Politicians Damn the Tea Party to HELL: More reasons for voting YES on ISSUE 2

Maxine Waters and many others of her political persuasion are damning the Tea Party to Hell for wanting to undo all the mistakes those progressive politicians have made over the last century. So before I get into Maxine and the rest of this issue please review the following video which I included on my article about WHY PUBLIC UNIONS FAIL (CLICK HERE TO READ AND VIEW THE FANTASTIC VIDEOS ON THAT ARTICLE) This video paints the picture of our current political situation extremely well. So before you do anything else, WATCH THIS!

What is happening in states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin are people like myself, who are absolutely sick of politics, tired of the double-talk, tired of new legislation buried in the back of another bill similar to the practice of EARMARKING and PORK BARREL spending, are hiring strong governors who are not in bed with labor unions to bring down the costs of doing business in our states. I don’t care where a governor like Kasich came from, I hired him to do one job, and that’s to balance Ohio’s budget, and I don’t want the public unions to pull him to their side like shown in that video. That has been the problem for many, many, many years and this is the cause of the strong governors we are starting to see emerge, such as Chris Christie in New Jersey who is bringing public sector reforms to his state. Listen to his most recent endeavor here:

In Ohio, Kasich and the House and Senate in spite of being Republican are attempting for the first time in my lifetime to actually fix something in state government. And that something is a tremendous huge fix that to the labor unions may feel far-reaching, but it’s really not. I think Senate Bill 5, otherwise known as Issue 2 is extremely fair and it has infuriated me that people like Bill Cunningham who have claimed to be a Tea Party leaning American have been so critical about S.B.5 and all this so-called “fairness” he keeps talking about. Where was all this fairness when progressives like Maxine Waters, and Barney Frank and Ohio’s own Ted Strickland and Bob Taft have been stuffing new legislation down our throats for years which only strengthened the public sector union against their boss……..the American People! It was a relief to hear Tom Niehaus come on 700 WLW to defend S.B.5 against all the misinformation created by the labor unions to convince busy voters that this bill is somehow “unfair,” that the process from which the bill was written was bad, and corrupt in some way. Listen to that broadcast here:

The facts of the matter are that Tea Party American’s are finally starting to stick up for themselves. They are tired of being pushed around, lied to, manipulated, disrespected, and over-looked because we don’t stuff money in politician’s pockets to get our way. We are sick of it, and people like Maxine Waters doesn’t like it, so she’s doing the manipulative thing and going to her political base, who she is obviously using to her own advantage, taking advantage of a demographic group that isn’t asking the hard questions but is content to sit with their mouths open waiting for someone to feed them. Those are the people who give Maxine power, and make her believe she has a right to damn Tea Party American’s to HELL! What she is really worried about is that those Tea Party Americans are about to discover just how corrupt and terrible her party has been against all Americans under the light of day.

Barney Frank is worried about the same thing; watch him here pretending that he is somehow superior to his bosses, the American People. He knows that it is the labor union empire, that tyrannical beast of complacency that operates like organized crime lords and stuffs his pockets, and those are his masters. And it is his job to eliminate that threat to his bosses. That’s what he’s doing here.

But this game is over. People like me support Senate Bill 5, (ISSUE 2) because I want this empire off my back and out of my tax dollars. I don’t want them infecting my elected representatives in ANY way. I don’t want them manipulating my school board, my trustees, my city councils, my state legislators, my Governor. I don’t want them in my White House. I don’t want them in my life at all; because history has shown me that they are wrong, misguided and dangerous to the American way of life. And already they are declaring that they are willing to go to war with people in the Tea Party. I find that comment laughable.

It is not they who are the silent majority, the sleeping giant as they claim to be with Senate Bill 5. It is the normal people who are in their garages working on their cars on a Saturday afternoon watching NASCAR, it is the farmer, the engineers, the architects, the businessman, the “masses” out there that are the sleeping giant and they are beginning to stir. Senate Bill 5 is just the start of their intentions, and these new politicians are “their” politicians. We are tired of the back room deals; we are tired of being told that more taxes will solve the problem because it never does. We are sick of the light at the end of the tunnel being drug down the hall so we can never catch it. We are tired of the process and Senate Bill 5 (Issue 2) helps us reset the table so real “fairness” can finally play out in government.

Maxine Waters doesn’t know what she just did when she publicly spoke to God Almighty and asked for the Tea Party to be damned to hell because it is desired to take away the corrupt influence of progressives like her upon the states and nation of our political system. What Maxine Waters and her kind are doing is declaring war against America, which reveals what the intentions have always been from her party. So the time for suspicion of their intentions has passed and it is hoped that through legislation we can defeat these foes against our Constitution. But it looks like legislation may not be enough, because these desperate manipulators are willing to fight for all the “progressive” gains they’ve achieved at our expense and that may lead to real violence if it is not suppressed now, before the situation really gets out of control. Because if she will use that kind of language in public, God only knows what she says behind closed doors, and that’s where the real battle plans are constructed.

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

Why Public Labor Unions Fail: The Science of Stagnation

It is one thing to say that communism, or labor unions do not work, that they are bad for American society, and history shows us that the typical result when these collective organizations have a majority rule are either a stagnate society or a declining one. The benefits of collective ideas when it comes to social construction are short-lived and only last a few generations. But the big question is why? What is the science behind this failure?

Well, there is a science to it, a predictable path that can be witnessed and predicted accurately as to why labor unions and other collective organizations are doomed to failure. For such a science I turn to the work of Robert Pirsig, which came to my mind while I was writing another article about the needs for voting YES on Issue 2. Click here to see that article:

Pirsig many years ago came up with a definition, a way of determining the “quality” of something that needs to be understood in reference to what I’m about to say. I created a chart which articulates this definition of quality into two types, Romantic and Classic. So click here to see that chart and learn a bit about these two types. But for the purpose of understanding why unions are doomed to fail understanding that there is a science behind determining the quality of something is important and can be obtained with mathematic certainty.

Once the quality of something is determined then that quality can be broken down into two types, Static Quality and Dynamic Quality. Static Quality tends to be all the rules of society, or the rules of your business. Static Quality is the rules that everything runs off of. One of the reasons that I like Robert Pirsig is that he has done the work of understanding the classic Greek thinkers, but where the classics fall short, because metaphysically, society has advanced, we now know of quantum physics and have an understanding of how the universe works that is based on much better data than the astronomical observations made with primitive telescopes. So our society has advanced, and the force that drives that expansion is Dynamic Quality. An example of Dynamic Quality would be Leonardo Da Vinci, or Bill Gates, people who brought radical changes in thought to the Static Quality of the rules society had previously lived by. Pirsig is the most recent philosopher to take into consideration this Dynamic Quality change with the new science discovered in the most recent century.

Dynamic Quality are the rebels of society, or even of a body. They are the cells of a body that fight off diseases and strengthen an immune system or they are the people who challenge conventional thought and force an expansion of human understanding. Between the two types of Quality, both types are needed. Without Static Quality everything would fly apart, and chaos would rule. Dynamic Quality needs Static Quality to keep some sense of order in existence. But Static Quality also needs Dynamic Quality to allow it to grow. In fact in organizations where Dynamic Quality is stifled Static Quality has shown to actually proceed in an evolutionary decline. Without the presence of a Dynamic Quality regression of an organism or an organization is the natural next process. This could be said to be the cause of aging in human beings, or the decline of cultures the human beings have built. This can also be seen in sports organizations that become complacent and do the same things over and over and why some teams are always competitive because they are always seeking to bring a “dynamic” quality to their teams. Maintaining a dynamic order to anything is the key to any measure of success. But you must do so while still maintaining a sense of order, otherwise known as Static Quality.

Labor unions fail because in order to preserve their Static Quality, which is the focus of all their endeavors, they destroy any chance of allowing Dynamic Quality into their organization to help challenge their beliefs and expand their culture. So instead, they are a culture on decline.

A decline in culture can be seen most evidently in inner cities where the problem is not one of race. It is of losing the aspects of their Dynamic Culture. When welfare and other government care is introduced to the culture and the parents of the children of that culture are no longer pushing young people to become “dynamic” then the individuals who have these tendencies will turn their efforts into a destructive behavior that leads to their premature deaths or they move away from the inner city leaving the Static Quality of the inner city belief system to rule, which leads to the decline that can seen by everyone.

This is also the reason why public education is failing, is because the dynamic individuals are punished by being different rather than celebrated or challenged for the health of confrontation. The dynamic elements are attacked like a cell in a body would attack a white blood cell in the body because the white blood cell is different from the common cell. This process leads to disease in the body the same as it does in society. The result is no different.

This explanation is but a fraction of what I could say on this topic. In fact, I could write volumes of books on the matter, but for the novice in this field, the person who normally doesn’t think about these kinds of things, this should at least suffice to demonstrate that there is an order to all this discussion about central organization from government, or labor unions and understanding why the work and products they produce always seem flat and unimportant. It is because by their very nature; they spend their energy as organizations fighting off their Dynamic Quality competitors in order to protect the Static Quality of their existence.

So the argument is not one of union busting, Republicans or Democrats, or young against old. It’s not the Middle Class against the “rich.” It is simply about the battle between Static Quality and Dynamic Quality being stifled which is the direct cause of decline in any culture, and that is the premier reason why labor unions and government will always fail.

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

Why to Vote YES on Issue 2: Being bold and doing the right thing

Was it the novel Lila that stated, “Once a thief is caught a whole string of crimes is often solved? Yes, it was Robert Pirsig who had articulated my thoughts as I heard Sheriff Jones and Bill Cunningham argue against Senate Bill 5 promoting a repeal attempt. Sheriff Jones as a traditional Republican is working against Governor Kasich with many assumptions that have fed much of the misinformation about Senate Bill 5. Jones was very critical about Kasich offering the unions a seat at the negotiating table which can be seen below. The unions did not show up, and Kasich explains the situation to the press.

