Tag: Bullwhips

Thank God for an American Gun Company in Springfield MA: The .500 Magnum, the most powerful production handgun in the world

When I cover for Matt Clark’s radio show on WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Saturday June 13th I plan to play an old T.G. Sheppard song he did with Clint Eastwood called, “Make My Day.” The song is a country song done after the success of the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact as a tribute to that classic cop drama featuring the .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson.   The song itself is a fun romp through common sense as seen from behind the trigger of a gun owner. Since I first heard that song shortly after watching Sudden Impact as a very young man, I have been in love with the company of Smith & Wesson. It has always represented to me a classic American company full of patriotism. The factory itself is located in the middle of an extremely liberal part of the country that is heavily dominated by labor union mentality and progressive politics. But Smith & Wesson has maintained itself as a dominant player in the firearms manufacturing world stage from its Springfield, MA factory off Roosevelt Ave for a long time and is a testament to the ingenuity of American resiliency. Firearms and aviation are still global manufacturing fields that are specifically dominated by American methods making the Smith & Wesson factory to me one of the most sentimental acts of patriotism available today.

It was largely that sense of sentimental patriotism that made me want to have the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum. There was a lot of controversy when S&W released their Model 29 Dirty Harry gun when it was declared then that it was the most powerful handgun in the world by Clint Eastwood himself at the start of Magnum Force. 

  There were other handguns that were more powerful and it became well-known that S&W were overstating the power of their .44 magnum Model 29. Sure it was a powerful gun, but it wasn’t the most powerful. Regardless, Model 29 sales soared throughout the 70s into the early 90s when progressives launched a full-out attack during the Clinton years against guns and their manufactures. Clint Eastwood turned to more serious films and never returned to Dirty Harry after the film the Dead Pool in 1988 leaving the S&W Model 29 hanging a bit in a changing marketplace.

Instead of turning tail and running for history the tenacious engineers at S&W went back to the drawing board looking to officially become the most powerful handgun in the world—this time for real, not just in movie reference. That’s when they came up with the X-frame revolver series which produced the .460 Magnum and the massive .500 Magnum. With that .500 Magnum S&W had officially become the most powerful production handgun in the entire world, and because of the patented X-frame design, it will hold that title for a number of years.

It is for this reason that I had to have one. It wasn’t just to own the most powerful production handgun in the world; it was to reward S&W for standing the test of time, competition, and politics to emerge with such a massive personal firearm which clearly went against the grain of social pressure. I respect S&W immensely for holding firm against the tide of progressivism that surrounds their facility in Massachusetts. In a lot of ways they represent the kind of pressures going on all across the nation and world in general. Instead of backing off and tucking their tale to hide, they went to the drawing board and invented something that was unequivocally the most powerful and dominate handgun around. In a lot of ways it’s a lesson for how we should all handle the pressures of progressivism.

That’s certainly not to say that we should go out and shoot anybody. When I brought the .500 Magnum out for the first time around a lot of seasoned shooters over the Memorial Day weekend, there weren’t too many who wanted to fire it. The sheer size and power of it is extremely intimidating. Most were happy to just look at it in the case I brought it in. I had brought along $200 of ammunition just for that gun, and there still weren’t many who wanted to fire it outside of my son-in-law, and myself. Its one of those things that is a deterrent to improper behavior just in knowing that it exists, and in a lot of ways it represents the resiliency of Smith & Wesson as a company serving as a kind of last stand of classic value in a land of progressive erosion. My brother-in-law shot the gun into a nearby river and when a geyser erupted in the wake of the bullet scattering water in multiple trajectories as though hit by cannon fire, he declared, “Holy shit………..I’m good for life.” That is the kind of punch the Smith & Wesson announced to the world with their determined effort to product Model X revolvers while the rest of the world was going softer, smaller, and more Brady Bill friendly.

The song “Make My Day” embodies that same S&W tenaciousness, and is what most of us feel now that we are backed up against the wall by a progressive infusion into the national media. It’s why I still love that song and the S&W company after all these years—and is why I’m going to use it as an intro to the radio segment I plan to do for that particular half hour. It’s a metaphor for what we all have to do in America and the kind of attitude it takes to get there.

