communist author Paul Kengor on his afternoon radio program at WAAM, Ann Arbor, Michigan but the interview didn’t materialize. So Matt invited me on to fill the empty spot and cover my novel Tail of the Dragon that is a month away from its own release and he caught me at a good time, because I had a lot to say. A week ago on my way back from the whip competitions at Annie Oakley in Greenville, Ohio I received a speeding ticket from a Camden, Ohio cop parked cleverly on the side of the road with his radar facing the blind turn I was rounding. I was only doing 80 MPH at the time so when I saw the cop I let off the gas just a little not thinking I was going too fast. When the cop turned around to pull me over as I stormed into downtown Camden about 4 miles down the road I was shocked to learn that the speed limit along that very open stretch of RT. 127 was only 55 MPH. You can listen to that interview with Matt here:

That citation marked the third time this year that I have been pulled over by the police, which has been the story of my life. I received so many tickets in my youth that I lost my driver’s license until I was almost thirty years old. I rode a bicycle most of those years, partially to save gas, and also to stay out of trouble with the police. But I have even been pulled over for speeding on my bicycle, doing 34 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, so my speeding violations are not just limited to automobiles. I have been pulled over by everything the police have in their arsenal including helicopters, and undercover police. I have been pulled over so many times that the lights of a cop car don’t even faze me anymore. Come to think of it I don’t think they ever did. When the young kid from Camden pulled me over with his female partner sneaking up alongside the driver’s side window, I rolled down the automatic windows to let her know I knew she was there. The kid realized instantly that his “safety” act wasn’t going to work on me when he asked me why I was doing over 80 MPH, I told him, “that I didn’t think it was very fast.”

Camden is known for its tendency to speed trap motorists going through its town. I am very good at spotting cops using speed traps, but his was particularly well placed. The goal of the kid driving around in a tax payer funded cop car on a Saturday night was not to make Camden safer from people like me. There wasn’t another car on the road at that time of night, and I could have easily traveled at over 100 MPH without being unsafe, since my vehicle can do that kind of speed without trying. I wasn’t in any particular hurry, I was simply enjoying a nice drive through the countryside with my wife in the middle of the night and it was none of his business. Speed traps set artificially low, where the speed limit is only 55 MPH when it should be at least 65 MPH have only one purpose and that is to collect fines.

I still get pulled over by the police a lot because I do not acknowledge their scam. Because I have an Ohio driver’s license, if they catch me, I am obligated to pull over. I pay my fines and go about my way. My attitude about traffic violations is that it’s a scam, and I treat them that way. If I get caught so be it. But it doesn’t take away the intent. I do not allow their intent to change my behavior, which is why I get pulled over so much, even to this day. My displeasure at the political system that allows for open extortion of the public through traffic citations is the main driver of the actions which occur in my latest novel Tail of the Dragon.

Within the last 6 weeks I have performed the whip show up in Darke Country at Annie Oakley, I did a whip show down at the Cliffhanger Ranch in Virginia, I’ve been to Louisville twice and been down to Gatlinburg to visit my friends Ron and Killboy at the actual Tail of the Dragon. I have seen a lot of speed traps over those 6 weeks and not a one of them was for “safety.” When a cop is sitting on the side of the road with a radar gun there is only one purpose and that is to make money for his district. The cop is essentially a troll, a measly tax collector. I view them with the same distain as I do an IRS agent, only the cop is worse—they disguise their actions as being a service of public safety instead their real job as tax collectors. Police speed traps are the ultimate violations of taxation without representation. With the amount of laws there are on the books, there is no way a person can know if they are in violation, which makes them perpetually terrified when they see the law pull up next to them in a squad car. Most people freeze up and drive extra cautiously to avoid even the hint of violating a law they may not even know about.

Police as the representatives of the law work with law makers to find new ways to generate “revenue,” which in political speech means creative taxation. For instance, the road I was on outside of Camden was set at 55 MPH by lawmakers, which is set artificially low on purpose, so that the police in various districts can exercise their option to pull people over. The state gets a cut from any fines incurred so they are incentivized to be deceitful in how they collect additional revenue through “creative legislation.”

