Tag: 700 WLW

Hunting RINOs In West Chester, Ohio: Why nobody should vote for Stoker or Wong

I nearly fell off my motorcycle traveling down RT 747 the other day laughing when I saw that West Chester trustee Cathy Stoker had the term “fiscal conservative” over her name on a campaign sign for reelection.  Then her partner in crime, Lee Wong had a sign very nearby that had the picture of an elephant on it displaying that Wong was a Republican.  They are the kind of Republicans that progressives dream of, Republicans like those portrayed in the HBO series shown below–Republicans that are really Democrats shaped by 100 years of European progressivism.  (Hint–its only a matter of time before Tea Party types get their own representation on shows like the HBO series.  Stay tuned to The Blaze on The Dish Network to see what is coming for tomorrow)  Those two politicians are extremely funny, misleading, and is the perfect definition of the term “RINO” (Republican in name only) which has emerged over the last couple of years to describe machine politic Republicans who have captured the party over the years and represent a progressive position that is quite to the left of the political center from the World War II generation.  Stoker is listed as a Democrat in past elections, but her campaign sign clearly attempts to avoid that association.  These RINO types like Stoker and Wong, are naturally trying to appeal to the strong Republican base which resides in West Chester, Ohio but they are far from traditional conservatives.

It wasn’t long ago that Senator Bill Coley at an event with John Kasich confided in me his frustration with the term RINO.  Coley attempted to attach pay to performance for teachers in Ohio, but the idea hasn’t taken leaving him to openly support school levies—which is why he was trying to convince me he wasn’t a RINO.  Deals and compromise are part of American politics, according to RINOs—which is how they ended up moved off from their original conservative positions.  Currently Ohio governor John Kasich is seeking a way to bypass the Ohio legislature so that he can expand Medicaid.  Kasich wants to use the poor through Obamacare as a vehicle to win votes for his 2016 run as president.  And West Chester congressman John Boehner is looking for anyway he can to cut a deal with President Obama and Harry Reid so he can resume his golf game without feeling guilty about the government shut-down.

Even though all the politicians mentioned are all Republican, they are not all conservatives, at least not when it counts.  Stoker and Wong support openly many of the United Nations Agenda 21 methods of micromanaging communities by global influence and expanding Medicaid is the support of Obamacare in an indirect fashion—which might as well be considered open communism of the medical industry.  Kasich stands for nothing if he’ll buy into that concept just to win an extra 2 to 3% of the vote over Democratic challengers.  If Boehner wants to cut a deal with Obama, he has already lost, as Obama has displayed a willingness to lie, cheat and steal in order to achieve his political aims, which are not good for the Republic of The United States.  These kinds of people are why Tea Party patriots have begun calling them RINOs, which that same establishment has declared war against, so to preserve their cancerous hold on the name of the Republican Party.  The RINOs are fighting for the right to use the Republican name to get elected into a government jobs with great pay, prestige, and social benefits.  They perform the task with the same looseness that the socialist leaning West Chester trustee Lee Wong uses an elephant on his campaign sign to pretend he’s an actual conservative.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON WONG AND STOKER.

The Republican establishment is vowing to strike back against the resurgence of conservatism as many of them know that if the party returns back to the right—where it belongs, they will be left out of the political loop, so they are fighting for their very lives, as reported by the Associated Press below.

The AP reported:

From county chairmen to national party luminaries, veteran Republicans across the country are accusing tea party lawmakers of staining the GOP with their refusal to bend in the budget impasse in Washington.

The Republican establishment also is signaling a willingness to strike back at the tea party in next fall’s elections.

“It’s time for someone to act like a grown-up in this process,” former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu argues, faulting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and tea party Republicans in the House as much as President Barack Obama for taking an uncompromising stance.

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is just as pointed, saying this about the tea party-fueled refusal to support spending measures that include money for Obama’s health care law: “It never had a chance.”

The anger emanating from Republicans like Sununu and Barbour comes just three years after the GOP embraced the insurgent political group and rode its wave of new energy to return to power in the House.

Good luck, GOP elitists.
Your whiny soft core conservatism may work out East but it won’t carry the Red States

– See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/10/establishment-gop-blasts-tea-party-promises-to-strike-back-in-2014/#sthash.dS7lSbaC.dpuf

I have been to events with Republicans where 200 to 300 very high-profile “conservatives” gathered in one place, and I can report that only about 7 to 10 people in the entire room actually felt any real conviction for conservative values.  The rest of the Republicans were in the party to “cut a deal,” socialize, or sleep with their friend’s wife over wine provided by business donors hoping for some sort of regulatory relief.  They were in the party for what they could get out of it, not for the philosophic basis of the name “Republican.”  Naturally I have been invited into these circles because of my “skills” but when it was noticed that I was to the right of right, they realized I was one of the RINO hunters, and not a RINO—and it scared them.  Upon those discoveries, they attempt to play the same game that Senator Ted Cruz currently has to endure—and I suspect that the outcome will not fare well for them either.

To call yourself a conservative then behave like a liberal simply makes a person a liar.  In this year of 2013 Stoker and Wong have two challengers to their seats, and both are true conservatives the way I would term it, one is Matt King and the other is Mark Welch.  I personally know both men, and they are what the Republican Party should be moving to—away from the domination of RINOs who are only in politics to secure contracts for their business interests. More about Mark and Matt can be seen below in a quote from the Journal News:

Mark Welch, of West Chester Twp., said he’s running for a trustee spot in order to make the township more business friendly. The owner of Bajon Salon & Spa for 13 years, Welch said his business has had to work around the township’s strict zoning regulations.

“I got keenly more aware of community issues and it solidified my desire to do something for the community,” Welch said, of becoming a small business owner after a 20-year career in sales.

Welch said during an election two years ago he had submitted his ticket and planned to campaign, but bowed out at the last-minute because he didn’t want to take votes away from the other Republican candidate.

“I told them, ‘Two years from now, I will be back,’ ” Welch said.

Welch has since been serving on the township’s zoning revision committee and is a member of the West Chester-Liberty Chamber Alliance. Welch said it was after he placed a feather flag sign outside his business to promote the location that the township’s sign ordinance required him to remove it.

“It’s hard enough to stay in business these days … business are trying to create jobs and pay taxes and the zoning is saying, ‘Don’t promote yourself,’ ” Welch said.

Also vying for a spot as West Chester Twp. trustee is Matthew King, a Procter & Gamble IT contractor who moved to the township in 1998. King said he’s been drawn to politics since his teens.

“When I was high school I just thought Ronald Reagan was the coolest president ever and sort of got interested then,” King said.

King said he hadn’t considered running for public office until getting more involved in the community over the years.

“I’ve been around the area long enough to remember when a lot of the towns around were really thriving and I just want to make sure West Chester stays some place like that and doesn’t decline,” King said. “I’m concerned that our current board is a little too content.”

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/newcomers-challenging-incumbents-for-variety-of-re/nY4KF/

While many people outside the political machine feel honored to be invited to the kind of events where they can actually get to know powerful politicians, it doesn’t impress me, so I have no problem revealing the kind of behavior that goes on.  I simply don’t like people who don’t have strong convictions about things, so I don’t like many politicians.  When I attend social events where they are I know their primary interest is in how much money they can get out of me, and little else, so I am not enamored by pomp and circumstance.  The whole infatuation with the drama of any political class is left over psychological garbage donated to the human race from our European descendants—and should be shed away like the skin of a snake in favor of a healthier philosophy.

Last weekend a dear friend and frequent reader here talked about their long career in fighting against these types of people—RINOs who pretend that they are all about reforming schools, standing for fiscal conservatism, and defending liberty in The United States.  It is often emotionally draining to discover all too late that most everyone they ever knew were hypocrites using conservative politics to advance their financial power through career changes, or business connections.  Most people who are true to their philosophy find themselves suffering some sort of emotional breakdown when they realize that their friends are not actually friends, but parasites feeding of the social system of politics.  This person and I talked about the RINOs of yesterday’s politics and the RINOs of today, many of them I’m currently entangled with.  When I was asked how I dealt with the betrayal, the let downs, and the lack of any conviction from the RINOs in my life, I simply stated that I read a lot of books, play video games, and consume myself with my multiple hobbies.  I don’t need them in my life for anything, so I am not at any kind of disadvantage if they decide they want to disassociate with me.   And if they want to move into physical, or intellectual combat, they can be crushed easily—so they are of no worry—and that’s how they must be viewed.