The theme of the song and the reason that out of all the cop dramas that have come out over the last four decades, Dirty Harry is still popular. The power of the .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson gave the Clint Eastwood character the assurance that no matter what kind of firepower he faced from the bad guys, he could out-gun them. Smith & Wesson to assure to their customers that they could always have that same type of personal assurance offered up the .500 Magnum for that very reason. Like the song brings to light, whether it’s a motorcycle gang, a collection of thugs, goons or punks who hide out in the night, Smith & Wesson provides their customers the assurance that they don’t have to be concerned with threats to their personal sanctity. That after all is the key to the American system of government and economics. Groups, no matter what their background whether it is an officially sanctioned government or a group of criminals desire to use fear to control individuals. When someone possesses the most powerful production handgun in the world it buys the assurance that no matter what a group tries to do to inflict fear on individuals, which the owner of such a gun doesn’t have to be afraid of anything. It is when individuals are forced to deal with each other on equal footing that a respectful culture of Americans emerges. Peace through superior firepower in the hands of good people.

Among gun owners it is found some of the best people functioning in the world today. Recently my same son-in-law who shot my new .500 Magnum visited his family in Great Britain who were shocked that he and my daughter had so many guns. In England it was appalling that anybody could own a personal firearm. My kids drove the point home by stating that guns are so prevalent in American culture that they had matching his and her 9mm semi-automatic pistols. That prospect was astonishing to the English family members who were functioning from a totally different culture. It is that kind of mentality that progressives here in America are trying to breed into our culture and currently surround the Smith & Wesson factory in Massachusetts. But the biggest difference between American society and everyone else is really the number of guns available to individuals. With so many guns come secure investments and limited government to abuse their power on helpless individuals. That is the point of the “Make My Day” song; it suggested that Dirty Harry actually looked forward to righting wrongs because he had such a powerful handgun in the .44 magnum. Because he was prepared, he looked forward to using it and didn’t have to live his life apprehensive as to what might come next.

In a lot of ways I have to thank Smith & Wesson for sticking around and fighting it out all these years. They answered much criticism to their product line by offering truly the most powerful production handgun in the world and to reward that tenacity—I bought one. To me it is a marvel of modern engineering achievement that is the backbone of the American system of government. Those who are against that American system are those who want to put the gun manufacturers out of business so that the firearm culture in the United States might abate. But that’s not going to happen, and now that I’ve given myself a taste of such a powerful gun in the .500 Magnum, I have a reiteration of a whole new category of Adam Smith philosophy to dust off and shout to the world. But before I do that I’ll give WAAM listeners a treat to what started it all for me, an old T.G. Sheppard song from a famous Clint Eastwood film that defined more than a cop drama to a Hollywood industry offering a story they thought would come and go without much memory. It was Smith & Wesson who was a silent credit in that film which defined for America a subtle key to its global success. When it comes to American success and self defense—the bigger the better—and because of S&W customers can legitimately get the biggest and best that a human hand can hold defending capitalism with all the self-assurance of Harry Callahan. There’s nothing wrong with that. As it says in the song, “It was Smith & Wesson that taught them a lesson, Go Ahead, Make My Day.” Obtaining my own .500 Magnum not only made my day—it made my century.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Matt Clark and Rich Hoffman on WAAM: Understanding why the media is biased and the Clinton Foundation evil

You might have wondered what the cause of all the media bias is and how it came to be.  Well for answers to such questions there is one sure source, Matt Clark’s show on WAAM.  Over the weekend we covered an unusual number of topics in the broadcast that can be heard below.  It was also the first time that I was able to use the equipment that has essentially turned a room in my house into a radio studio.  The sound was clear which was just about as good as if I were in studio with Matt from several hundred miles south.  Obviously the equipment is primarily for when I stand in for Matt while he goes on his honeymoon for a few weekends in June.  But, it works so well, I’m sure we’ll conger up some other means for getting into some trouble with it. But that kind of trouble is different from the type that George Stephanopoulos is in as an undisclosed media donor to the Clinton Foundation.  Well, the Foundation reported the $75,000, but Stephanopoulos as a chief anchor didn’t—which is why he found himself in the specified hot water.