My book Tail of the Dragon hammers on the Tennessee Highway Patrol so relentlessly that I almost felt sorry for them. But my friend Ron assured me, “they deserve it.” The dirty little secret that my novel exposes is that police budgets are dependent on traffic citations. There are quotas even though it is denied in the open. Cops are expected to pull people over and generate a certain amount of revenue, which is what my novel Tail of the Dragon is all about. The cops in that story pull over the wrong guy, and a civil war begins in America.

The lid was ripped off this ticket writing scheme recently when Brendan Keefe of Channel 9’s I-Team exposed the scam at Arlington Heights in Cincinnati. The speed limit on Interstate 75 through Arlington Heights drops down to 55 MPH after motorists from Dayton and Detroit have been traveling 65 to 70 MPH for hundreds of miles. Arlington Heights police write 20 times more speeding tickets than any other mayors court in Ohio, and their yearly police budget of $1.2 million last year was supplemented by $412,000 generated just in traffic citations. Arlington Heights it was discovered had clerk employees stealing money that was paid in cash from traffic citations and authorities were wondering where all the money generated from the fines was going. A mom and her daughter stole more than $262,000 from the citations generated. The state of Ohio auditor Dave Yost noticed that Ohio wasn’t getting “their fair share” of the loot which prompted an investigation that would have been swept under the rug if Brendan didn’t dig deep into the story to reveal what was happening to the money. If Channel 9 didn’t do that investigation, there would be no prosecutions or scrutiny of the way traffic citation money was consumed in Arlington Heights. The revelation of injustice was so intense by the community after Brendan’s story that Police Chief Kenneth Harper pulled his officers off radar for a couple of days while the heat died down a bit.

Arlington Heights got caught going too far. They took too much money. Communities like Camden will poke a bit here and there and take just enough money not to infuriate the general population. They seek to pull over people like me who are just passing through, and will mail in the money, because they don’t want to upset the locals. The Tennessee Highway Patrol has been known to do that on the actual Tail of the Dragon which is how I came up with the idea for my novel. The police ticket writing business is not about safety, it’s 100% about making money.

When the young cop came to my window after writing my ticket back in his cruiser he attempted to use the “keep the speed down and be safe” line so he could pretend that his job had importance beyond a tax collector. I didn’t let him have it, “How much is the damn ticket, kid,” I cut him off.

His hands started shaking as he handed me the ticket and asked me to sign. After I signed he then gave me a sheet that had the fine amount circled on the back. He quickly said, “Have a nice evening,” and left. He didn’t want to be standing next to me when I saw the ticket amount. The ticket was for $185 dollars because it was 25 MPH over the speed limit. I laughed to myself when I saw that for speeds under 25 MPH the fine amount was $165 dollars. I told my wife that it was worth the $20 extra bucks to go 80 MPH because it’s all the same difference really. If the cop wanted to give me a ticket for going 5 MPH over the speed limit the ticket could have been $165 dollars. It was up to his discretion to pull over whoever he wanted when he wanted to, because the speed limit is impossible to stay under at only 55 MPH. I mean for God’s sake, a bicycle goes almost as fast!

People who disagree with me will say that if I would only follow the rules, then I wouldn’t have any trouble. Well, they are wrong. Most of the rules are created not to make a good and just society but to find a way to wrestle a little more money from the general population. In our public schools, the unions use “the good of the children” to justify a bottomless pit of tax increases. And with the police unions who give heavily to politics, it is “public safety” that is used to scam the public. Police will declare that the 55 MPH speed limit in Camden and Arlington Heights are a result of bad accidents, and that legislators determined the area to be unsafe, and lower speeds are required. But the real intention is to simply collect fines so the police officers can pay their own salaries as tax collectors.

