GMC and a Wife Hard to Please: A financial warning triggered by low interest rates

For a long time my wife and I have missed our old Jeep Grand Cherokee. She lost it in 2005 to an accident where the airbags went off during a wreck actually induced by the Lakota school system’s cut of busing during a levy fight. There were too many people on the road at Lakota East and my wife was driving our children to school. It was wet out and there was an accident. The Jeep held up wonderfully. Hardly any physical damage to the vehicle—but the airbags did deploy and that put the cost of repair well over the price of the Jeep’s worth. So it was totaled and wasn’t worth covering the extra cost to repair ourselves. We had the Jeep for a long time, and it was time to get a new car anyway. We picked up a Chrysler Town and Country which was perfect for us, and our large family. We drove it everywhere for the last ten years. We tend to buy vehicles and keep them for a long time. We don’t lease throwaway cars. We buy to keep, and we take care of them when we get them. So it’s a big deal in our family to make a car purchase. But its time again for my wife to have a new car and she is really, really, really picky. Let me emphasize, she is very hard to please. She has very specific tastes that are hard to satisfy. Her standards are extremely high. Picking out a car with her is very difficult.

I had been looking at buying a GMC Yukon Denali myself with the extended back and showed them to her, but she wasn’t going for it. They are just too big for her. She wanted a Jeep, but now that they are owned by Fiat she wants nothing to do with them. Additionally we loved our Town and Country but after Fiat acquired Chrysler that was the end of having any possibility of buying a Chrysler or Jeep. My wife may be an old country club girl, but she is probably more patriotic than I am when it comes down to it, and she doesn’t want to pay good money for foreign cars. Her very first car was a BMW. We had a Toyota Camry once, back when she was in college, but she resented having an Asian car, so since then it’s always been American cars—which I personally think are too expensive due to the labor unions and short-cuts that are often made to compete with foreign markets. I didn’t want to look at any General Motors cars because of the bailout in 2009, and Ford wasn’t making anything all that great in my opinion. They weren’t dynamic enough for us. So shopping for a car was hard for us. She didn’t want to look at any of the Mercedes products, which I tried to bring up—because she didn’t want to support German manufacturers over American even though I think they have the edge in engineering presently. But my attitude softened as I started looking into the new Yukons. On that car GMC was starting to build a good reputation again, and I was impressed.

My wife refused to drive a Yukon so we gave up on the discussion as we were at an impasse. What I didn’t know was that she started to consider the smaller versions of the Yukon on the GMC line and found that she loved the Terrain quite a lot. I was aghast because I thought the car was too small, but knowing she had done a lot of homework, and how hard she was to please, I gave it a shot—reluctantly. After all, we weren’t buying for me, it was for her. We went down to Fiehrer Motors at Bridgewater Falls to let her sell me on the merits of the GMC Terrain and I walked away rather impressed. The only drawback for me was that the Terrain wasn’t a Yukon, which wasn’t fair to the Terrain. After driving them around and looking at all the options it was clear why she liked the vehicle, it reminded us of our old Jeep, and it was made by an American company trying to give birth to itself once again—and the front end of it was smashing cool. Inside there was a lot of room and it’s technically quite a leap forward in engineering development. I was impressed with the 6 speed transmission that actually has the ability to go manual if needed, so she sold me on it and we bought one.

But this article is not about buying a new car or reviewing the GMC Terrain. It’s about a revelation I had while going through finance and signing all the paperwork. Buying a car is a very important part of the American economy, so I pay attention to aspects of it that measure the greater aspect of national GDP. I enjoyed greatly my experience at Fiehrer Motors as they have been in business for three generations now—which is very unusual. They used to be on Route 4 for a long time across from the Hamilton Plaza, by the old Richard’s Pizza place. But my wife and I would never shop for a car in that type of location because it’s too busy there to think right, plus the area is surrounded by impoverished has-been homes. Not a good way to usher in an expensive car buying experience. When we have bought cars in the past, it has been at Kings Automall. We like it over there for all the reasons that we prefer that Costco over the one in Tri-County. There are fewer slack-jawed losers over on Fields Ertle, and it does matter. People who have purchasing power don’t want to hang out with people whose life goals are to buy a pack of cigarettes and win $10 on a scratch-off lottery ticket so they can buy a case of beer. It matters even if it’s not politically correct. If the new Fiehrer dealership at Bridgewater wasn’t so nice, my wife would have never convinced me to go car shopping in the first place. So we were there buying the new Terrain, the sun was out on a nice 68 degree day after a bit of rain. There was some college football on the big screen behind me in the lounge area which I enjoyed watching as we went over all the contract details. It was clean, everyone seemed professional, and it was a good productive atmosphere that was conducive to the proper exchange of money and product. The finance guy was finalizing the details and I had positioned myself so I could see his computer screen just enough to read. That’s when I asked him if he was a drug addict.

I’m not going to give away a lot of personal details especially on a purchase that costs half of a small house. I’m grateful for good terms when I can get them. I’m not complaining on an individual basis. But what I saw was alarming to me. Keep in mind that I used to do what this finance guy was doing, so I had some experience on the matter. That was over twenty years ago, and back then I even helped paint on the front window of our dealership a giant sign designed to entice people to come in and buy a car—“4% on all cars and trucks.” I remembered back then that almost nobody had credit good enough to qualify for the 4% interest rate. They usually walked out of finance at somewhere around 6% to 7% if they had really good credit. Only people with “gold” credit were able to actually get what was on the window. So here I was watching the Sooners stomp all over the Golden Hurricanes, my wife had found a car she liked, and we were getting Chick-fil-A for my grandson’s birthday on a nice fall afternoon once we were finished with buying the car. It doesn’t get any better than that—except for the interest rate that I saw on the computer screen of my finance guy. It was less than what I painted on the window of the dealership I worked at decades ago. I thought he had made a serious mistake and was trying to hide a drug addiction.

But he wasn’t on drugs, and it was a legitimate interest rate. While my wife and everyone else was happy, I wasn’t. Something was dreadfully wrong about that. Things were not alright, that interest rate should have been much higher. As we signed the paperwork, I thought about the Fed’s decision to keep interest rates where they were, which are artificially low. Sure its good for the economy, it’s good for people to spend money, but it essentially means that any investments made in bonds or other long-term holdings are not increasing encouraging investors to continue dumping money into risky stocks further flaming a volatile market. This meant that the economy was in far worse shape than anybody was willing to acknowledge, including the most conspiratorial talk show hosts on AM radio. Banks were giving away money at a very low profit to them just to get people to buy products—and that artificial stimulus was a direct correlation to the true state of our economy that is dangerously perilous.

Look people, America is about to hit $19 trillion dollars in debt, wages are stagnant, inflation is unbelievably high, and there isn’t enough GDP to stave off complete economic collapse. There is really only this next presidential election to get it right where both the House, Senate, and the Executive Branch can increase GDP, pay down the debt so the United States doesn’t choke on foreign interest rates itself, and put the country back on course again where buying cars is a routine exercise, along with many other factors of a national economy. Failure to solve this problem means there is no future. Interest rates can’t be lowered any more than they are, and if that’s not getting people out to the stores to move products, then nothing will do it. That is not a good situation.