RINOs are defeated by standing on convictions.  It is not the task of the masses to move to the political left to fit the career aims of John Kasich.   It is not the job of the conservative base to let John Boehner off the hook so he can resume his golf game and “man tan” regiments by cutting a deal with a communist president.  And it is not the job of conservatives to give socialists like Stoker and Wong more years to use the economy of West Chester as a platform to prop up Lakota schools, Agenda 21 sidewalk construction, and taking federal money to blow on pet projects of social malpractice.   It is not the job of people who are truly conservative to change their view and names of things to suit the people who wish to profit off politics.  It is their job to hunt tricksters down like the RINOs they are, and to kick them out of office putting an end to machine politics.  It is more important to have representatives in government than just a Republican as governor, or as Speaker of the House who will allow themselves to be drug kicking and screaming to the left using Overton Window tactics so to preserve their thirty year aims of being “career politicians.”

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Ghost of Bentham: Needs of the many do not outweigh the few

Bill O’Reilly history will remember as one of the most influential people of the 21st Century.  His news show on Fox is an unmitigated success attracting millions of viewers every night Monday through Friday, but that is not the most beneficial aspect of O’Reilly.  O’Reilly will go down in history as one of the most prolific authors of all time as his Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and now Killing Jesus will sell more books than any handful of top 20 New York Times authors.  His lasting memory will be in his literary legacy, not his television show.  O’Reilly is a “down the middle” kind of guy, and represents well the kind of mind that assisted in voting favorably many of the modern troubles plaguing our nation, such as debt management, welfare support, and public education statism.  That is why it was so remarkable that O’Reilly in the wake of the many debates on Obamacare finally asked the very important question on his show, “does the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

The answer of course is that it doesn’t, no mob of collective rule has the right over individual citizens.  The needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the few, and that premise destroys the basic premise of democracy—which causes considerable problems.  This is why O’Reilly finally asked the unsaid question on his show.

Any needs that the many may have over the few which is articulated with such questions are driven straight out of communist text.  It was philosophers like Jeremy Bentham who helped inspire Karl Marx to write The Communist Manifesto which would bring to the world the idea of communism directly attacking capitalism as an economic concept.  Jeremy Bentham (/ˈbɛnθəm/; 15 February 1748 OS – 6 June 1832) was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Bentham became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalizing of homosexual acts.[1] He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children.[2] He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights.[3] Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them “nonsense upon stilts”.[4]

Bentham’s students included his secretary and collaborator James Mill, the latter’s son, John Stuart Mill, the legal philosopher John Austin, as well as Robert Owen, one of the founders of utopian socialism. Bentham has been described as the “spiritual founder” of University College London, though he played little direct part in its foundation.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham

Karl Marx’s criticisms of Bentham[edit]

Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, writes:[104]

“ Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he who would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is “useful,” “because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law.” Artistic criticism is “harmful,” because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, “nulla dies sine linea”, piled up mountains of books.

”

Marx’s accusation is twofold. In the first place, he says that the theory of utility is true by definition and thus does not really add anything meaningful. For Marx, a productive inquiry had to investigate what sorts of things are good for people—that is, what our nature, alienated under capitalism, really is. Second, he says that Bentham fails to take account of the changing character of people, and hence the changing character of what is good for them. This criticism is especially important for Marx, because he believed that all important statements were contingent upon particular historical conditions.

Marx argues that human nature is dynamic, so the concept of a single utility for all humans is one-dimensional and not useful. When he decries Bentham’s application of the ‘yard measure’ of now to ‘the past, present and future’, he decries the implication that society, and people, have always been, and will always be, as they are now; that is, he criticizes essentialism. As he sees it, this implication is conservatively used to reinforce institutions he regarded as reactionary. Just because in this moment religion has some positive consequences, says Marx, doesn’t mean that viewed historically it isn’t a regressive institution that should be abolished.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

Bentham was creating the foundations of utopian socialism at a time when America was fighting for its independence from the same imperial forces that created the left leaning philosopher.  Today, because of Star Trek using the character of Spock to utter the sensibilities of Bentham the entire world has come to believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, which is a communist foundation concept.  While Marx was critical of the looseness of Bentham’s definitions, he used the direction to shape his own philosophy of Marxism.

It is to support this foundation of collectivism that public education institutions have been targeted as factories of making students ignorant instead of brilliant, because the goal is to train the masses to be unchallenging servants to the political rulers of the current age.  By “dumbing down” the masses through the education process, modern statists do not have to concern themselves with being smarter than their potential rivals for power, and seek to keep the masses at their back with stupidity—which is the ultimate failure of Bentham’s philosophic premise.  The needs of the many simply become a mob of ignorant souls under any political system—and nothing good comes of it in the long run.  Man-kind simply regresses.

So the answer to Bill’s question is that, YES, it is morally wrong to enforce the needs of the many at the expense of the few—because often it is the few, the exceptional, and the driven that create everything that the many enjoy.  When the few are penalized, tortured, and ran into the ground—sacrificed like offerings to the Mayan gods of the Yucatan Peninsula, then society will crumble completely and the needs of the many will grow as there will be nobody to provide substance to them—since they pillaged all value from society with their unchecked demands.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

A Better Reality: Life in ‘The Old Republic’

The very expensive wine was flowing freely at the type of dinner that cost a small group of five over $2500.  It was the type of thing that business professionals and political science majors spend many thousands of dollars in college hoping they’ll achieve some day.  The minds were powerful; the participants were dressed in their latest fashions from Nordstroms, and the topics were at the top of discussion in any level of human endeavor.  It was a power dinner and at 8 PM in the evening my wife sent me a text………..”are you done yet.”  I replied, “not yet, I’m about to wrap it up.  I’ll be home very soon.  Get everything ready.”  The handshakes concluded and all members of the small party left into the parking lot by different trajectories as I headed for my motorcycle parked far away but in clear view of the restaurant.  I do this so my enemies cannot tamper with my transportation while I’m involved in these kinds of activities.  I never sit with my back to a crowd, and I never sit somewhere where I cannot see my transportation at all times.  It is an old trick I learned from friends I who were “hit men” during the 80’s working for a branch of the mob stationed in Chicago responsible for the Chester Road portion of business coming out of Sharonville, Ohio.  Precautions no longer necessary I headed home quickly and within 25 minutes was in front of the same computer station that had been set up 9 months prior for the solitary purpose of playing an online game called The Old Republic.  My wife and I have duel computers built specifically for heavy online gaming, and she was waiting for me with both units powered up and ready to go.  I sat down and we began to play the same video game that we had played almost every day since the previous December when we started our journey into a galaxy far, far away set in a time, a long time ago.

I consider the time my wife and I have spent playing that game together to be far more important than the value of the dinner described, or any other dealing I’ve been involved with at any point in my life.  The reason can be seen in the above video.  In the real world that we all live in there are veils of deceit that permeate everything—even the dinner mentioned.  There is a sense that nothing is as it really is—that everything is dressed up to disguise the ugliness that is left unmentioned.  Our society is at war, but nobody discusses it—the war is not over racism, equal rights, or even political ideology—but over philosophy—even religion.  It is a war over values which nobody discusses.  However, in the Star Wars game my wife and I have spent well over a thousand hours playing together as one of our favorite past times, values are the theme of the entire game, and I relish the environment.

I feel most comfortable on the space ship I have in the game in the middle of space away from the noise of the busy metropolis worlds, or the baron outposts that exist in the outer rim.  The ship is mine, the space is mine, and the control I have of what goes on within it are for me and me alone.  Of all the cool things to do in The Old Republic my favorite are the space missions.  They are not traditional flight simulators, but the graphic combat is absolutely astounding.  I never tire of them.  In that place the perspective of existence is easy to see.  The values of the game make sense to me, and the war between the factions eluded to in the above video are those of our modern age, which go unsaid in the dinner meetings previously described.  In such meetings it is permissible to discuss football team power rankings, baseball playoff scenarios, and the latest in fashion, but not the things that really matter—philosophy.  But in The Old Republic, my wife and I can play side by side on many far flung worlds against players who adhere openly to the opposite philosophy, the fight between statism represented by the Imperial players, and individual freedom represented by players of The Old Republic.  The fight for freedom versus control is out in the open and obvious.  Those attracted to the Imperial faction tend to support statism, while those who support the Republic tend to support individual freedom, and within the confines of that game, it is easier to see the boundaries that exist in the real world—and I relish the honesty.

I have said it on many occasions, I believe Star Wars and their movies, the television shows, the many novels, the comics, and the video games are bringing a philosophy to tomorrow’s world that will have far-reaching consequences deep into the future.  Those consequences are stepped carefully around during dinner meetings as nobody feels comfortable discussing them in public, because most people feel unqualified to express their feelings about philosophy.  But philosophy is the foundation of thought, and without firmness in a manner of belief, people have a tendency to drift in their convictions.  However, in the world of The Old Republic, the characters are not shy about their beliefs, and they are willing to fight to support them—which for my wife and I, is why we’d rather play that game together, than do just about anything else.  Meetings like the one I was engaged in do not impress her.  But beating a terrible villain on a remote world in The Old Republic does.

