Tag: Ayn Rand

The Future of Government: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s pace setting changes

A friend of mine gave me a nice book by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum which I’ve had for a few weeks and browsed through with some enjoyment. Given the Thanksgiving break, I was able to set aside another 7 hours to complete the book and found it very enjoyable, especially with his views on government. Now in reading this with an open mind, I had to put his support of Palestine against Israel into perspective and also consider the large amount of drama that has been following one of the world’s richest men and the driver of Dubai’s leap into the future, especially in regard to his daughter, the missing princess. But great energy and intelligence are often criticized, and nobody ever fits into the square holes that society gives us as we are all circles, triangles and rectangles and usually don’t fit unless we beat them into place with a hammer.

I like Dubai very much and I especially like what they are doing in that region of the world with the Hyperloop and the efforts at skycars. It takes a person thinking like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to do big things like that. In the United States we do have a mind thinking like this in the Oval Office in President Trump. There is less democracy in Dubai, so it is far easier for a big personality like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to have his way and get things done. Often very wealthy people like this are hated by the lazy and stupid, so much of the smoke that comes from these types of people is scrutinized with more of a focus on pushing them into one of these square holes instead of understanding their true value to the context of the human story. With that said, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s opinion on government is something worth considering as I share his sentiment.

I make it no debate; I hate government as it has been presented to me over the years. They are slow, unambitious and filled with people afraid of real performance. They get to work too late in the day and they leave way to early. Just a trip to the BMV is a miserable experience, the hours of operation is in the middle of the work day so you have to take time out of your schedule to get silly things like drivers license renewals completed which is an extremely low value add contribution to the day of people who are really doing things in life. Government in the United States especially is too expensive and does not serve customer interests nearly enough, especially for the cost. They are corrupted by liberal labor unions that push back against very basic requests and are generally a huge waste of time. I was happy to read in Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s book that he feels much the same way that I do about government and in the UAE he is pushing reforms with the following sentiments:

• The government of the future is open for service 24/7, all year round. The private sector remains open for business so why not the public sector?” We want our government to be just like an airline—available around the clock.

• The government of the future competes with and surpasses the private sector in service quality. We want our government to welcome customers more professionally than hotels; we want our government to manage processes better than banks.

• The government of the future is connected. Citizens should be able to complete any government transaction at any government service center. Integrated service centers will spare citizens long trips from one entity to another.

• The government of the future is available anywhere. We want to shift government services onto smartphones so that customers can file and follow up on transactions using mobile devices at their convenience.

• The government of the future is innovative and constantly able to generate ideas. In 2012 the UAE government was able to generate over 20,000 fresh ideas to simplify and improve its services. Our goal is to create an environment that encourages people to generate innovative ideas. Implement them and constantly measure their effectiveness. Innovation is the capital of the future.

• The government of the future is a smart government with integrated and efficient technical systems. A smart government is so much faster in completing various kinds of transactions.

Now, all that sounds very logical to me. It makes perfect sense. In the United States when I complain about taxes being too high it is because I have always my business hat on, which requires the kind of thinking that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has set as targets for his own government in the UAE. And I am quite sure that they are working to make that a reality in the city of Dubai. Its important to realize that this is what the United States is competing with, its not Europe, or China or anyplace other than the very innovative thinking coming out of the UAE. I noticed this first actually while visiting Harrod’s in London and seeing on the top floor all the future plans for cities of the future in the UAE. London was no longer the cultural center of the universe, nor was New York, or Hong Kong, but rather it was Dubai and more specifically this way of thinking from Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The forces at work in the United States that are keeping us from matching the ambitions of Dubai are what I would call domestic enemies because they are standing in the way of the kind of innovation that we need to be utilizing aggressively. Every time I hear some teacher’s union complaining about less kids, less work hours and more pay it makes me literally sick, because the rest of the world is starting to realize that people like Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum are shaping the future. And it should be the United States that everyone should be emulating. It also makes me very angry to see that our own government would rather fight to protect the status quo by attacking our own President Trump, who wants to think ahead of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. But instead, they want to impeach him any way possible so that they can resist the need to change their behavior in government.

A healthy hatred of government if it proves to be a detriment to productivity and a happy life is good. We shouldn’t expect something to be bad just because its government and rationalize that we can’t do anything about it. Government works for the people, not the other way around and for too long governments around the world have grown complacent and more intrigued with their aristocratic status than in being known for what they accomplish. That isn’t acceptable to me and it was refreshing to hear that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum doesn’t find it acceptable either, that some people in the world do get it. That is why it is good to read books, especially from cultures that are not native to your own, so that ideas can be generated, and understandings met. The media certainly wouldn’t report this information, I didn’t know much about Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum until I read his book except that he had family problems with one of his daughters. The media will report that, but not all these thoughts about government. And that is another huge part of this problem that we should all be angry about.

Rich Hoffman

Why Kids Like to Play Shoot with Toy Guns: The Mandalorian is all about cool gun fights

Another reason The Mandalorian is such a great show is because it’s the first that I can think of where gun fights are embraced in a very long time. Watching these episodes, I can’t help but think of all the radio broadcasts I had done at WAAM talking about this very subject with a guy who loved Disney so much that he left radio to work for the company. We were perplexed that Disney had a policy at the parks that did not allow for guns on costumes due to the very progressive stand the company had toward the Second Amendment. All in the name of security. Well, and I’m very happy to see it, but all that is out the window now. The Mandalorian isn’t just a show about the nobility of violence, but its also about gunfights in ways that only classic television westerns were, and this is a good sign of many great things to come.

When I was growing up I play fought all the time. At recess me and the other kids of my class would pretend anything was a gun and we’d shoot at each other religiously. Of course none of us grew up to be mass killers, play fighting is a natural state for young people, especially boys. So the primal necessity of having gunfights in The Mandalorian is an admission of sorts from the Disney Company that they understand that what will follow, as they have Star Wars events at their theme parks and the general nature of the cosplay culture that fans will be dressing up as their favorite Mandalorian and their guns, and there won’t be much that Disney can do about having their name on it. They bought Star Wars and guns are a huge part of the property, so if they want to get the value out of their purchase, they have to embrace that culture and know that little kids have a need to play fight with each other for needs that they will need to understand once they become adults.