I’m proud of GMC for getting their act together and producing a nice series of cars, particularly the Terrain. I am impressed, and it deserves a look by anybody in the car market. I am proud of Fiehrer Motors for relocating into a really nice store in a really nice area—because I otherwise wouldn’t have went car shopping—so it’s a factor in national GDP—nearly as much as interest rate shopping—for me anyway. Without their decision to move off Dixie Highway, I wouldn’t have visited them and they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sell me a new car. I’m proud of the Sooners for playing a fun college football game that sold lots of beer and fast food options to hundreds of thousands of viewers. And I was proud to spend $100 at Chick-fil-A on food that day. These are all wonderful things for our economy. But, the bank shouldn’t have to feel like they have to give away money. They need a chance to make a profit and while some people will say that banks make enough money, profit is what they need to stay in business. And they deserve to make money on their services. Based on that interest rate, it was clear to me that they weren’t making enough. For my situation, I won’t complain. But the fact that they felt compelled to offer it makes me worry about their future. Good things aren’t always good things.

Overall, it was a fun day, but many of the things I write about became quite evident to me. I don’t always like being right, even though I am most of the time. Unfortunately, not enough people listen in time to help themselves. That is frustrating to me. For that reason my wife and I did get the subscription to XM radio. No matter what happens, we’ll have a good life and we’ll enjoy it. However, I want many others to have a taste of the good life too-which is why I put so much time into trying to teach people—if only they’d listen.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Why America Should Abolish Labor Day: The Marxist roots of a national holiday

It was a disgusting Labor Day Holiday in 2015. I have never liked Labor Day because the premise of it speaks of unionized activity. And of course the premise of organized labor is a bad one, collective bargaining, collective adversarial relationships with management, and the greatest insult of all, the expectation that a job is an entitlement that should not be connected to performance. Entertainment unions aren’t as bad as manufacturing and government sector unions because there is still a bit of free market capitalism present in those fields. If a star football player or movie star doesn’t put butts in seats, their value goes way down. But in almost every case, labor unions do not connect productive work to their efforts at solidarity and their efforts are criminal viewed through the proper lens of capitalism.

Even more sickening are the number of times during Labor Day that employees were termed as “workers” in the mode used commonly in Karl Mark’s Communist Manifesto. Such as the term at the end of the book, “workers of the world, unite.” Democrats and labor union leaders use the term “worker” in precisely the same fashion and every time I hear it I am reminded of just how much communism has penetrated the capitalist culture of America much to all of our detriment. When President Obama or VP Joe Biden say “worker” they are using communist terms to describe people. Their vantage point is clearly framed by Karl Marx—and that is the general spirit of Labor Day—to me it’s a communist recognition holiday—so I don’t like it.

Of course from a communist perspective the White House thought it appropriate to issue a new executive order on Labor Day—this one was one of the most disgusting that I can remember in recent history. Here’s how The Blaze reported the story:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Showing solidarity with workers on Labor Day, President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Monday requiring paid sick leave for employees of federal contractors, including 300,000 who currently receive none.

The White House wouldn’t specify the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which Obama was to address at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up.

Under the executive order, employees working on federal contracts gain the right to a minimum of one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours they work. Stretched out over 12 months, that’s up to seven days per year. The order will allow employees to use the leave to care for sick relatives as well, and will affect contracts starting in 2017 — just as Obama leaves office.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/07/heres-how-obama-will-mark-labor-day/

Here’s the problem with this ridiculous executive order and the Labor Day that it was signed on—it celebrates “not working,” non productivity. It is a celebration of staying home and doing leisurely activities as opposed to actually working. The premise is a bad one rooted in laziness. When Marx says “workers of the world unit” in the Communist Manifesto and Barack Obama tells those workers to stay home more often, they are both building a sense of entitlement toward the endeavor of work that is unhealthy, and detrimental for a capitalist nation. Marx says to unite so that through collectivism they gain leveraging power to deprive an employer of their labor so that they can make ridiculous mandates as to the allocation of their effort toward productive enterprise.

Just before Labor Day a middle-aged male uttered happiness at their ability to have a four-day weekend. They had Friday off, but would also have Monday off due to the national holiday. They were quite happy to be free of work for four consecutive days. The statement to me was troubling because it indicated that the work the young man was doing was so far from what he’d rather be doing that he considered the opportunity for freedom from that expectation enough to proclaim joy. Now I’m sure a lot of people feel that way toward their jobs, but that doesn’t make it right. If you feel that way about something you work at, I feel sorry for you. Working is a joy. When I do it, it is part of my life in every way. I work while I’m at Disney World. I work at 4 am—I work all the time, even during holidays, weekends, all hours of the day because I see work as a creative endeavor and it feels good to make things. I enjoy making things. It is a joy to bring things to life that did not exist before. The thoughts of that middle-aged man were not something I could understand, or sympathize with. What would that person be doing besides working, playing video games, watching a movie, or just talking with friends? Those might be fun exercises, but they are often spectator sports. In the case of video games and other entertainment, the programmers did the work; the players just enjoy the productivity that brought the product to life. Enjoying entertainment is not in and of itself productive—its leisure. Productivity is when you bring something to life and the effort creates economic energy. Being productive is quite rewarding. You feel good after a hard day of work.

Yet the president is instigating a quandary that does not make sense. On one hand he is saying that workers are valuable, then on the other that they aren’t needed, because if they can afford to take off one hour of paid leave for every thirty hours they work, clearly they aren’t being paid for productive enterprise—but are relegated to the type of work typically associated with the government office worker—a butt in a seat that does very little but browse the internet all day while being paid extraordinary amounts of money for nothing. Obama clearly doesn’t understand the value of hard work and is clearly aligned with the referred middle-aged guy who was happy to have four days off for Labor Day. They don’t want to work; they simply want a job that pays them so they can do what they want in their leisure time. Obama has shown that his value in a job is not in productive output, but in time off work. That is an important distinction. It is a false assumption based on Karl Marx, not any capitalist philosopher. The failure is in the basic premise established on a college campus with Marxist pot smokers ignorant to the benefits of real productivity.

I would be alright with getting rid of the Labor Day Holiday completely. America doesn’t need to spend less time at work; it needs to work more, and harder. That may not be a popular sentiment, but you don’t get to be a great nation sitting around playing games all day. You have to do things that are productive, even if it’s fixing something around the house, or getting groceries. Productive output is the measure we have in life to gauge success. For those who couldn’t wait to have four days off, what did any of them achieve in those four days besides some extra sleep and more time to perform leisurely tasks? How productive was that long weekend, really? Not much, because the American government promotes that lazy, lackluster communist mentality that is so common around Washington D.C. They promote the entire nation to think the way they do—and to them Labor Day means spending time on their boats, eating out, or having more time to socialize with others—all acts that require the productivity of someone. To them they care not a bit—so long as it’s not them.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Donald Trump from 1988: What he said then and what it means now

For those who think that Donald Trump is a policy swapping former Democrat, the below clip from 1988 is rather telling, and astonishing. Trump was critical of the Reagan administration because of its policy on exports—for not being conservative enough. This is Trump as a young man shortly after writing The Art of the Deal on the newly created Oprah Show extremely confident and riding on top of the world. What is even more astonishing is that Trump has stayed on top of the world really his whole life. Aside from a few marriages, he’s been remarkably successful for a long period of time without any kind of emotional meltdowns along the way and it’s due to his extraordinary confidence. This is the Donald Trump that I grew up with, and he is the reason I think he would be a great president. What’s really interesting is the very political answer he gave while talking about the field of candidates in the 1988 presidential election, from Bush to Jesse Jackson. I think many people hold his non-committal political positions against him because they don’t understand business. For successful people, one very key ingredient is that you have to know how to navigate around people who might get in your way. Trump showed that he was hedging his bets no matter who won the nomination because as a business man, he knew the consequences of a government aligned against him. And he wanted to continue to be successful. Watch for yourself.

