Tag: big government

The End of the Socialist Experiment: People are tired of high property taxes to fund Democrat dreams

The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, recently stood up at a forum and essentially begged the wealthy who have fled her state to return and keep paying the bills that fund her vision of big government. She said something along the lines of, ” Go down to Palm Beach, see who you can bring back home, because our tax base has been eroded. She admitted that New York is now in direct competition with other states that impose a lighter tax burden on corporations and individuals, and that Wall Street businesses are looking to Texas instead of staying captive in Manhattan. This is the same Kathy Hochul who, just a couple of years earlier, had told political opponents to jump on a bus and head down to Florida, where they belong, if they didn’t represent New York values. Now she’s pleading for those same people—and their money—to return so she can keep the generous social programs afloat. It’s a stunning reversal that proves exactly what I have been saying for four decades: liberal policies, built on endless taxation, endless spending, and the assumption that people will stay put and keep writing checks, are collapsing under their own weight. The free market is working exactly as it should, and people are voting with their feet. 

I was recently talking with folks in my local community here in Butler County, Ohio, about the Lakota Local School District, and the conversation crystallized everything happening on the national stage. Lakota had put a massive $506 million bond issue and levy on the ballot in November 2025—one of the largest school funding requests in Ohio history—tied to a master facilities plan that would demolish and rebuild buildings, supposedly to accommodate growth and modernize things. The district discussed reducing the number of buildings from 21 to 16, improving safety, and freeing up money for students. But voters saw through it. The levy was rejected by a decisive 61 to 39 percent margin. Even with promises that the actual net tax increase would be phased in later and capped at something like $93 per hundred thousand dollars of appraised value, thanks to debt roll-offs and state matching funds, people said no. They were tired of the trajectory. They didn’t want more property taxes funding a system that keeps growing its administration, its facilities wish list, and its social agenda while the real value delivered to families keeps getting questioned. This isn’t just a local story. It’s the same story playing out in New York, in California, and in every high-tax, high-spending blue state or district where the easy-money days of the past have finally run out. 

For decades, people tolerated these large social programs and bloated public education budgets because the economy seemed to be working in their favor. Compound interest in savings accounts was real. Home values kept climbing year after year, creating paper wealth that let families cash out when the kids grew up—sell the house, pocket half a million or more, and move into something smaller while still feeling ahead of the game. Property taxes felt like a tolerable price to pay for nice communities, decent schools that acted as reliable babysitters during work hours, and the social approval that came with supporting “the kids.” You could afford to be a little generous at the next neighborhood gathering or school board meeting because your net worth was rising faster than the tax bill. But that scheme is over. Inflation has eroded real returns. Interest rates have fluctuated wildly. Home appreciation isn’t the guaranteed golden ticket it once was for everyone. People are looking at their tax bills, looking at what their money is actually buying in public schools, and saying enough. The taxation trajectory that propped up liberalism for generations is now pointing downward, and the people who built their political power on it are panicking.

Look at what Hochul and her fellow Democrats are confronting. New York has been bleeding residents and businesses for years. Domestic migration data from the U.S. Census show New York losing hundreds of thousands of people, net, to lower-tax states like Florida and Texas. California is in the same boat, with net losses exceeding 200,000 annually in recent cycles. Florida alone has gained hundreds of thousands of domestic migrants, and Texas even more. These aren’t just retirees heading south for the weather. They are working families, entrepreneurs, corporations, and high-net-worth individuals who have had it with sky-high income taxes, property taxes, regulatory burdens, and the cultural policies that come attached. New York’s per-pupil spending is among the highest in the nation—often topping $30,000 per student—yet educational outcomes measured by national assessments like NAEP remain middling at best. Florida and Texas spend far less per pupil, around 12,000 to 14,000, and deliver competitive or better results in many categories while keeping taxes lower overall. No state income tax in either place. That is real competition, and Hochul is finally admitting it out loud even as she tries to guilt-trip people into returning for the “patriotic” duty of funding her programs. 