What’s even better in The Mandalorian is that the fights are not confused with the nobility of Jedi fighting with lightsabers. Its all about guns. Watching through the first three episodes and noticing the online reaction to them that primal need is alive and well with people. Even though public education has sought to drive the desire for such recreation out of the mind of their students, the play fighting that was always so important to me growing up using combs, rulers and our own hands to pretend to shoot guns, has moved online to the video game world. The people making The Mandalorian obviously have been playing Star Wars: Battlefront II and other shooting games that are much more popular than many people in politics are willing to admit. This whole notion of gun control politically is going against the tide of human desire. Disney has had to come to terms with that, and the rest of the world will soon follow. The Mandalorian is just the product coming about to support a market need. The need was always there, but it was politics that slowed down the fulfillment as social experiments to the contrary were fully in place.

The Mandalorian is so good in fact that I can’t imagine that millions of young people, boys and girls, are going to rush out to buy some version of their favorite gun from the series. And I understand. I have hanging from the mantel of my fireplace in my home, right next to my reading chair, my DL-44 in its official Han Solo holster complete with all the little greebles that only hard-core Star Wars fans would understand. It’s a toy, but I like looking at it so I keep it out so I can see it every day. When I was a kid, the toy Han Solo gun was one of my favorite things to have and over the years that was my first introduction to guns which is still a very healthy hobby of mine. What they have today is much cooler, so young people have so many more options than I did. I can’t imagine how exciting it is for them that they can not only have such weapons, but that they can turn around and play Battlefront II all weekend when they aren’t in school with all their friends in a squad. In so many ways, play fighting has never been easier, or more popular than it is today, which is saying a lot.

Entertainment companies like Disney have had to come to terms with their responsibility in the whole political order. In entertainment, all companies have an obligation to the market needs of the consumers, for which young people want guns to play with for all kinds of very legitimate psychological reasons. The politics against guns is due to an infantile desire for the political class to have power over others and by promoting the disarming of society due to safety concerns, they are in the end seeking to make their jobs easier. The effort has nothing to do with making a better and more peaceful society, its just seeking to suppress human need for freedom so that earlier in their lives, children will learn to behave to a higher authority.

Obedience doesn’t sell very well in a free and open marketplace. There is a reason pop culture music is rebellious by nature and there is a reason kids like to play at violence and fighting. The fantasy in both cases is to break away from the social norms of existence so that something new might be carved out of the effort. In most cases, the children will grow up and become nice little conformists. However, when they are young and full of dreams, they play shoot hoping to be that cowboy, that Mandalorian, or that desperate smuggler from Star Wars looking to break free of the system and to create some heroic adventure in the process for themselves. They aren’t looking to be conformists to the social norm. Play fighting is to become good at overcoming oppression so that they might have the courage to do the same when it really matters later in their life.

Of course, a Disney theme park with all kinds of safety concerns, political parasites trying to extract money from them all the time, and insurance adjusters making everything a potential lawsuit, the easiest thing they can do is eliminate the temptation for something dangerous to happen. So they come up with their no gun policies in regard to cosplay and if there are guns they have to have those stupid orange colors on the barrels or the entire guns so that police don’t confuse them for the real thing. It’s easier on the political class, but terror on the kids who want to play with the guns and learn the basics about shooting through their leisure.

During those referred to radio broadcasts, I thought it was a pointless endeavor for Disney, and that has turned out to be right. If anything the need was only suppressed and now that the cat is out of the bag, I anticipate a steep increase in young people admitting to the world that they want to play shoot guns and they want their guns to look cool and realistic. Even though they are only toys, it is good to be thinking about these things as early as possible because there is honesty and hope in that kind of play that the political class has sought to destroy, and if their feelings get hurt in the process, so be it. They should have never attempted to tamper with the necessities of human development to begin with. They instead should have done their jobs and not sought to make it easier on themselves by altering the way kids play, and why they play it.

Rich Hoffman

Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian: Guilds, fraternities and organizations are no match for a good smuggler

Needless to say it, but I am very happy with The Mandalorian, the latest Star Wars show revealed on the new Disney+ streaming service. I think it’s the best show I’ve seen on television in quite a while, and I don’t just say that as a Star Wars fan. The first three episodes have completely captured pop culture with the revelation of the now famous baby Yoda and suddenly we have something very special on our hands that is bringing people together in a time where Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump so that they don’t have to run against him in 2020. Knowing how politically active the modern Disney Company is I was surprised that they even allowed for The Mandalorian to be made since the plot is essentially a “lone gunman” fighting his way for life after the events of Return of the Jedi and the fall of the Empire. There are lots of gunfighters and the way the episodes are filmed are very reminiscent of early Clint Eastwood westerns. But Disney more than anything is about making money, which they should be, and after the let downs of political tampering so far in the Kathy Kennedy era Star Wars shows, everyone seems to have learned their lesson and is making The Mandalorian in a way to make up all that to the fans. Needless to say, I’m a fan.

As all this is happening my wife and I are planning a trip to Disney World, its about time for me. I’ve always loved Disney because of their more traditional programming, such as Zorro and Davy Crockett which are both available on Disney+ and I have been watching them for the memories. Disney World and all those Florida theme parks are intended to be such optimistic places which a person like me feeds off of. But being the big corporate target that they are, not all management at Disney gets it and they do pander to Democrat and more dangerous progressive ideas way too often such as they had with Star Wars which I have covered here voluminously. Frozen II is out and doing good business, but it has several political messages that will be considered dated in the near future, especially in regard to gay and transvestite concerns and that’s a shame. So there is bad with the good and Disney as a company is trying to make money off everyone, so the Disney products are not traditionally safe and family friendly as we’d assume them to be, and I find that problematic. Frozen II was green lit a few years ago, before Trump was elected, so I can understand their mistakes, even though the box office has yet to reveal it to them. The Mandalorian however shows that at least Disney listens and is looking to make a course correction with Star Wars.

Disney as a company has always been about ideas and that is obvious in the theme parks. Their films and television shows generate sentiment, but it is the theme parks that drive the mythology home and make those ideas into something you can see and touch. I’ve always thought of their entertainment vision as bold and beautiful. I look at Liberty Square in Disney World as a temple of American reverence and it would not exist if not for the greater appeal of Disney as a company. To a point I’m willing to overlook political work like Frozen II or the lectures about global warming from a company that took a swamp in central Florida and completely reformed it for the benefit of amusement, because the end product is very good. In many ways The Mandalorian is the embodiment of the Disney Company itself and the metaphor has not been lost to me. At the start of the show the bounty hunter was well respected and wealthy. But along the way it has had to undergo some transformation that has inspired it to find the now famous baby Yoda and save it from the clutches of an evil Empire seeking to restore itself to power. To do so, The Mandalorian must turn against the Bounty Hunter Guild to do the right thing. Pretty good stuff.