Being in business is very dangerous. Politicians are always looking for a contribution and you have to be careful who you say no to. If you give to the wrong guy and the other person wins, that person might come after you legislatively. It happens all the time. Regulations are used to extort vast billions of dollars a year from business people. A lot of the reason that business people use the Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations to keep orthodox politicians in their seats of power is to protect their businesses from activist government regimes. Market fluctuations and political fall-out are two of the most troublesome elements for a business person’s career. Those who have not had to deal with a zoning board, they don’t understand how difficult political tides can work against you. In Donald Trump’s case, New York is notoriously progressive. It has been for years, so there has always been a lot of liberalism associated with those city government positions. If a rich businessman like Trump gives money to both parties, the zoning issues get resolved quickly. If he only gave to Democrats or Republicans then there would be trouble during subsequent administrations. That’s a ridiculous fact of life in the world of commerce.

Government should not have that kind of power over commerce. But it does and will for quite some time to come. It’s a game all business people have to play. If you don’t play it, you will lose your business. What’s remarkable with Trump is that he has survived for so long with so many parasitic politicians always looking to soak up every last dime that they could extract from him. People have to understand the nature of a politician, and for those who are not rich, or even wealthy and in business, they likely believe that politicians do good things on their behalf with each election. They don’t. All they want is to get elected. Their primary function is to raise money for more elections and they owe the people who give them money constant legislative favors. The vote occurs with donations, not the voting booth. Business people do not give money for any other reason but to protect themselves from intrusive government. Sometimes money is given for more government interference so to perhaps destroy a rival. But the money given is always about getting something. It’s not given for fun.

Trump in that 1988 clip understood this concept very well and he was commanding those around him with the leverage he created even back in the Reagan administration, which was comparatively very business friendly compared to what it is today. When Trump’s father warned him that the family business did not have what it took to make it in Manhattan, it wasn’t the business of real estate that he was talking about, it was about being an aggressive enough mover and shaker to survive that political environment. Jesus would not make a very good businessman. He was a good man, but sometimes when playing aggressive games, you have to be an aggressive person. Trump is often criticized for his use of eminent domain occasionally as a fault—which it is. But it’s a tactic developers often use to get what they need done. I’ve been on both ends of that kind of dispute—and if you think you are right, you have to fight them—the developer. They respect when you fight them, because it either strengthens their position or it shows them the faults of their proposal. Ultimately, they are often grateful even though things do sometimes get violent. I wouldn’t have done to the guy in Scotland what Trump did when a homeowner refused to move the junk off his property so that an exclusive golf course could be built with all the lush trimmings near it. But I’m not a billionaire like Trump is. One of the elements of the great book on strategy called The Art of War is that you must have the heart to take hearts. And if you are in business, you sometimes have to think like that. There are lots of times where I’ve had to run down nice people because they purposely put themselves in the way of something I need to accomplish. Is that right or wrong—well, the Pope might not like it, but capitalism says it’s morally correct. Jesus might turn the other cheek, but that’s not necessarily the right thing to do. Being successful is about more than money, it’s about having the heart to take hearts when such a thing is needed. The result of conquest often results in victory for all—because everyone gets better due to the competition.

Donald Trump represents a different kind of politician. I would vote for him just because he managed to build the Trump Tower in Manhattan where it overshadows Macy’s. The politics involved in that deal would have been enormously difficult. For Trump to purchase the air rights next to his proposed tower design was extremely creative. Without question Trump made decisions on where to purchase concrete from, what anchor stores would be inside the tower and how it would fit into New York politics based on his strategic intentions. He really is a master strategist, which is showing in the presidential race.

As a president, you really can’t afford to paint out half the country the way Obama has. Republicans have been happy to limit themselves to those limits much to their own detriment. Trump is uniquely positioned to recruit voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats as he has knowledge of the entertainment industry that is very unique for a presidential candidate. He may have shown various sides of himself over the years, but at his core, he is the person who appeared on Oprah in 1988 and knows how to get things done. He telegraphed it way back then, he said he’d run for president if he felt the country was too screwed up for anyone else to solve the problems. Well, that’s where we are, and he’s positioned to do the job—best positioned. The world is a mess and internal politics is a disaster. Nobody else has what it takes to get the job done. So why not? If Jesus Christ were running for president, I wouldn’t vote for him. We don’t need someone who will sacrifice themselves to the cross and turn the other cheek declaring love for all. We need someone who knows how to win, any way possible. And that’s what Trump is an expert at doing. That might sound harsh to people who don’t think about life in competitive terms, but for people who are used to winning, they understand what it takes, and how important victors are—even when others don’t see the value as quickly as they can. Those people just enjoy the benefits of someone like Trump and his towers along with the wealth they build for the American economy.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Quality on a Golf Course: Why being “rich” is valuable

I hope it doesn’t happen, but I support it if it does–if Donald Trump goes third-party, I will support him. I am likely much more conservative than Donald Trump. I’m probably more conservative than every Republican in the party. I’m probably more conservative than even the most Bible thumping conservative–anywhere. Yet I would in less than a heartbeat support Donald Trump for president if he leaves the Republicans for a third-party. I would do so because I support a business man over a politician almost every time, particularly one who is as independently wealthy as Trump is. I think economic understanding is the paramount issue of the 2016 election because without money, there is no value—no morality, no understanding of quality, no measurement of worth. Wealthy people are typically a measure of productivity. If they have money, their hands touch the creations of wealth in positive ways. Money has been so ridiculed by the political culture that they forget that it is the only way to really measure value in our society. That is the premier reason I support Donald Trump even if he leaves the Republican Party. Here is how he put it during an interview with The Hill:

“The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” the business mogul told The Hill in a 40-minute interview from his Manhattan office at Trump Tower on Wednesday. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish. I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans. Absolutely, if they’re not fair, that would be a factor.”

“I’m not in the gang. I’m not in the group where the group does whatever it’s supposed to do,” he said. “I want to do what’s right for the country — not what’s good for special interest groups that contribute, not what’s good for the lobbyists and the donors.”

http://www.msn.com/?cobrand=lenovo13-comm.msn.com&ocid=LENDHP&pc=MALCJS

Much of what Trump said in that little interview was exactly how I feel about machine politics. I don’t like it. For something I don’t like, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, but my thoughts are always on how to break it up, not in how to play along to get something. I despise that system, because it gets in the way of pure capitalism and find it repulsive. If Trump will take a stand against it, I’ll fight with him against that system.

I was at a golf course the other day with my favorite pair of jeans on. I’m not one who cares much for orthodox behavior, or the rules of society, but at golf courses there is an understanding of how one dresses and acts. Just like business meetings typically involve suits and ties. You don’t show up covered in tattoos and torn cloths and expect people to take you serious, because the dress is an expectation of quality. Once all parties meeting with that basic agreement of quality in place, then discussions about important topics can begin. Golf courses are all about quality. They are about nice greens, golf clubs, amenities, and nice casual cloths along with quality time with yourself, or friends. Golf is about the swing, shooting under par, and getting the most out of the various tools among the assortment of golf clubs. The distinct ping of a driver hitting a golf ball squarely and with greatly controlled force is a sound of extreme beauty. That is because there is quality in the action. So I was aware that I would get some sideways looks when I showed up in my favorite jeans that have the knees torn out completely with holes. They look really bad. But I love them; they are comfortable and represent my lifestyle. And after spending several straight days in business suits, I wanted to be in my favorite cloths as I stopped by this particular course on business. Not to play, but to do some other activity.