Even though we covered a lot of topics on that show—whether it be the conviction of the Boston Bomber, or the lunacy of Congressman Hank Johnson all the stories share in them the desire of one organization to rule over another using consensus to perform the task.  For instance, obviously with the Clinton Foundation the goal of the Clintons is to build relationships with people they can later use for some tactical advantage.  A fine example might be a sex party where everyone present is expected to get naked and do something embarrassing in front everyone else.  The immediate gratification might be interesting and enough to endure the apprehension, but the net result would end up being something you wouldn’t want to discuss at a fine dining occasion.  Then if one of the people—especially the host were at that fine dining opportunity with you, the trend would be to keep your opinions to yourself and to go along to get along because the other person is now in the power position over you.  They have dirt on you which prevent you from acting according to your own code of ethics.  Again, you might not agree with the host of the sex party on what they are trying to do, but they’ve seen you naked and compromised, so you don’t want to embarrass yourself by pissing them off.  So you go along with their plans even if they are maniacal and against your better judgment.

This is essentially why college fraternities have hazing rituals.  Groups want to see individuals assimilate themselves to the glob of the group by checking their values at the door and offering themselves uninhibited to the collective desires of the organization—even if that organization is just a handful of others.  Traveling road buddies want to know about that affair, or that over-night cheating opportunity.  They want to know you get intoxicated after four or five beers so that they can get emotional leverage on you’re at some future time.   They want you to be sure that you are not so high and mighty that you might think of stepping out on your own with your own line of thinking.  The group offers short-term rewards for long-term control.  With the Clintons it’s always about control whether it’s the sex orgies on Epsein’s private island of mischief or the donations given to the Clinton Foundation under the ruse of helping children. As a former president who has a wife next to the ear of the current president the Clintons used their name to sell influence.  A donation to them and their foundation under the auspices of goodness might feel good in the short run, but down the road the money is dirty and every contributor knows it.  They gave the money hoping to get a picture or an interview opportunity to build their own fame—but what they give up is the ability to hold the Clintons feet to the fire when they deserve to get burnt.

Even Fox News has given money to the Clinton Foundation and what the Clintons get out of the relationship is a dog with a soft bite because of the complicity. Fox News could rake the Clintons over the coals for any number of issues—especially the Epstein story.  But when the money you’ve given helps create an evil, it is far easier to put on the rose-colored glasses and go along to get along.  This is why the Clintons feel they only need to wait out the Benghazi storm, or the Epstein orgy island story—because most of the media is involved in the Clinton Foundation in some respect, and everyone knows that you have to pay to play.  If George Stephanopoulos is giving money at ABC News to maintain his relationship with his former pals, then he’ll get scoop interviews with the Clintons when a new book comes out, or get premier announcements of any political happenings as an exclusive.  But if other organizations like Fox News wants a shot at perhaps not an interview with the Clintons directly, but with at least James Carvel or John Podesta—then you better bring your donation to the next Clinton Foundation event.  If you don’t pay, you won’t be on the inside and thus won’t have the media credentials to cover any potential story. What would the mighty Fox News be without the ability to at least interview John Podesta from time to time?  Not very relevant when the other networks can get him on at will.  So everyone pays the money, commits some sin in front of everyone else to show that they can be trusted later and big stories get suppressed as a direct result.