This is liberalism eating itself. For years, I have pointed out that every socialist experiment in history required walls—literal or figurative—to keep people from leaving. North Korea has its borders sealed. Cuba had its rafters and its political prisoners. East Germany built the Berlin Wall because people were fleeing to the West. China, even with its economic openings, maintains tight control because the alternative is mass exodus. The Soviet Union collapsed when the pressure to contain its people became unsustainable. Here in America, Democrats have relied on the soft walls of economic dependency, guilt, and cultural pressure. But those walls are crumbling because people can move. They can load up a U-Haul, drive to a free state, and never look back. Florida, under Governor Ron DeSantis, has become a magnet precisely because it refuses to play the high-tax, high-regulation game. Texas is booming for the same reasons. And here in Ohio, we are seeing the early stages of the same shift. People are coming to us from the collapsing blue states, and the lesson is clear: competitive models win. Punitive taxation and endless government expansion lose.

The property tax itself is at the heart of this fight, and it always has been a flawed, almost feudal concept dressed up in modern language. Its roots go back to William the Conqueror in 1066 England, where the king claimed ownership of all land and extracted perpetual payments from tenants and knights. The American version evolved through the Northwest Ordinance and the general property tax of the nineteenth century, which treated land and personal property as subject to state taxation indefinitely in exchange for “protecting” them. It was never truly about voluntary contribution; it was rent paid to the government for the privilege of owning what you thought you owned. Critics have long called it the most hated tax in America for good reason. It punishes ownership, discourages improvement, and ties local services—especially schools—to ever-rising assessments that have nothing to do with a family’s ability to pay. In places like New York and California, it became a weapon to fund expansive social programs that many residents never asked for and no longer support. Florida is leading the charge to change this. Governor DeSantis and state lawmakers have advanced multiple constitutional amendments to phase out homestead property taxes over time, ultimately eliminating them. Proposals include massive increases in exemptions—hundred-thousand-dollar jumps annually until nonschool property taxes on primary residences disappear. Ohio has its own movement gathering signatures for a 2026 ballot initiative to ban real property taxes altogether. Even some national voices aligned with President Trump have floated ideas for broader relief or elimination as part of a freedom agenda that recognizes property rights as fundamental. Why should anyone be penalized year after year simply for owning a home? It is a socialist march concept from the beginning, and people are waking up to it. 

Here in Butler County and at Lakota specifically, the failed levy is a microcosm of the larger revolt. The district wanted hundreds of millions for bricks and mortar, for renovations, and for a smaller footprint that supposedly saves money in the long term. Yet the community looked at the track record: rising administrative costs, questions about curriculum priorities, and the reality that public education has been turned into something far beyond basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Parents are sick of teacher strikes or walkouts that leave kids without instruction while unions demand more pay and less accountability. They are tired of seeing resources funneled into social experiments—coloring hair purple, pushing premature discussions of sexual lifestyles on young children, and ideological lessons that many families consider inappropriate or even damaging. Schools were supposed to be trusted babysitters that prepared kids for smart, productive lives. Instead, too many have become vehicles for cultural agendas that parents never voted for and refuse to subsidize with their property taxes. When the easy-money era ended, and families started feeling the real pinch, the willingness to keep writing blank checks vanished. One more mill or two more mills might not sound like much on paper, but when it is attached to policies people actively oppose, it becomes unacceptable—even if it is just one extra dollar.

The same dynamic plays out with every other government service funded by these taxes. Look at the TSA—Transportation Security Administration—as a perfect example of what happens when critical infrastructure is handed to unionized government workers attached to the Democratic extortion economy. Long lines, delays, sickouts, threats of shutdowns whenever funding fights arise. People who once flew without a second thought are now choosing sixteen-hour drives rather than enduring the inefficiency and the political games. Airlines struggle to maintain themselves while government mandates and union leverage create artificial bottlenecks. Taxpayers are funding something broken, something that punishes them for trying to travel freely, and they are done with it. Democrats love to attach these unionized workforces to essential services because it gives them leverage—hold the public hostage, blame Republicans or “underfunding,” and demand more money. It is the same playbook with public schools, public transportation, and welfare systems. When people can no longer afford it or no longer support the ideology behind it, they stop paying voluntarily. They move. They vote against levies. They support politicians who promise reform.