On the front of that meeting Sheriff Jones and I both spent a considerable amount of time on 700 WLW debating Senate Bill 5. Sheriff Jones’s position same as Bill Cunningham’s is one to protect the unions who they have either worked for or have done work in other capacities. So their arguments are the same basic union talking points based on party politics, emotion, and obscurity that we are hearing from union leaders like Richard Trumka. That important discussion can be heard here and is well worth listening.

There isn’t much about Senate Bill 5 that a public sector union supporter will like, and this is the cause of much of the misinformation, the protests and the divisive comments. And among the Republicans they are split over this issue, because S.B.5 is not the typical piece of legislation that is rooted in political gains. I have met Senator Jones on a couple of occasions now and several other legislators who were involved in the creation of Senate Bill 5 and I haven’t detected any level of maliciousness among them. It is quite the opposite. In fact, you can CLICK HERE to see a couple of them speaking at a School Choice event on the eve of this very issue way back in January of 2011. They knew then that this was going to be a tough fight because the public union worker, of which Sheriff Jones is a part, have grown too powerful and control too many of the costs. It is too late for elected leaders to “just say no” as Sheriff Jones proclaimed. That time has passed and time is of the essence. And, as I will show you in a clip below, just saying no is not so easy.

When Sheriff Jones says that the public boards of education, trustees and council members need to do their jobs and say no to these unions, that’s an unrealistic answer. Jones has managed to control his costs and lay-off workers depending on his budgets, but he’s done plenty arm twisting of county commissioners to get a good budget for himself, and he’s also openly supported the double-dipping process among his deputies, which is a legal loop-hole created by union lobby power purchased by the union dues paid by members.

So the process is not nearly as smooth as Sheriff Jones attempts to articulate. When he says all these elected officials have to do is say “NO” he is being completely misleading. To illustrate the reason why Kasich did not initially sit down and attempt to negotiate with the unions in a one on one sit down is for all the reasons heard in this broadcast from Darryl Parks way back in December of 2010 where the police and firefighter unions went ballistic over a PowerPoint presentation. This is not the exception, the kind of yelling and screaming you’ll hear in this broadcast. The only reason the public unions have been quiet in the year of 2011 is because they are afraid of Senate Bill 5 and they are putting on their best face in order to win over the public to repeal the law the November. But the broadcast below happened before Senate Bill 5 was even talked about, and it is because of this radicalism that the authors of Senate Bill 5 did what they thought was right knowing full well they would be relentlessly attacked in a massive public relations campaign and they knew that it was going to hurt. It was kind of like going to the dentist knowing that it was going to hurt, but they just had to put up with it so they could get their teeth fixed. LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE POLICE UNION THEN LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE FIREFIGHTERS UNION. (By the way, I think John Kasich did exactly as Darryl demanded of the councilwoman in this interview, Kasich does not care if he gets reelected. He’s trying to do the right thing which I’ll show below, and that earns him my support because he’s trying hard to be honest in spite of traditional politics. I judge a man by his actions, not by the spin. (The casino situation and union positions are all spin designed to make him play ball)

Now that I’ve had a chance to understand what finally made it through the final approval of Senate Bill 5 I find it baffling that anyone thinks it’s unfair in some way. As I have looked it over as a neutral observer who recognizes that reforms need to be implemented, Senate Bill 5 is extremely fair and well thought out. The only trouble with it is that it goes against the grain of “traditional” politics. It’s a uniquely bold piece of legislation that does not come about very often in politics. It is the kind of political fix that millions upon millions of Americans secretly yearn for because it is understood how difficult it would have been to do even one of the reforms listed below. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SHANNON JONES HERSELF. WHO IS SHE? WHAT WAS HER MOTIVE…….FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF.

• I think the greatest aspect of ISSUE 2 (Senate Bill 5) is that it protects employees from unwanted union membership. The practice of government union contracts requiring employees to pay fees to a union has been ended in this bill which means the unfair practice of withdrawing money from their paychecks for union use is over. The bill does not outlaw unions, but provides the option to join or not, which I think is absolutely essential.

• Another thing ISSUE 2 stands for is it eliminates binding arbitration. What that means is that the current system allows an unelected, out-of-town mediator to settle government employee contract disputes. We see this all the time in school districts where a federal mediator is called in to bring school boards and union leaders together, and this is a process that we have all become numb to, but it is highly corrosive. This means that someone with no direct accountability to the voters decides how to spend our tax dollars. Senate Bill 5 says those decisions should be made by the people who answer directly to the taxpayers, which is what Sheriff Jones says he wants. But he left out the process of how a person in his position has to play “politics” smartly to win over the arbitrator. Most elected officials are not as “smooth” at it as he is, or do they have the ability to pad the pockets of county commissioners with their personal “war chests.” That is part of the dark side of politics that get left out of the discussion, and Senate Bill 5 is written to eliminate that type of political maneuvering. IT HAPPENS IN EVERY DISTRICT AND MUNICAPALTIY TO VARYING DEGREES.

• Senate Bill 5 Prohibits government workers from striking. Police currently cannot strike but school teachers can, and Senate Bill 5 eliminates this practice. I can speak from the case of Lakota Local Schools where in 2008 the teachers threatened to walk off the job shortly after the district passed a school levy. The teachers demanded better wages and better insurance rates and they were willing to walk off the job in October of 2008 if those demands were not met. The school board buckled under the pressure and the unions got their way in an undisclosed settlement. Over the next 2 years the cost of labor at Lakota shot up 10.1%, so the teachers got their money then again in the spring of 2010 they were ready to strike again, this time over insurance contributions. A federal mediator came in and helped resolve the issue. If the strike attempt had not occurred Lakota would not need to come to voters for a school levy in 2011, which they are. This practice is happening all over Ohio and it must be stopped. Federal government employees have long been prohibited from striking, a policy upheld by liberal Presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama. In fact, it was Roosevelt, an advocate of organized labor in the private sector who was opposed to collective bargaining among government employees so much that he called strikes “unthinkable and intolerable.” CLICK HERE TO SEE THE EXECUTIVE ORDER PRESIDENT KENNEDY SIGNED TO MAKE PUBLIC UNIONS LEGAL, SOMETHING THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN DONE.

• Senate Bill 5 is asking public employees to pay 15% of their benefits. A vast majority of Ohioans pay an average of 31% of their family health care coverage. For too long government employees have paid less than 9% and that type of disparity between public and private sector benefits must end. It’s not only unsustainable, but unfair to the tax payers who pay the salaries of their public workers. As Sheriff Jones says, “But we public workers pay taxes too,” well not exactly. The value of the initial money comes from the original tax payer for the services rendered by the public employee. The government is simply using taxation as a way to keep some of the public workers pay. The value of the money to begin with was created by someone in the private sector. The taxes that a government worker pays only helps prevent some of the slide of declining revenue that is happening around the pension requirements, sky rocketing Medicare costs, and other entitlement programs that are draining state and federal budgets.

• Senate Bill 5 rewards performance rather than longevity. Most Ohioans work under this system in the private sector. They’re retained and rewarded based on the job they do, not on how long they’ve been on the job. Teachers for a long time have attempted to keep any kind of performance assessment out of their pay structures which has simply not worked, leaving the United States far from the top in education placement throughout the world. Much of the reason so many school districts all over Ohio are asking for school levies this upcoming year is because of this very problem. At Lakota, my district, there are over 600 employees who make over 65K per year, and that has driven up the labor costs dictating another levy. If the school board were allowed to manage their costs they could still pay good teachers and administrators that kind of money, but the ones that they know, and everyone else knows are bad could be kept out of the higher rates of pay. Under the current system good teachers and bad teachers all advance at a steady rate under union contract which is what drives up the costs of a school district. It’s a terrible system that must be corrected immediately. Thirty years of this behavior have created such a burden on school districts that have only been fixed with increased taxes which is no longer a fix that people can afford. Reforms must occur before districts like Little Miami become insolvent and under state control forever.

• Senate Bill 5 ends seniority based layoff. This is something that Bill Cunningham, Senator Bill Seitz, and Sheriff Jones are all against and have been very vocal about. Today’s government contracts often require a system known as “last hired, first fired.” Well, this is an insane practice, if forces the newest employees to be laid off first, regardless of their performance. This is especially a problem in our schools, where good, new teachers are let go and bad teachers are kept on the job just because of seniority. Improving government services requires policies that keep the best and brightest not just the longest-serving. It must be remembered that the whole goal of a public sector job is to serve the public. It is not to create a position for a government employee that is secure for their entire lives. S.B.5 puts the public worker in the same situation every private worker in Ohio is in, and goes a long way to helping to get the most out of a work force, which should always be the goal of any employment endeavor. The personalities mentioned who are against this idea are all people who have helped build it, so of course they desire to protect it now. It doesn’t matter if it’s Republicans or Democrats, it is politics that put that system in place to help buy bloc votes in politics, and it is simply a failed system that must be removed.

When opponents of this bill say that Senate Bill 5 is too FAR reaching, that Governor Kasich should have come to the table to discuss these issues, those same people are the types who would have yelled and screamed just like in the Cincinnati City Council meeting played above where the union presidents of the police and firefighters were SCREAMING over two slides on a PowerPoint presentation, let alone the 6 major reforms listed above. Each of those items could have been a bill in and of itself, and under a normal political system they would have been. But in these current days where trouble is erupting everywhere from entitlement programs suffering years and years of abuse, drastic action was needed, and it took a Senator in Sharron Jones who is a newcomer to politics, without a cluster of special interest ties to write the bill and it took a governor in Kasich who could make a lot more money in the private sector, and could care less if he gets re-elected to sign it. After looking into their eyes and peering into their souls, I can say that I believe completely that these politicians wrote Senate Bill 5 because they know it was the right thing to do. They didn’t write it to play politics, or be popular, obviously, because the political machine is in an uproar, which is the primary reason Bill Cunningham and Sheriff Jones, both old political veterans, are aghast at S.B.5. They represent a portion of politics that wishes the train could continue forever, and they believe that if somehow someone could talk to the labor unions, that somehow the problem would be fixed going into the future. But their way still requires “dirty politics.” Their way still requires “war chests” of money to grease arbitrators, or re-elect commissioners so that the budgets will hold and alliances can be built, and that is how this whole thing became a mess in the first place.