I actually went through this on a smaller scale in my hometown of Liberty Township involving the Lakota levy, which I spoke about in brief during the radio discussion.  My guys in No Lakota Levy were largely developers who didn’t want to see their taxes go up on their investment properties, especially their holdings prior construction that weren’t making any money—but just sitting there waiting for a zoning hearing, or financing to line up.  They went to charity events usually hosted by school levy supporters so were largely handicapped into what they would say publicly about tax increases.  I always felt sorry for them because it was obvious their livelihood was in jeopardy based on their social connections within the community.  Without those connections, life would become much more difficult for them.  I was invited to these events, but I never went—because I didn’t want to break bread with the enemy—and those asking for higher taxes were the enemy.  The enemy was mystified as one by one they called in favors against my No Lakota Levy people starting with who they had primarily targeted, Mark Sennet who had been a previous public leader against tax increases and had a lot of properties to defend.  I never liked Mark even when we’d meet in person largely because of an animosity that occurred years ago when Trustee Bob Shelly was running things and rolled over to let Sennet scratch his belly over the United Dairy Farmers deal at the corner of Princeton and 747.  The last thing I was going to do was associate with him in a social setting.  It might affect my aim when it came time to make him a target—so I kept business in the proper categories until things got personal, which is when the relationship ended.  In this case the story came to a conclusion with the famous latté sipping prostitute utterance which formed the foundation of the Curse of Fort Seven Mile Cliffhanger stories.  I was able to keep things rolling longer than usual because I stayed out of the social circles involving the Chamber of Commerce, progressive tax increase professionals, and the business community all seeking a consensus on “helping the kids” by raising taxes on property values.  It was a scam.  The Clinton Foundation is the same, only on a global scale.

The goal of the Clinton Foundation is not to help children or impoverished nations lift their economies out of the gutter—it is to silence critics and to buy influence.  The best way to help poor areas of the world is to promote capitalism—but that’s not what this game is about.  It’s about control, not freedom and the Clintons are paving the way for all future ex-presidents.  Soon the President of the United States will no longer be the top job in the world; it will only be a stepping stone to United Nations influence by gigantic charity foundations like the Clinton Foundation.  If you give money to it, you get a picture with Bill, maybe Hillary and maybe a hug from their daughter.  If you don’t give money and you report negatively on them, they will call up your boss and shake you down for everything your worth.  You’ll lose your home, you’ll lose your mortgage, and you’ll lose any hope you have of a career within their social circles.  Once people like the Clintons make themselves the hub of the wheel, the direction of things will go where they decide—which we all know is toward the Scandinavian socialist model of northern Europe.

The same could be said for the other topics Matt and I discussed.  Even the Islamic story is functioning with the same overall strategy as the Clinton Foundation.  Play the game their way; you get to be on the inside.  Deviate from the path they establish and you will find yourself attacked, ridiculed and ostracized in negative ways.   To them the collective is much more important than individual rights.  That is what the Clinton Foundation and Islamic radicals have in common and why they are both dangerous.  They both are collective organizations, one political the other religious who desire to achieve the same objective, the conquest of individual will in support of collective assimilation.  The best way to achieve that is to get individuals to surrender their integrity in public which is equitable to a gag.  It is then that the secrets of the society from within are kept and why George Stephanopoulos paid $75,000 to his old friends to stay in their good graces.  As a head at ABC he does after all have a responsibility to the collective network to use his past influence to nab up all the hot interviews—after all, that’s why they hired him in the first place.  But to the Clintons, nobody is really their friend—unless you throw money at them to assist with the illusion of their charitable organization.  The real objective is global consensus as they seek to control their donors with all the mad zeal of the most tyrannical kings of historical memory.  And there’s nothing good about it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

A Gringo Like Me: A day that’s coming

A Gringo Like Me: Keep your hand on your gun! 

There is no other song played on my iPod more over the years than the one below. My favorite song of all time is “Desert Chase” by John Williams which is an orchestral piece without any lyrics. But even that I have not listened to more than the lyrical masterpiece by Ennio Morricone from the movie Gunfight at Red Sands done with Peter Tevis.   The lyrics are a masterpiece that captured the spirit of the typical mythology of the American western and represent a time and attitude that built what is now considered the Greatest Generation. I firmly believe that the music of a culture directly influences the mind of it and you can directly tell the direction of a society by the type of music it enjoys. When the song “Gringo Like Me” was made, this was the kind of America that westerns portrayed, and while the modern hippie would bulk at the violent suggestions of the lyrics, there is an honesty to it that I find infinitely refreshing.

Here are the lyrics in all their masterful glory.

 Keep your hand on your gun

Don’t you trust anyone

There’s just one kind of man That you can trust That’s a dead man…

Or a gringo like me

Be the first one to fire

Every man is a liar

There’s just one kind of man Who tells the truth That’s a dead man…

Or a gringo like me

Don’t be a fool for a smile or a kiss Or your a bullet might miss Keep your eye on your goal

There’s just one rule That can save you your life It’s a hand on your knife And the Devil in your soul

Keep your hand on your gun

Don’t you trust anyone

There’s just one kind of man That you can trust That’s a dead man…

Or a gringo like me

Keep your hand on your gun

Don’t you trust anyone

There’s just one kind of man That you can trust That’s a dead man…

Or a gringo like me…

Or a gringo like me..