My novel Tail of the Dragon is about a state governor who wants to run for President of the United States and he puts 100 officers on the streets of Tennessee to show his commitment to public safety. His real aim is to win the public union vote with such an act, and he does it without raising taxes on the people of Tennessee by telling those 100 officers that they must pay their own way. What that means is that they must pay for themselves with traffic citations. Many people who first read the book in manuscript form thought my plot line was too conspiratorial. Thank goodness American Book Publishing saw through that, and was willing to take a chance on a story written from a guy who has been involved intimately with the police game my entire life and rather than be broken from the experience I am angrier than ever, because it’s an unjust, and misleading system that paves the way to tyranny. And as Arlington Heights proves, little communities like Camden, Ohio are not about safety, but about tax collection. The reality of most of the police departments is that they are over staffed and have been created to make politicians feel good about themselves, because all they really have to do in society is to pass out tickets to fund their livelihoods like a parasite that is intended to appear as a friend, but in reality is just another IRS agent. That’s why after all this time; I still drive fast and always will. If they catch me, I pay the ticket and get on about my way. For me, the opportunity cost of going slow exceeds the amount of the tickets. But the character Rick Stevens in my new novel Tail of the Dragon isn’t quite so passive, and it sure is fun to ride along with that character as he more than thumbs his nose at the system and openly challenges the law all the way to The White House. For it is in fiction that we see the world the way it ought to be, and in Rick Stevens we see in him what many of us wish for in the deepest recesses of our fantasies. A way to fight back at the law, and to win.


By the way, the Blount County Courthouse you see in the background is the same courthouse that the action in my novel takes place. Sometimes the truth is wilder than fiction, unless you make it “faction.”
____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

The Rigged Game of School Funding: Monroe residents stand up for themselves

The Monroe School Levy is about go before voters and I have been hearing since my article last week that the levy opposition in that district under state financial emergency had shabby campaign signs and a poor, broken down group of protestors who were in need of more education themselves. Such comments from the pro levy supporters are normal since they can’t argue the real facts, so they attack the credibility of the people who oppose them. In this case the organized effort to oppose the 7.03 mill levy Monroe needs to stay out-of-state control. The situation is so heated that 25% of all Monroe homes have viewed articles at The Voice forums on Mainstreet Monroe’s website, and it is obvious that levy supporters are not at all happy to see an opposition standing against them.

http://www.mainstreetmonroe.com/voice/topic.asp?topic_id=26649

Upon reading the comments at The Voice I decided to go into Monroe myself to see all these haphazard signs by the No Monroe resistance and what I found were some really nice signs that were well thought out and financed, and they were all over town. That had to infuriate the Monroe School System. It doesn’t matter what school district it is, the government education system does not like opposition to their plans.

With all the discussion on both sides, I will have to say I admire Tom Birdwell of the current Monroe School Board. His argument is that residents either vote for the 7.03 mill 5 year levy in Monroe, or the state will force Monroe to merge with Middletown where there is room in some of their buildings. But the catch is that Middletown already is operating at 47.16 mills, 7.02 mills higher than Monroe’s current mills rate. Birdwell is offering to speak to anybody personally to answer their questions, which is a very stand-up thing to do. But what he is assuming is that the state will be able to successfully force the people of Monroe to pay for taxes that they didn’t vote for in a forced merge with Middletown—that Middletown was foolish enough to approve. At that mill rate, no wonder Middletown is a ghost town these days. You certainly don’t see businesses flocking to locate there. More info on the specifics of the levy is at the link below. The truth is Monroe is not obligated to pay for taxes they didn’t approve of, and a state bureaucrat cannot politically do so. Birdwell made a compelling argument, but it is without any teeth. The state may be able to legally arrange such an injustice, but some politician will lose skin off their back with such a move, and this shoots major holes in the Yes Monroe position that Birdwell represents.

http://www.mainstreetmonroe.com/articles/monroe-school-taxes-will-increase-by-7-mills