Senate Bill 5 is the kind of bill that workers standing around their tractors in a barn in Greenville, Ohio, or the fishing boat in Sandusky Bay, or the McDonalds dining room in Pebbles, Ohio sipping coffee in the morning air all demand why those “damn” politicians don’t do something right for a change. Well, they have for once, and the people who wrote and signed the bill are feeling the wrath of the “political machine” that has suppressed these reforms for decades and allowed abuses to take place that are epic and once removed will show just how far-reaching the corruption really was.

And that’s the real fear behind the chants and the arguments to repeal the bill. The people who have openly manipulated the system of the public worker for years to achieve tremendous financial gain know that they are caught. They were caught the moment that Senate Bill 5 was signed because all the scandals hidden in the reforms listed above will soon be revealed. It will take only a few short months for the light to show just how much money was disappearing from the tax payers once these controls are in place and as stated in the opening line of this article, “many crimes will suddenly be solved.”

The repeal attempt is simply no different from a criminal who would entertain once they were convicted of their crime to evade their sentence through an appeal process. The public unions, and those people who have profited from them, hope that if they can just convince enough people that they are innocent, than they can be set free once again. And since there are so many people in Ohio guilty to some extent of the treachery that has occurred, there are a lot of people who will vote to hide their crimes. There is no shortage of people who will apologize for public union behavior because many of them carry just a little bit of the guilt for allowing it to continue for so long, they will attack the people who are just trying to solve the crime, and they will do anything to save their own skin, even if it means taking that skin off someone else’s back.

To me in this discussion I feel like the musicians on the deck of the Titanic playing one last song before the floods come and whisk everything away. I hope that by writing just one more article, or speaking on the radio one more time I can avoid the inevitable sinking of this entire public union debacle. But like the movie Titanic, the public union workers believe that their ship is unsinkable, and it is their naive arrogance that places all of us in danger.

After the ship has sunk and everyone is stuck in the freezing water the true primal nature of those in peril can be seen for all the ugliness a human being is capable of. That behavior is currently hidden behind the “political machine” but the ruthlessness that many will engage in to survive and preserve their own interests can never be underestimated and can be seen if looked at close enough.

I do not work for the Republican Party in any way shape or form. I am loyal to absolutely no politician. I have never taken one dime of money from a political party and I’ve never given one dime to a political party. I have zero desire to be a future politician for I despise the very term. In fact the only thing I’ve ever received from a politician is a tie from Ross Perot’s family for the work I did for his campaign during the 1992 election. I was tired of this whole process even back then! With that in mind I’m going to say that I not only think Senate Bill 5 is fair and a bold piece of legislation that I have personally desired for my entire adult life, but that I believe it was written in the most fair way possible to assist public workers with the change in political culture that must take place. The riots and protests that have been seen toward S.B.5 would have been witnessed with the same intensity over just one of those issues, and the politicians knew it, and this is the reason Kasich wasn’t willing to “talk” as Bill Cunningham and Sheriff Jones have accused him of doing, to the unions. But to Kasich’s credit the process did allow for input. There were two weeks of testimony where all sides presented their arguments before the Senate. This was not a deal done like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi where they rushed “Health Care” through without anyone reading the bill over a holiday weekend. The Republicans did not do that. They did listen and they acted according to what they believed was the right thing to do. The unions spoke in testimony. They chanted outside and their history of intimidation over just minor issues as heard in the Cincinnati City Council recording are well noted, and the politicians involved braced themselves for the pain that would ensue.

But the authors of Senate Bill 5 did the right, and essential thing in a time of crises even though the task would be extremely difficult.

One last broadcast before I end this. In an interview by Bill Cunningham with his buddy John Kasich right before he was sworn in as Governor; this was about a month before S.B.5 was initiated as a law, provides some interesting insight into the world of politics. Kasich is the same person today that he was then, but it is Cunningham who has changed, because the foundations of the public sector worker are part of his business and these changes are uncomfortable. I’m not sure what people thought was going to happen when Kasich was sworn in, but Kasich is doing the job I elected him to do.

Kasich did exactly what he said he would do. But the people who benefit off the system as it is today obviously turned on him when the unions started their lobby campaign, which everyone knew was going to happen.

The reason I do this blog and have over 200 videos on my YouTube account, is to keep everyone honest and keep the “political machine” from manipulating the tax payers as they have for over 200 years. Since the newspapers and television stations have short memories, and I don’t, I created Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom to bring the truth to people with my opinion behind it. But the history of our existence is fact and is shown here for all to see, and I don’t mean to pick on Bill Cunningham, alliances and friendships only extend to the flow of money in politics, so it can be difficult to understand whose friend or foe. A friend today can be your enemy tomorrow and in a period of just six months a good friend like Bill Cunningham can turn into a Judas for all the reasons history provides, because when it gets hot in the kitchen some just can’t take it.

So I’ve provided you with the truth as I see it. If you dear voter do not vote in favor of Issue 2, you will regret it for years to come. You will see the kind of financial conditions that those people on the Titanic were experiencing. The issue of Senate Bill 5 is not matters of life or death like on the Titanic, but the financial requirements for your city, your schools, and state government will see a similar flooding of the fiscal nature if not passed. School teachers will still teach. Fireman will still fight fires. Police will still serve our communities if you vote YES on Issue 2. It is the financial culture behind those public positions that must change, not the jobs themselves. It cannot continue as it is now, because public workers already make nearly 30% more than the average private sector employee. CLICK HERE to read some stats for yourself and be armed to deal with the facts when a public worker claims they are being treated unfairly. In fact, click on every paragraph of this article to go to another article about S.B.5. This entire article is HOTLINKED to multiple articles.

Ultimately if you do not have the courage to vote in favor of keeping Senate Bill 5, by voting YES on Issue 2, you will be personally responsible for the aftermath of fiscal trouble that will follow. It’s already too late, this repeal process is stalling the needed reforms that school districts everywhere need to avoid going to the tax payers this upcoming November, and the tax payers can no longer afford to pay, even if they wanted to. With costs of everything up, the average taxpayer does not have the extra money, and there aren’t enough rich people to loot in order to balance the budgets the labor unions have negotiated. The radical extortion of the past has no place at the table of the future and if public workers want to be a part of that table, they need an approach different from what we experienced with Cincinnati City Council when the head of the police union refused to “discuss” the numbers on a simple PowerPoint. Instead she attacked the data with yelling and screaming and violent protests, a tactic that Senate Bill 5 virtually eliminates, so that proper negotiations can take place and disparities can be managed with a fairness every citizen in the State of Ohio deserves.

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

Money, Prostitutes, and Libertarian Islands: The history of fleeing tyranny

The Report Card for local school districts in Southern Ohio are out during a year where almost all of these schools have cut back their spending dramatically, reduced their staffing to unprecedented levels, yet still maintained their excellent ratings. Doc Thompson of 700 WLW had some fun with the facts because he is the only media personality who has tackled the hypocrisy of school funding. The same administrators who are now patting themselves on the back for performing well in their school districts are the very same administrators who proclaimed that the school districts would decline if tax payers didn’t pass new school levies. Listen to that broadcast here:

During Doc’s discussion he covered the debacle of college expectations, where the debt for college loans is about to exceed 1 trillion dollars in the United States. Professors and college administrators have marketed their product of education so well that every American believes they must have that product in order to be successful. However, to a person who sees clearly it is obvious what’s going on, those in the education industry share a common thread with unions to communicate their message that more money makes education better, and are manipulating the situation to suit their own financial interests. There is no evidence which suggests that more money poured into education makes education better at all. The entire premise of education is based on a foundation void of results or measurements of any kind, because the real origin of the education culture has a much more cryptic intention.

On my way out to speak with Doc Thompson on his broadcast toward the end, I was engaged in a conversation with a person who was struggling to save enough money to put his kids through college. My comment to him was “why, with the rate that tuition is increasing uncontrollably, and the amount of students coming out of college these days with a degree but no job to work, why does college for your child make sense primarily considering the expense?” All the man could say to me was that he had a moral obligation to give a college education to his kids. (CLICK HERE TO READ WHY THIS IS A BAD IDEA) I felt sorry for the guy, because he was obviously a victim of the marketing machine of education that has been allowed to grow uncontrollably and indicates a problem of a higher nature.

The trouble with America’s colleges as they are now is that they attack the kind of person who traditionally is an American. Colleges are inventions of Europe and were brought to the United States by people who value education a great deal, just as I do. What was mistaken in this process was the failure to recognize just what an America was and why it needed to be protected from foreign ideas.

In the great novel, The Frontiersman, the essence of the American is seen clearly. The very land from which I am writing this piece was embroiled in a wilderness war with the Native American Shawnee Indians against the English frontiersman. The frontiersman who came to America in those days wanted nothing more than a fresh start away from the European hierarchy, which can be seen to this very day not only in Europe, but in virtually every college institution. The Americans who founded this country became something of a hybrid adventurer who craved freedom from political strife more than their fear of death, and America was a “chance” to escape those psychological shackles. The personality of the American adventurer became an interesting mix of the Native American warrior personality merged with the European.

Well, once the frontier battles were fought by people like one of my all time favorite Americans, Simon Kenton, Tecumseh, Blue Jacket who was a white guy adopted by Indians and fought on their behalf, and Daniel Boone, the Europeans moved in droves to this new land cleared for them by the spirit of the adventurers. Those adventurers resenting the migrating Europeans continued to move westward for all the same reasons that Native American tribes were being pushed westward. It was in this wave of people who settled in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the like who brought with them the university system, and the education methods of their homeland. The trouble is Europe was a broken, fractured land full of conquered people from thousands of years of war. It was this system that poured into the borders of the United States after the frontier wars, almost immediately after the American Revolution.