I have been part of the no-more-taxes, lower-taxes movement my entire adult life because I saw this coming. High taxes deter growth. They drive away the productive. They reward inefficiency. In New York, California, and places like them, the richest were supposed to stick around for the social clubs, the prestige, the elbow-rubbing with the political class. Instead, they took their money, their businesses, and their talent to Florida, Texas, and increasingly to states like Ohio that are positioning themselves as the next frontier of opportunity. Ohio’s future cannot be more government, more spending, more taxes. It has to be the opposite. We have legislators and potential future leaders who understand that. We have a governor’s race and local movements that are aligning with the national shift toward lower costs, smaller government, and actual freedom. Property tax relief is coming—whether through caps tied to inflation, homestead exemptions that grow dramatically, or outright abolition in some form. Sales taxes can be reformed or reduced. Income taxes, where they exist, must be kept competitive. The gravy train that funded reckless social spending is over because the people who pay the bills have decided they no longer consent to the product being delivered.

This is why the walls of the old order are failing. In communist countries, the only way to keep the system intact was violence and threats—shooting people who tried to cross to freedom. Here, Democrats assumed guilt, cultural inertia, and the inability to leave would suffice. But remote work changed everything. The pandemic accelerated the realization. Free states with lower taxes, better governance, and respect for individual rights became irresistible. People are not afraid anymore. They are packing up and leaving New York, California, Illinois—anywhere the liberal model has run its course. The tax base erodes, the deficits grow, the pleas become more desperate, and the cycle accelerates. Hochul’s Palm Beach pilgrimage is just the latest symptom. She and the supermoms and the big-government cheerleaders who built careers around this model are late to the party. Bernie Sanders-style socialism always sounded good in the abstract until the bill came due and people realized the cost to their communities, their families, and their futures. Now the bill is here, and the payers are walking away.

Locally, Lakota and districts like it will have to adjust. No more assuming taxpayers will fund every wish list. Superintendents and boards will need to trim administration, focus on core education, respect parental values, and operate within realistic budgets. If that means fewer buildings, fewer non-essential programs, or actual efficiency reforms, so be it. The same applies statewide. Ohio cannot import the failing model from the coasts. We have to export the successful low-tax, high-freedom model. That is how we attract the people and businesses fleeing the collapse. That is how we keep our own residents from looking elsewhere. Competitive states win. Coercive ones lose.

I have warned about this for forty years because the math was always inevitable. Socialism requires coercion. When the coercion fails—when people can leave or vote no—the system collapses. We are watching it happen in real time. New York’s tax base is eroding. California is eroding. The liberal dream of endless spending funded by other people’s money is dripping through their fingers like water. They cannot hold it. They cannot force it. And they certainly cannot guilt-trip a free people into submission when better alternatives exist just a moving van away.

The future belongs to the states and communities that understand this. Florida is already moving toward eliminating property taxes on primary homes. Texas thrives without an income tax. Ohio has the chance to lead the Midwest in the same direction. Property tax abolition movements are gaining steam nationally because people are tired of being treated like tenants on their own land. Schools will be funded differently—perhaps through choice, vouchers, or learner operations that actually deliver value. Overall, government services will shrink because the public will no longer subsidize failure. TSA lines will either improve through competition and accountability, or people will keep driving. Either way, the extortion ends.