When I arrived at my game that day my wife had snacks lined up by my keyboard ready for two or three hours of gaming.  Her computer sits right next to mine and our characters link up online so we can travel together in that virtual world the way we would in the real one.  We both love the game for its honesty—and for the commitment to goodness that The Old Republic stands for.  I enjoy fighting for that Republic the way I’d like to fight for the American Republic—if only people in the real world were as honest with their beliefs, as they are within the world of a video game.  Under such conditions, I will choose the honesty of fiction over the falseness of reality.

There is a freedom in the of The Old Republic that does not exist in the real world of current, but it should.  The philosophy of America articulated through The Constitution allows for that freedom, but in practice, it has been surrendered to discussion about sports teams, and redundant trivia—leaving the most important things in life unrepresented.  In The Old Republic I am free to punish evil, and stand for good without the worry and concern of confrontation with statist government.  In the real world there is constant worry about arrests, legal costs, and social castigation for doing the right things—and standing up for what’s right over what’s wrong.  In The Old Republic, such concerns do not exist, which is why my wife and I prefer that environment over all others.  That is the reason even after a long day associating with the kind of people young professionals dream of growing up to correlate with, and dinning in luxury among—my eye was on the clock dreaming of getting home to my wife who awaited me at the spaceport of Corellia.  It is then that we experience freedom, and justice the way the human mind desires—away from the failed philosophies, and political corruption that leads to war, and the suppression of freedom in the real Republic of America.  It is in the fictional world of the computer where real freedom resides, and why video games in general are so popular—and hold so much power over the minds of tomorrow.  I foresee a literal day when the video above comes true as shown, in the world of the living, of the real.  The statists are out to destroy those who cherish freedom, and the fight has not yet manifested beyond unspoken words over wine glasses and sports trivia.  But it’s coming……….trust me.  For now, the only world that matters is the one in The Old Republic—where honesty is clearer through the lost art of philosophy accompanied by the sights, sounds, and action from a computer generated world that is freer providing relief from the real world we are all chained to.

My wife and I have never really returned from our vacation that started so many months ago during the cold December months of late 2012.  I have cut back my personal meetings and interactions to a bare minimum in favor of this fictional world because the vacation has been that good, so good that not even the indulgencies of opulence conducted under luxurious and socially acceptable conditions hold a candle to tasting freedom within the purely imagination driven world of The Old Republic.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Bee Hive of Lakota Schools: Parasites, Thugs and Communists

A wonderful example of the labor union hypocrisy penetration of public education came to me through an email message from a guy who communicates with me regularly arguments contrary to mine. As it is well-known by now, I report virtually every bit of news that comes out of my school district of Lakota with the intention to combat the constant tax requests imposed by that education institution upon my community.  I write at least one article every day, sometimes two or three. When Lakota is light on news, I cover other topics discussing schools all across the country, and sometimes just to take a break I talk about other kinds of things all together.  However, the primary focus of my blog is the evils of public education particularly centered on my home district.

Of course there are people who take great offense to what I write, because they profit off the education business in some way or another as it currently is.  And those people look constantly for some way to undermine my arguments.  That is the spirit of the letter listed below where the commenter sent me three pictures of nice, pleasant women who teach at Cherokee Elementary as an attempt to invalidate my claims that teachers are typically, parasites upon civilization, thugs as their radicalism brings harm to the communities that employ them, and are serving an occupation that is designed around the philosophy of communism.  I list the letter below without the pictures of the teachers to protect them from unneeded scrutiny.

Rich,

 

I am a little tired of seeing images of teachers from other cities in your blog.  So I give you images of three teachers from Cherokee Elementary.  The titles above them have been given to them for no apparent reason other than they are teachers in Lakota, just as you have labeled virtually every teacher in Lakota as being parasitic, a communist, and a thug.  Why don’t you start with these three teachers in your effort to call out the bad guys instead of beating around the bush with the out-of-towners you like to put in your blog.

 

Parasite

 (picture omitted)

Thug

  (picture omitted)

Communist

 (picture omitted)

 

 

William Schmidt

 

 

What I love about that letter is it shows the weakness of the labor argument.  The primary driver of high taxes imposed upon communities by their school districts is the collective bargaining agreements that were typically reached through the threat of labor strikes by the same teachers that were mentioned above.  It is through collectivism that the budgets of Lakota were wrecked—as all boats in the teacher labor pool rise together regardless of skill level and personal behavior.  Typically, through collectivism, the bad teachers such as the parade of teachers who have been busted recently at Lakota for sexual misconduct hide their evil actions behind the smiling faces of the nice teachers exhibited from Cherokee Elementary.  Through collectivism the bad, unskilled, and corrupt disguise their failures behind the good deeds of the few.

When a bee hive is identified as a threat to a small child out of fear that the youngster might swat at it and stir up the hive of bees into stinging in retaliation, it is the fear of the collective bees that is the threat.  But when individual bees are seen landing from flower to flower harmlessly doing their business, they might be considered a thing of beauty.  Typically when I see a bee land in my swimming pool, I will scoop it out hoping to save it, so that it can live life one more day.  But if a bee hive were near a spot where a child I cared about played, I would incinerate the hive killing thousands of bees in the process to protect the child.

The collective bargaining agreements reached by the teachers unions are a bee hive in our communities.  It protects the bad by using the good as props to show value for the collective whole, which is what the letter writer above was attempting to do—sensing that public sentiment is very much against their public education arguments.  He is attempting to play on my sentiments, which are universally human, to fish out a struggling bee out of a pool to save it from drowning, when I am arguing the incineration of the entire hive.  The hope is that by pulling the focus away from the collectivism that caused the trouble of creating school levies and focusing on the individual lives of a few teachers the bad behavior of the of the collective whole will be forgotten.   They are attempting a trick from the past which created the entire problem.

Collectivists in education want the power of group force behind them to advance their position, but when they get into trouble they seek individual recognition.  When a teacher has sex with a student it is just one or two bad apples that have went bad, but when they want more money, they collectively stop work and hold children hostage from their educations to force wage increases.  I show routinely that these problems are nationwide and exist in every school where labor unions control the political structure.  This leaves the only strategic maneuver by them to loot off the good merits of a few teachers to justify the cost of the entire bee hive.  The teachers mentioned above I have no doubt are nice people taken individually.  They are someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s special someone, and are not the epitome of evil.  Yet, they allow their good names to be tarnished in association with the group hive of their labor union where statist advocates use the good deeds of a few to justify the evils of the many with looted value.  This makes them every bit the menace as the child molester because the pervert is allowed to hide behind such good teachers through the collective bargaining process.  This makes the entirety of the teaching profession in public school an evil entity which should be defunded at the very least, and eradicated politically before it further destroys the next generation the way it has the previous three.

The attempt to use three mild-mannered teachers from Cherokee Elementary as a way to run cover for a profession that advocates open communism, and radical Democratic political policy on the backs of children is sheer evil.  Evil is not always in the biggest, scariest foe, but sometimes is most dangerous when the single bee stuck in the swimming pool appears harmless enough, but is simply a trap for the entire hive.  Public education is on a declining trend and its advocates are seeking the good name of the very few to loot their collective value for their perpetual salvation.  However, eventually just like money, good deeds do run out and once the good stop offering themselves up as sacrificial victims to the merits of collectivism, the communists, the thugs, and the social parasites will have nowhere left to turn as they are then exposed for lack of anything to hide themselves behind.  This is the nature, and frustration of the note sent to me from an education advocate who can’t fathom such a realization.  But even if the skill is not present to see the facts, the facts exist and will not go away just because pro education supporters wish them to.  Once the masks of goodness are stripped away from individual analysis, what becomes quickly evident is that the teaching profession is filled from the top to the bottom with parasites, thugs, and communists.  This leaves the next statement which should then be obvious to all—what will society do to protect themselves from this diabolical menace that unleashes upon all society an invisible attack designed to conquer the minds of children before anybody ever realizes it?  The first step is to not approve tax increases, and from there let the system collapse on itself.  The way to destroy the bee hive is not to become filled with compassion for one single bee, but to see the threat as a whole.  In this case, every public school in America is a bee hive filled with busy bees functioning as a collective unit for the manufacture of honey.  But in these schools the honey is not the kind consumed as food, but is taxes for the solitary consumption of the federal government and their statist policies of doom concocted with tyranny in mind sold to the public through promises of comfort…………and goodness.