It is not by accident that John Wayne was born in Iowa; Annie Oakley was born in Greenville, Ohio. Roy Rogers “King of the Cowboys” himself was born just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s because the land of the Midwest, the land of the Frontier Wars, was ignored by this emerging European style culture being established on the East Coast, so the people born in this region still maintained some of the spirit of the brave adventures who fought and died in that part of the country and those traits showed up in those famous personalities who went on to evoke the spirit and adventure of westward expansion, which is an innate desire in not just American culture, but world-wide. Freedom is a universal desire.

That spirit was captured I think pretty accurately in St. Louis at the arch. They have a nice little museum at the foot of the arch that shows this whole process pretty well, from the objective standpoint of history. But what doesn’t get dealt with is why; what were the motivations of the frontiersman in the first place to brave a strange new land laced with danger. Well, the progressive history education in this European mindset of the universities will say that it is greed that the white man was after, greed for more. But as history now shows, that greed of which they speak is the same greed that we are hearing about today, from the same segment of the population which looks to Europe as the secure hand of a parent and thus explains they way they think. They are the same people who say that people who do not wish to pay more taxes are greedy, because those Americans do not support the social mechanisms of the tax hungry progressive. Europeans since the start of America viewed the type of person who founded the county with distaste. American’s were considered “uncivilized ruffians, and “undisciplined slobs.” The idea of the cowboy, and the Indian were terms of terror in the eyes of the European noble, and they did not have a hard time convincing a conquered people, and let’s face it, all of Europe contained conquered people at that time that life in America was for the fool and downtrodden. The European nobles had to market America this way to keep all their people from being tempted to flood into America to flee the tyranny of Europe.

Karl Marx and other European types like John Mayard Keynes, both residents of London came up with their own solutions to the European problem of declining economic gain, as America seemed to accelerate at a frightening rate under the flag of freedom. Those ideas were of course Marxism and Keynesian economics, and England adopted these methods more with an eye to America than at themselves. Through the university system, which American universities were attempting to duplicate from the European model of places like Oxford, English nobility infected American education with the notions of those types of European thinkers. In this way they were able to slow down the growth of America and prevent the new nation from getting too far ahead of Europe.

Another philosopher more than a century before Marx named John Locke who had frequent correspondence with my favorite pirate of the Caribbean, Henry Morgan was learning through Morgan’s exploits the merit of valor and freedom for the first time. Morgan was the ultimate frontiersman and it was the work of Locke who influenced the American intellectual rebels like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to cast Europe away, keeping the good but scrapping the bad, and this worked for over a century. Morgan had been hired by the king of England to roam the Caribbean for one reason, to keep Spain from accumulating too much wealth from the sacking of the Mayan and Aztec cultures of what would become Mexico. It was fear of Spain gaining too much wealth which provoked the whole pirate era. It was this same fear which caused Europe to infect American education with subversion tactics of an ideology which would suppress the culture for generations to come, and thus prevent America from growing out of the reach of the rest of Europe, intellectually, philosophically, economically and worst of all, as a world power.

It is this European system of education that our public schools are built around. The goal of these public schools is not to teach kids about Daniel Boone, or Simon Kenton, or Henry Morgan but about all the things they need to know so they can get into college. And once they are in college, radical European sympathizers will then teach the social principles of European nobility so that the American citizen will be “cultured” and not emit the kind of radical frontier independence that was so dangerous to the mind of the European when they had to confront the stories coming back from America in the adventures of Lewis and Clark. (I’ve been to college, my wife has, and I have many friends who teach in college, so I speak with firsthand knowledge)

When Teddy Roosevelt had captured America’s imagination with his exploits out West as a cowboy, and a rough-rider, it was Europe who seduced him under their wing. Roosevelt, being born of wealth in a European oriented culture in New York always had in him a kind of yearning to please the parent country of Europe, which was no different from a child wishes to please their own parents. After Teddy’s presidency and subsequent tour of Africa on his great year-long hunt, Europe begged Teddy to visit every noble family of their lands where they took him under their tutelage. Saul Alinsky many years later would call this process The Delphi Technique. (Click here to read all about it) It was during this trip through Europe that the monarchs seduced Teddy Roosevelt into “Progressivism.” Teddy still the rough and tumble adventurer of the Dakota’s was still mentally present, but he used the Progressive platform to split the Republican Party away from his former friend but now political rival, the President of the United States, (his successor) William Howard Taft. (also from Cincinnati) Teddy wanted to be President again, for a third term and it was the Europeans who planted the seeds in his power-hungry head. It was Teddy who then paved the way for progressives like the educator, President of Princeton University Woodrow Wilson and later Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Teddy’s younger cousin.

It was education that was used during this whole process to tie America’s wild spirit to the motherland of Europe with a yearning for European culture that survives to this day. London is a dank, compact city that is terribly crowded and rigid. Paris, the city of lovers is much the same. They are no different from any American city; in fact some of my European friends were shocked when I took them to the top of Carew Tower in Cincinnati. “My goodness, you have such high buildings here!” this coming from a guy who goes to London for everything he needs in a city. When I say that Carew Tower may be the tallest building in Cincinnati, but places like New York and Chicago have many, many more that are much taller he would just look at me like I was speaking from Mars.

Education costs too much because it is based on European models of thought which of course are failing. It is the European that threw American adventurers into the path of the Indians and created westward expansion. It was not greed for land to steal from the Native American, but a thirst for freedom that had always been there, but was suddenly released upon the discovery of the New World. Within a few centuries oppressed Europeans could leave the stifled political climate of Europe and run into the dangers of settling America, and they did.

Today American’s still love their cowboys, their NASCAR, their straight shooting Midwesterners who are descendents of those original Americans. But Americans are truly confused. The European plan to infect generations of these crazy, individualistic Americans has worked by using education institutions to halt the growth of America and turn its citizens back to the monarchs of Europe, which is what they always wanted, and yes, they do think in terms of centuries, where the typical American does not. People like the guy I mentioned at the beginning of this are dedicating their lives to sending his children to an education institution that is designed to turn his child against everything he thinks he likes about America, but has forgotten in the chaos of living. The man does not question whether the value of the tuition is even worth the money, because his mind has been trained by the education system itself to support the system blindly.

This led me to wonder about the mind of human beings. Why would they openly support a tyrannical system when they can see with their own eyes that it is bad for them? Well, all one has to do to understand that is to study the behavior of a prostitute who will sell her body for sex, subject herself to tremendous danger then turn around and give the money she’s earned to a pimp out of fear that the pimp will beat her. The woman is perfectly free to roam the entire Earth, and she could easily escape the pimp’s power which is usually only relevant for a few city blocks, maybe even a portion of a town. But the woman will not leave the territory of the pimp because she knows her surroundings and lacks the spirit of adventure to exceed beyond those limits, like a typical European. She will gladly walk into the violent abuse of her pimp because she knows him. This is similar to the guy struggling to pay for college tuition for his children. He does not question the validity of the money needed, he will just prostitute himself out in some blind pursuit to support a structure he knows and trusts without regard to whether that structure is right or wrong.

The conflict of the age of which we are all a part is no different now than it has always been. There are still those who know better who are looking to flee the confines of this cancerous European monarch system complete with nobility and political corruption that we are all taught to trust. Recently Peter Thiels the founder of PayPal placed over a million dollars of seed money into a manufactured island off the coast of San Francisco to give people a place to flee the corruption of government. I have met many of these types of people. You find them on obscure mountain trails in the middle of West Virginia, lonely roads in the middle of Tennessee, sitting at a bar in Key West, and on island paradises all over the Caribbean, people who just want to be left alone. They want freedom from the looters and thieves of monarchy, or European social structure, and they’ll do just about anything to have it.

So when Doc covered the report card for area schools, it is quickly revealed that it isn’t about results that the schools are really after. It’s money, and the money feeds the machine invented by Europe to suppress culture, not to expand it, so that no country on Earth would exceed the development of mother Europe. Institutional control is more persuasive than all the missiles, tanks and guns of all the worlds’ armies, because if thought can be limited and controlled, then conflict isn’t needed. And in a territory such as Europe, who has been at war with itself for several thousand years, they know very well how to wage a war whether it’s with literal troops, or thoughts in a mind. (Just read Shakespeare) But make no mistake about it, war is the objective even if the warlord who is the enemy shakes hands with a smile on their face and appear to be “cultured” and “civilized.” Such manipulations are designed to keep the mind fixed on the past so innovations of the future can be suppressed for fear that those who currently hold power can keep it.

Click here to read about all the successful people who did not go to college and make your own assessment to the validity of my content.

Remember, Einstein came up with his Theory of Relativity while working in a low-level position of a patent office, and William Sidis spent the rest of his life after predicting the existence of Black Holes 47 years ahead of their conceptual theory, working odd jobs and writing for his own amusement in obscurity. He could have owned the world with his mind alone, yet he chose to turn away from it. What does that say?????????

Education does not create intelligence; it simply passes on what others have done to share with the class the exploits of those who do things. In all the billions of hours of classes taught universities have not produced another Einstein, Sidis, or a George Lucas. It is the individual themselves who make their own way which cannot be purchased with money, and it is typical of the European noble to loot the achievements of their “subjects” to their own benefit. And this is the answer as to why schools even in cutting back their funding were still able to produce at a high level. Because it is the parents of a community who send their children to the school who make the school good, and if the child is good, then the school will be good. Social engineering with a European mindset will never change this as much as they’d desire too. The answer to this equation is contained in the Metaphysics of Quality, seen at this link.

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

Meet Lakota’s Mrs. Mantia: Is a superintendent of a school system the same as a CEO?

John Halase is a frequent contributor to the West Chester Tea Party and since he attends many school board meetings for the Lakota School System, and has a technical background, he is the perfect candidate to take some of the obscure fiscal information dressed up in the legalism of education terms and explain them in a way everyone can understand. John is one of the most neutral human beings I know. His only goal is fairness, but a firm understanding of the facts involved in any particular situation. This can be seen clearly in his presentation of August 16, 2011 to a crowd of approximately 200 to 300 people eager to understand why Lakota has placed another levy on the ballot. Central to this new discussion was the new superintendent Karen Mantia and the justification of the one-quarter of a million dollar annual cost she is to the district.