Or a gringo like me… …like me…

 

As a guy who’s been around more than a block, and been in conflict with other human beings—many times—I can say that there is an honesty in that song that is very sincere, so I listen to it often. That kind of brutal honesty was represented in the westerns of the past and is only hinted at today in movies like Star Wars and Mad Max. For me though, there will never be a better time than the kind of values shown in those old westerns, and that song embodies all those values.

Even though the temperature of the day is to wear the peace sign on our clothing and sing about world unity—the direction of society is headed back in the opposite direction. The experiments into progressivism will leave in its wake a world on the precipice of Vico’s anarchy and theocracy—and violence will be in the futures of most of us. We may not like that reality, but it’s coming, and the best way to deal with it is with the kind of mythology that evoked values that worked—and to stick with it. As of this writing it is being reported that American birthrates are down meaning that the legacy costs of government within just a few short years will leave the world scrambling for dollars in a vast wasteland. That wasteland may look more like Mad Max than the Gunfight at Red Sands but it will be an untamed world governed by what’s left of human failure.

We can see that failure of society at virtually every turn today. There is no way a dumbed down public that values intoxication over logic, and sex over family sustenance can survive long into the future. The money that was spent by baby boomers born of that Greatest Generation mismanaged virtually everything, and the top-heavy bureaucracy they created will collapse in our lifetimes. I think for the world of tomorrow—with all the opportunities provided by wonderful inventions coming from Elon Musk, and the legacy of Steve Jobs will provide decision gates. But I think it will be more valuable for a young man in the future to learn to shoot a gun than to study at a four-year college—just to survive and keep what they have worked hard to obtain. That is why that song for me is honest, not because it reminds me of the cowboy values of yesterday, but of the values it will take to live and preserve capitalism in the future.

Westerns essentially were about preserving individual value and defending private property as they were made from the 1920s to the 1950s. Clint Eastwood’s westerns took the cowboy individualism to an Ayn Rand level overman largely dropping the social aspects in favor of individual power. The spaghetti westerns that Ennio Morricone wrote some of his most memorable music for were operas on individualism—and they are just wonderful. In a few years when the stand alone Star Wars film is made about the origin of Boba Fett, it will be those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns that will be the model used to make the film. Just as the new Fury Road is an update on the original Mad Max, which was essentially a cowboy film transposing horses for cars. The honor in individualism is all there—the raw solitary figure standing against insanity represented by a band of collective bandits is a classic western tale.

In the future there will be hoards of young people raised by failed public schools who won’t be able to own private property, because the means for doing so will be out of their reach. They won’t respect the private property of those who do have it. They won’t respect our cars, our children, or our spouses. We are quickly arriving at a desperate age where those who don’t have the intellectual aptitude for owning private property will want to take it from those who do. When that day comes, and the law of the land has been suppressed and legislated out of existence—where the courts are so overloaded with cases that they can’t process them all, and attorneys have made mockeries of those that do go to court, there will be only one defense on that day—that of the gun. There will be only one thing that stands between those with property and those that want to take it—and that is the gun.

At that time when society falls into such a shambles, you will want to keep your hand on your gun. You won’t want to trust anyone. In that time there will be only one kind of man who you can trust, and that’s a dead man. And it will be that way because progressives failed in their social experiments and left the world a wasteland of shattered dreams and desperate souls low in intellect but hungry for material goods they can obtain by the only means their government schools taught them—by stealing it.