 

Notice how all those lip dub videos were published around the same time as Lakota did their video.  Lakota wasn’t doing anything new.  They were just copying off everyone else like all collective organisms do, and that is what they are teaching children.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Overworked Lakota Teacher: New levy talking points from the regime of public union monopolies

If it was ever wondered what the cost of public education monopolies are, read the following comment from an apparent Lakota teacher who came unglued the other day on the Channel 9 website for a story they did about the upcoming levy attempt.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The teacher’s comments are shown below.  Before I dismantle this teacher’s claims to pain and suffering, read it for yourself.  The short of the issue is that this teacher can make the claims of hardship because they are working for a monopoly—they have no competition to judge against.  So they can claim any little thing as an unwarranted pain, because the unionized workforce of the teaching profession backed by the federal government is operating as an anti-trust.  Their demands, and pay rates are dictated by price-fixing, and their expectations are ridiculously high because of it.   Now read what a teacher from Lakota thinks is a hard day as they answer to a commenter named “Joe Jobs.”

Let me be succinct in case you can only hold one or two thoughts in your head at any one time. First, those “unions” are made up of teachers; teachers who spend their every day in the classroom with their students and then do the grueling “union” job after hours in many cases. Teachers choose their profession because they are dedicated to helping children be successful people and citizens of their communities. See, it benefits us all when our children succeed in life. Joe, take a “sick day” this week and visit any Lakota school. Sign in and tell the secretary you want to volunteer in a classroom for the day. Don’t forget to pack a small lunch; you won’t be going out and you won’t have much time to eat that lunch anyway. Better be sure to go to the bathroom before the students arrive, because once they do, your only “break” of the day will be after the students go home. Please dive right in; help that teacher manage classes filled with students who arrive with a myriad of abilities and challenges. Some don’t speak English yet. Others are living through family wars, losses of parents or jobs, some are latchkey and arrive at school before the sun is up and most people are not even dressed for work. Be sure you help the students understand how to edit their writing to make it clear. Then help the students understand the challenging new math curriculum that the state and the new “common core” dictates they must understand and succeed with. You’ll have to write for the student whose muscular disease no longer allows her to hold a pencil. You’ll need to always be aware of the time so that students get to the nurse for their insulin checks and their medications. The counselor will need to see some who desperately need his/her help. Several in your class will need to leave at their appointed time to go to the resource room where they’ll continue to work with their specialist who tailors their work to meet the individual needs of each of those students who struggle. Don’t forget to challenge those kids who fly through their work and crave more! Follow the students as they travel their day to each of their classes without their favorite subjects: art, music, and PE. They’ll get a lunch and small recess; you won’t. During your half hour lunch, I hope you can eat with one hand while you answer parent emails with the other, tutor that child that comes in needing help with their math facts, and of course, you’ll have a meeting 4 out of 5 days. When everyone is exhausted, and you finally send your students home, get your butt outside because you have carpool duty. See, Lakota lost most of their busing, so you’ll stand outside every afternoon while hundreds of cars line up to retrieve their children. Pay attention; make sure the right kid gets into their car quickly. The kids will be too busy talking with their friends to be paying attention, so you’ll have to. Finally, at 4:30, go to the bathroom, finally, and drag your butt into your car. Did you remember all those papers that must be assessed before the kids arrive tomorrow? Take them home. Forget watching TV or going out for a run or walk, you have work to do. This is your 60+ hour a week job, that you love, by the way, for 40+ weeks of the year. With an advanced degree and 20 years of experience, what is your salary? Seriously? Think again, JoeJobs. Support our children and their education. Teachers have been doing just that every day.less

I see no problem with arriving at work at 7:30 in the morning and not taking a break until 5 PM.  The teacher however does get a bit of a breather between class periods all through the day, so no matter how grueling this teacher attempts to portray their day; it is an obvious neurotic exaggeration.  A ten-hour work day is a piece of cake, and I have offered Lakota schools to take this teacher’s challenge and teach not just one of their classes, but four of them at the same time.  I made such a challenge to Lakota East’s Spark Magazine where Dean Hume is the head of that endeavor.  Of course they didn’t take me up on the offer, and our relationship is so deteriorated now that it is off the table.  But the gist is they know at Lakota that their claims of hardship are overblown in a big way, and their collective bargaining agreement expecting over $60K a year on average is too high.  Way too high—by about 10K per year.

Much of what the teacher complained about is driven by failures in progressive education, where teachers have attempted to take the place of traditional parents, infusing themselves to the lives of all children in intrusive ways.  They have desired to push traditional parents out-of-the-way and raise children into a statist education making students always dependent on others.  This has made the teacher’s job harder as parents have yielded to this intrusion seeking a taxpayer-funded babysitter while they build their careers for their own pursuits.  The teacher at Lakota made themselves advocates of a progressive education, and they are dealing with the results of a classroom full of dependents.  The failure is in the style of education.  If the teacher’s job is harder, it is because the progressive education children are receiving has made it so.  The task of putting a band-aid on the failure by throwing money at education through permanent tax increases is a stupid idea.

If there were competitive options, that teacher would be happy to have the problems they are complaining about now.  The only reason they feel obliged to complain in this case is because there is no competition to their profession other than a few remote private schools, or the occasional home-schooled family.  Therefore, the severity of the workday expressed by this teacher is measured against the unrealistic expectations of employment created by a government monopoly at Lakota.  Only in such monopolies could employees behave as badly as some of those teachers at Lakota who have been involved in sex scandals, and gotten away with the crime, and still make the claims of hardship similar to what was made in the above statements.  The reason is that they are anti-trust employees justifying their impositions on the communities that employ them with parades of complaints that are driven by their own incompetency.

For further proof of this mentality, here is a letter to me from a pro tax supporter I received just the other day.

Rich,

I disagree with your goal of $45K average salaries for teachers.  But the public will ultimately decide that.  If that goal is reached, it will be up to the teachers to work at a $45K pace and not the pace they are currently working..  Your comment that “teachers at Lakota are making too much money for doing too little” is the point of the levy results.  Why would anyone devote so much time toward a job which the community deems as being not worth it?  Why isn’t 8 hours of hard work each day enough time toward their jobs?

Mr. George says that the public wants to work with the teachers, but the union won’t let them.  Who does he think the union is?  It is that 2nd grade teacher that comes in to school 3 weeks early to set up her classroom and prepare for the year.  The union is the 5th grade teacher who postpones her bathroom break so her students are under constant supervision..  The union is the AP teacher who teachers college level material using a high school schedule with high school materials and support.  When parents go to open house and conferences, that is when they should voice their displeasure with the union because that is who they are directly talking to.

Once again I call on the labor force of the schools to determine the next round of cuts if the levy fails and those cuts should be in the time devoted to the job at hand.  Make gone the 50-60 hours work weeks.  The public, by voting no, is saying they can’t afford to type of service.

William Schmidt

Isn’t it amazing how similar those comments are to each other?  It is the new union talking points for the elections of 2013.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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The Class of 2005: Rise of Adam Winrich and the majesticy of bullwhips

You know pivotal moments in life when you see them, especially in hind-sight, and for me the Class of 2005 at the Annie Oakley Western Showcase was one of them.  In the picture below, some of the best whip crackers, knife throwers and western performers in the world were gathered together in 2005 at the Darke County Fairgrounds in Ohio.  CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS LATEST YEAR.  Many of the people shown in that photograph are the people who mean the most to me.  I thought of that year while in Burbank, California not long after the picture was taken as I spoke with a stunt coordinator on a film production about whip work, and his fear of Anthony DeLongis discovering that he was working with me—who had taken over the whip work in Hollywood after the passing of Alex Green.  I didn’t understand the concern, even as the young actress I was teaching offered me a thousand dollar bill for our short half hour class on cracking a bullwhip.  I turned it away to her shock as she declared that Anthony would have never turned away money—who was a personal friend of hers.  As much as I loved bullwhip work, and the people in the business, there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that all was not right with the world.  I had just published the novel, The Symposium of Justice but for me it was not enough to write about the pursuit of justice, I had to carry out the traits of my characters in real life, and I expected myself to act and behave in much the same fashion of Fletcher Finnegan.  I didn’t want to be someone who just acted like a dynamic character from a writer’s imagination, I wanted to actually be one, and use my skills to that effect.  But that didn’t stop the need for people especially of the next generation from taking up the task and pushing the whip cracking sport to new limits.KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

I didn’t think much of it at the time because he was so young, not much older than my own kids, but Adam Winrich was one of those guys who worked out with bullwhips with the intention to become one of the best that the world has ever seen.  Adam can be seen in the picture between my wife and children in 2005.  I was very happy with that group, but always felt people like Anthony should have been a part of the festivities.  There just aren’t many of us out there in the world.  However, reflected in my discussion with the Hollywood stunt coordinator, there aren’t many films being done with bullwhips in them, so the competition is fierce on who will get the jobs when they do come about.  KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAI had no plan, or desire to challenge Delongis for a film coordination job as a master whip handler when I knew that people like my friends Gery Deer, and Chris Camp worked much harder at the technical aspects of whip work than I and should be doing those types of jobs over me.  My interest was in actually doing some of the things I was writing about, so my destiny trailed off and away a bit into the realm of politics—where real threats are actually happening.  Without giving away too much, I have spent my time since that Class of 2005 living life in much the same fashion as Don Diego did in one of my favorite films, Zorro’s Fighting Legion.  I lost touch with some of those members of the Class of 2005 in the process, and one of them was Adam.