My argument when it comes to costs, which dictate to the tax payers whether or not more funding is needed to fund a school is how much is the public supplying, and if it’s sufficient, then why is there still a requirement for more funds. If the revenue is insufficient, then what criterion determines the level of funding? Well, that answer is what the community can afford, and that is determined in a vote. If the people of the district vote no, then it is the school boards job to go back and trim the budget to the level of revenue that the tax payers approved. It’s that simple.

But how it is currently is a ridiculous situation. If the community votes no, then the district just puts the issue on the ballot. Most school boards do as Lakota did, and that’s drop some staff through attrition, cut small costs like busing and sports programs because it punishes the people for voting no, and they’ll keep putting it on the ballot however many times it takes till it passes. That is a foolish business model. Lakota is on its third attempt in a two-year period, and Little Miami is on their 9th over a four-year period. Most of the schools in Southern Ohio can tell a similar story.

That’s why it becomes necessary to look at just what the costs at a school like Lakota are, what they are spending their money on. Lakota has a total of 1,976 employees at an average wage of over $62,000 per year. 600 of those employees make over $65,000 per year. Of that employee matrix there are 1,192 teachers, 712 support staff, and 72 administrators serving 18,458 students. In 2010, Lakota brought in $157 million and it spent $167 million.

Now to regulate those costs, which were obviously at a deficit even though the revenue coming in is over 150 million dollars, which is nothing to balk at; it is the job of the superintendent to manage those costs. I keep hearing that it is the superintendent, who often makes over six figures and deserves to be paid like a CEO at a corporation, should be paid so much money because as in the case of Karen Mantia, she is responsible for over 24 buildings and 2000 employees with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. Ok, fine, but with all that responsibility I see a trend with these superintendents where they don’t behave like CEO’s at all. They behave like spoiled union workers where there’s never enough money coming in, and that’s the big difference.

Karen Mantia is no different. She started off as a teacher at Northmont City High School where she worked for 24 years as a law/economics and government history teacher. While there she was a principal, Director of Curriculum, then Assistant Superintendent. She took a job at Sycamore Community Schools as Superintendent from 2000 to 2006 for 100K per year overseeing 5,710 students. In 2006 she retired when she turned 55. She then took a job at Piqua City Schools double dipping from her retirement at Sycamore while making 117K per year managing 3,750 students. She wasn’t at Piqua long, because by 2007 she took the Superintendent position at Pickerington School District making $144,000 managing 10,500 students. It was from this position that Lakota spent $42,266 to recruit Mantia from her Pickerington position where Lakota paid her $165,000 to manage 18,458 students.

Mantia’s contract pays her a base salary of $165,000 a year plus an annual deferred compensation of a $30,000 annuity. She gets an annual performance award, retirement contribution and STRS Membership “pickups,” health and dental along with vision insurance, “known as a Cadillac plan,” Life insurance based on 2.5X her base plus annuity. She is required to work 227 days a year, she gets 23 vacation days, 15 sick days in addition to 3 personal days during that span of time. She also gets all the administrator paid holidays. She is also paid for any professional membership meeting expenses. The over-all cost of Superintendent Mantia is one quarter of a million dollars, ($165 + $30K + $61K (31.7% benefits) per year. Mantia also has a severance package that is 3 years her base salary plus annuity up to the 5 years or less remaining on her contract for contract termination.

Now, to me, those are wonderful benefits. I think it is extremely generous. And what I expect a person so well compensated to do is to manage the district costs like a CEO, because she is currently paid higher than the Governor of Ohio.

But already, the indications are that she will provide a “business as usual” approach. On her first meeting as a superintendent, was the meeting where the school board voted to go for yet another school levy this November. So why?

The problem is, Mantia like all the other superintendents come from a teaching background and seem to be sympathetic to the union. In Ohio, because by law every teacher must be in a union and as a teacher Mantia was a union member, and she will not choose to take a hard-line against union demands, because it is because of those union demands in the past that she is able to receive the tremendous benefits she has received at Lakota. This is the big difference between superintendents and CEO’s. Mantia is a functionary and not making hard decisions about labor costs and management of them. Her primary function is that of a politician, not a cost reducer. Her job is to secure more revenue from the community, and make cosmetic cuts to convince the tax payers that they are doing everything to reduce costs, when in reality she is protecting the integrity of the union contracts which just continue to grow without any mechanism at reduction, which is needed.

If a superintendent could promise the community that the revenue needed by the district could decrease year after year, and at a certain point when we realize that we’ve minimized staff, wages, and contracts to a level that actually jeopardizes an excellent school, it is only then that any tax increase should be explored. But with education currently it is perceived that every year an education budget will increase and that just isn’t going to work as a long-term sustainable model. That is the reason why there is so much fuss about what Mantia makes as far as compensation. The education industry sells the superintendent position as a CEO, and in comparison to other CEO’s she holds a “lame duck, powerless” position that is carefully regulated by union contracts. It would be the CEO’s job to operate the corporation at a profit, which would be met with an increase in sales, and a decrease in costs. With a school superintendent, they are regulated to only dealing with 20% of the costs that are not covered by a union contract which means they cannot control their costs, and can only ask for more revenue in the form of taxes to cover the disparity. That is why such high compensation for administrators in education positions are considered too high, and why Lakota should have looked for a superintendent that was much, much cheaper.

It is decisions like those made in acquiring a new superintendent at Lakota that drive up the cost of education for everyone, and display vividly for all to see where the real problems truly are.

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

RICH HOFFMAN NO LONGER RECOGNIZES THE AUTHORITY OF ANY PUBLIC UNION

There are few things that truly anger me, and this whole issue of the attempt to bargain with the unions over the repeal of Senate Bill 5 is one of them. Because, the comments of We Are Ohio, a union backed group articulates the entire problem when they said, “we view the repeal of Senate Bill 5 as only the beginning.” It is that attitude which has virtually bankrupted the State of Ohio in order to pay for the services public sector unions have manipulated for themselves. For the unions to even proclaim for a moment that they are somehow innocent of any wrong doing in the whole budget crises of the age, that they are victims in some warped universe, is the ultimate denial from a group of people fighting to cover-up over 50 years of political mistakes instigated by their little “clubs.”

It is in the type of fury that I feel right now that I feel compelled to do something similar to what one of my favorite writers Robert Pirsig has done, and that’s to buy a sail boat and retire traveling the world without a care, because as Pirsig believed in frustration when people had difficulty understanding his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. It was the same frustration that Ayn Rand experienced after Atlas Shrugged came out, when people were slow to understand the material. Those two writers are part of modern philosophy. The trouble with our society is that it is believed that philosophic growth ended with Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Voltaire, Marx and the several others from the “old days” of philosophy. They forget that modern philosophers like Pirsig and Rand are continuing along the traditions of thinking based on the evolution of society.

Well, I’m a person who understands the work of Pirsig without any difficulty. He matches my own thoughts which have been forged from a full life of experience. I can honestly say that I have seen every type of human deception, witnessed every type of scandal, and experienced the most brutal forms of violence first hand. I have to say that as a qualifier for what I will now say, because my feelings are harsh in regard to public unions.

I am not a supporter of unions of any kind. In private industry, we have seen unions drive up the cost of a product, and if the demand for that product can support it, then fine. Having a union should be an option to people who want them. To date, unions for entertainment and sports are the strongest surviving unions, because people have shown they will pay the extra money for a ticket, or sports memorabilia to support sports unions, and buy movie tickets for all the entertainment unions. But in manufacturing, once NAFTA was signed into law in the early 90’s, jobs have fled the United States because the labor is simply too expensive. Only large manufacturing jobs who rely on government contracts have truly survived. It is unions that have killed manufacturing jobs in the United States and I resent them for it.

But the public sector union has absolutely no place in modern society. I personally don’t even recognize their right to exist. A union is simply a club of like-minded people, just like any club. It’s no more complicated than that. However, the make-up of this club tends to be, unless compelled by law to join, the very weak. They are the type of people who fear sticking up for their own rights to an employer. They are the type who prefers to cower behind a group of friends where courage only comes to them in mass. Unions have achieved what they have through violence, extortion, intimidation and other methods which lack personal valor. Unions allow the complacent and average to be equal to the best and that is a crime against society.

It is in the pursuit of being the best that makes one the best. One cannot be the best just by being paid wages that are high. The short-term sense of fairness and antagonistic relationship these types of employees have with their employers is culturally deficient and socially destructive. Unions kill culture the same as deforestation and drought killed Mayan, Aztec and Native American Cultures, just as war and territory wars have held back European society. Unions have their roots in Europe and are products of the Dark Ages. They should be despised in American culture like cancer is despised in the human body.

Public Unions should be illegal. They are not the back bones of the middle-class as they are sold by the complacent, the small-minded, and intellectually deficient. Unions are a short-term solution to the jealousy of those who lack ability, or ambition. To those who are too lazy to push themselves to reach beyond their limits to earn a sense of pride in their self-reliance. Unions, as a club of such lazy types have attracted the masses, because it is true that many people are born with a natural inclination to follow, but should look with eagerness at those around them who are strong and strive to be strong too. Unions kill this process. It forces the strong to be average and the weak rule in mass, so whatever enterprise is created under this arrangement is less than it otherwise would be.

Unions are a fix for the human sense of insecurity to have and maintain a sense of extended family. It is common for union members to refer to each other as a “brother” or “sister” as though their unity is bound by flesh and DNA. The only unity of such types is one of poor mental evolution. These people share in common a sense of basic functioning from the food that goes into their bellies, and the sex they can achieve with their reproductive organs. They are what the Kundalini Yoga refers to as the beings of the lowers states, those of Chakra 2, maybe 3 at the highest. Their only concern for existence is what goes into their bellies or comes out of their penises. They lack any sense of history but what occurs in their lifetimes, and they care not for what the waste of their lives produces in the future.