Learn to shoot, and keep you hand on your gun……………..always. I will miss the days where it was possible to go somewhere without worrying about someone trying to threaten you in some way. It has been relatively nice for a long time. But progressives thought they could manage violence away from human beings with the same stupidity that they thought they could eradicate poverty. They thought that government instruction and management would solve all those problems. But all they succeeded in doing was in making more of the behavior and ultimately placing society on a collision course with collapse and devastation. It is then that the individual must turn to the gun to protect themselves from the encroaching mob of collective stupidity democratically mandated to steal from those who have, and kill those who resist. In such a time there is only one rule that will be sufficient—you must be the first one to fire. Because there’s only one kind of man who you can truly trust in that future—and that’s a dead man. That’s also why I love that old Ennio Morricone song so much and why it holds so much truth not as a relic from our cinematic past, but of the prophetic times to come.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Why the Department of Education Should be Shut Down: Broadband for everyone!

This is why the Department of Education should be completely eliminated. It is grotesquely ineffective and agenda based politically. The aim of equality so boisterously proposed by government school advocates is only a thinly veiled attempt at state-run parenting. It’s an insult to have them in charge of education. For instance, I first saw the following article from Yahoo News, and found the source article after some checking. Essentially it’s a marketing ploy advocating in favor of two progressive agenda items—one Common Core, the other Net Neutrality and using children to advance both causes. I personally find it insulting that they actually think human beings are stupid enough to believe what they are saying. While many people may be, not everyone is, and while they strive for equality of stupidity for all people, I’m not going to comply, nor will the typical reader of this site. Here is how the article read:

Overall, 63 percent of public schools don’t have access to broadband speeds needed for digital learning. The problem is particularly acute in rural and low-income districts: Only 14 percent in those areas meet high-speed internet targets.

“It’s just very uneven all over the country,” Lan Neugent, executive director of the non-profit State Educational Technology Directors Association.

The Federal Communications Commission approved a $1.5 billion spending cap increase for school broadband and Wi-Fi last year that is expected to significantly boost connectivity. State grants linked to Common Core implementation and collaborations with tech and business leaders are also bridging the gap. But those initiatives could take a year or more to connect thousands of schools and testing started in 29 states and the District of Columbia for 12 million students this year.

In the meantime, they’re resorting to alternatives: Testing students in small groups, busing them to other schools and limiting all other internet access while exams are taken.

Ideally, technology can help eliminate achievement gaps between poor and rural students and their more affluent peers. The shift to online testing, however, reveals how wide the digital divide remains. Districts like Chicago Public Schools with large numbers of low-income students have raised questions about whether their students — who often don’t have access to a computer or the Internet at home — are at a disadvantage.

“The implementation of Common Core is bringing these issues more to the forefront,” said Brian Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Education Trust-West. “But this has been an issue that has plagued communities of color and low-income communities for years.”

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2015/05/11/online-common-core-testing-lays-bare-tech-divide-in-schools

Problem number one, if technology is being used in public schools to the extent that they need WI-FI internet connections, then the institution itself is not needed. I already argue that modern technology as far as teaching is far superior to an actual union member public school teacher. Teachers may have some success in helping children who have bad parents, or limited financial opportunities, but for the masses of children, public school is ineffective as an institution—other than providing day care for children while parents work. Here is the Department of Education attempting to articulate that the internet is needed to provide education in a brick and mortar school—even to the extent that they are willing to spend money to bus students to locations with better WI-FI connections. People are supposed to actually sympathize with that nonsense. It’s an insult to assume that normal people are stupid enough to not see what is going on with that ridiculous assumption.

Secondly, the Department of Education ignores completely the Vico cycle of human devolution—which is historically as reliable as sunrises and sunsets. The reason that there are different portions of the country rural and urban as well as wealthy and poor is because different factions of people depending on their values progress along the Vico cycle at rates specific to them. For instance, those in poor neighborhoods are entering the anarchy phase while those in the suburbs may be at the aristocratic. Those phases are not compatible with one another—so there will be different types of people produced by them. CLICK HERE for a contemporary understanding of the Vico cycle. It would be thought that all the supposedly smart people at the Department of Education would understand the Vico cycle—but apparently not. Loses in internet connectivity has little to do with any other factor than whether or not an area is profitable. Internet providers are willing to incur the cost of service if there is money in it for them. They are not going to do it for the fun of it.   Ironically, Richard Branson with his Virgin Galactic company is planning to put satellites up that will bring internet coverage to even the most remote portions of Africa, so a day when such connectivity problems will still be an issue are on their way out—so long as government stays out-of-the-way. If Virgin Galactic is left alone, the problems of this entire article will evaporate like a puddle of water on a hot summer day. It won’t take long for there to be no trace of anything left behind.