I feel I have accomplished many of the political tasks I intended, and recently announced that I was going to put more of my personal emphasis back on the bullwhip as it has been such a large part of my life for over thirty years.  The yearly Annie Oakley event still takes place, and some of those faces from the Class of 2005 still return every year, to meet up and tell stories of their previous year.  But some of those faces have found it difficult to return as they are continuously busy working in the business.  Adam is one of those guys, which isn’t a surprise to me.  Adam worked very hard, and it shows.  Since the Class of 2005 Adam has done shows everywhere from The Conan O’Brien Show, to football halftime demonstrations and everything in between and I think he is one of the most technically proficient bullwhip artists that there is anywhere.  Many of the whip masters who learned from people like Alex Green and Mark Allen felt they had taken whip work to unforeseen heights and they had.  Young guys like Adam then took the work several steps further breaking records and delighting audiences in ways that have never been done before.

I am very proud of Adam Winrich who has taken the sport of whip work to new levels.  I knew there was something special about him when he was cracking his 100’ whip in the main path in front of the Darke County Fairgrounds Coliseum, only to get a reprimand by Gery because the activity was going on outside of the yellow tape danger indicators.  Gery was right; the whip was very dangerous and could have removed the head of a person who wasn’t paying attention walking by.  But Adam’s custom made whip couldn’t have been cracked anywhere else because it was so big and I enjoyed his constant enthusiasm to try new innovative ways to advance the sport.  So Adam and I had the big whip in the crowd trying to crack it which was very reckless, and very fun.

One thing that is different with me from virtually everyone seen in the picture of the Class of 2005 is that I am not nearly as campy as everyone else, especially Adam Winrich.  I am a serious person almost all the time and have to work hard to crack jokes when performing in front of people.  That is why I don’t do shows in the way that Gery and Adam do.  I’m much happier in my back yard working with my whips in private than touring around the country doing stage acts.  That’s also why I had no desire to cut into Anthony DeLongis gig in Hollywood.  I’d rather write stories and have a creative influence on producing material that gave those guys work, than sitting around waiting for some producer to come up with the idea on their own.  But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying good work when I see it, and Adam is simply one of the best that there is.  He has done remarkable things with a bullwhip and that innovation continues.

I hope that in the future he can align his very busy schedule to returning to Annie Oakley as a new class of young whip crackers is emerging and could use his mentorship.  The kind of enthusiasm that Adam brings to the world of bullwhip art is the type of thing that makes legends out of raw talent.  I am very proud of the Class of 2005 because of people like Paul Nolan, my own children, and especially Adam Winrich.  It is wonderful to see that the fire that burns deep inside a mind can translate to the end of a whip with antics that have never been done before by anybody.  And it is my hope that such innovation and technical skill will continue to advance in subsequent Classes of Annie Oakley graduates.

Nice job Adam.  I learned to do this trick from you.  Nothing against Mark Allen, but he would have never considered such a thing before some of your technical experiments.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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Why A Whip Trick to Save Lakota Helps America: 20 cities facing bankruptcy

After a few people saw my Whip Trick to Save Lakota video, (Click to review,) I started to receive several comments, one particular from a guy who lives on the other end of the country.  The problem of public sector workers taking too much money from the tax base isn’t specific to Lakota by any stretch of the imagination.  The entire structure of the public school system in virtually every community is a ridiculous scam that should have been called out a long time ago, but hasn’t essentially because nobody wanted to be called names for not supporting a public school.  Here is what the comment writer sent me:

“This goes on where I live too. In the face of declining enrollment, they (public schools) still beg for more money. They know they’ve got teachers on the way out, and they’re probably planning to use this money to jack up the salaries of the departing teachers in their last few years because their pension is probably based on their last few years of salary. It’s got nothing to do with quality education. It’s got everything to do with cozy retirement. Watch for them to get re-hired after “retirement” too!”

I referenced in the video A Whip Trick To Save Lakota the course of Detroit, and how unmanaged costs in Cincinnati, especially in affluent districts like Lakota will eventually lead to the same fate where the once wealthiest city in America has become the poorest in a span of 40 short years.  The unions destroyed Detroit, the private sector unions pushed businesses out of the city, especially in manufacturing taking those jobs with them—the public sector unions just continued to increase taxes to pay for their unmanaged wage increases.  For instance, in Detroit the average teacher pay has been $71,000 per year.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.  The end result is that high taxes pushed away those who didn’t want to pay the extra money, or couldn’t pay any additional money, and the city essentially died.

I also mentioned the upcoming bankruptcy of Chicago.  That city also has an average teacher salary of $71,000, which is what happens when nobody puts on the breaks and manages the salary ranges.  The unions are not management, and they will not regulate themselves, as is evidence.  School boards for years in virtually every community across the country have responded to union pressure by simply rubber stamping every pay increase that has come across their desks.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   According to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute, several Chicago pension funds are in worse financial shape than the worker pensions in Detroit. One is only 25 percent funded. There are about a dozen major California cities having systemic problems paying their bills.  Any and all of the cities listed below are likely to suffer the same fate as Detroit.   CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SOURCE ARTICLE.  The list is based on bond ratings and other data, of the top 20 cities to watch for financial troubles in the wake of Detroit.  A large number of those unfunded pensions are public workers such as police, firefighters, and teachers who were promised too much by politicians who simply didn’t have the stomach to endure the constant threat of strikes and mob pressure invoked by public sector labor unions.  The fault of these failures are on all the people who were involved in the process of not saying “NO” to years of tax increases by a greedy class of public employee who simply took too much money, far more than their jobs were actually worth.

1. Compton, Calif.
Compton has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy after it accrued a general-fund deficit of more than $40 million by borrowing from other funds, depleting what had been a $22 million reserve.

2. East Greenbush, N.Y.
A New York state audit concluded that years of fiscal mismanagement — including questionable employment contracts and illegal payments to town officials — left East Greenbush more than $2 million in debt.

3. Fresno, Calif.
Fresno had the ratings of its lease-revenue bonds downgraded to junk-level by Moody’s, which also downgraded its convention center and pension obligation bonds due to the city’s “exceedingly weak financial position.”

4. Gulf County, Fla.
Fitch Ratings warned that Gulf County’s predominately rural economy is “narrowly focused,” with income levels one-quarter below national averages and economic indicators for the county also comparing unfavorably to national averages.

5. Harrisburg, Pa.
Harrisburg is at least $345 million in debt, thanks largely to municipal bonds it guaranteed in order to finance upgrades to its problematic waste-to-energy trash incinerator.

6. Irvington, N.J.
Irvington has a violent crime rate six times higher than New Jersey’s average, with Moody’s citing “wealth indicators below state and national averages and tax-base and population declines due to increased tax appeals and foreclosures.”

7. Jefferson County, Ala.
Jefferson County, home to the city of Birmingham, has been dealing with the collapse of refinancing for a sewer bond. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011 over a $3.14 billion sewer bond debt.

8. Menasha, Wis.
Menasha defaulted on bonds in 2007 it had issued to fund a steam plant which has since closed and left the city permanently in the red and, as of 2011, had $16 million in general fund revenue, but had $43.4 million in outstanding debt.

9. Newburgh, N.Y.
Newburgh was cited by Moody’s for “tax base erosion and a weak socioeconomic profile,” with 26 percent of its population below the poverty line and its school district facing a $2 million budget gap.

10. Oakland, Calif.
Oakland is trying to get out of a Goldman Sachs-brokered interest rate swap that is costing it $4 million a year. According to a recent city audit, Oakland has lost $250 million from a 1997 pension obligation bond sale and subsequent investment strategy.

11. Philadelphia School District, Pa.
Philadelphia’s school district, the nation’s eighth-largest, faces a $304 million deficit in its $2.35 billion budget, and is seeking $133 million from labor-contract savings to prevent further cutbacks.

12. Pontiac, Mich.
Pontiac, where the emergency manager has restructured the city’s finances, was downgraded by Moody’s, reflecting the city’s history of fiscal distress and narrow liquidity.