As far as Star Wars mythology goes I had been liking The Mandalorian as a character when he was presented as the lone gunman type, but all this attachment to his Mandalorian culture is not something I admire. This “way” they keep talking about is not something I can relate to. But Star Wars has a lot of things for a lot of people and for me, the “smuggler” class still is far superior. They are not held to the rules of an organization the way these bounty hunters appear to be so I find their efforts far superior as a philosophy, and that is obviously understood by Disney as well as they have made their theme park attraction Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios a dedication to those types of people in the Star Wars storytelling experience. Even when the big organizations fail, such as the Empire did, or the First Order is attempting to restore, or the Rebellion succeeded but failed to properly organize a replacement government leaving the Resistance to attempt to stand up to the First Order, or the Mandalorians are trying to reestablish themselves in the wake of war, it is the smugglers and outlaws who manage to see the reality of such things due to their lack of investment into the social order of things, and that is very much a sentiment I can relate with.

There’s a lot going on and media and the things people enjoy coming from it is happening at a rapid pace. Political sentiments that were started in 2015 look like ancient history by 2020 so for a company like Disney trying to be all things to all people, its hard to pin down and I’ll give them a little room for that. By what has so far been seen of The Mandalorian Disney at least has shown that they aren’t so committed to Democrat talking points that they’ll penalize themselves as a profitable company. If Disney can continue to put out the kind of content that they are with The Mandalorian there is a bright future for Star Wars even if they have stumbled through much of this present decade. There is a lot of room to repair that relationship and they are off to a good start with baby Yoda and The Mandalorian.

More specifically I do not find The Mandalorian such an admirable character as he is more attached to his culture than I would like to see. Belonging to a guild, a fraternity, or club is a social security blanket that many people can’t see beyond, so I understand the reason its part of the story. I prefer the lone gunfighters who are also smugglers and don’t crave the company of others to make them feel a sense of belonging. But The Mandalorian is great in all other aspects and I look forward each week to the new episodes. It is certainly some of the best television I have seen in a number of years. And it looks like that is only going to increase.

Rich Hoffman

Stand Your Ground in Ohio: There is never a “duty to retreat,” the law is wrong

It tells you all you need to know about gun control, especially in states like Ohio where gun rights are very explicitly covered in its own Constitution, that all subsequent gun legislation has been designed to drive people toward more government central authority and not the individual rights guns protect. And that is certainly true of the liberal resistance, even by the current Republican governor of all forms of “stand your ground” laws that move through the legislature. There is another attempt at this now floating around Columbus, Ohio by lawmakers and the debate that it has spawned has been predictable. But for me, it is simply the legislature that is trying to catch up to the reality and intent of the original Constitution. This “duty to retreat” stuff is completely wrong. When assaulted with a threat, no human being has a duty to retreat, under any circumstance just to protect some hippie view of some collective existence being more important than individual ownership and the maintenance of private property.

Listening to the current crop of Democrats and open socialists running for president, all who support gun control and therefor the destruction of individual rights in favor of group affiliations, it makes me sick to think that we paid a lot of money for their educations only to have them grow up and become……that. Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere in the presidential election, but he’s been in the top job and knows better, yet when he talks about restricting gun magazines that can feed a gun in a firefight, he is way off his rocker. Citizens can’t have inferior weaponry to the state-controlled military. Who controls a potential out of control military if the wrong people are running things from the White House? People have to be able to stand up to corruption and abuse of power, and you can’t be shooting BB guns when they come knocking on your door to confiscate your property because they want it, or to throw you in jail because you are representing the wrong political party. (Roger Stone)

Our military and police are not a one stop shop of honor and protection. They must ultimately be managed by the people who pay them, and if the power goes to their heads and they are the ones with all the heavy weapons, silencers, and high capacity magazines, then they have leverage over the population and that is not their job. And when politicians fail us, such as they did during the Trump election, someone must have the power to keep them in check. No matter what anybody thinks of Donald Trump, his election revealed massive corruption at the top of the food chain, particularly among the Democrat Party and their scandals planted in Ukraine for their own enrichment. It goes far beyond Joe Biden. When the FBI is willing to edit FISA warrants and use the law for their own political desires, they will do anything else to harm private citizens and it is for that reason that any law in any state has a duty to retreat, to give the bad guys the advantage over the good, pure and simple. We know that we can’t trust government. We need government to manage affairs, but we know the power goes to their heads often, and we need to defend ourselves when it does.

In one of my published works, The Symposium of Justice the book starts out by the police letting a rapist out of jail to go after a young girl in the community. The police have a levy on the ballot for more money so they want to remind people how much the police are needed by letting a rapist out of jail and driving him by the home of a young teenage girl to “nudge” him into making her into a target that will ultimately panic the public into voting for more police funds. Just short of the attack a vigilant shows up and beats the rapist up to near death ruining the plans the police had and saving the girl from disgrace. A lot of people who have read my book think all that sounded like fiction and conspiracy theory dribble, but I can report that the entire first scene, including the vigilante action is nearly biographical and based on my own experience with the police department in Mason, Ohio while I was raising my family there and we became complicated with a marijuana distribution ring that the police were protecting, going all the way up to the mayor at the time. So don’t ever tell me I have some moral obligation to “retreat” when threatened. If you know how the game works you have a right and duty to justice to stand your ground, and nothing else. That is why my book was called The Symposium of Justice, because it was a look at what justice really is as opposed to what political tides want it to be.

American society and the culture of Ohio as a state shouldn’t not have anywhere in any of its laws a duty to retreat from a threat leaving action to the authorities. We shouldn’t give power to politically motivated prosecutors and loser lawyers to prosecute individuals who protect themselves and others with a gun, there are far more dangerous crimes out there to worry about. But to allow guns to be villains because they give power to individuals is the wrong sentiment and has no place written or implied in law. Rather, the key to a great society is when individuals can protect what they build and work for when danger comes to alter their momentum. For instance, if a businessman is taking his wife out for a nice dinner and they pull up somewhere for leisure and a robber is looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the couple, the businessman should be able to shoot the bandit dead on the spot without question, then continue their night of enjoyment unhindered. The businessman and his wife should not be subjected to embarrassment and plunder while the authorities waste countless amounts of tax dollars tracking down the villain, especially if it is found out that the businessman is a political contributor to a rival party and the bandit was sent to embarrass the businessman and force him down into a hole to hide in with disgrace from being robbed. This happens more than people are willing to admit. But regardless, its not the job of the robbed to retreat. That is just ridiculous.