This is the movement of the world now. Anti-tax sentiment is rising everywhere because people have lived through the consequences of big government. They have seen the waste, the indoctrination, the inefficiency, and the cultural decay funded by their dollars. They voted for change at the national level with President Trump and the Republican wave because they want a different kind of government—one that does not punish success, ownership, or families trying to raise children in line with their values. Fraud in elections will continue to be exposed. The 50-50 split on paper was never real; it was propped up by manipulation. When people vote their true preferences without interference, the results will be even stronger.

For anyone still clinging to the old model, the message is simple: it is over. The easy money is gone. The guilt trips no longer work. The walls are down. People are free, and they are choosing freedom. Here in Ohio, in Butler County, at Lakota and beyond, we will learn the same lessons New York is learning the hard way. Budgets will be cut. Priorities will be realigned. Taxes will come down. And communities will thrive—not because government spends more, but because it spends less and interferes less.

I have always been clear on this. Beware of any politician who wants higher taxes. They are dangerous. They are going out of fashion fast. My book, Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, lays out the philosophy of self-reliance, competitive thinking, and the rejection of coercive systems that have guided my warnings for decades. It is more relevant now than ever. Subscribe, read it, and join the fight. The future is bright for those willing to embrace lower taxes, smaller government, and genuine freedom. The collapse we are witnessing is not the end of America—it is the end of a failed experiment. And the rebirth that follows will be something worth building.

Footnotes

1.  U.S. Census Bureau migration estimates, 2024-2025 data releases.

2.  Tax Foundation State Business Tax Climate Index, 2026 rankings.

3.  National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports on per-pupil spending vs. outcomes.

4.  Historical analysis of property tax origins from feudal England through the U.S. Northwest Ordinance.

Bibliography for Further Reading

•  Fox News coverage of Hochul’s Palm Beach comments and tax base erosion (March 2026).

•  Cincinnati Enquirer and local Butler County reporting on Lakota levy failure (November 2025).

•  U.S. Census Bureau State-to-State Migration Flows tables (2023-2025).

•  Tax Foundation reports on property tax relief proposals in Florida, Ohio, and national trends (2026).

•  The Atlantic historical piece on feudal roots of American property tax (2016, with updates in policy debates).

•  DeSantis administration statements on Florida homestead tax elimination proposals.

•  Hoffman, Rich. Gunfighter’s Guide to Business (self-published, available via subscription platforms).

•  Additional data from NAEP/Nations Report Card and state education spending comparisons.

These sources provide the factual backbone while the analysis reflects four decades of observation on tax policy, education funding, and the failure of coercive governance models. The era of unchecked liberalism is ending, and the evidence is everywhere for those willing to see it.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an independent writer, philosopher, political advisor, and strategist based in the Cincinnati/Middletown, Ohio area. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, he has worked professionally since age 12 in various roles, from manual labor to high-level executive positions in aerospace and related industries. Known as “The Tax-killer” for his activism against tax increases, Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

He publishes the blog The Overmanwarrior (overmanwarrior.wordpress.com), where he shares insights on politics, culture, history, and personal stories. Active on X as @overmanwarrior, Instagram, and YouTube, Hoffman frequently discusses space exploration, family values, and human potential. An avid fast-draw artist and family man, he emphasizes passing practical skills and intellectual curiosity to younger generations.

When Government Causes the Problems They Want to Protect You From: Frock Cameras are dangerous

I’ve had many people try to convince me that the upcoming Liberty Township Police Levy, which will be voted for in the March primary election, is something I should support. I have a lot of friends who are in government who really think things like police are essential to the viability of a community, and the more police you have, the better your community. My argument is that I have seen too much abuse from this local group, and I don’t see them with enough to do. When I see the police in my community, they are sitting in their cars because there isn’t much to do on radio calls. My argument is that I can understand a few police officers for a community our size, but that the 30-40 they propose, along with a lot of administrative staff, is too expensive and isn’t worth the money. But that’s not even the worst of it. I have seen enough over these last few years to give me a lot of pause on any government expansion, especially after Covid. When the police say they are there to help and to keep our community safe, we have found that the most dangerous element we deal with is government radicalism. And during Covid, we came close to checkpoints of health enforcement and door-to-door raids for nongovernment compliance. And when you have some loser like Biden in the White House, I’m not too keen to hire the people who would be most likely to harass me. And yes, on Christmas Day this year, I came close to a swatting situation where police had gathered in front of my home, looking like they were preparing for a raid until I went out and engaged them, which was when they drove off. In this political environment, especially, more government workers do not make sense.