13. Providence, R.I.
Providence, rumored to be filing for bankruptcy for more than a year, experienced consecutive deficits through fiscal 2012, has a high-debt burden and significant unfunded pension liabilities, as well as high unemployment and low-income levels.

14. Riverdale, Ill.
The credit rating for Riverdale is under review by Moody’s because the city has not released an audit of interim or unaudited data for the year that ended April 30, 2012.

15. Salem, N.J.
Salem is under close fiscal supervision after it issued bonds to finance the construction of the Finlaw State Office Building, which was delayed by construction issues, and its leasing revenues are not enough to cover the debt payments and the maintenance fees.

16. Strafford County, N.H.
Strafford County regularly borrows money to cover its short-term cash needs after it spent two-fifths of its budget on a nursing home, which lost $36 million from 2004 to 2009.

17. Taylor, Mich.
Taylor has a large deficit and is vulnerable due to significant declines in the tax base, limited financial flexibility, and above-average unfunded pension obligations.

18. Vadnais Heights, Minn.
The St. Paul suburb of Vadnais Heights had its debt rating downgraded to junk last fall by Moody’s after the city council voted to stop payments to a sports center financed by bonds.

19. Wenatchee, Wash.
Wenatchee defaulted on $42 million in debt associated with the Town Toyota Center, a multipurpose arena, and has ongoing financial issues due to the default.

20. Woonsocket, R.I.
Woonsocket faces near-term liquidity shortages necessitating an advance in state aid, a high-debt burden and unfunded pension liabilities, with Moody’s citing the city’s continuing difficulties in making spending cuts because of poor management and imprecise accounting.

All those places and many more who are right on their heels to failure, are suffering now because they did not do the hard work of saying NO to tax increases.   It’s not easy saying no, and the most dominant reason that management gives in to the pressure of the public sector unions is that they don’t want to be called names by the mobs who are members, as silly as that sounds.  Most people have an inherit desire to be liked, and it is too much for them to be ostracized by their peers.  Much of the bankruptcy threats listed above simply exist because the people in charge of the money were afraid of being called names by the people who wanted the money.  It all comes down to that.

It is important to understand that the budget problems with the teaching profession is not just centralized in Southern Ohio—but is in fact a nationwide epidemic.  Even though I was never a fan of FDR as a president, he did warn that public sector employees should never be allowed to unionize.  John F. Kennedy, even though many wish to believe he was such a great president made public sector unions legal with an Executive Order seemingly to appease the mob bosses who helped him win the close election against Nixon, and the whole system has went downhill from there in a steady progression of failure.  The root cause of the default was when Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988.  Cities have been on a decline since that action.  Kennedy may have helped put the nation behind the space program, he may have endured a stalemate with Russia in Cuba, and gave some decent speeches, but he was a deeply flawed man who’s womanizing, mob connections, and unethical behavior opened the door to thuggish mobs to ruin America.  He hoped that city councils, school boards, and state law makers would have the stomach to stand up to the new public sector unions–but he was dreadfully wrong.

The only things voters can do now are Vote No against tax increases and force the reductions of the public sector union members as a political power.  Their inability to regulate themselves has forced this issue now, so they have only themselves to blame.  A failure to say NO will not only destroy their lives, but also the communities everyone lives in.  Their life as public workers will come to an end eventually anyway—sooner or later.  If it is sooner than entire cities may not be laid to waste.  But if it is later, as in the examples above, then it is too late to avoid the inevitable.  Bankruptcy will follow, and many more people will suffer because they feared to say NO to the masses that are never happy, and can never be appeased leaping from crises to crises always looking for higher wages from extortion to fill the bottomless pit of their belief in the net worth of their unionized professions.

Rich Hoffman

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A Whip Trick To Save Lakota: The real reason behind the 2013 tax increase attempt

To state that Lakota, like most government schools these days, is operating as a deceptive enterprise built upon open manipulation of the taxpaying public and are dangerously malicious is not inaccurate.  Lakota has said recently that without levy approval in the fall of 2013, the distinct “will” decline.  Those are words from an Enquirer article featuring statements by Lakota Superintendent Karen Mantia who told the school board, “We have balanced our budget but now we’re at a baseline and that is not a good place to be.”  This prompted school board president Joan Powell to declare, “We are in danger of becoming a second-class district.”  Lakota and its administrators are pushing a 5.5 mill levy for the upcoming November 2013 ballot which will raise the taxes per $100,000 in evaluation by $192 based on the premise that they have cut, and cut, and cut till they can’t cut any more, and if they cut any more, every citizen in the district will suffer.  Well, the Lakota members of the administration who have said these things are guilty of deception, manipulation, and malicious action, because there is a very important factor that they did not reveal to the public in these levy talks which they did discuss in the same newspapers at the start of the 2013 year.  However the issue is a bit complex prompting me to explain the situation with one of my bullwhip economic videos.  Check it out.   I explain to Lakota what they should already know themselves.  I use a bullwhip to cut a soda can in half as a proper metaphor to what is in Lakota’s employment future.

The cost of the levy for the average property owner is quite excessive.  The figures I used in the above video were off the top of my head, which I refined further below.  Most homes in the Liberty Township/West Chester area are well over $200,000 each.  The tax increases on homes per year at $200,000 with voter approval of a new Lakota levy will be $384 per year.  At $300,000 a year, which is not at all uncommon, the taxes will be $576 more per year.  And at $400,000 which is quite the standard in Wetherington, Beckett Ridge, and Four Bridges, the tax increase per year will be $768 per year.  But that’s not all.  Commercial property is taxed at the same rate as residential property.  Buildings that are valued at $5 million will go up on that one building $10,000.00 in additional taxes. Buildings valued in this range are typically small strip malls housing several small stores and that cost will be passed down to the 5-7 tenants, who are all small business owners.  Their costs per year will increase about $2,000.00 each, and that’s tough on people with small margins and continuing rising costs in other areas.  In many cases, a tax increase like what Lakota is proposing could shut the doors on many small businesses operating at minimum margins.

The assumption by the government school of Lakota who does not have to do anything performance wise to obtain their profit margins except beg for tax increases, is that if residents can afford a home that is $300,000 to $400,000 in value then they can afford to pay a little more for a tax increase to “help the community’s children.”  They also believe that a property owner with a strip mall or restaurant that is $1 to $5 million in value will happily absorb an extra $10,000 in yearly taxes because they are already “rich.”  What’s a few thousand dollars to a “rich” person?  As ridiculous as that sounds, it is precisely how the administrators of Lakota think, and those who jump on the bandwagon to support the levy.  This is why I call them Lakota Levy Zombies, because they mindlessly pursue tax increases without considering what the impact of that increase will have on the people who pay it.

But worse than anything is the carefully concealed study performed by the McKibben Demographics group who co-conducted an enrollment study for Lakota late in 2012 at a cost of $20,000.  The results of that study indicate that by the 2022-23 school year Lakota will have lost 2,300 students due to declining enrollment trends.  What this means in terms of jobs at Lakota is that the staff will have to be cut by at least 85.1 teachers who would normally teach 27 children per class.  By 2022 Lakota will have to reduce their work force to meet those new enrollment needs.  Over the next 10 years Lakota will save $5.1 million in just teacher salary at an average wage of $60K per year.  That does not consider all the six figure administrators that Lakota will not need to manage those 85.1 teachers.  Lakota will have to close down school buildings and consolidate resources that could easily save between $10 million and $15 million dollars without cutting a single program to the community just because the enrollment numbers will be less.  The projection numbers at Lakota were over 18,000 students during the 2010 school year but will decline to 14,950 by the year 2022.

In addition to those numbers Lakota’s treasurer Jenni Logan stated that Lakota has lost 672 students to other public, community, or private schools, which is a trend that is likely to continue.  Lakota has over the last couple of years taken away busing because their tax increases did not pass.  They have also cut electives for students, and they have raised sports fees.  Parents have reacted by voting with their feet and simply leaving.  Meanwhile Lakota administrators continue to brag about the “tens of millions” of dollars they have cut out of their operating budget attempting to sell those cuts as a “sacrifice” to the quality of their education service, but in all reality, the cuts have been on par with the reduction in enrollment.  In just the last couple of years from 2010 to 2012 Lakota has seen a drop of around 1000 students.  By 2015 the enrollment numbers will be around 15,913 and continuing down from there.  If Lakota continues to complain, and sell themselves as ineffective, more people will vote with their feet and simply leave the community taking their children with them, exacerbating those numbers further.  If that happens Lakota could see a yearly enrollment of 10,000 by the year 2020.