Then of course is the not so subtle marketing of public education services by stating that technology can help erase the gaps between poor and affluent—as if government schools were the great equalizers of society. They aren’t. You could give a poor kid in South Chicago a brand new laptop and it would likely be destroyed within a few weeks, sold for drug money, or riddled with pornography because the parents of the poor child were terrible and instilled limited values on the unfortunate sapling. I’ve known lots of people from poor neighborhoods and tried to help them all. You can’t make bad people into good just by being nice to them, or giving them a fair shake. They have to change their values. A drunk has to value soberness to want to quit. The illiterate has to value reading to break their curse. A poor person has to want to be productive; otherwise they will continue to be poor. Until you work on the core values of a society, nothing can stop their progress on the Vico cycle. Nothing—no amount of money, no feel good public education experiment—no billions of dollars spent on the internet. The internet is useless without the desire to learn something from it. The internet doesn’t just magically make everyone equal with opportunity. Stupid people will use it for porn. Smart people will use it for knowledge. In order for everyone to be equal, everyone has to either want to be stupid or smart. Public education as indicated by the Department of Education has decided that the best way to make everyone equal is to make the smart into the stupid and then hope that government can manage the chaos of the Vico cycle that follows. But they can’t, and they will never learn to. Because the phase after anarchy is always theocracy, and when that happens the Department of Education will be eliminated anyway in favor of a new god to worship and the whole mess starts over again.

Well everyone isn’t stupid, or have plans on joining the ranks. For them, the Department of Education insulted their intelligence with such a stupid release of information flowed down to the orthodox media. It shows just how astonishingly ignorant those in charge at the Department of Education really are. I mean I don’t think much of them anyway, but to not understand the basic concepts of the Vico cycle—it’s just preposterous. Sad and ignorant that such people are employed by tax payer dollars. That—is the real insult.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Fury Road’: Rebelling against Giambattista Vico

I have a general assumption about mankind that is quite opposite of typical academia. Civilizations rise on the backs of innovative individuals and flourishing capitalism. They decline with more centralized control and absorption of individual achievement into the fabric of a collective society. When an unworthy king or bureaucratic democracy takes over the direction of economic enterprise and invention, a society is in decline. It is due to the hard wiring of human beings trained from their infancy to follow the Giambattista Vico cycle always witnessing societies fall only to be born again in a much regimented pattern. This holds true no matter what the society, whether it be the Mayan people, the Inca, the Mongol, the Roman Empire—all societies so far have followed the Giambattista cycle. This is why anybody with any honesty looks at George Miller’s Mad Max films and declares him a genius. It’s also why it was more than symbolic that Mel Gibson showed up at the premier of Fury Road, the latest Mad Max film now staring Tom Hardy. Studios didn’t want Gibson in the film as the Vico cycle declares that what’s old must be recycled to make way for the young and new. But Gibson showed up to give the young Hardy a bit of support because any Mad Max fan knows that Mel Gibson will always be the iconic Road Warrior. It all started with this movie.

Our current world is not very far from the world of the first Mad Max movie. Police are now being openly murdered and Vico’s final phase of anarchy is fully at hand. What happens next is the rise of a theocratic society followed again by aristocratic, then democratic rule, followed by chaos once again. In the film Fury Road we find that in the period between the first Mad Max film society has devolved into the rise of theocratic civilization. No longer is society concerned with missions to Mars or inventing a new iWatch—now the primary concern as it has been in the past is to establish a new deity figure for the society at large.

I have always loved the Mad Max character because he maintains himself throughout the entire cycle as a constant reminder into the phase of the Gambattista cycle from which everything was taken from him, his wife, child, friend, career—everything he cherished from that time. Unlike the rest of the world he finds himself standing up against the tide of regression. He is a representation in these Mad Max films as Nietzsche’s ubermensch-otherwise translated as the overman. Nietzsche’s ubermensch is one who has graduated from mankind and stepped away from the Gambattista cycle all together—and has decided to advance their life based on individual creativity.   But this is a dangerous road, Hitler tried to take Nietzsche’s ubermensch and advance Germany, but failed in his interpretation and instead moved his country into a Karl Marx inspired socialist democracy—followed by war defined anarchy, then back to a theocratic/democratic existence where it currently finds itself in a European Union—otherwise a democracy that is once again plunging into anarchy now inspired by the failing economies of Greece.   Mad Max is the figure who refuses to submit to these tides of the world.