Unions are the inventions of fools, miscreants, socialists, the weak-minded, the violent, the power-hungry, and the empire builder. They are the mechanisms of fantasy for the social reformer, the corrupt magpie wishing to undermine society with a smile but a hand on the knife concealed under their clothing, (metaphorically speaking).

The gains public unions have made over the years they achieved through either the threat of violence or the threat of work stoppage, not the merit of their arguments. Not on the strength of their ideas. They gained respect through fear and are no different from a street gang fighting over turf in a city, or a drug cartel leader establishing a trade route over a rival cartel. They are no different from the organized crime habits perfected by Al Capone, and evolving to this current day in various enterprises where a baseball bat and a threatened loved one halts any intrusion into their business practices.

If I were the governor of Ohio, this is what I’d be thinking when a group of public unions struggling to maintain their business monopoly on the tax payers of Ohio wanted to meet. And when the Governor refused to meet with these people he spoke as my representative, because I did not want to even give those people the merit of an audience. They should be illegal, not legitimized with even an acknowledgement. By sitting down with those union leaders the governor gives them a strength they do not deserve, that was taken in the first place by violence and manipulation, and represent the kind of America that Karl Marx envisioned, not the one of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, or John Locke conceived.

But don’t mind my opinion dear reader. My view of America is that the Federalist Papers were too imperialistic, if I lived in the time of the founding fathers I would without a doubt be an Anti-Federalist! But today I shake my head at the lost souls around me who have such a shallow understanding of history to actually believe they have a “right” to special privileges because they are a member of a club funded by the tax payer. My anger becomes paramount in my personal philosophy. The anger is from the kind of frustration one might feel toward a child who you are trying to teach to read, yet can’t even read the first word in a sentence.

These people against Issue 2, these union leaders, and blind followers have been taught all their lives all the wrong things. It is those wrongly taught things that are the sources of wrecked lives, health problems, broken marriages, and children who dislike their parents, because looted money from the tax payer cannot fix the mind that drives the bodies of these union people. They are on a path of personal destruction and do not have the eyes to see that it is their fault the foundations of modern society is failing. They fail to understand because they are stuck on the fixed idea of fairness created by philosophers long dead, and refuse to accept the new data which is arriving to our minds in great abundance in this very modern age that indicates mankind is doing all the wrong things for the sustenance of the human race.

A destructive class of people have the right to be stupid. But they do not have the right to dictate to a governor a seat at the table of power, a power they stole from the tax payer and did not earn with their personal merit of strength and intelligence. By sitting down with a simple club which is what a union is, the governor and his staff will only appease a mob hell-bent on personal destruction and have no interest in negotiation of any kind unless that negotiation involves the sacrifice of someone else. History has taught us this, and if we have not learned by now, then hope for intelligence to rule ever, appears unrealistic.

I understand now why Pirsig sails the oceans of the world on his boat, because the masses do not understand his words, because they waste their time in groups like these unions, reducing their minds with false philosophy and sit with their mouths open for society to feed them like some little bird in a nest waiting for a mother to drop food into it’s mouth. The more I think of it, the more Pirsig’s solution to society’s foolish behavior seems rational and actually evolutionary preservative. Because it is only on the open sea void of politics and the rules of mankind that the nature of existence makes sense. Thus the source of my anger is not at myself for choosing not to join Pirsig on the open waters, but it is in my belief that people are worth the fight, to help them become better than they show an inclination to become themselves. Such a task at this point seems pointless in the wake of a deal with the labor unions over repealing Senate Bill 5.

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

The Worth of Warren Buffett’s Opinion: Looters demand more taxes!

About a decade ago, I was in a wedding party for my brother and we were dining at the Grand Finale in Glendale when he gave me my gift for being in the wedding party. It was a book by Warren Buffett, a man my brother greatly admired, so while the conversation of the evening drifted from tales of marriage and hardship, I read the book at the table.

My thoughts about Buffett were that he was “lucky” to have become rich as an investor. Like many of his type, he became wealthy not by creating, but by a manner of deception, playing on the behavior patterns of the timid and foolish. This isn’t illegal and is a natural part of capitalism, where predators take advantage of those not as ruthless, cunning, or even greedy. The threat of these predators encourages the very good to become better in order to compete, and this is where ideas are born.

But people like Warren Buffett and George Soros did not gain wisdom from the creation of something new. They gained wisdom by dealing with fools and this is the net result of books like what Buffett has put out, and Soros. They gained their wealth by being bottom feeders. They did not earn their wealth the valid way, like a Bill Gates, by creating something from nothing. They simply capitalized on the mistakes of others in a quest for wealth pursuits. So if the goal is simply to “get rich” no matter the method, then the works of these types of “investors” is commendable.

Their wealth however does not make them experts in all things involved in money and value however. Buffett and Soros are not experts on the art of living, and advice from them must be taken in context. If one wishes to become rich by climbing over the backs of others with a sense of ruthlessness and cold-hearted rancor, then their advice should help the hungry investor. But if an advice seeker wishes to know more about the complexities of existence, then these characters will leave that seeker very hungry for more, because they do not understand themselves the nature of society.

When Buffett says that more taxes are needed, he is making the statement of a progressive, not a traditional American. So it is only natural that Buffett would want to continue to fund the social programs created by his fellow “progressives.” The feeding of taxes with the money of the people in American society is a reckless enterprise that if the goal of that society is to have a smaller government that is less intrusive, then of course fewer taxes will be needed to maintain that infrastructure.

If the goal however is to have a larger government well then of course more taxes are needed, so when Buffett and Obama speak about raising taxes, and that people of wealth like them are willing to pay, it must be considered what kind of men they truly are. They value money based exclusively on the merit of the dollar value in relation to other things. These progressive types mistakenly believe that their money has equal value to those who actually create something, and this is the reason they tend to dislike actual producers, like oil tycoons, and “big business” owners. They exhibit a jealousy toward their fellow wealth peers hoping that they can be seen as “equal” to those producers because deep in their hearts they know that their wealth was created by a measure of looting, where they took advantage of someone not quite smart enough to hang on to their money, and not by the benefit of invention.

This is why these types of people do not understand the value of what they are asking. Buffett might understand the value of stock prices, but he does not understand the value of the merit behind the company which holds the stock. He understands the nature of speculating the behavior of ownership and the way the public will perceive the actions of a company, but he does not understand the value of creation, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t say such naïve concepts as blindly tossing tax money into the tax monster that is government.

Much of the corruption in government is due to the money that flows in it. The reason politicians will do anything, say whatever, and make any promise to get into public office is because they want to be in control of the money that comes to them in the form of taxes. Public union’s exist for one reason, and that is to gain control of the money which comes to the public worker. It is money which corrupts government and it is money that ruins the attempts of any country to maintain a reasonable, trustworthy republic. So when a progressive makes the statement that they support higher taxes, what they really are saying is that they wish to maintain the structure of corruption from which they have enriched themselves. For people like Warren Buffett, this is perfectly acceptable. But for people who want to see government become more trustworthy and for politicians to become more representative, cutting the amount of money that is tossed into that black hole of government consumption will make public office much less attractive to the thieves and miscreants who are currently attracted to public office.

To improve the quality of government, society must take away the incentive of those bottom feeders to migrate into public service, and the only way to do that is to take away the waste from which they flock to.

I closed the book at The Grand Finale and kept my opinion about Buffett to myself because the men at our table were all gushing over themselves regarding the achievements of Warren Buffett. The nature of Buffett and those like him are elusive to their minds, because in society, we are trained that the value of something is contained within a fixed dollar amount. So we are trained to believe that Buffett’s wealth gives him immediate value as a person of the mind, after all, he was smart enough to amass massive amounts of wealth, so he must know something important, and the men at my diner table were hungry to unveil that knowledge so that they too might achieve some measure of success, and take care of their own families with some wealth of their own.

As I sipped the remaining contents of my wine that night I knew that the real genius is not in the indulgence of a fool and the advantage taken from them, but it is in the restraint. For the way to truly build society is not always to indulge and roll about like pigs in a mud pit, but to refrain from the impulse to indulge with an eye on the greater good, even when that good appears to be bad to the pig wishing to roll in the urine and feces of it’s own kind to accumulate merit earned by decadence.

And that’s what I think of the opinions by Warren Buffett.

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

Public Unions Should be Illegal: They are simply too expensive and too demanding

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN ARTICLE I WROTE CALLED PAYING FOR PROTECTION: THE ORGANIZED CRIME OF TEACHERS UNIONS FOR MATERIAL SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW.

Leslie Ghiz of Cincinnati City Council goes ballistic on 700 WLW while talking to Doc Thompson about the lack of interest in dealing with the Diana Frey case, the public union president accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. The source of the complacency she is upset about is the very reason why public positions simply cost too much money to the tax payer. Click here to listen to that broadcast:

There is a disconnect between the reality of the public union leader and the rest of the world. Doc Thompson recently did another show where the average tax payer would have a lot of difficulty coming up with $1000 if they needed to without going into debt. Yet the public union expectation when their contracts demand more money is just to raise taxes to fund their demands, and they don’t care at all that they are draining the communities of their wealth, who simply don’t have the money. You can listen to that broadcast here:

The public sector unions have shown no restraint, no sense of economic understanding, no compassion for their employers, which are the tax payers. They have been excessively greedy, corrupt (Diana Frey and she’s not the only one), manipulative, and perfectly willing to walk off the job if management doesn’t see things their way. Their behavior has driven up the cost of their employment simply to the point of being very unattractive as a labor option.

When the public union representing the teachers at Lakota in 2008 went on strike, and a deal was made to appease them, to keep the teachers from walking off the job, I decided that I would not support another school levy until the public sector union was out of the equation. They simply drive up the cost of education too much. The unions make it impossible to have an intelligent conversation about cost controls, because the direction of the negotiations always migrates back to the welfare of the employee, and not the product they create.