As I walked around the clubhouse many golfers looked at me with disdain, which I understood. I was clearly not dressed for a golf course, so I didn’t take any offense. The value system of the golf course dictated that people conduct themselves with proper attire. It doesn’t matter the sex or race—only that fellow golfers conduct themselves with a sense of “quality.” In addition to the holy pants, I had on a loose-fitting button-up shirt that wasn’t tucked in, which is normal for me around the house. At a golf course, it was frowned upon. And I understood and accepted that. Life on a golf course is supposed to be slightly luxurious and otherworldly. People go there to get away not just from the world for a bit, but to be around quality. If people show up expecting that culture of quality to change just because they want to wear holy pants, they are the one in the wrong. Now, I was in the mood to not care what people thought, so I dressed the way I wanted. But never did I expect them to change for my benefit.

Similarly, money is a measurement of quality. Those who have lots of money have usually done something in their life that reflects excessively productive output. The money is a measure of that productivity. People can be jealous of that productive output and hope that they might acquire a lot of money without the work of being productive, but usually they would be wasting wishes—unless they happen to win a lottery ticket or inherit a lot of money for someone else’s effort. But they do not have a right to demand that productive people refuse to put a cap on their efforts just to make others feel better about themselves.

The Republican Party as an organization doesn’t do much but consume resources. They solicit money from people like Trump to keep them funded and continuing to win elections which then provokes the question as to why they are even needed if they serve no other purpose but to appeal to people who have money so they can stick themselves between the productive and the needy to barter the relationship with their con-artist appeal. If they aren’t going to manage resources, then the politicians are useless, which is what Trump’s campaign is shaping up to illustrate. He doesn’t need them and neither do voters, which begs the question as to why we have such a ridiculous system to begin with.

The political class is attempting to demonize Trump because he has money. Because he has money, he doesn’t have to appeal to any donors, so there is nobody to pull out the rug from under his campaign. The political class knows they can’t compete with that, so they have no other move but to castigate him from their circles of associations. They want him as a donor; they don’t want him as a contributor to the philosophy of Republicanism. That makes them leeches in need of sustenance. It also makes him the body they need to suck off of, and with all this name calling they have embarked on, they are trying to put him in his place with force—whether it’s John McCain calling Trump’s supports “crazies,” or Lindsey Graham calling Trump himself a “jackass.” They actually expected him to take the ridicule which is why politics is so screwed up in the first place. The emphasis among the political class is that the individual must subject themselves to the greater good of the group—those who are most served have the value over the least. But that assumes that everyone involved is of the same quality. And people are not all of the same quality. That is the lesson one learns at a golf course, or based on the size of one’s bank account. Some people do more and are worth more than others. In the world of politics, Trump has done a lot more than all the politicians on Capital Hill put together. Yet they expect Trump to fall in line to maintain their illusion of value behind a group consensus. They do the same to us all, which makes them completely worthless to the task at hand.

If Trump leaves the party behind, I will as well to help him accomplish his task. I’ve pulled for Republicans before; I still do with a hope that some of them aren’t a bunch of screwballs. After I was burnt by John Kasich personally as I was one of the Right to Work leaders in Ohio during a time when the governor wanted to attack those types of people using the party to try to eliminate them, I will never give anybody a chance to do that to me again. So I have no love for the party, they are too liberal for me. They can point to Trump and declare that he was a Democrat, and that he was friends with the Clintons, and that he isn’t a strong conservative. But he’s rich, and he has made a lot of money, and to me that means something. I’d put my bets on him over any politician, so if the party paints him out of the party, it will be their loss—yet again.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Gun Grabbing Obama: Attacking America from within by first disarming them

The communist oriented Democrats have been “community organizing” vigorously on the heels of the infamous June 2015 Supreme Court rulings going for what they think is the conservative jugular in the final year of Obama’s flamboyant rule as a socialist dictator. Over the weekend I received several emails from them advocating fundraising and liberal activism. Below is one such example from the Obama camp specifically targeting guns. Here’s what it said.

Friend —

We’ve had to come together as a nation too many times to mourn after horrific acts of gun violence. And right now, it’s not good enough simply to show sympathy.

We need to acknowledge that there’s more work to do — that these tragedies have become far too commonplace. This is a conversation that folks need to have, and organizers like you are the ones who will move it forward.

People across the country are stepping up, and OFA supporters and volunteers are working to prevent gun violence state by state and city by city — join their fight today.

As we take the time to heal in the shadow of this most recent tragedy, we have to ask ourselves what more we can do as individuals and communities to prevent guns from getting into the hands of dangerous individuals.

The lack of movement in Congress on this issue is incredibly frustrating. But their refusal to act won’t stop progress. Because of organizers like you, states like Washington and Oregon have introduced successful restrictions on gun purchases, like common-sense background checks.

No single reform will eliminate violence. But we can’t give up, or act like this is some kind of new normal. We have to make progress where we can, and OFA and other groups have a real path forward.

There’s much more to do — so join OFA in working for it:

https://my.barackobama.com/Stand-Against-Gun-Violence

I’m not giving up, and I hope you won’t either. Every voice is important.

Thank you,

Barack Obama

Remember, progress to a progressive is elimination one by one of the Bill of Rights, and the gun is highest on their priority list. So defend the gun by sending a nice message to OFA and let them know how you feel. Communists want a disarmed America for obvious reasons. It’s your job dear reader to make sure they don’t get their way. Send this article to everyone you know and make sure to take action and defend your rights—or you will lose them.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Tragedy behind ‘Jurassic World’s’ Success: Hollywood in crises driven by a brain-dead culture

I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll do it again. I may not have said it in quite this strong of a fashion, but given the recent performance of Jurassic World at the box office, it is making several points that need some understanding. The greatest crises facing our American civilization is not global warming, inner city gun shootings, or even a tanking economy, it’s our inability to make new and original art.

I am extremely pleased with the box office performance of Jurassic World. I am a huge fan and I have written about the positive implications that such a film brings to the world of science. It’s almost immeasurable. So in that respect, there is wonderful news for the film industry this year, and for the next six or so—until this well of old material runs dry. Specifically, the contents of that well are all the retreads from the 1980s and 90s, the Star Wars films, Terminator franchise, the Avenger comic films along with other Marvel properties, Mad Max—etc—the strong box office showings declare quite strongly what American movie goers really want. For instance, Jurassic World is breaking records as of this writing making $400 million domestically in just 10 days. That record will last until of course the new Star Wars film hits in December. People are desperately hungry for these types of stories—and that is generally a very good—healthy thing for our culture. Films like the new drama Dope made under $6 million for its opening weekend which is well under the $7 million distributors paid for the film at Sundance. Once again, progressive films fail at the box office, traditional films succeed. The formula should be an easy one for studios—yet like idiots they continue to use the film industry as a way to evoke social change which most Americans are weary of. And it is that which has brought us to our present dilemma.

In Jurassic World the director is clearly similar to me. I’d probably get along wonderfully with Colin Trevorrow over a beer and nachos just because it’s obvious he loves the original film at least as much as I do. There were a lot of scenes in Jurassic World paying homage to Jurassic Park the way a person who truly loves something would do. I saw the same type of thing during last year’s Godzilla—specifically the scene where the classic movie monster was tearing its way through the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It was nearly a scene for scene duplication in sound to the original Jurassic Park when the T-Rex first appeared. These directors today were obviously fans of the original Jurassic Park, and they want to make movies representing that love. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what is troubling is that there was once a day when Jurassic Park, and all these other movies from the past were original—and our culture is not presently making original films any longer. Now that Jurassic World is having so much success, studios will be very hesitant to attempt funding new projects because given the cost of movies these days to make, the box office expectations are just too high to justify the expense on anything less than a movie property that is not deeply imbedded in the consciousness of movie fans percolating for twenty or more years. Jurassic World is good on its own and might even do similar numbers as the original did 22 years ago by itself. Yet the massive drive to see the film, and huge oversea numbers are attributed to the recognition the film has historically in the hearts and minds of millions for two decades now. So there is a lot of pent-up desire to see this new film. Studios now will be so focused on resurrecting old properties that they will be extremely hesitant to do anything new—which is taking our culture to the edge of disaster.