The corruption of law enforcement is horrendous

And with the same kind of zeal that communities are always asking for more police, we have had frock cameras imposed upon us, always with good intent. But that’s how it always starts: the need for safety and security. In case you haven’t noticed, and I have, cameras are all over our communities these days, especially in Fairfield, even in West Chester, and areas outside of the I-275 loop around Cincinnati. The cameras we are told are there for our safety, to record the comings and goings of cars in our neighborhoods that can track them in case something happens. And who doesn’t want an always eye in the sky to record a license plate number for a hit and run? The argument for the cameras is that they are always watching and will keep us safe from criminals who roam around at night looking for soft targets to harass. Yet all that sounds good until you realize that all this nonsense is code words for lazy police work and the building of an extensive government network that can track everything you do at all hours of the day. I have been involved in fighting back against these cameras in a couple of different places since about a decade ago when they were first introduced. One argument in Lincoln Heights was in partnership with WLW radio, where police were giving people tickets in the mail for speeding along that corridor of I-75. And again, at the toll bridge in Louisville, Kentucky, toll fines were mailed to people just for driving across the bridge. There were no toll booths to pay; they just took a picture of your license plate and sent you the bill in the mail. It was pretty scandalous then, but it has become common practice over the years. That’s how they do it in Florida, around the Orlando area. I tried to pay the toll at a toll booth, and the stupid cameras still sent me a bill. Technology has been introduced to cover up lazy police work and employee engagement.

It’s a trick being used more and more against political enemies

It always starts with the pitch from some tech firm that has a new technology or a vaccine for a virus that the government hasn’t yet made in a lab in China under the direction of Dr. Fauci and other expert class malcontents. And good-intentioned people like local trustees start nodding their heads yes to the promise of more security for their communities. That is until you realize that many of the dangers in our communities are caused by government, such as the current lousy border policy by the Biden administration, which has allowed criminals and cutthroats of all kinds from drug cartels to roam freely and violate our safety. The government causes problems with terrible political policy, and then they turn to more government intrusion to cover up all their mistakes. We end up paying for all of it and, in the process, lose vast amounts of our freedoms. And they sell it to us by saying, “We would never abuse our power,” and one day, you are getting a bill in the mail for that traffic light you went through as it turned from yellow to red a bit too quickly. The frock cameras give police a chance to enforce the law from some rec room somewhere doing even less because A.I. and these cameras are doing most of the work for them. It always starts with good intentions and ends in more tyranny and abuses of power.

Do you really want people like this watching your every move, where you go and when, and with whom?

It’s not hypothetical; we saw it happen when an out-of-control government panicked by some global health police decided to shut down our communities and “shelter in place.”  When DeWine did that in Ohio, I ignored him and conducted my life.  Luckily, at that time, I knew the sheriff of my community and knew he was not in agreement with the governor and wasn’t going to enforce the unjust lockdown policies, which came straight from a globalist loser by the name of Richard Hatchett, who started that mess.  A lot of political figures were suckered into enforcing unconstitutional laws.  If such a thing happened again, the cameras that were set up for our security would be there to tell on us every time we left our driveway, making it all too easy for a centralized authority to punish us for violating the mandate of a prominent government governor out of control and power hungry.  What started as good intentions for safety and security has become an ominous tyrant we can never turn off or escape.  Our local law enforcement suddenly isn’t the cops we know in our community but is A.I. in some data bank at the NSA who is plotting our every move and reporting it to our foreign and domestic enemies who are openly trying to overthrow the Constitution of the United States with international law.  And it all starts with more police levies and politicians who get suckered into saying yes to frock cameras.  It all sounds fine until you have to pay for it all, and you lose your freedoms for some greater good, as it’s determined by communists in the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, which directly created our policies at the CDC and were enforced with authority by the Biden administration.  By putting up the cameras, the loss of local control of your law enforcement goes away, and soon, outside forces are watching your every move from any place on the planet.  And if you violate some policy they come up with on the back of a napkin, they’ll have the evidence that you did so for them to prosecute.  And at that point, you are a slave to their system of vile tyranny.  Yeah, no thanks.  I’m not supporting the Liberty Township Police Levy or their stupid frock cameras.  I think many people will be unfortunately suckered into voting for it.  And I’m sure everyone will regret it later.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Killing the Sacred Cow of Military in America: Republicans have been suckers in supporting just another big government scam that only the United Nations benefits from