I have noticed that the television stations lately are focused on the catastrophe of public funding and are resorting to the feel-good stories of emotion, which plays straight into the kind of manipulation the unions have used to extort massive sums of money, (tax money) for themselves. It is never asked by the established media why all these public employee jobs are going bankrupt, because the answer is simply too painful. Public employees, particularly teachers are too expensive. They cost too much money to employee, and they did that to themselves with extreme labor practices such as threatening to walk of the job with strikes.

The legislators who made it law that a teacher should have a master’s degree to keep their teaching certificate helped perpetuate the situation with legislation. They did as they always do; they created laws without considering the cost of compliance. That is the problem with electing small-minded people into positions to create laws, because they are unable to take in the whole picture. Since they too are public employees and not responsible for creating the funding, they don’t make the connection but simply take money from the public in the form of taxes, so they bare no responsibility.

Public employees do not exist for the benefit of job creation. They are not there for the convenience of the employee. But that is the expectation. The tax payer is expected to jump through hoops to figure out how to appease the high expectations of these out-of-touch employees.

If I were the superintendent of a school, which I could never be because there are actually laws to keep people like me from being hired by a district, the unions have covered their tracks in every direction, I would simply let the teachers walk the next time they attempted a strike, and I’d hire cheaper labor. It is the cost of labor that is the problem and is creating the demand for more taxes in every sector of government service. Government in no capacity should ever be paid more than the average wage of the public, because it creates an incentive for people to attempt to become a government worker that will do anything to become employed by the government because it’s simply too lucrative.

Teachers should be paid fairly, and if they want to make a lot of money, they should work for a private institution that will pay them according to their expectations. If the United States were the best in the world, I might buy into the union argument that we need to pay for the best to have the best, but the United States education system is not the best. It’s average and that’s being generous, and I think it fails in entirely too many ways. It certainly isn’t worth the amount of money we are pouring into it.

Politicians and news organizations looking to simplify their stories focus only on dollars spent equals’ value to the child, but that simply is not true. We could pour all the money the United States produces into education and the result would still be a flat line. Education is an elusive quality that comes from the strength of a family and the mentors that surround a child. Children just do not learn on an assembly line and making the factory more expensive won’t improve the results.

I’m not against public education. I think it’s a good thing for people who come from broken homes, or poor families. In those conditions, it is possible for a teacher to have a major influence on a child, because the teacher can fill the role that the parent is neglecting. But in families that are strong where there are two parents, grandpa’s and grandma’s and the family has a middle to upper income, there isn’t much a public school has to offer in the development of a child but a baby sitting service. I know that hurts the feelings of many “sensitive” guidance councilors and teachers, but those are the facts. As a tax payer, I’m happy to employee some of those people in my district for some of the underprivileged, but having hundreds and hundreds employees all making extremely lucrative incomes is simply not good business.

But it is the unions who have high-jacked the entire process, allowed no management control on a run-away train that just goes faster and faster requiring more and more money to fuel. To me, they are not worth the money. They are guilty of being too greedy and out-of-touch. To be honest, I have never seen a system so screwed up, as wrong as you find when you lift up the rocks of public sector unions. The entire situation is terribly out of control which directly affects the overall cost. I believe the teachers for the most part believe they are in the profession for the kids they teach. But the union leaders are clearly out for the greed of the position and have shown no restraint on their demands. And the teachers who have voted to keep those types of leaders in place are all guilty of putting themselves over their job to the children and the more I learn, the angrier I become.

Being foolish is not against the law. If the union leaders wish to be so foolish as to be out-of-touch with the rest of the world, that’s their prerogative. But when they ask me to fund their foolishness, that is passing the fool baton to me, and I’m not going to carry it. They make it my business when they ask me for more money to support their folly, and I know better. Therefore, I will not support public sector unions with any more additional taxes until they remove themselves from the process. They are getting in the way of proper management of public employees and should be outlawed. We have tried that little public employee union experiment started by President Kennedy and it has failed, and needs to be abolished as a practice.

The unions will call it union busting. I call it practical. I do not recognize the authority of any union to take my money out of my pocket and do what they please with it. Such a practice is simple robbery. It’s nothing else and needs to be outlawed at every level in government. Until that happens, there will never be any management of government costs which is just plain foolishness when money is the primary concern.

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

Rich Hoffman and Doc Thompson Fix the World: In spite of the hauntings from the past

As we are bombarded incessantly for further impositions into our personal income with the demand for higher taxes the irretrievable implication is that there isn’t a plan for taxes to ever be reduced, only to grow forever, until society completely collapses. This is the case of all government these days and has been since President Kennedy signed into law with executive action, the legalization of public unions, which Lyndon Johnston then expanded to build a voter base. (CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW IT ALL BEGAN) The incredible lack of wisdom and complete selfishness of the Democratic political party in those critical years of the 60’s have taken us all down this current path which ends at a collapsed bridge with steep cliffs on all sides and nowhere to go but back. Standing at the end of that road on a Saturday afternoon, being the first to arrive there, Doc Thompson of 700 WLW and I have a serious talk laced with humor and frustration about all the reasons why the school funding models are failing, and how ridiculous it is that school boards have no other option but to request higher taxes in an out-of-control system bent on self-destruction. If you have any doubts, questions, or fears about why taxes for your school keep going up, then listen to this broadcast. After my interview, there was a parade of callers all deeply frustrated who shed further light into this diabolical modern-day catastrophe that has become public education.

I’m not just blaming the Democrats in this folly. All politicians are to blame, because they didn’t address the problems, fearing political fallout. I personally have no desire to ever be a politician. From my experience too many politicians celebrate their wins as though they won the lottery, not as a sacrifice. Politicians know that there will be opportunities to enrich themselves, that there are unions and other special interests out there that will give them money to do as they say and they can become wealthy in the process, and that’s what’s been happening. (CLICK HERE TO SEE JUST HOW BAD THE SITUATION TRULY IS) My desire is to write, read, and continue to climb mountains with my wife on weekend adventures. Public office or political gain of any kind is unattractive to me. Fixing the problems of politics however is, because I don’t want to spend money on aspects of culture that isn’t needed because it lowers the quality of the culture I wish to enjoy.

I had lunch with my daughter after the radio interview and she showed me a new phone application on her smart phone that she downloaded for free. It’s a language translation program where she can speak into her phone, then the phone will translate the phrase into any language she wishes, and it will vocalize it as well. This will be helpful if she is in Romania on a photo shoot, but she doesn’t know the local language, and she needs to ask someone a question, she can simply speak into her phone, and then play the translation for the person she’s asking. The phone has become an instant translator.

My wife and I stopped by Best Buy on the way home to check on buying new computers for a new video game called The Old Republic by Bioware. I’ve been looking forward to that massive online game for years, and the release date is nearing, so my wife and I plan to buy a couple of new computers just to play that game, one for her and one for me, so we can spend time with all our nieces and nephews and other friends who are scattered all over the face of the planet. I was shocked that virtually every young person I spoke to from my daughters friends to the employees at Best Buy are all on a waiting list for that game. I joked to my wife on the way home that when The Old Republic is released, the economy may tank, because nobody will want to do anything but play that game. People my age and younger are eager to jump into that extremely immersive world.

But what does that say about our current society? Many of these people wanting to play The Old Republic currently play World of Warcraft and will spend countless hours learning everything there is to know about a fictional world with absolutely no implication to their actual lives. It’s all a fantasy. But why the powerful desire……escape?

Many people have given up on American culture, and public unions have capitalized on that apathy. The technology of online gaming and my daughters smart phone should be incorporated instantly into our education system because that is the way young people are learning now. They are wasting their time in modern education. It makes the parents feel good about themselves, but the kids really aren’t learning anything other than social boundaries which makes public education a complete failure in my book.

I can speak for myself; I understand why so many people are drawn to online gaming. Because there are no restrictions in those environments, the internet is the freest way of life ever conceived by human minds, and online gaming whether it is for Maddan Football, or World of Warcraft allows the human mind to venture beyond the social restrictions of our current culture, and that is the tragedy of our age.

Public education has been captured by public sector unions and molded into a boring, stale, environment that kids are simply not interested in, and is preparing them for a world that will change tomorrow. Public education is way behind the curve; they are in the back of the train as I’ve discussed using Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a prime example. (If you haven’t read Pirsig it’s in the philosophy section of your local bookstore.) Click here to see what I say about it.

I have taught those close to me many things, one of them is a phrase I’ve used for more than 30 years and its “Advice is only as good as the person who gives it.” If the quality of the person giving advice, teaching ideas, or even coming up with a social model of ideas that are deemed important, if the minds “advising” are not quality minds, then the advice is worthless. When my wife was younger she had a parade of people who were always telling her she should be a fashion model, she should go to school to become a great scientist, that she should do a bunch of things because she is a very intelligent woman who is also very attractive, attributes that many around her secretly resented. So I’d say to her, “Where are the lives of the people telling you these things? Are they what you’d consider successful people? Even the people who are wealthy, do they look happy to you? If not, then why would you even consider their advice even a little? Their advice has not led their own lives to prosperity and happiness, so how can they be expected to tell you what to do.”

Yet in traditional education, we send a child to school to be taught by a complete stranger advice which the child is supposed to carry deep into their lives. I understand that many parents are not equipped to live by the mentality I provided my wife with, but in sectors of the internet, gaming community, and social networks like Facebook the true desires for human development are there for everyone to see. And the reason new ideas are not being explored in education is exclusively because public sector unions are resistant to the rapid changes happening in the world around them. They are like a boat going downstream in a swift river filled with rapids only to toss out an anchor into the water to stop all movement because they are “scared” of the changes. But in doing so they have limited the maneuverability of the boat to navigate in the water and the swift current is actually beating on the boat threatening to sink the vessel by sheer force.

I am convinced that no adjustments to public education are even possible as long as public sector unions exist. They are a cancer in the body of thought. And they are in denial of their corrosive nature.