When a culture is no longer making new art, it is losing its ability to think—and that is where American culture is headed. The public education system has failed to ignite in several generations a sense of wonder, televisions have made thinking a lazy exercise, literature is laughed at by younger people, and the music of our day seems only concerned with political motivations than anything of the human experience. Our society is making more Colin Trevorrow types who copy those from the past and less Steven Spielbergs who made the original and that is dangerous.

It’s not just in film that we are seeing this—but in the movie industry there are behavioral indexes that are easy to track. Likely we will see this same behavior in patent filings and new job creation in the coming years. It probably shows up already if there were proper ways to collect that data—but there really isn’t. The effects will be seen none-the-less in a less creative culture. Creativity is not just about making dinosaurs in a motion picture but in solving little problems that create new kinds of cars, new concepts in philosophy, politics, law and order—in just about every field where thought turns to action to advance civilization.

From experience, on the business side of things I can safely say that from one end of this country in the United States to the other are brain-dead slugs, which is unique to our time. When you pick up the phone to call someone in Seattle, New York, Chicago, or Atlanta—and everywhere in between, a person just going through the motions of life answers. Their primary objectives are to eat, reproduce, and pursue further reiterations of endorphin utilization—pursing pleasure over thought in nearly every circumstance. It wasn’t like that even when the first Jurassic Park came out two decades ago. This brain-dead society is a fairly new phenomenon, and the entertainment industry is the first to reveal its ugly realization. I would also dare to say that the reason there is so much hunger for Jurassic World is due to this obvious vacancy of thought. Suddenly there is a movie about things that has heroics, hope, horror, and possibility in it that people can see and touch—and they like it. Those are traits in our art that is becoming less obvious by the day, which of course leads to artistic and intellectual disaster for a society falling from its precipice.

A further perpetuation of that thoughtless manifest is in the so-called intellectual culture who thinks that Jurassic World is low brow and that films like Dope are proper representatives of a culture—and teach such nonsense to film students and college literature courses. They consider a Broadway play of Kinky Boots to have more artistic appeal than say Terminator Genesis—yet the masses of American culture do not find such progressive art appealing—they can’t relate to it. So they tune out and turn off—and remain that way sometimes for their entire lives. It’s quite a crisis.

After 2020 – 2021 I see a major drop off within the film industry. The movies we make as a culture will fall in on itself—and even the retreads will wear away in their appeal. New concepts will have to take their place and I don’t have faith that we have a culture any longer that can produce anything new. We should be in a period of incredible creativity with the modern tools available. But they are being wasted on pornography and gossip—not on innovation. That is when you know you are in trouble, and as much as I love the box office numbers of Jurassic World—they speak most obviously of the desperate hunger people have for that kind of entertainment that they aren’t getting from any other source—which is sad. A lot of what we take for granted today will be treasured greatly tomorrow—and that is obvious most distinctly in American art. As hopeful as movie studios are today in staying relevant—hard times are ahead for them—and the culture in general who consumes the product of Hollywood. That is the disaster I think is behind the massive success of Jurassic World.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Trap Behind the Deal: Danielle Richardson standing against a tide of corruption

Danielle Richardson has been leading the way to save the Old Union School within the Lakota school district. She led a group of protestors to the school board meeting on Monday June 8, 2015 to stop the giveaway the district is attempting to create with a Boys and Girls Club offering free babysitting service to area tax payers. The deal is essentially a levy building consensus exercise designed to pull together the business community with the progressive aims of the government school. What is being destroyed in the process is a bit of history within West Chester, Ohio and the efforts of the tax payers at maintaining sanity from the runaway costs of the Lakota school system—for which they are paving the way for yet another tax increase.

Karen Mantia the superintendent of Lakota is up for a contract renewal, which should be allowed to expire and part ways because of her ineffectiveness from a community perspective. Under her watch taxes have gone up and so have her labor costs not resulting in an increase in services offered to the community. She is everything that people like me said she would be at the very beginning. Lakota during the levy fights have since yielded to the labor union strategy of pay for play programs and reduced programs putting as a priority their employees over the kids who attend resulting in a failure that is only hidden by the benefits of an affluent district. She has ridden the coat tails of that success and sought wherever possible to utilize progressive consensus building mechanisms like the Community Conversation program which costs $40K per year to do nothing but change people’s minds about increased property taxes. The other strategy utilized by her has been to make alliances with former opponents from No Lakota Levy to quiet them during upcoming levies, which is what the Old Union School giveaway is all about.

Danielle’s protestors had a hardy presence even though it will fall on deaf ears, because Lakota has no other management option but to ask for more money and make deals to gain public support for tax increases. By giving away the Old Union School to development, the cost of the tax increases for the property owners involved are marginalized and everyone gets to walk away from the deal thinking they did something nice for kids—and everyone sleeps well at night with that belief. But that’s not the end of the story for everyone else not associated with the deal—and that’s the issue of concern.

Through an alliance with the Community Foundation Lakota has one of its largest levy cheerleaders which penetrate the heart of the GOP community within Butler County. In this way Mantia and her consensus builders within the Lakota organization gets the Republican Party to support unionized labor which indirectly works against them politically with the amount of PAC money that is generated through union dues. The Old Union School deal is something more reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s backroom deals with Uranium One. It pulls local Republicans in on a trap set by her, using children as bait, to attack their financial base indirectly with union fees. It marginalizes their protests in public because they are all in on the deal, and moves them politically to the left neutralizing their future opposition when tax increases are proposed.

Lakota is too far committed to this Old Union School deal to listen to protestors now. Their goal is not to work with the local GOP as Mantia is a former school teacher herself—they are a progressive advocate intent to water down the GOP into a more centralist organization which has shown itself to be the case over the last four years. Mantia’s not alone of course; the woman who hired her was Lynda O’Connor who openly befriended many of the No Lakota Levy people in 2012 to the point where we supported her for re-election. She’s now the president of the school board and has helped pull all these elements together with consensus building of her own. People who would normally disagree politically play ball because they want a piece of the pie that this Lakota team helped build. In this case the Lakota alliance with the Community Foundation and area developers whom I worked with in the past are the primary players. I along with a few others exposed this ill begotten alliance when we started our own foundation to compete with the Community Foundation which resulted in a violent backlash toward myself—which has been well documented—much of it led by the same person who is advocating on behalf of this Boys and Girls Club project. The evidence had been emerging for quite some time, so we flushed it out, and not everyone had the courage to stand up to it. In the end, there were a lot of people who quietly showed me their support, but really in the end just like Danielle Richardson is experiencing now—it’s a lonely road that only one or two people at any given time have the guts to expose. Danielle’s protest is more of an exposure of this vile behavior than a hope for change. The silence and slander from Lakota is the confirmation of her validity because it’s the only play they have in the matter. The slander doesn’t always come from direct sources, but in the roundabout ways within party politics.