There should never be in any legal writing any right to retreat, it goes against the very nature of a good society itself. Such a thing only helps the ill intent of villains, never the good people that are just trying to live their lives. The intent of such a law is to attempt to regulate good behavior to the words on a page and the promise of an oath to God, and these days, neither mean much to the villains of our society. But the barrel of a gun does, and it is that which truly keeps our world good and peaceful. Every person has a right to stand their ground, and nothing else, under no other pretense. Especially in Ohio!

Rich Hoffman

The Hit Job: Understanding the impeachment attempt and the crimes behind it

I’ve said it all along, and so have many others, and now the start of a massive bombshell is starting to reveal itself to a sleepy public. The Trump impeachment hearings and attempt have always been about only one thing, trying to get rid of Trump so that he loses his ability to uncover the real conspiracy, that is the Obama White House is who tampered with the 2016 election attempting to put things in favor of Hillary Clinton. And they used their powers of government through the various intelligence agencies to weaponize their political intentions—which is way worse than Trump’s Ukraine call they are so up in arms about. The amount of villainy shown by Democrats in general, connected to the previous administration is absolutely so unbelievable that its difficult for most people to get their minds around. But the proof is coming out, specifically the evidence uncovered by Inspector General Michael Horowitz that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the secretive surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser.

To make matters worse, since it was the Democrats who have been bringing up the Watergate scandal lately, trying to apply it to Trump for which there is absolutely no connection. If the cover-up in Watergate was the real crime, then what do you call an entire political party and previous presidential administration that has spent the last three years trying to pin every false narrative that they could to overthrow an election while covering up their own crimes in the attempt, and their massive corruption in dealing with Ukraine that consists of many people. I don’t know that there has ever been a bigger cover-up of crimes involving so many people than this case of the Democrats against President Trump. The only reason they have been so embolden has been because they have controlled the law. And now with the Trump administration, they control the Justice Department and it is terrifying to them that they will be found out. That is why they are coming after the President so hard.

If anybody cares to read the documents that were recently released on the Kennedy assassination, it will become very clear that our own government played a part in the execution of a president. Its no longer a conspiracy theory, and for a long time that fear is what kept presidents from looking too closely at things. Elected presidents were expected to play their part, do their ceremonial duties, and stay out of the business of the career politicians and unelected bureaucrats. The intelligence community has not been shy about it, they want everyone to make sure that they know who is really in charge and if presidents get in the way, they will be eliminated.

The political hits that are conducted by our intelligence agencies whether they get into the head of some lone gunman with daddy issues and drug problems and plant the seeds of destruction through psychological mechanisms or they do the work themselves, they have new methods of assassination these days that don’t connect so directly back to their fingerprints. In some ways the character assassinations they do these days are worse than just blowing the head off the president in a motorcade car. The sissy strategies of today’s metrosexual males and power climbing females are to assassinate characters, not people. Its cleaner, and less obvious. Killing a character isn’t technically against the law since they are public people usually anyway. Killing a person is, so this new strategy of killing characters is their new preferred method and the intelligence agencies committed to stopping Trump from getting elected were doing everything they could to manipulate that election, then blame their actions on everyone that wasn’t involved.

But if they could just make Trump disappear, don’t think they wouldn’t. These days with the improved secret service, and high visibility media culture, it is much harder to spin a story that a lone gunman took an assassination shot from some open window. So those avenues are not much of an option, instead they have resorted to actually trying to overturn elections which in many ways is an attack on our entire system as a republic. Its far more dangerous for them to assume so much power and to act on it than to just attempt to arrange the physical assassinations of the president and their people. It’s the intent here that we should all be concerned about, and the attempt to cover up the evidence through malicious means and the destruction of people’s character no matter what it costs. What we have witnessed from our government over the last three years should scare everyone, to the Supreme Court fights, to the fake Russian investigation, to this impeachment trial. It says a lot that Trump has had such a clean life that nobody has really been able to pin any kind of scandal to him. Probably the best result of putting a president in the White House that was used to celebrity and living under a magnifying glass for his entire life. In the end, that is probably the best skill Trump has had for this job, to protect himself from the character assassinations taking away that weapon from these new age assassins.

For myself, I don’t trust any of these institutions, especially now. If we ever want to repair that relationship, then they are going to have to come clean. As Horowitz has discovered, if an FBI employee is willing to modify a FISA document to falsely surveil a political target this time, they’ve done it before and likely many people have done the same thing, only they didn’t get caught. So how can we trust any of them ever for any case whatsoever, anywhere? We can’t, and that is the problem. We could apply the same standard to the Michael Flynn case where it appears that the FBI manipulated official records against the former general and national security adviser. If they will do it to Flynn, they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to do the same against you and me dear reader. These are bad, vicious people who have political revolution in mind, and they will do anything to see their intentions through. Anything.

So that is the story of this whole impeachment case. Its not that Trump did anything wrong, its all about trying to pin on him what the accusers have done themselves. They have been caught in an insurrection and their best way out of it is to destroy the administration that could bring justice to their doorstep, especially now that they’ve made an enemy of him. Things might not have gone so dark if they could have kept Comey close to President Trump and they just endured each other for a while, but Trump was smart and started firing everyone he suspected of sedition, and now things are starting to become clear with the bureaucrats out of the way, we are seeing the truth for the first time with hard evidence. These are dirty people sucking our taxpayer money up for their insidious deeds and a fight with them is inevitable. But we don’t need to take up arms against them. We can beat them at their own game as the first option, and that ladies and gentlemen, is what is about to happen. Enjoy!

Rich Hoffman

America Should Support the Rebels of Hong Kong: The need to break the back of communism in China, for good

One of the saddest events I think in history was when in 1949, the communists took over China and brought tyranny of the highest order to that country and its people after America worked so hard to prevent it. I read with great horror the specifics in Joseph Campbell’s Oriental Mythology the hard reported events of that communist take over and also read in the great book Way of the Fighter by my favorite military general, Claire Lee Chennault the warnings of the communist take over that would eventually lead to the Korean and Vietnam Wars—and the long cold war we are currently experiencing. With an educated opinion on the matter provided by these books and many others, I am convinced that the same types of people who are in the American government going after Donald Trump’s presidency are the same ones who pushed presidents then like Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower into allowing communism to seep into Asia and to use it as a platform for global domination, and it pisses me off something awful. It always has, but now in the context of the protestors in Hong Kong, a proper context within history is clear for all to see.