This one might be a little controversial, but we must discuss it because a trick is being applied that brings conservatives to mass collectivism and partners Republicans with diabolical America-hating Democrats with common ground. This was never more obvious than the bone that was thrown into the last bill that was passed in Congress to commit trillions of dollars more in debt over the nation just to get some defense spending that Democrats pretend to protest against. But in truth, it’s a bone they always throw to the dogs of Republicans they appease time and time again out of a misplaced sentiment toward the military. I’ve never been one of those “thank you for your service” kind of people when I meet people who serve. Entry into the military for me is just another government job, and I am always weary of the power government has to command individual lives toward mass collectivism. The first thing ritually that is done in the military during boot camp is to strip people of their individual selves, the people their parents made them, shave them, give them a uniform and integrate them into the system of the military, the yes sirs, no sirs of process and the blind compliance to a culture that gives orders and soldiers are to follow them without a thought. I don’t see much of anything good about that system, and I never have. But over time, the people who hate the American way have turned such a process into a representation of morality, and I find the whole thing reprehensible. 

Of course, when people hear my thoughts on it, they are quick to say, “but they died or committed themselves to it for your freedom.” Well, that is not how our military works, as exposed during the Trump administration, specifically in North Korea. The American Constitution is what gives me freedom, and our military isn’t fighting for it; they are fighting against it. The scam is that by selling themselves as advocates of American independence, our military then gets used as the world’s police, the military that the United Nations never could legally hold, and we do all that they have no power to do themselves. We get involved in all kinds of wars dedicated to globalism and disguise it as “global security,” and while everyone is too busy following orders to question it, or Fox News is doing the latest color ceremonies dedicated to those who serve, the real villains are stirring up war all over the world and counting on American troops to advance the needs of the United Nations one world government and using our money and troops to perform the task. When we were told for years that North Korea was the biggest menace on planet earth, then within a short time of taking office, President Trump was crossing the line into North Korea and shaking hands with the basketball fan who happens to love America very much, much more was revealed than just The Art of the Deal by Trump to break down barriers to negotiation. Our military, once the League of Nations was started in Europe and the United Nations was created, was not to serve the interests of America; it was built, funded, and populated with soldiers to fulfill the needs of progressive intent and then to use the reputation of America to take the hit as imperialists. And in that way, the political left could complain about American involvement in fighting communists in Vietnam while also pushing for big government solutions like what create a big military in the first place.  By default, Republicans filled that gap, just as the plan called for. American troops were now the empire builders England used to be accused of. Meanwhile, it was just announced that Vietnam is one of the fast-growing economies in the world, on par with China, another propped-up country by the United Nations types. The wars clear out political opposition, whereas international sympathy follows in the wake, and the communist regimes then take over in running those parts of the world. 