But it should never be taken for granted that the overall goal of the Old Union School deal is to weaken the grip of the GOP, gain support for a future tax increase, and offer free babysitting services to already addicted parents who cannot afford to put their children in daycare so both parents can work and pay for the large mortgages it takes to live within Liberty/West Chester Townships. It is far cheaper to pay the taxes for those levy addicts than the yearly daycare costs—and that is at the heart of the entire strategy which pulls all these parties into supporting indirectly radical labor union intentions dedicated to progressive politics—anti GOP strategies. So while the Old Union School demolition and rebuilding of a new Boys and Girls Club might give local developers some much-needed work, the gains are short-term exclusively but the impact to the GOP down the road is gradual erosion of its small government platform.

As much as area Republicans might want to chastise Richardson for being a radical activist and a say-no-to-anything and everything related to progress type, she is more Republican than a whole room full of GOP leaders—and she’s not even a hard-core Republican. She’s a libertarian in almost every way yet her intentions and goals benefit the GOP far more than Todd Hall’s grand unification of the GOP strategy of pushing out all the radicals and pulling in all the business types under the same tent. Because when it comes to levy time, those who took the deal won’t be able to stand against the tax increase, and Lakota knows that. That’s the main objective of the Old Union School demolition and property giveaway. It’s a flytrap for insurgents who have too high a profile to stand honestly against the corruption as Danielle Richardson is. And for her, it’s going to be a lonely road.

If you want to join her you can at the following link:

http://www.saveoldunionschool.com/

As for fans of Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom who are distraught that No Lakota Levy members are involved in the Old Union School deal, do not fret. The resistance to the future tax increases is alive and well, and more vibrant than it was even four years ago when No Lakota Levy was in its prime. Things evolve and new faces emerge as other faces fade off under the pressure and make deals. People like Danielle Richardson will be a part of those future fights which of course begins with events like this one centering on the Old Union School. I wonder what Lakota will do when they can’t answer the questions that Danielle brings up……………..they certainly can’t call her a sexist. Ummmmmm, that might be a difficult problem for them to overcome. What’s the old term……………………….”what comes around……………goes……………..”

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Helping Chief Blackwell: Cincinnati needs more guns–not less

Gun grabbers and pacifists are licking their lips with all the recent violence in Cincinnati involving guns. As Channel 9 released the report below and the Cincinnati Enquirer pandered to the same class of the panic driven drivel, the root cause of the gun violence was ignored in favor of a progressive objective seeking to demonize personal firearms. Here is how Channel 9 presented the case for which the burden fell on Chief Blackwell.

Cincinnatians have been barraged with the reports of 168 shootings so far this year. They include the recent gun battle on I-75, gunfire ringing out on our streets in broad daylight, teen-agers getting shot and teen-agers doing the shooting. There’s one thing all these incidents have in common: a gun.

That’s what I wanted to talk about with Chief Jeffrey Blackwell when I sat down with him Friday. Guns have been on his mind too.

He produced a daily report showing shootings are up 23 percent this year compared to the same period last year. Homicides are down, but he agreed that the recent violence has created an atmosphere of unease.

His short-term response to the outbreak of gun violence is to create a new “gun-reduction program,” a group of 13 officers who will focus on the people police know of who are responsible for much of it.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/06/03/sentinels-support-chief/28408041/

http://www.wcpo.com/web/wcpo/news/crime/cincinnati-police-department-90-day-plan-includes-moving-more-officers-to-the-streets

So I’m going to do Chief Blackwell a favor, and explain to him the cause and how to remedy the problem that the city manager of Cincinnati has placed upon his shoulders. First of all the reason for the increase in gun violence is that the news reports from Baltimore and Ferguson have shown the criminal minded how to avoid prosecution and harassment by the police. Now that they’ve seen how mobs of people can protest the police and how the police have been neutered, particularly in places like New York City, and Chicago—respect for the law is at an all time low. Poor quality politicians and the media have fanned the flames of violence provoking it in many cases in inner cities where government dependents reside in a high concentration. The net result is an increase in the statistical violence involving guns in Cincinnati, and just about everywhere else where large concentrations of public housing, and welfare dominate the per capita population.

Yet in areas where there is a high concentration of gun ownership, like Mason and West Chester, Ohio—there is almost no gun violence per capita or by volume of gun ownership. That is because the quality of people in those areas are different—there are less thugs per capita in those areas. So a simple gun reduction program won’t work, because guns have been invented and bad guys will find them just as they do illegal drugs. Reducing gun ownership within the city of Cincinnati will only guarantee more violence, not less—because when those who behave with an animalistic desire to suppress others drives criminal behavior against the innocent—the lack of guns allows for an unbalanced defense against thugs. Thugs are those who wish to impart violence against others to fulfill their own personal objectives. The victims may not desire to take part in that desire but if they don’t have a gun to equalize the ill intent, the thug will have the advantage 100% of the time without any resistance.

Progressives and other community advocates who lazily wish that guns had never been invented and fantasize that more government workers could manage all the elements of society into peace if only there were no more guns are the cause of the violence and the delay of the solution. They are the cause of the increased violence coming and going then point at the guns as the villains. Well, they have lost their seat at the table. There is enough history and facts now to dispute their fear based diatribes. Fewer guns increase violence, more guns reduce it. It’s a very simple equation.

If the violence within Cincinnati were to truly be reduced, then more homes with more guns should have them. There may be a slight spike at the beginning of such a proposal where the guns are used to dispel the efforts of a bad guy but once word hit the streets, the cockroaches would return to their hiding and keep their crimes from the eyes of humanity—for the most part. Give some shotguns to the old men who sit on their porches in Avondale talking about the old days—and let them eliminate the violence on their streets, the car break-ins, the drug deals, the gang gatherings—and it will quickly be shown how effect a pro gun program in the hands of private citizens truly is.

Take those same old men in Avondale sitting on their porches with shotguns painted against the reality of our day and they would be arrested for poor handling of a firearm and disturbing the peace while the members of a gang stand on a street corner down the road and laugh. The old men are an easy arrest for the police and keeps their captains off their backs for lack of arrests—but the kids down the road are difficult. There are legal entanglements and revenge killings—and they are just too much trouble. No cop with a family wants a cartel killer to show up on their doorstep, so they leave the kids alone. The gang is just too much trouble to deal with. Cops will show up to take a report after violence has occurred, but they just can’t do anything until a crime is committed making them virtually powerless to stop anything before a thug committees a violent act.

So what is Chief Blackwell supposed to say to a bunch of panicky politicians wanting a quick fix to a problem they created with progressive policies? Tell them the truth, or tell them what they want to hear—that he’ll focus on getting rid of guns off the streets. To liberal progressives, that is music to their ears, so they might be appeased—for a while, but it won’t solve the problem. Violence will continue because those in charge have been deemed weak by the thugs, and that will only breed more thugs—not less. Before crime can really be solved management must admit that some of their citizens are thugs, and that they seek to correct that behavior with a basic respect for humanity. Those failing to adhere to that basic respect must be dealt with in the only way they understand—with force. Then and only then will violent trends decrease, and assumptions toward civility be cultivated successfully.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Truth Behind Pseudoscience: How the Forest Hills superintendent played a part in the destruction of scientific method

Pseudoscience is a growing trend which I cover quite a lot, mainly because it is evolving out of a lack of trust in the current intellectual institutions. As it turns out the imagination of mankind is more reliable than its ordained collectivism—the level of reality that the masses are willing to accept. For those masses, their level of intellectual aptitude is not very high, and they are happy to relegate their trust to those they consider authority figures. But that trust quickly evaporates when it is discovered that those authority figures are extremely corrupt individuals lacking basic leadership skills, which is certainly the case when the Forest Hills superintendent was caught trying to manipulate his child’s individual test scores—because obviously those types of things are important to his family. This is not an uncommon occurrence. In my dealings with public schools I was amazed at how simple their thinking was, and how easy to corrupt they were. My net result of observation was that they cannot be trusted with much of anything—especially the framework that science and education in general are bound by. Here is the story of the superintendent as reported by Channel 5.

ANDERSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio —Forest Hill School Board members have released the results of their investigation into allegations that Superintendent Dallas Jackson is accused of invalidating a first semester exam score, because his son did poorly on the test.

It could be a packed house at the Forest Hills School Board meeting Monday night after the district’s superintendent was accused of tossing out a test because of his son’s grade.

The board met in executive session for more than three hours Monday night.

According to an unnamed investigator, Superintendent Dr. Dallas Jackson attempted to interfere with grades on a pre-calculus honors mid-term exam, but the Turpin High School principal addressed the exam grades without influence from the superintendent.

Teachers first sent a letter to the school board questioning the ethics of the superintendent’s inquiries into the test his son took.

WLWT has been pushing the Forest Hills district for the documents for days. The station obtained a copy late Tuesday afternoon.

Jackson tried to step in after 44 percent of the honors students, including his son, failed an exam in December.

An independent investigation found Jackson sent a text to the principal saying he was not happy with the way she was handling the issue.

The district reported Jackson met twice with the principal at Turpin about the exam. Jackson told the principal the failure rate was due to either “a bad test or bad teaching.”

The principal approached the teachers in charge of the exam about averaging out the test grade, but they refused. Ultimately, the teachers, the Turpin principal and assistant principal agreed on a plan to give students a chance to raise their grades.

Jackson disagreed with the plan, but it was implemented anyway.

http://www.wlwt.com/news/forest-hills-school-board-ends-investigation-into-superintendents-conduct/32623884

In my experience at witnessing, writing, and researching many stories like the one above from Forest Hills, it is safe to say that I don’t trust much of anything that comes from institutions backed by government—especially if they have connections to international trade unions. There is just too much temptation to cover up bad human behavior, or interpretations of a strongly held static pattern—such as a religious preference—to alter and manipulate data intended to be involved in critical thought. As I say that I can’t help but think of a book a person I greatly admire wrote called The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. Sagan is not the type to jump into conspiracy theories and wanted very much to fight back the trend to take imaginations into pseudoscience. But the scientific data he often relies on to make proper decisions are known to be deliberately revised. Evidence cannot be considered if it is destroyed and proper assessment of data cannot be deduced if it is avoided to protect intellects from the challenges of new data that may be contrary to a static pattern of thinking.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan.

In the book, Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical or skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science, and ideas that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking, and should stand up to rigorous questioning.

Science to Sagan is not just a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking. The scientific way of thinking is both imaginative and disciplined, bringing humans to an understanding of how the universe is, rather than how they wish to perceive it. Science works much better than any other system because it has a “built-in error-correcting machine”. Superstition and pseudoscience get in the way of many laypersons’ ability to appreciate the beauty and benefits of science. Skeptical thinking allows people to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved. He states that reason and logic would succeed once the truth is known. Conclusions emerge from premises, and the acceptability of the premises should not be discounted or accepted because of bias.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

Yet we live in a world where public schools have deliberately avoided critical thinking and reason—so that emotional decisions centering on collective endorsement can be utilized instead. The result of this action is an entire society that has lost the ability to think critically or to use reason to make determinations. When those types of people are in charge of an institution what you get is the kind of results seen in Forest Hills Superintendent Dallas Jackson. His son had a bad grade, he was a superintendent of an important public school, and he didn’t want the embarrassment of having his kid not performing at the top of his academic expectations………….what would the neighbors think? Worse yet, what about the rest of the family? So he used his power to abuse the system to his needs. This has happened within the IRS involving Lois Lerner. It happened in Benghazi. It happens every time a teacher decides they want to have sex with one of their students. It happens all the time and at all levels.

Its not unrealistic to imagine that some curators at The Smithsonian Institute, or The National Geographic Society who have poured their faith behind the Charles Darwin theories of evolution and built their careers around those assumptions would not stuff the bones of some giant discovered in a Ohio mound into some vault, or even destroy the evidence to preserve their scientific outlook. For instance, everyone knows that whatever wreckage was found in the Roswell incident was sent to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Not long thereafter there were many UFO sightings around Southern Ohio probably related to new military technology either being developed at WPAB or the testing of alien technology found in the wreckage. Or perhaps somebody or something connected to the wreckage went looking for their stuff back. Supposedly the complex of this mysterious Air Force base was connected by tunnels to the Mound Nuclear complex nearby in Miamisburg. And in the middle of all this activity was the Masonic temple that looks down into downtown Dayton and the Great Miami River upstream from the nuclear site. Old buildings around Dayton all up and down the river in that area have lots of references to gargoyles and strange winged creatures that really don’t have a direct connection to the frontier development of those communities, so something really odd is going on behind the veil of the presented reality there. I probably wouldn’t think anything strange about any of this except that somebody decided to build the entire nuclear research facility right in the middle of a magnificent mound builder complex right in the middle of the site. At the Miamisburg Mound at least two skeletons of people over 8 feet tall were found, so any credible university it would be thought would seek to do some major excavations in Miamisburg to discover who and what they were. Instead, science and industry backed by politics built a nuclear research facility supposedly connected to the alien conspiracy theories of WPAB. If you take Carl Sagan’s scientific method at face value one has to ask—what proof is there of any paranormal, or pseudoscience behavior? Well, the mound itself there in Miamisburg is large, and the entire nuclear faculty was built around it for some reason—perhaps to give the illusion of having respect for Native American culture. Yet nobody has dared to do a proper excavation of the site in over 100 years. Why? The University of Dayton is literally just a few miles away—they have some anthropology courses that they offer. Nearby University of Cincinnati and Miami University both have respectable archaeology programs, yet nobody has pulled together the ability to do a suitable dig at the site—which would unquestionably produce many more skeletons—probably some of which were giants—relatively speaking. Science creates the pseudoscience speculation because of the various cover-ups which likely stem from a religious desire, or a European pride issue of maintaining that Christopher Columbus discovered America and that the cultures that were already in the New World were truly primitive hunters and gathers. The culture that built those mounds was more advanced than previously thought, and those in charge wanted to manipulate the facts to force reality to be shaped to their desire.

That’s why it’s a big deal when someone like Dallas Jackson abuses his authority to make his son look smarter to his peers. Jackson manipulated the science of critical thinking to create a desired outcome. When this happens in a local school system, you get mistrust and some chicken gawking toward righteousness. The teachers had a chance to push back against management and show what ethical people they are ahead of their next levy attempt, and the news outlets get a story to cover. But when the same thing happens on a national level with all the coordinating institutions protecting their version of realty—whether it is in preserving the illusion of European history and cultural superiority, religious orthodox, or even political alignments the only way to scratch at the truth is through the pseudoscience.