It is my position, which requires all Americans to take one, that America support the rebels in China once the election of 2020 has concluded, because it would be the right thing to do. China, as a communist state has been a threat from day one, and it has only been recently that the cracks in their carefully crafted façade have been broken. There are of course agents around the world, many sitting on the boards of some of American’s greatest corporations who are indifferent to communism. Most corporations have their fair share of socialist sentiments, so its not a far stretch for them anyway. But that doesn’t make it right and never has. The people of Hong Kong want to be free. They are looking toward America for guidance. Their black market is giving them exposure to American concepts and products and they need support for their own freedom. And the least we can do is to back them as a continued stab at communism as we have endeavored for most of the last century. Why stop now?

While its quite obvious that pro communist forces in the American government didn’t want Claire Chennault to be successful in protecting China from the communist invasion coming out of the Soviet Union. They only wanted to protect China from the Japanese. Once it was clear that American forces were going to be successful against Japan, Chennault had his hands tied behind his back by General Stilwell who was put in place after the famous Flying Tigers had done their deeds of protecting China in the opening days of American involvement in World War II. Any careful scholar comparing these days to those days will see clearly that the point of World War II, and of propping up Hitler and so many other ruthless dictators around the world was to create a power vacuum for which the United Nations would fill, and communism was going to be their mode of government. It didn’t work of course, and the seeds of that intention lasted for the rest of the 20th century, even into the present. A few years ago, these things would have been considered conspiracy theories, but by the evidence we have about the attempted Trump impeachment proceedings we now have evidence as to how the deep state has always worked, and why they believed the things they have. Communism in China was always going to be the way the rest of the world came to that political ideology, and our American corporations like Google, Nike, and the NBA were going to deliver us all to that doorstep. That was always the intention.

You could see it even in small, normally unrecognized issues in entertainment where production companies were weary of pissing off the communists of Chinese censor boards who are careful not to allow western influences into their country by way of film. That left giant companies like Disney trying to have it both ways, to get their products into the Chinese market of over a billion people while still putting on their happy face of branding. In the movie Kong: Skull Island, the pandering toward communism was too obvious, and American audiences hated it. The film didn’t do well, just as the obvious communist sentiment from Godzilla: King of the Monsters didn’t do well either intending Asian markets to love the film while still pandering to western audiences. The result wasn’t very good. Production companies have been chasing a ghost in China, the black market is far more reaching than the traditional theater presentations. There is more money to be made in China through the black market than in the communist endorsed primaries, which is what is fueling this rebellion in Hong Kong. For the purpose of defeating communism, America should support that greater rebellion into the mainland for the sake of those plus billion people, and break communism once and for all.

Silently, most of the big American corporations have been steering consumers toward communism so that they could have access to that large market in China. But what they have been willing to give up in freedoms and intellectual property to get a boost to quarterly results have been devastating, especially when you measure the results in decades instead of years. You can see the results everywhere as corporations have agreed to make a compliant society where China has set the rules for their own benefit, to gain knowledge they couldn’t produce in their society under communism by robbing creativity from the western cultures. You can see from any Chinese knock off that they lack imagination which only thrives under a free culture. The compliance culture that so much impead American business these days and has been bolstered by the communist loving academia culture in the west that has already been conquered by the Chinese long ago, have further pushed business into compliance toward the communists of Asia. Where else would they go, the plan was always to limit their options so that China could benefit with their sheer size of population. The gig worked until President Trump turned everything on its head, and now the people of Hong Kong see their chance to make a move, or never at all.

America is responsible for the people of Hong Kong, not just through the western influences that have found their way to the black markets and into the homes of many people looking for hope, but for our abandonment of China when the communists took over in the first place. Many of our own people contributed to that evil and its time to reverse the decision in favor of justice. So it would not be unreasonable to stand behind the rebellion now, once the election is done of course. China is not good as it is now, and communism is an ever-present threat to capitalism, which requires diligence on our part to defeat it from both foreign and domestic enemies. And make no mistake about it, they are our enemies.

Rich Hoffman

 

Choice, The Fear of all Communists and Democrats: What attempts at impeachment and the protests in Hong Kong have in common

One new outlet for news coverage that I enjoy is the Spectrum News Channel from my cable provider. Sure, they are liberal as hell, but I enjoy watching how and why other people think things and I find them infinitely fascinating. Most of my readers here have probably cut cords to their cable subscriptions by now and probably don’t know about the Spectrum Channel. There are so many entertainment options these days that I wouldn’t fault anybody for their lack of experience. However, I do tend to give them about 15 minutes of my time each night before I wonder off into slumber to see what they think of the world, and what I saw the other night was hilarious. I’ve heard it elsewhere since then, but the crux of it all is that the wild, lunatic, institutionalists had such a bad week with their impeachment trial of President Trump that they are already making excuses for its failure, and get this, they just discovered what you and I have known for over a decade.

The blame for the poor performance by Democrats to gain ANY traction against President Trump was placed on consumers having too many options. The Spectrum News Channel explained that during the Nixon impeachment and that of Clinton, the big three television stations were pretty much the gate keepers on information and were able to control the narrative. They rationalized that these days with social media, talk radio, blogs, video broadcasts of all kinds that the mainstream media is nowhere near as influential. Well, duh. There was a news flash. I can’t imagine that anybody has said that before. Just kidding, I’ve been saying that for the last 30 years. It is so ridiculous looking back in hindsight that the mainstream media types thought that if they drove Glenn Beck off the air at Fox, Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones, and many like them, that the narrative would go back to their side of things.

The trend, just as it is with gun ownership, freedom from public schools, and even the protests in Hong Kong are that people desire to be free and to have options. That was the reason for the foundation of America, and that is why social media was even invented, to fulfil a market need that the state-controlled media couldn’t fill. And ultimately that’s why we voted for Donald Trump, the very first social media president who was a huge part of the invention of reality television. Its not that Trump coerced people into voting for him, they did it on their own free will. Just as they wait in line for hours to see one of his rallies and are happy to do it, because it represents their free will as an enterprise. The trend of human history is to have more freedom, not less and what liberals have a hard time believing is that they were not picked.