To get Americans to support such a structure, patriotism has been used to sell it, that our children join, get a free education, learn to become supporters of woke culture, take orders, wear the uniform, and in that way, we never asked the dreadful questions as to who does the American military support? If our borders aren’t important, as the Biden administration has made clear it’s not, then who does the American military support? Well, the amount of money we have been sending to Ukraine answers that question. Our military as it is today exists to advance the needs of the United Nations and big centralized governments all over the world. And it’s not patriotic to blindly support them. We should be looking to shrink their influence into something Americans could easily control with the Second Amendment. Because under the kind of political regimes we have in America today, as we have seen from our own FBI and CIA, our military is more of a threat than something we should be celebrating blindly. 

I’ve had to talk about our local Sheriff Jones a lot lately, and many people wonder why over time, I wasn’t closer to him within the Butler County Republican Party, just north of Cincinnati, Ohio. The truth is, we used to be until we found ourselves on opposite ends of a public union issue way back in 2012. At that point, our relationship had become very strained. Then we were at an event at the Ronald Reagan Center at the Voice of America in West Chester, and as he usually does, he led the ceremonies dedicated to the military, which he is very voraciously supportive of. As I usually do at these events, I shudder at the blind compliance that such people like him have to the saluting of the troops, the perfection of uniform compliance, and how quickly he was to accept that the individual is just a small part to a greater good, which in this case was the support of a military with the mask of the American flag on it. I have seen him perform such ceremonies at Republican events many times. Still, that particular time at the Ronald Reagan Center gave me the creeps, not just about him. Still, in how many people who call themselves Republicans are so quickly enticed like moths to the flame in supporting military service without a clear understanding of how that military service actually protects our Constitution when in fact, the people who most benefit from our military around the world want to see our Constitution destroyed. And there are plenty of Sheriff Jones types all over the nation, on Fox News, in every local parade, who sell the military to the public as something good. But I see it and always have as dangerous to the ideas of American values and the eventual erosion of Constitutional protections. Just as we saw during Covid, and forever supporters of the expansion of the NDAA, our military is the first body of government that often violates the Constitution they were sworn to protect. But in blindly supporting the orders of superiors, our own children are often used to shred that Constitution at every opportunity, especially when globalist forces like the United Nations declare something to be an emergency. Then, our military is turned on us, and we learn too late that it never served America. Our military serves the aims of globalism, and they have tricked us into supporting such a move by draping the flag over the effort and talking about sacrifice as if we were a civilization of bloodthirsty Aztecs. And we learn too late that our military never served us at all, but a sinister collection of globalism who fund the efforts of politics and have captured our elected officials in ways we could never have imagined. And because of blind patriotism, we never see the problem until it’s too late, and they are on our doorsteps kicking in our doors and violating our constitutional rights with a smile on their faces because they took us as suckers, and we proved them correct.

Rich Hoffman

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The New Costco in Liberty Township, Ohio: Small government and guns make communities great

For around two years, I had been looking for a PlayStation 5. Unfortunately for PlayStation, the company released its newest video game console during Covid. Who would have ever thought that the economy of the world would shut down entirely when planning for such a new release? In many places in the world, supply chains have not returned to normal due to massive government interference and their stupid support of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset. That has been particularly true of computer chips, which make the new PlayStation 5 so powerful. So it’s been very difficult to get a new PlayStation 5. Our family has continued playing our old PlayStation 4 over that duration like many people have had to. But I’ve been on the lookout for one for several years and have not been able to find one. There are usually long waiting lists you have to get on to have a chance to buy one. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and all the usual places have been unable to keep them when they do come in, and what they get has usually been a very limited supply. So I was quite shocked when I went to the new Costco in Liberty Township to meet my family on the opening day of November 2022 and saw at the entrance a pallet of PlayStation 5s stacked high for people to grab as they came into the new and wonderful store. I arrived before my family did, and it took me less than a fraction of a second to see the obvious. I grabbed one as people were plucking them from the stack as quickly as they came in, and we bought it that day and have enjoyed it profusely. 