Their leaders are fools intent to hang on to some archaic education practice long outdated, and is increasingly just too expensive. The teachers unions have priced themselves out of relevance because not only are they teaching in an outdated model that they force upon society with their fear of change, but they charge too much to do it. It’s that simple. They’ve high-jacked all administrative control, political persuasion, and social latitude to arrive at a place where the world is marching on without them and they are still holding their stupid signs from the 60’s, “better jobs for teachers.” Who cares? The kids can’t wait to leave the classroom of the teacher to get home and get on their computer and play World of Warcraft with their friends, or The Old Republic. If education was smart, it would be teaching in that realm so that kids could learn perhaps three times as much in a shorter period of time than what is currently experienced.

When a Smartphone can do with a free download what it takes two years of foreign language studies to achieve, society has reached an impasse, and the public sector unions like what the teaches have, are still walking around with the dinosaurs. They sadly believe they are more relevant than they really are, and society up till now has just thrown money at them so they don’t have to feel bad about all the years of college they have, the massive debt they’ve accumulated, and the social fulfillment they were promised when they entered the profession. They have become extinct, because society, like that swift river, is moving too fast for their timid minds to navigate.

And more taxes won’t fix that void left in the broken heart of the disillusioned soul who discovers that the impact they believe they have on social development is easily out-done by a video game character in a virtual world who can level up by initiative, without needless restriction. It is the teacher who belonged to a union and used that collective influence to make themselves extinct, like ghosts haunting a house who do not know they are dead, and insist on living by sheer force even though they are just reflections of the past.

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

The Cincinnati Bengals, School Levies, and Health Care: Why they all suck!

As I was watching football, my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was on one channel, and the Cincinnati Bengals were on the other, I received several emails from some of my valuable contacts who supply me with a stream of information daily. One was about the Health Care Freedom Amendment. Another was about Sycamore Schools and their thoughts about going to the tax payers for more money, both of those I’ll include here to share with this audience, and retain their value for future reference.

The Tampa Bucs led by Raheem Morris looked fantastic. The Cincinnati Bengals looked absolutely pathetic. Actually, terrible was more like it. Considering how much the tax payers of Cincinnati are paying for the stadium that the Bengals play in, it was a slap in the face to see such a pathetic display of complacency taking place on the field in what the Bengals showed. As I watched the Bengals stumble around during the game I could not help but think that they are the perfect example of why throwing money at a political problem does not work.

Also, yesterday morning it was revealed that even with all the court challenges by Progress Ohio, the Health Care Freedom Amendment, which will allow the State of Ohio to challenge Obama Care under the rights of state sovereignty. Getting the issue on the ballot in November is the huge first step to knocking back the intrusive hands of government bureaucrats who are aggressively advocating the rapid expansion of government with even more far-reaching impositions. Read all about it below:

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August 12, 2011 9:51 AM Ohio high court: Healthcare signatures valid COLUMBUS, Ohio — Opponents of a federal health care overhaul scored a key legal victory on Friday that should clear a proposed ballot measure for a fall vote.

The chance for voters to reject portions of insurance changes championed by President Barack Obama will appear Nov. 8, alongside a ballot issue seeking to repeal a contentious re-write of Ohio’s collective bargaining law. One is expected to bring out Republican-leaning voters and the other is expected to bring out Democrats in a state closely divided along political lines.

In a unanimous decision Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a liberal policy group’s lawsuit challenging certification of the so-called Health Care Freedom Amendment on the grounds petitions carrying 69,000 signatures were flawed.

ProgressOhio executive director Brian Rothenberg argued that Secretary of State Jon Husted counted signatures on petitions that contained technical errors, including the way paid circulators listed their employment.

Husted, a Republican, argued the challenge revolved around petitions carrying extra information, a practice government should not discourage.

Justices said the secretary of state is “entitled to deference.”

They found that Rothenberg’s charges lacked legal merit, noting “even if his challenge had substantive validity, Rothenberg’s evidence is insufficient to establish that the part-petitions do not have enough signatures.”

Husted announced July 27 that the coalition of tea party organizations and other groups behind the measure that submitted 427,000 valid signatures, well over the roughly 385,000 needed to get the amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The proposed amendment to Ohio’s Constitution would keep people from being required to buy health insurance or face penalties. The federal mandate would go into effect in 2014, when new competitive insurance exchanges are scheduled to open.

Opponents say the federal government is overreaching by requiring individuals to purchase a product. The Obama administration counters that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce squares the constitutionality of the mandate.

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The Bengals are such a terrible as a team for all the reasons the government screws up everything it touches, whether it’s education, or health care. The ownership of the Bengals believes as government does, that money spent equals value on the field, and that clearly is not the case. Carson Palmer gave up over 40 million dollars to leave the organization because he was so embarrassed to be a part of the Bengal organization, because at least he wants to retain his soul moving forward. But many in government have given up their souls long ago in trade for financial security.

These soulless creatures of bureaucracy are why government believes that “they” have the right to force us to buy their health care plan, and of course why public education simply doesn’t understand that they will have to learn to decline their revenue streams to match the declining wages, declining property values, and less money coming from outside community sources because the education bubble has burst. They believe they have a service so valuable to society that they should be exempt from any decreases in value.

This next article displays the extreme arrogance of the Sycamore School District, which is similar to what has been going on at Lakota where almost the same terminology was used to justify a 4.75 mill levy they voted on early this past week. It is not by accident that all the districts seem to be saying the same kind of thing. It is the Ohio School Board Association, a centralized organization in Ohio who helps provide the guidance to these school boards in times of crises, and it is this OSBA that is seeking to fulfill the type of education agenda that Progress Ohio, (the same group against the Health Care Freedom Amendment) wish to implement, at the tax payer cost. Check it out:

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Update five-year forecast

Regarding the July 13, 2011 article “Sycamore schools: Some light at the end of fiscal tunnel.” In order for the taxpayers and board members to understand the significance of the lost state revenue, the district’s May, 2011 Five Year Forecast must be updated now.

The lost state revenue needs to be looked at in the context of the five-year plan. The five-year plan would show the new revenue, planned expenditures and new cash balance for each year.

The development of a revised plan should not wait until the next state mandated October forecast. This revised forecast will provide the school and community four more months to consider the consequences of these changes.

Twice in the article, Diane Adamec, board president referred to a planned tax levy in 2012. The school has promised not to approach the community for more money until at least 2012.

She said, “What the regular citizen will not see is a request for an additional tax levy sooner than planned.”Later she adds, “By holding expense growth to an average of 1.5 percent annually, this district will maintain its promise not to go back to the community until at least 2012 for new taxes for operations – an eight-year span.”

Based on what I read and hear about the worldwide fiscal crisis, the possible U.S. financial default and constant deficit spending, there is no “light at the end of the fiscal tunnel.”

All government entities at the Federal, state, local levels including public schools, and citizens are facing a huge challenge ahead. Thinking that we might see some light ahead may be a comforting thought, but it is more akin to burying one’s head-in-the-sand.

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I like that article because that is precisely what these schools are doing; they are burying their heads in the sand. They are pretending to “sacrifice” and maintain a lower rate of growth, in this case only 1.5%. They pretend that they are doing it “for the community” and at a great sacrifice to themselves. Preposterous!

I heard multiple times last week in regard to Lakota Schools that it’s been since 2005 that Lakota has had a revenue increase! It was only two years after that increase that the teachers union mounted a strike against the school which drove up costs 10.1% over the next two years, so some of us have learned that putting more money in the basket doesn’t get better results, or even maintain the old ones, because the union once they see the money, will threaten to walk off the job anyway in order to get at the extra money the community has supplied. It is in these modern times, where all the inflated costs are contracting, and education falls under that category, that plans must be made along that contraction. It is only natural that revenue should be less than the 2005 numbers because the financial supply, (which was inflated) is contracting, so it is not growth that should be expected, but decline, and their budgets should reflect that.

Yet with all the discussion Sycamore Schools articulates the dilemma wonderfully. They think it appropriate to present to the public that they only expect a 1.5% increase in revenue per year, like they are doing everyone a favor, by not going to voters for more money more often!

The value of something cannot be measured in some transitory monetary figure. Teachers have overpriced themselves and with the absence of elusive state and federal money, it is obvious now. Arrogant academics like these superintendents who think the voting public to be fools, just like the academic oriented president who has tried to force the nation to buy into his Health Care Policy, in order to fulfill the political whims of progressive groups like Progress Ohio, are simply out-of-touch and living their lives buried in the sand while their bodies are visible, but their heads are not. And if anyone doubts that there are people in the world who are just so heartless and outrageous by their actions yet friendly and conciliatory in their public presentation, (just like school systems are) just have a look at the ownership of the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Bengal organization threatened to move to a different city, just like teachers threaten to strike to get their money. The city voted to give The Bengals a new stadium, which is now bankrupting the city for a game that is played 8 times a year in a stadium that is average at best compared to other NFL homes. And the product the Brown family puts on the field is terrible…….absolutely terrible with no sign of getting better…….ever! I look at that team as proof that money spent does not acquire the desired results, it just fills the pockets of those who care for nothing else but money.

The city is under contract, and obligated to fulfill that contract. And the schools are under contract too, with their unions who have extorted enormous sums of tax payer money into their pockets out of sheer greed…….and they talk down to the public like they are children! This election of November 2011 will have a lot to deal with, but more than anything it will say what kind of society we are to become. Because in voting for these school levies, allowing President Obama to mandate that citizens must “purchase” something from the womb to the tomb, and that unions should continue to have the right to drive up costs even when market factors show their expectations should be declining, are all at play, and depending on the outcome of that vote, our society will be shaped accordingly. This is not one where people can sit back and let somebody else make the decisions. Ultimately, that is why the Bengals are such a bad team, because the contract was forged from the blood of the community and it lacks accountably, or even reality and that has infected the leadership, which infects the players, and ultimately infects the fans. The same happens in a school, and it always will until the public puts a stop to it. Until then, everyone is guilty just a little.

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

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