Liberals thought all along that they were for the people, but what they have found out is that the people don’t like them, or their thoughts. They don’t want to share their space with their local liberal. They want to be away from them, and that has hurt their feelings. Even when they have gained great political power, they still have a hard time understanding that people don’t want them in charge of their life. People are not inclined to trade security for freedom. There are times in most people’s life where they will, but they don’t like it. When given a chance, they will pick freedom every single time. That is especially true when it comes to the news media. Spectrum may be a little cable start-up, but they certainly represent the trend of media types working in the industry, and they are perplexed why more people don’t believe the same things they do. But instead will voice their concerns on social media.

Democrats hate choice as a result because people don’t choose them. They are frustrated that there are too many choices and they can’t compete with any of them. Most media companies have had to learn this the hard way and are still slow to react. They must deal with reality or be put out of business. And the grim reality for them is that even if they did control the media completely like they wish, and could gain control of the Internet, and all the social media platforms, that people would still vote for options, and they would still vote for Trump, because they want an option. The protests in Hong Kong are made of the same kind of stuff. The communists can attempt to scare the protestors, but Hong Kong has tasted a little bit of capitalist freedom, and they aren’t giving it back to live under the tyranny and restriction of a communist society. That is why the Chinese communists are so terrified of options, especially coming out of the west. Options give people hope and ideas, which communists want to remove. And we have the same kind of types of people in the Democrat party, people who loved Cuban communism and many college academics who lick the feet of every communist dictator praying for sanctimony for the common good as they define it.

You know something is truly good if somebody chooses you over other options. If you are a good movie, and people rush out to see that movie and it makes a billion dollars at the box office, it was made that way because people chose it as an option. The same with a restaurant, if the food is good, people will choose to go there. Choice is the centerpiece of all western civilization and it forces everyone to be better as a result. And because America has a First Amendment, if the traditional sources of media suck, other forms will emerge. The same with presidents, if the political class sucks, as it has for a long time, people will choose an alternative. You can’t impeach your way into forcing people to love your stupid way of thinking. You can’t force a woman or a man to love you by taking away all their options in life. That is what liberals are trying to do, force us to love them by taking away our options. That is what China is trying to do with the protestors of Hong Kong. And that is certainly why Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump. After a week of trying to win the hearts of Americans, by the end of it the reality was that even with all the power the media thought it had, nothing changed in public sentiment, and now they are all holding their pitch forks but nobody is cheering them on. Instead, they look stupid and lost. And they should, because they attempted to be gallant at the expense of choice assuming they knew better for us than we do. Which was a tragic mistake—for them.

Rich Hoffman

The Nature of Rules: Conformity, compliance and innovation often do not get along

The project I am currently working on, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is really an idea I’ve been exploring my entire life. It’s on my mind because I’ve spent the last week enjoying all the various Star Wars mythologies that are spawning out of Disney, the new Mandalorian tv series, the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, the new book Resistance Reborn which is setting up the new Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker. All while planning my trip to the Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World with my wife. I remember how it was in the beginning when I was just a young 20 something hanging out in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian with the Joseph Campbell Foundation for which George Lucas was on the board of directors and seeing the models from the films which had filled my imagination all during my youth. Joseph Campbell had done for mythology what I want to do for business, and after half a century of work, those mythic efforts are finally starting to shape our culture in a positive, and measurable way.

Campbell taught at the little maverick school Sarah Lawrence College where he was free to conduct his outside the box academics to his liking, and to be truthful, if he hadn’t, Star Wars likely would have never happened. But it was a slow go on an obscure topic that took a long time to form roots. And in many ways, I consider Joseph Campbell one of my primary influences growing up. I’ve read all his books many, many times and listened to his various lectures most of my life. And my plans for my own life have been similar, but very different from his. My subject matter goes many steps beyond his study of cultures and comparative religion, but to the source of all activity among the human species. That is why my focus is on business and why this book I’m working on is such a big step that keeps getting deeper and deeper the longer I work on it.

The theme of my two previously published books, The Symposium of Justice and The Tail of the Dragon explore the nature of rules in our society and what their usefulness is. Nobody would argue that having a society of rules is what keeps everything we build together and that is certainly true in business. But rules by their nature prevent innovation, which is the key to all business expansion. My pick of the gunfighter period of the American West, around the 1870s to the 1890s is due to the lawless period of the American experiment that brought forth so much upcoming economic activity, which then created so many opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn’t have had them. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald captured some of this very well, the idea of old money and new money. The old money was from the aristocratic class migrating from Europe while the new money was made in America by new innovations spawning from this Wild West period. While shortly after the Gatsby novel Ayn Rand wrote her classics, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which did a good job of getting to the meat of the American experience as opposed to other influences around the world.

I grew up with a natural, and healthy hatred of rules. For as long as I have memories, I despised the limits others placed on me and dedicated myself to solitude and the treasures that could be found there. My best friend growing up was my books, especially the works of Joseph Campbell and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Once I figured out the nature of rules when I was still under ten years old, I stopped caring about them. Teachers and their homework assignments would take a back seat if I had something better to do. Society and their rules for going up and down escalators, speed limits, or not standing too close to a steep edge were all open invitations to me to break those rules to see what society was trying to keep me from. When I could drive a car, I routinely always drove 100 MPH everywhere. Functioning under the speed limit to me was forcing me to live by the averages of mundane people who weren’t interested in pushing any limits but confined to live within the limits of very average, and boring people. And yes, I was involved in several fiery crashes at those speeds. Not where I was driving, but other people, so I know what it feels like and after each one, I resolved to go even faster and defy death even more.

I could tell stories from here to some distant planet well outside our solar system about the many perilous adventures that have spawned off this tribute to pushing limits and questioning every rule that there is. I am far from an anarchist so I do like rules to a point, but I think a culture should always be pushing up against them and that insurance agents and politicians should not be limiting our intellects with stupid conformity to concepts invented by lazy minded losers. So putting all these thoughts together into this Gunfighter’s Guide to Business has turned out to be incredibly revelatory. I have gone back through all the education of the years that brought me to this point in my life, the rules based education of Lean thinking, of college MBA programs, of the kind of talking down that goes on in those endeavors and have crippled the scope of business to this very day, and am flipping all those concepts on their heads. But like all rules, you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You don’t break all the rules only to have anarchy allowing for open theft of possessions by the destitute. There has to be some structure to it all that is conducive to risk-taking and risk mitigation.