The cause of the decline in enrollment according to Mckibben is that the population in the Lakota district has aged.  Over the next 10 years most homes will be those of empty nesters as the current average age of the Lakota resident is 40.7.  McKibbean explained this trend to the Lakota school board at a January 28 2013 meeting by saying, “You have a very high graduation rate and very high post-secondary participation rate.  Your kids graduate, go off to college and don’t come back.”  However, McKibbean declined to finish that statement.  He didn’t want to insult the people who paid $20K for his study after all.  The reason kids don’t come back to the Lakota district after they graduate college is simple, they can’t afford to.  A twenty something with an average college debt between 50K and 100K cannot afford to purchase a home in the affluent Lakota community where average homes range between $200K to $300K. I know this first-hand because I have children in this age group, and they have moved back to Lakota to buy a nice home of their own in that price range and they looked all over the Cincinnati area for the best opportunity.  They are unusually successful as a professional couple.  They were able to buy a home in the Lakota district.  They are unlikely to use the Lakota school system to teach their children, however they are tax payers in the community.  But most young people their age are so saddled with debt; they can never hope to make enough money to purchase a home in that price range.  This means families with children who might want to use the Lakota school system will not be able to afford to move into the community because property values are so high.  Only successful adults with grown children will be able to continue living in the Lakota district.  That is what is driving the Lakota enrollment decline.

Yet, even knowing this information, Lakota’s administration is ignoring it choosing instead to pick and choose their facts.  They want to give their teachers who average in salary over $63K per year a raise when the collective bargaining agreement with the union is up in 2014.  They are not planning for any reductions in force, or even working their salary structure to meet the community budget established through the election process.  Instead, they are relying on fear tactics to win over voters which is dishonest, and negligent.  Fear tactics like saying “Excellent with Distinction” (at Lakota) is in jeopardy without new tax money.  We are in danger of becoming a second-class district.”

Without context the situation is complicated at Lakota, which is why I explained it with a bullwhip economics video.  Most people take these professional government workers at their word which is a mistake.  People are too busy in their lives to compare the notes of what was said in the media by Lakota eight months ago and what they say now after they examine Lakota’s need for more tax money not due to economic conditions of the Lakota community, but the administration’s own desire to cave under the union demands for a collective bargaining agreement in 2014.  To say anything other than the truth is misleading and after all that we’ve been through at Lakota the administrators still think the taxpaying residents are too stupid to see through their sham.  The facts of the matter is not that Lakota needs a tax increase, but rather they need a major employee reduction of nearly 100 teachers and administrators over the next 10 years.  They should be able to achieve such a reduction with tax decreases over the next decade instead of the other way around, but they will never utter such a truth—because that’s not what they are about.  As government workers they want to do one thing, and one thing only, to grow jobs through government off the backs of tax payers never putting their eyes upon reality in a hope that the formula will never collapse on itself.  But the formula is in serious jeopardy, not just at Lakota, but every school district in the country that is filled with an aging population that isn’t having as many children as they once did, and the children they do have aren’t making enough money to support the tax demands of the growing government.  The recipe for disaster is upon us, and is just now beginning to be seen in the embattled land of Lakota, in Liberty Township/West Chester, Ohio.

Click Below to see the source articles of this content:

Journal News, Janurary 2013

The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2013

Here is the situation nationally, but featuring Columbus, Ohio from the New York Times, July 2012

Rich Hoffman

Contact me at www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

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The Best Talk Show Host in America: Doc Thompson ignites the flames of liberty with ‘The Blaze’!

What is the strongest beacon for freedom in the world today?  Is it Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, John Stossel, or any other modern commenter, publisher, or financier?  I would say not.  Is it the multitude of freedom oriented websites like FreedomWorks, or American Thinker?  I would say not.  Rather, I would say that it’s a new force to the entertainment world.  Several years ago the former Fox News star Glenn Beck started his own news organization called The Blaze—which is changing the way the news is delivered.  As an online publication that rivals traditional magazines like Time, Life, and People it also specializes in providing the latest scoop on news stories in the way that made the Drudge Report so important to the art of breaking news stories.  But it’s not even The Blaze that I’m speaking about—not as a website based news source.  In January of 2013 Glenn Beck created The Blaze Radio Network which is an all internet radio station that broadcasts online outside of FCC regulation.  Normally these kinds of operations are fly-by-night and built with pure heart, but little money.  Well, not anymore.  Glenn Beck has invested a considerable amount of his personal fortune into the new Blaze Radio Network and brought in top talent like Doc Thompson and his partner Skip to provide 24 hour a day seven days a week news and entertainment radio that is unparalleled anywhere.

I was very disheartened to learn that my friend Doc Thompson was leaving Cincinnati.  I have been a talk radio fan all my life.  I used to lie in bed as a kid and listen to radio broadcasts from 700 WLW and WMOH till the pre-dawn hours while the rest of the world slept, literally and figuratively.   During my working years, I would listen to talk radio through long hours of 2nd and 3rd shift hard labor.  As I grew older and had started participating in talk radio actively I enjoyed being more than just a listener, especially on Doc Thompson’s Cincinnati show.  I respect the art of being a talk show host.  But Doc was a bit too freedom oriented for the sports talk stations of Cincinnati, and was too big of a name to put on a station that didn’t have a voice equaling his own booming enunciations.  So it didn’t take long before Doc moved on to the Detroit market leaving a void in Cincinnati, and the freedom movement that was so strong here.

There are other voices, but on FCC controlled radio stations, they are somewhat handcuffed by their station managers, and the advertisers who essentially control the content.  Doc has been a breath of fresh air wherever he has worked, but the stations he worked for never allowed him to utilize his full potential of talent consisting of humor, deep political analysis, and a tremendous range of topics that he can discuss.  But more than anything, Doc is the opposite of the kind of radio host that Howard Stern has been—he has deep convictions and tries to be a good person.  He wants to do good with his microphone, and that has hindered him during his long career………..until now.  Glenn Beck hired Doc Thompson in January to start off his new Blaze Radio Network with the 6 AM to 9 AM morning show just ahead of Glenn Beck’s national show and the gloves have come off.  For the benefit of my readers here I have placed two of Doc’s recent shows on the following video clips so that they can be listened to on demand in their entirety.  I would suggest playing them and filling your day with their contents.  There is a lot of comedy, loads of great information, and some deep sincerity from Doc and Skip which is typical of them in what I consider to be one of the best radio show in the history of talk radio that was only made possible because of Glenn Beck’s innovative, and bold investment in the enterprise.

The reason I consider The Blaze Radio Network to be the purest beacon available for the freedom movement is because it is free, and it is not under the regulation of the government in any way.  This allows the programming on the Blaze Radio to be unusually unconcerned with regulators who can threaten to pull their license if at least a balanced approach to statist concepts isn’t adhered to.  Every television, and radio station in America is typically concerned about these federal regulations, and it does water down the content, even on programs like Rush Limbaugh’s.

Doc and Skip are for the first times in their life completely free as talk show hosts, and they are making excellent use of that liberty.  Before any organization can hope to be a beacon of freedom to the listeners they service, they must in fact be free themselves.  Because of the commitment of Glenn Beck into The Blaze Radio Network, it is the most “free thinking” broadcasting anywhere in the world.  It functions the way that The Constitution intended with the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights, to use free speech not in a destructive way to boost ratings with sex, and deviant discussion, but with high quality content from people who care deeply about the topics they discuss.  And for the first time, radio hosts who work for The Blaze have a boss in Glenn Beck who is just as committed to liberty as they are.

I know Doc Thompson personally.  I have been to dinner with him where he and Skip would not stop doing research for their radio show even at 1 AM in the morning.  Doc never turns off his engine.  He never completely shuts down.  Radio work and the matters of current events are his number one passion.  He is constantly analyzing material for his shows, and he ruthlessly looks for fresh content.  Doc is one of the hardest working people I know, and in entertainment/news, this is certainly the case.

Doc has been fighting for a chance to do what he is currently doing for more than 20 years of radio in cities all over the United States.  In one of his darkest days of recent past, he never let up off the gas.  I remember vividly when his wife Yuna Lee left her television job in Richmond, Virginia so she could finally marry Thompson after several years of a long distance relationship.  Finally they were going to be together, living not only in the same house, but in the same city.  Yuna boldly left her job to take a job at Channel 2 in Dayton where she works to this day.  But the very moment the two were married, Doc lost his job in Cincinnati.  He was always a bit too passionate, too “wholesome,” and too “Tea Party” for the Cincinnati stations, which left him jobless again looking for a home.  Even in those moments when he was most tempted to change his style to fit the producers of radio shows, he didn’t.  He held tight for a syndication deal because he knew he was that good and he needed someone to believe in him with financial backing.