At the heart of the No Levy argument is former school board member Mike Irwin who appears to be attempting to redeem some of his views from the past. Some school board members learn once they’ve been through the management of a district what the problems are, and they do correct their thinking. Often school board members feel they must go along with the patriotism of a district and they ignore the perilous situations that the unions put them in. School board members know there isn’t much they can do about 80% of their costs that are tied up in wages and benefits, and budget items are controlled by union contracts. If a school board shows resistance to the union elements, then the union will threaten to strike. If a school board member does not lie down and play dead before the labor union, then the union attacks the character of the school board member publicly. This doesn’t happen directly most of the time, but indirectly through community infiltration into peer groups. School board members with weak stomachs find it’s best to just get along with everyone. They work closely with the PTA groups who become the voice of the union indirectly and are the source of much community infiltration. (That’s why they call them Parent Teacher Associations.) The people who always get left out of the education debate are the long-term residents who have already raised their kids and pay their taxes, but get sick of being hit up constantly by out-of-control costs driven by excessive labor expectations.

http://www.mainstreetmonroe.com/articles/school-levy-debate-goes-down-to-the-wire

Older residents have learned to brave the multiple perils that come at their children, and have learned not to respond neurotically to every claim a unionized work force claims. Most of the pro levy supporters, teachers included are under 40. Many of the people criticizing the No Levy people on The Voice are in fact in their early 30’s and have very young children in the district. These thirty year olds are children raising children and they must be listened to with caution. As parents they have a long way to go and a whole lot to learn before they get there. Someday, when they become older and wiser they will also be No Voters. But the way the education system works currently is it is the youth who get all the attention, the students in the schools of course, and their young, inexperienced credit card debt incurring parents. In a game of the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the quiet ones get ignored—and those are the typical “No Voters.”

http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/news/local/opposing-sides-debate-how-to-solve-monroe-fiscal-e/nP6zD/

As I drove through Monroe taking the pictures shown on this article it was nice to see those quiet types finally sticking up for themselves and voicing their opinion with some well designed No Levy campaign signs. After I took enough pictures I went on over to Kings Island to ride a few roller coasters and think about the dynamics of the education situation under a setting sun while in line under a mister machine. At Kings Island that night I watched some of the people playing all the games set up in Coney Island–the games where players threw undersized rings around oversized bottles, and tried to shoot basketballs into undersized rims to win prizes. I realized that many of the people playing those games were younger people—and were probably levy supporters in their local school districts. They were doing with their children essentially what they were doing while playing carnival games at Kings Island—throwing money at a chance to win a prize.

Parents who vote for school levies believe that if they just pay a little more money, that they’ll win a prize for their children, and that prize is a good life. What the parents don’t understand is that the games are all rigged. Every now and then someone does win, but most people don’t. Public education is a scam as it is set up now, without competition so they can charge anything they want for their service. In Monroe and every other school district in the country it is collective bargaining that is the real villain of the out-of-control costs. Nobody in their right mind would pay all employees the same level of income based on years of service as opposed to performance. Collective bargaining is what has driven up the wages and forced Middletown to maintain a 47.16 mill levy left over from their heyday of economic activity. The unions in Middletown destroyed their industry, and the Middletown Mall is the ancient relic of that previous economic boom. What’s left now are the high taxes to pay the public employees after all the people who had money packed up and left town voting with their feet. That’s why Middletown has room in their school buildings, because enrollment is down. Now Monroe is facing the same temptation. If they give in to the union, they will find themselves in a slow decline economically with business as usual returning to the administration of the district finances, just as Little Miami did when they finally passed their levy after 9 attempts. If residents say NO to the levy they will put the weight of the financial strain squarely on the union where it belongs to wiggle, squirm, and play the squeaky wheel game. But finances will be forced out of the shadows so everyone can see what’s happening.

Monroe will have to decide what kind of community they want, and experience says that growth occurs by saying NO. Saying YES is agreeing to a slow death. Saying NO stops the bleeding. But regardless of what happens on Tuesday August 7th, at least the quiet NO voters have decided to voice their opinion with a spirited debate which is healthy, and very much-needed.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“With Tale of the Dragon, Rich Hoffman combines NASCAR, Rebel Without a Cause, and Smokey and the Bandit. If you like fast cars, and hate speed traps, this is the book for you. And just every once in a while, any real American wishes he had a Firebird like the one in Tale of the Dragon.“

Best Selling Co-author Larry Schweikart, A Patriot’s History of the United States  (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VISIT US ON FACEBOOK)

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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