Guns are the perfect combination of the two necessities so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are part of American culture the way they are. If you are reckless with a gun you can hurt lots of people, including yourself. But in shooting you unlock all kinds of gut instinct mechanisms that are obscure to the mind under any other condition, which is the nature of rule breaking so that innovation can flourish. By the time I’m done with this, I think it will have a very Joseph Campbell effect, not on mythology which was his thing, but on business, which is my thing. Looking at something differently than 5000 to 10,000 years of human evolution is a tough undertaking, but it takes being willing to break the very rules of assumptions by their very essence to get there. And that is what I am excited to see percolating out of obscurity in a very unique way. Rules are too often not put into place to help, but to hinder. The rule makers tend to be unenlightened and create the rules to keep challengers from dethroning them from some position of power they have acquired by learning the rules better than their competition. But rules in themselves don’t open the doors to the future, thinking outside of the rules does, so that new rules for new ways of thinking can then be applied. While we can’t have chaos, we can’t allow rules to hold us back from innovation. And that, once its understood has a marvelous potential that I am very, very excited about.

Rich Hoffman

A Review of The Mandalorian: Boys never wanted the girls to invade their tree house.

There is no impeachment, even though that is the news of the day. All there is or ever was regarding the attempts of the Democrat controlled congress to attempt to get rid of President Trump is a frustrated attempt to manipulate the law in an effort to avoid their perilous fate of a 2020 loss even more embarrassing than over the past two elections. And my resolve is not to care too much about it unless they try to remove my president from his elected office, where I will then grab whatever volunteers are needed to defend him with the Second Amendment from those villains that have infected our government. Its that simple. No further commentary needed. Meanwhile, and I was glad for the options, Disney+ opened this week and we were all finally able to watch the new Star Wars show, The Mandalorian and let me just say this, it was fantastic.

I also say that for me visiting any story within the Star Wars experience is like a vacation for me. To understand that I’d refer to a recent article I wrote on the value of thinking like a 12-year-old. Children think in big, broad terms with solutions in focus and are not restricted on how to create the questions that might complete such a journey, so I see great value in it. The adult world would say that such a way of thinking is immature, but then look at their lives. They are heavy on burdens with limited options to deal with them, and their lives are most of the time a complete disaster. Nobody should listen to them under the best of circumstances. Star Wars was never meant for adults, but specifically for boys between the ages of 7 to 12. Of course, Disney wants to reach out to girls and older audiences if it can get them, but Star Wars as we have always known it was geared toward the problems of young boys. Visiting that way of thinking has always been fun for me because I like to explore lots of options with infinite optimism, and when everything fails in the real world, Star Wars has always been a place that values those sentiments.

As I have pointed out the new Disney owned Star Wars has not been as good. It’s been like that moment when all the young boys had a boys only tree house and the girls found out about it and wanted to join in. To be nice the boys let them but started grumbling when the girls brought with them dolls, cooking utensils and brooms to replace the guns, knives and acts of war of the boys. And instead of play fighting the boys found themselves talking about raising families and the difficulties of getting to the store, and they were noticeably upset about it. Under Disney, Star Wars became less about war and more about social justice and the skin color of the actors, and it became just boring. The Mandalorian much to my delight was made for the boys. Girls of course are invited, but the show was certainly an attempt to put Star Wars back to what it does best, and I think it exceeded at that.

The key to understanding big issues, such as this impeachment fiasco is in thinking without all the constraints that most adults learn to live with, and within Star Wars stories where big concepts are always at the front of discussion as we are talking essentially about the problems of a type 3 civilization, one that can use the power and resources of an entire galaxy yet have all the challenges of our present condition, it helps put the mind at play to behold the concepts. While most adults scratch their heads and attempt to put whatever the context of the modern problem is, such as the perplexity of the current congress to even attempt impeachment. That is because the reality of the present circumstances do not fit the adult assumptions of our understanding, which is precisely what the villains of modern government are counting on. To understand their game, you have to pull back your vision enough to play with various thoughts so that the true intention can only then be seen.

Such lofty thoughts are certainly at play in The Mandalorian, which was a nice science fiction/spaghetti western platform to tell some very interesting stories from. It was energetic and reminded me a lot of many Clint Eastwood westerns, everything from For A Few Dollars More to The Outlaw Josey Wales. It was fun and remarkably girl free. Not that girls are a problem. But the focus of The Mandalorian is being faster on the draw, not whether or not he cooks breakfast for his wife. I was a little shocked reading the most recent Star Wars book Resistance Reborn, which sets up directly the events of the next Star Wars film Rise of Skywalker, that the old hero Wedge Antilles was cooking breakfast when pilots arrive to recruit him back into the fight. Its not that cooking is a big deal, but the book was written by a woman and women think differently about things than boys. Wedge was a great warrior of the rebellion, yet the focus of his efforts was on cooking. Not something boys are naturally concerned with. That’s what I have been talking about with Star Wars with girls inviting the tree house of thought the boys would otherwise prefer to be in.

This is also why women are so easily tricked in politics, because their concerns are so quickly trapped by political theater and their natural predilection is not to fight, but to conform. When you can fight back against oppression, you tend not to find ways to live with it, and at the heart of Star Wars is that premise. Girls are invited, but its clearly a boy concept, and with The Mandalorian, that is clearly what is happening and its good to see that Lucasfilm can still reach that place even after so many progressive missteps toward social justice. Yet in other reviews about The Mandalorian the value of the largely female reviewers was that they thought it was great that the male leads in the show were from diverse backgrounds, one black, one Latino. I personally don’t care as long as somebody is shooting someone else. Its not about being white male that attracts me to a plot line, it’s the body count and the kind of guns they used. To get to the big ideas of anything the main character needs to be over the primal fears of a herd, and with women, they typically are trying to live with the world, not trying to change it.

Concerns about cooking, and feelings about things are not the natural state of boys. But overcoming problems and oppression are, and The Mandalorian certainly put its focus on those items. So, it’s the perfect entertainment to divert too while in real life congress is attempting to perform the worst scandal in human history. The goal is not to live with the consequences of that endeavor but to fight back against it. Star Wars was always about saying no to complacency and endeavoring for real change, not concerns of docile domestication, but in saving the galaxy from itself in spite of itself. And watching The Mandalorian it showed that the makers of Star Wars still understand what that looks like, and I’m looking forward to a lot more.