Public education institutions have lost their relevancy because they have shown themselves all too willing to behave as a filter to reality by programming the masses into illusions of understanding—so to preserve versions of reality they see as valuable. For Dallas Jackson it was more important to him to have his son look like a smart kid than in the actual fact of his son’s intelligence. So he sought ways to fudge the numbers in favor of his boy. This is how Carl Segan’s trust in the scientific method goes wrong because institutions and those in charge of any collective oriented enterprise are prone to doing just as Jackson did meaning that very little of what is produced and offered as truth can be taken as such without more evidence being sought out through speculation. Little things do add up to big things rather quickly and because of that pseudoscience is gaining ground where orthodox science is failing. And sometimes it all starts with a superintendent just trying to change the grade of his son to look better in a social setting. That is the damage that is done, and why it is so perilous a path to take.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Vote No on the Midpointe Library System: Philosophy and the changing way of expanding knowledge

I am against the MidPointe Library System in Butler County, Ohio for all the same reasons I am against school levies. Even though I tend to love people who strive for knowledge and desire to feed minds with information, the quality of those efforts can cast people adrift all of their lives ruining them, and a library in many subtle ways contribute to that personal destruction. Before detailing why and how, here is the case that the MidPointe Library System makes for itself looking for more money from voters during the upcoming May 5^th 2015 election. Essentially to make a long story short, they make the same arguments that public schools make, helping the children, offerings to the community, and all that kind of nonsense.

The MidPointe Library System will have a renewal levy on the ballot on Tuesday, May 5. Please find information regarding this levy, as well as why the Library is asking for continued community support below:

Something for Everyone in the Community

With current funding levels, the MidPointe Library System is able to provide many resources, materials, services, and programming to the residents of eastern Butler County.

MidPointe offers a collection of over a half million items, and partnership in the SearchOhio lending consortium gives patrons access to over 16 million items from across the state. In 2014 over 2 million items were checked out. Additionally, MidPointe provides internet access and public computers to assist people in finding jobs, accessing data and doing school work.

In 2014, MidPointe offered over 2000 programs. These are as diverse as yoga class and technology instruction for adults, to storytime and early literacy book clubs for children. The Library’s Summer Reading Program, which promotes literacy for all ages, reached record involvement last year, with nearly 10,000 patrons participating.

MidPointe’s influence expands well beyond the buildings. Librarians visit schools and community centers to engage young people in the joy of reading. Educators are able to stock their classrooms with books as a result of MidPointe’s “Teacher Collections.” The MidPointe Outreach Services Department delivers materials to over 200 patrons who are unable to physically visit the Library.

Library Budgeting

For the past two decades, Libraries in the state of Ohio have faced reduced funding. In 2008, the most drastic of these cuts occurred and as a result, the Library had to dramatically reduce hours, services and staffing. For the first time, the Library approached the public with the possibility of a .75 mill levy to supplement operations. The voters of our Library district passed the levy, which represents almost 40% of the MidPointe budget. Overdue fines and fees only represent 3.25% of the Library’s overall budget.

The overwhelming majority of the Library’s expenses are devoted to collection development and public service and programs. Administrative costs represent only 12.5% of overall expenses and the MidPointe Library System has continually been recognized as one of the most cost-effective in the state.

Levy Details

The levy on the May 5 ballot is a renewal. This is not a new tax.

Levy funds make up 40% of MidPointe’s budget.

Levy Millage: .75 mill

Length of Levy: 5 years

Cost: The cost of this levy to the owner of a $100,000 home is approximately $22.97 a year(less than the cost of one hardback book).

Levy funds will:

Maintain services and materials at all MidPointe locations.

Continue to provide current technological resources to the public.

Allow for sensible expansion in our growing community.

Sustain programs for children, teens and adults.

http://www.midpointelibrary.org/news/renewal-levy-information/

Essentially they simply want more money to continue a practice that is rooted in socialism. I have never liked libraries because I have never liked sharing my books. I like buying them, and owning them—collecting them like treasures to be guarded by me as part of a life’s journey. It has always seemed wrong to “borrow” a library book from the library where they maintain “collective” ownership. The concept of a shared resource is disgusting. Library books are routinely abused because nobody owns them and are reflective of the type of society that is not centered on personal responsibility and individual ownership.

I have not been to a library for years. In my community within my little network of a neighborhood I have one of the best libraries in the entire country, the West Chester Library, yet I never, ever use it. I would not borrow a book or movie from them, because I don’t want to use someone else’s stuff. However, I go to one of two Barnes and Nobles book stores about two times a week. The children sections in both of those book stores are tremendous services to children and show how much better private investment is in constructing the mind of young people. The book store in Newport, Kentucky is just fabulous and is still one of my favorites anywhere—which is pictured within this article. It is a temple of knowledge and I love it—yet it is struggling to stay afloat in the changing climate of online offerings. Unlike the MidPointe Library System, Barnes and Noble cannot ask for a tax increase to stay afloat in a changing economy. So they have to adapt—where libraries are doing the same things they always have—and they lose a lot of money because of it. They are essentially money pits and their offerings to the community are not beneficial as they pretend.

The job of teaching children to read falls on the parents or less directly, the extended family members of a child—aunts, uncles, grandparents and so on. Not a socialist librarian or volunteer who has a subtle agenda of encouraging sharing as opposed to ownership. The world of a capitalist society like the United States is rooted in ownership—not sharing. When something of value maintains its worth because someone owned it and cared for it, it is then valuable to someone who might want to purchase it for their own. Libraries encourage sharing and while that might sound good on the surface—the mentality created from this exchange of ideas often leads to various acceptances of degrees of socialism—like public education, public housing, public assistance and so on.

From the book shelves at Barnes and Noble in Newport, Kentucky in my favorite section—the philosophy section—the two primary competing ideas regarding philosophy are on full display—because that is what people are buying. Amazon.com can provide obscure books within a few days and at a great price. Barnes and Noble put on their shelves titles that sell. All the other sections in the book store, politics, fiction, and cooking, current events—etc, all stem from the philosophy section. People think the way they do and are attracted to some things rather than other things based on their personal philosophy, so I see it as the most important section. In the various schools of thought in Western philosophy everything is basically built off two individuals, Plato and Aristotle. In the east it is Confucius, which leans toward Western Platonic thought. What that translates to through a long line of philosophic thought is essentially Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. I certainly lean toward Ayn Rand—yet I think her Objectivism is limited to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and that there will be new schools of thought stemming from her Objectivism that will have to encapsulate the bizarre behavior of quantum mechanics now being discovered. But Karl Marx has been a failure and is a dying philosophy that will either be extinct within the next two hundred years, or it will destroy our civilization. I have no use for Karl Marx in any fashion. Libraries are part of a Karl Marx mentality.

I love libraries for their historical significance—especially the library in Alexandria. At the time the cost of printing books was prohibitive and everyone couldn’t own a book. So the borrowing of books at a library was the best way to achieve an exchange of knowledge. But that time has passed. Now there are so many books printed that the market is saturated with knowledge. It is easier, and more efficient for people to upload books onto their devices, or just buy them at Amazon.com. Stores like Barnes and Nobel fill the traditional role of a library being a center of learning—especially for kids. But as for motivation into intellectual endeavors, libraries are not a substitute for a good parent or mentor. The reason I don’t go to the West Chester library is because it feels like a socialist utopia to me. But Barnes and Nobel feels like the intellectual center of a capitalist country and I could essentially move into every one of them and be very happy. It is for that reason that I will vote no for the MidPointe levy on May 5^th. I feel sorry for them, but they are a dying enterprise that will evaporate under the changing times—and it would be better for them to see that happen now than prolonging the agony. Community isn’t very valuable unless the members of that community believe in an Aristotelian logic as opposed to a Platonic sentiment. A community of socialists is a destructive force, and that will be the unintended consequence of a continuation of the library system in America. It is time for a replacement and it begins with a withdrawal of funds from the black hole of tax increases for which libraries currently represent.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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