Yes, I’m a fan of Costco, even though they are not exactly conservatives. They are known Obama supporters, but they provide excellent service, so I haven’t held that against them. Costco does a lot of great things, and I have been a frequent visitor to the one in Tri-County, Ohio, for many years. When I found out that they were going to build a new Costco in Liberty Township, Ohio, I was very happy because I feel like a lot of people do about Tri-County, Ohio, located between the cities of Sharonville and Springdale, that big government has destroyed the former economic boom town and left it a husk of desperate value. I used to think of Tri-County as one of the greatest economic centers in the United States. I worked there several times in my life, so I know the area’s character well; it’s been a part of my life most of my life. So I’ve seen it in better days. But over the last 10 to 20 years, the progressive policies that came from big government woke policies have left the reputation to be one of crime. To describe it simply in one word, when I think of Tri-County, I think of MTV. The youth have been allowed to run wild and take over the character of the area, and wherever youth go, like mindless locusts, they destroy everything in their path. Older people don’t want to deal with a bunch of slack-jawed kids dressed inappropriately and constantly catcalling women while trying to shop and spend time with their families. But kids don’t have money, but moms who run families do, and those types of moms made Tri-County great. 

That is why Costco built a store in Liberty Township, which is everything that Tri-County isn’t, very conservative and safe, and people who live there have money and care about things. It’s not to say that Liberty Township couldn’t become like Tri-County at some point, but the differences couldn’t be more obvious. In Butler County, Ohio, where Liberty Township is, there are over 400,000 residents, most of whom have guns. They either have guns in the home or carry them, and crime is not tolerated the way it has been 6 miles to the south in Tri-County and Sharonville. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Costco realizing that their Tri-County store was being held back because people just didn’t want to be in an area known for crime to shop at their store. So they built a new one, and people were hungry for it. For the first few weeks, there has been a line to get into the store, and people have been flocking to it just to buy goods and services and enjoy the Costco experience. And this new Costco has had everything, a lot more than the Tri-County store had, like PlayStation 5s. As I bought our new PlayStation in the long lines that went to the back of the store, I realized that if the Tri-County store did try to carry the type of items that the new Liberty Township store did, that theft would be the likely result. In Tri-County, with their progressive governments and their big-city attitudes, crime is much more permitted. In Liberty Township, crime isn’t permitted at all. And there are a lot of guns carried by good people who won’t hesitate to use those guns to defend property and persons, which was always the point of the 2nd Amendment. 

This is precisely why many of us in the Butler County area have fought the temptation to allow West Chester and Liberty Township to become a city like their neighbors in Sharonville, Springdale, and Forest Park. Bad government happens when it gets too big, and once there are city councils and mayors involved, woke politics starts to attach itself to the decision-making process, and things get out of control. So we have fought for small government in Butler County, and the results are obvious. Butler County communities run much better than communities within the I-275 loop that have fallen for the big government temptation. I could tell stories about my experiences in Mason, where they have a city too, but over time they have had to become much more nibble on their feet to adapt to the pressure exerted by Sycamore Township to their south and Liberty Township to their west. The struggle to keep the government small is hard, but it’s obvious where they manage because when the government is small, there is less bureaucratic nonsense, allowing companies to invest without all the additional trouble. And when you go to the new Costco in LIbety Township and see the lines from people hungry to get in, you can see the obvious quickly. I happened to listen to a few older men standing outside the new Costco, bewildered as to why people were going so crazy over this new store, even days later after it initially opened. And the answer was that a lot of these shoppers were simply sitting at home waiting for something to open near them because they didn’t want to go into Tri-County to deal with the mess there, all the kids with their pants walking around half down, the nasty language, the cars with rap music pouring through closed windows but being so loud that it vibrates the fillings out of people’s teeth. When there is too much government and too much progressive policy, it ruins communities. When there is less, it makes communities better because the kind of people who shop and start businesses can then have a relationship without the government messing it up. And guns help a lot. Where there are lots of guns by private hands, there is much less crime. Where there are less guns, there is a lot more bad behavior.   And put simply, that is why the new Costco at Liberty Township is so much better and why communities like Tri-County, Ohio, are failing. 

Rich Hoffman

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