Rich HoffmanRich Hoffman

The Louisville Toll Bridge Scam: Who it really hurts and why bringing it to Cincinnati would be a disaster

There is a bridge extending from Louisville over into Indiana that is part of the 1-65 highway system managed by RiverLink, which is a toll collector that has been very controversial. I was quite surprised to learn after going across that bridge a few times to visit destinations on both sides of the Ohio River that I received a bill in the mail after cameras photographed my license plate demanding payment for a bridge that did not have the traditional toll signs that we have all come to expect from such toll collecting activities. I wrote an article about it which continues to be one of my most popular. It has many tens of thousands of impressions since I wrote it a few years ago, including from RiverLink which attempted to defend their poor signage and toll collecting practices. That article can be found at the link below along with the many comments from people inspired to contribute their thoughts.

https://overmanwarrior.blog/2018/01/21/the-river-link-scam-louisvilles-theft-of-the-innocent-through-a-toll-bridge-to-depraved-economic-activity-in-clarksville/#comment-63440

I don’t get many comments, not because people aren’t reading, but usually because the nature of my content is not conducive to it, and just like in any classroom setting, the audience does not feel comfortable raising their hand first. Once a few people do string together some thoughts, more join in, but most of the time, reader engagement is low due to the nature of my content. But occasionally a contributor like Christina chimes in, seen below, and the true scope of the issue comes into focus. I present it here as she wrote it. She is obviously upset and the sentence structure and emphasis show that. Essentially she represents why RiverLink is a massive scam created by stupid politicians who wasted the money we gave them on everything but what they should have, and they’ve passed on their incompetence onto this bridge for people like Christina to fund out of desperation and massive amounts of inconvenience. In her case, such as many other stories of people who move onto one side of the river and may not know about the toll bridge, but simply need to get to the other side to get to a job, they could unknowingly rack up many hundreds if not thousands of dollars before they get their first bill in the mail. And it does cause them a lot of pain, which is the nature of her comment.

christina
November 10, 2019 at 5:38 pm Edit

are you SERIOUS? i ONLY went across the bridge to go to work to feed my family!!!!!!!! yes i know that i owe them money and i was paying them what i could but then the charges got bigger and BIGGER! i was charged a total of $170 in fines just to send me a BILL!!!!!! now they have a lean on my car because i can not afford to pay them $511.40 that i KNOW I DO NOT OWE! THEY HAVE SENT ME OTHER PEOPLES BILLS AND HAVE CHARGED ME WHEN I WAS HOME AND NEVER WENT ACROSS THE BRIDGE!!!!!! not only that but i find out that you not only get charged when you go across the bridge but if you take exit 0 you are charged TWICE BECAUSE RIVER LINK “SAY’S” THAT IS ANOTHER BRIDGE!!!!!! HOW IS THE HELL IS AND EXIT A BRIDGE????? now i am screwed because i can not get tags on my car because they out a lean on it, and when i called to ask to make payments they said quote “MUST BE PAID IN FULL” then when i called a few months later i was told that i could have been making payment’s and when i asked why the other person said that i could not make payments she said IT IS NOT THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO LET US KNOW THAT! IF WE DON’T ASK THEY DON’T TELL. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TOLD BY THE SUPERVISOR!!! THIS IS WRONG!!!!! PEOPLE LIKE ME THAT WORK PAY CHECK TO PAY CHECK AND DO EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE PAY THE BILLS TAKE CARE OF THEIR KIDS SHOULD NOT BE DONE THIS WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this bridge was paid off a long time ago and we SHOULD NOT HAVE TO KEEP PAYING TO CROSS IT! AND THEN YOU GET CHARGED NOT ONCE BUT TWICE BECAUSE YOU TAKE EXIT 0????? THIS NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH AND FAST! NOW I HAVE TO DRIVE ILLEGAL UNTIL I CAN PAY OFF RIVER LINK SO I CAN GET TAGS ON THE CAR I WORKED SO HARD FOR AND IS PAID OFF JUST TO GET TAGS AND INSURANCE!!!!!!!!

THEY NEED TO HELP PEOPLE LIKE ME THAT WAS JUST GOING TO WORK TO FEED THEIR FAMILY AND NOT OVER CHARGE ME SEND ME LATE FEES THEN PUT A LEAN ON MY CAR! AND I TRIED TO PAY THEM IN PAYMENTS AND WAS TOLD “NO” THEN WHEN I CALLED A FEW MONTHS LATER WAS TOLD I COULD HAVE MADE PAYMENTS AND WHEN I ASKED WHY THE PREVIOUS LADY SAID THAT I COULD NOT MAKE PAYMENTS THE “SUPERVISOR” SAID I QUOTE “IT’S NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TELL YOU, YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I was upset in a similar way over a $19 charge, much less than what she has gone through. It wasn’t the money; it was the silent intrusion into my mailbox that really pissed me off. That some cowardly collection agency just took a picture of my license plate and could bill me from behind some computer somewhere was revolting. It makes me wonder how many Christians are out there going through the same thing for the same reasons. RiverLink will say that they have up signs and that people should know that they are using a toll bridge. But for people unfamiliar with the area just trying to make sure they are on the right road, it would be easy to make the mistake of staying on that road until you cross over into the other side of the river, where it would then be too late. I think it represents the worst of the mismanagement of highway funds and politics in general, and just like Chicago, the tolls will likely continue far into the future as a money racket that is intended for oversized union pensions and other wasted dollars spend on worthless government employees.

It concerned me because I do travel to Louisville a lot and it bothers me that something so corrupt is so close to my home in Cincinnati. But even worse, politicians on both sides of the Ohio River in Cincinnati are looking to do the same thing to pay for the I-75 bridge replacement that is projected there. The corruption is migrating, and politicians are intent to provide the same type of RiverLInk scam in Cincinnati. I remember in the 90s when Cincinnati was building more bridges than they needed just to use up highway funds that were in the bank, yet 30 years later nobody can come up with the money to provide a badly needed bridge replacement on one of the busiest highway arteries in the nation. With the amount of money that we do pay in taxes, the money for a new bridge should be there, we shouldn’t have to fund bridges with these toll roads. If government wants to lower taxes, then maybe we can talk about tolls, but at this level of taxation, its just another tax on us all collected in a different way, behind some cowardly camera by lazy trolls. And the cost of that stupidity isn’t just economic, it hurts people like Christina much more than anybody, and that pain comes straight out of political mismanagement and bad fiscal planning. It certainly isn’t fair to the population in general.

Rich Hoffman