Glenn Beck was that guy, and the benefit to freedom is that finally Doc Thompson has NOTHING in his way to be a serious pain in the ass to statists, progressives, communists, union thugs, race baiters, education empires, and every parasitic entity hanging from the halls of government.  For the first time in his professional life Doc Thompson is free to provide the kind of radio that hasn’t been conceived since the very early days of radio broadcasting before the FCC put its claws into the lives of every radio listener.  Doc takes full advantage of this freedom, as evidence in the over 5 hours of broadcasting played above.  I hope you took full advantage of those clips to let Doc’s voice bring the sounds of freedom to your ears.  The Blaze Radio Network it has nearly replaced all my old news sources.  I play it all the time, at home, in the garage, in my back yard, in my car, on my iPod—especially during flights, on vacation, in the middle of the mountains, and in the deepest valleys while camping.  Because The Blaze is broadcast across the internet, and podcasting is always available on Soundcloud, every show Doc and Skip do can be listened to on demand.  By loading his segments onto my iPod I can attend business engagements pausing his information, then resuming when my time frees up.  When riding my motorcycle, I can broadcast Doc into my helmet through my iPod, which is a completely new technology.  Years ago the only way to listen to a radio on a motorcycle was to have a bulky device attached to the handle bars.  Now I can hear Doc anywhere at anytime of day and the information is free.  CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO FIND DOC’S BROADCASTS ON SOUNDCLOUD:

http://soundcloud.com/docthompson

For traditional radio talk show listeners, The Blaze Radio Network has a full staff that broadcasts out of New York the news at the top and bottom of every hour just like most other AM stations.  They are doing much better work than Fox News is, and certainly leaps and bounds above CNN, MSNBC, or any other news source.  The Blaze guys are on top of just about everything 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  They are always there.

For these reasons listed above Doc Thompson on The Blaze Radio Network is the best and most authentic example of a voice for the freedom movement that there is in the world.  Doc works harder, plays harder, and has the tools in his tool box given to him by Glenn Beck to be a monstrous success, which he and Skip are well on their way to becoming.  What they are doing is the wave of the future, and the most effective form of new media there is.  I trust The Blaze in ways that I have never trusted any other news source. Their news is good even when they don’t agree with what the other side has to say. Such as in this example:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/07/we-should-be-like-jay-leno-glenn-beck-defends-tonight-show-host-in-moving-monologue/

The Blaze is a game changer in the news business, and Doc Thompson working for the Blaze Radio Network is a game changer in the world of radio.  The radio business will never be the same again, now that Doc Thompson is loose and able to communicate the truth where it lives most brilliantly, at The Blaze operated by Glenn Beck and managed by hundreds of wonderful people who deeply care about the state of America and it’s role to the rest of the world who look with longing eyes toward the freedoms that only we have.  I would recommend dear reader that you tune in to this wonderful tool for freedom and support it with your attention which will be mutually beneficial for many years to come.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Worst Kind of Welfare Recipient: Congressman, Senators, Presidents, and all those in between

We often think of welfare recipients as the inner city single mom who has had children recklessly in order to receive more government benefits.  Or the retired crack addicts who spent their youth and money on drugs only to become born again in the eyes of God but penniless, toothless, unemployable adults.  Or the reckless young people who have been taught that they should apply for welfare at every turn by their public schools serving as sign up centers for government assistance promoting reckless behavior so that recruiting for welfare programs is higher.  There is another class of welfare recipient that very few talk about which costs more money than all those demographic stereotypes combined.  That class would be the political class, of which people like Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner are a part.  In fact the most expensive public housing project in the country by square foot  is The White House where the recipients who live and work there are all welfare recipients living off the public dime.  For a breakdown of this political class of welfare takers listen to Darryl Parks from 700 WLW where he brought his usual stats to an epic broadcast which will forever live in infamy.  Listen carefully!

After listening to Darryl is there any hope that any politician from the local trustee, to a federal senator or congressman will ever do anything to cut off the welfare from which they are empowered to give so much money to themselves?  Does anybody think that John Boehner will reform federal spending which would take money out of the pockets of the House he resides over–of course not; otherwise they would not have picked him as their leader.  Boehner was not picked by members of the GOP in the House because of his high ethical standards, his moral authority; his understanding of law—but rather for his ability to keep the members of the federal government firmly entrenched on welfare.  Under no other operation could any worker anywhere hope to make as much money as people like John Boehner have made in the federal government.

As Darryl Parks stated, the reason politicians like Boehner have been in government for so long and is considered a leader of his party is because he has the ability to raise money.  I personally know some of the people who give a lot of money to Boehner– I’m only picking on him because he is my congressman—so I have firsthand knowledge of the guy.  I know Boehner is a nice fellow who my in-laws spotted in their early days at the Beckett Ridge Country Club where my wife and I were married. They knew him through his family as being an up and coming star in politics.  Paul Ryan as a young whipper-snapper at Miami University down the road from John’s home actually put out yard signs for Boehner’s first congressional run in areas like Trenton, Lakota, Fairfield and his college campus.  The speeches politicians give to get elected are all the same, but the result never changes either.  In spite of all the campaign promises what the members who lobby themselves into the political class are really after is easy money where all they have to do is sign up for the vast number of welfare programs offered by the federal government disguised as salary.

I have been to fundraisers where the plates are $500 a plate so the welfare recipients can make appearances to the public.  Knowing of John and his family most of my life as next door neighbors so-to-speak it shocked me recently to see some friends who were worth millions of dollars willingly pass out invites to one of these John Boehner fundraisers.  These very financially wealthy friends looked toward the event as though they were school girls who had back stage passes to the latest boy band concert.  Boehner had been made up to be a celebrity because he was the third most powerful person in the entire world—according to the media, and that designated celebrity status.

But when I look at John I only see a welfare recipient.  He’s a guy who makes his living making rules, and that is a very parasitic existence.  That certainly doesn’t make him a celebrity in my book.  But worse, he does virtually nothing to earn the vast sums of money he takes as a congressman.  Sure he does a lot of “wheeling and dealing” in Washington, but how much of it is for the good of the country?  Not much.  Most of Boehner’s wheeling and dealing is done for the good of his party, so that he can use the celebrity created by the media to generate money from my friends who are willing to pay $50 to $500 dollars a plate to raise money for his “war chest,” so he can win more elections and gain more welfare wealth.

Does any of this make John a bad guy?  No.  It just makes him a parasitic welfare recipient that our modern statist system of government uses to create celebrity status so more people turn to government for their riches, instead of private enterprise.  To stay in power politicians like John need to convince people of real power—those who are wealthy, that their campaign donations are worthy of his celebrity status—an image created by the media for the benefit of all welfare recipients, from the crack whore of the inner city to the residents of The White House. Once John raises his money and stays in power, he then makes his money by appeasing the mob in congress who often gives themselves raises, while enriching themselves with insider trading and lobbyist bribes.  John claims to have a clean record with lobbyists, but he wouldn’t be House Leader unless he turned his head the other way so others could abuse the system.

Yet the only way that the debt ceiling can stop climbing its way back from the $17 trillion dollar mark is for congress, and the senate to spend less money, and to do that, they have to stop taking so much themselves.  At some point in time they have to stop viewing federal office as a treasure chest full of pirates looting and pillaging as though there were no tomorrow.  The result of that behavior is what we have seen in modern Detroit.  California is next, followed by the entire nation of America.  Politicians robbed Detroit blind just as they are now against every taxpaying district where most of the money collected goes to inflated government pensions, and wages that are not representative of the skill level purchased.  For most of these workers that in the federal government pay near six figures in salary, their actual work is only worth bare minimum wage in the private sector.  There is a reason that Washington D.C. has the highest per capita worth anywhere in the country.  It’s not because they make wonderful cars, or airplanes, or even computers.  All they make in Washington are deals from one welfare recipient to another swapping money stolen from the American tax payer for the benefit of themselves.

To some degree or another anyone who is employed off tax money is a welfare recipient, including those who work at NASA.  If the federal government is involved, the employees are welfare recipients.  Not all of them are diabolical menaces to morality, and some actually contribute to the betterment of science.  NASA has done many great things for America and the world, so in some cases, the money can be worth it.  In most situations however, as in the present day political landscape, politicians were never intended to become so wealthy as social servants under elected office—and they were never intended to make life-time careers out of the election process.  So long as the desire for easy money in politics exists, con artists, lawyers, social parasites, and comb over, insecure womanizers will desire to occupy those halls of power that are built off the sweat of the American tax payer—where looting off of goodness is so common that the violations are as frequent as the raindrops of a summer storm in a monsoon soaked region of the world prying for daylight.

Rich Hoffman

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