I have no doubt that George Miller would agree with this assessment. He knows all too well what he’s doing. He’s not just making a popcorn action thriller with great car stunts and bizarre characters. He’s making a rejection statement against Gambattista’s famed cycle. He may not have set out to be conscious about that statement but rather let his intellect drive those elements of the story along as evolution of the various aspects of the story evolved, but based on the presentation of Fury Road, it is clear he understands what he’s doing all too well. It’s also clear why so many people are excited to see such an apocalyptic story and why after all these years it’s so close to the hearts of so many people. This is not a typical summer blockbuster film.

So, how excited am I for the upcoming Fury Road? Well, let me tell you, I have dedicated this upcoming Friday to seeing it. I will certainly be one of the first, and I will likely see it several times. I love the action, I love Mad Max and all that he stands for, but more than anything I love seeing the Gambattista cycle challenged. The world may have went crazy in relation to the advanced days of invention when oil was being produced to propel cars from city to city, to instigate the growth of economies of various trade. All that can and will fall apart within just a few decades of human development—just like the Maya abandoned their cities apparently very fast—as if they just evaporated. It’s not that such people abandoned their cities because they left earth for alien destinations, the people of Ur did not suddenly become equivalent to the Neanderthal after building hanging gardens and massive temples—they regressed because they emerged into war then reinvented theocracy starting the Vico cycle fresh again losing all that they had gained before. Mad Max is that personality in these George Miller movies who in spite of everything that he has lost and continues to lose, refuses to give up on his heroic past and be the last representation of a time when mankind was truly great.

How many people do you know who would at the drop of a hat become one of the mindless followers of some future attempt at theocratic rule? The current Muslim obsession is but the latest. How many maniacs would kill the masses for a chance at everlasting life in the hereafter because some slug of a wanna’ be king dictated that such a thing would bring redemption to the soul? The answer is probably everyone that you know. Most of the people shopping at the grocery and working in a corner cubical would gladly trade in their suits and ties for a thong and Mohawk if some skull inspired death cult instructed them that through worship of his heavenly presence that someday they too might rise up to greatness if only they adhere to the tenets of collectivism.   Miller’s brilliance is that he was able to see such a clear vision from our present age. It’s not easy to see that overweight school levy supporter buying meat at the grocery as a future sex slave to a blood thirsty cult fighting over the worship of water—but Miller does, and with a grand design. It’s not easy to see that corrupt politician kissing babies and whatever else as the skull wearing Immortan Joe hunting down the wives who are desperate to leave him. But in Miller’s films, it is quickly recognizable that most people we know under similar conditions would find themselves as some character in that wasteland. It doesn’t take much to forgo everything we have ever been and throw it away in exchange for basic human necessities, like food, water, and sex.

I am excited for Fury Road, but for reasons that go well beyond the visual spectacle. I love it for the rebellion against Vico. On one hand the Vico cycle is shown in all its brutal honesty, but through the character of Max—using almost no dialogue—Miller beholds the ubermensch—a character that launched the career of Mel Gibson who in almost every movie refused to buckle under the pressure of Vico to decline—but always to advance. Whether it was Riggs from Lethal Weapon or William Wallace from Braveheart, Mel Gibson started as Mad Max, that hero from the past who punched through the Vico cycle with the throttle down and the skill of a Road Warrior as the rest of the world attempted to drag him back into the Stone Age. That’s why Fury Road is more important than a four-year degree in college studying history and the Vico cycle. Because Fury Road shows through art the results of that path—and how treacherously close we always are to falling off the edge of reality into an abyss controlled by maniacs like Immortan Joe—or the Toe Cutter.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What’s Hidden Behind the Veil: Monsters of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares brought to reality

I grew up with a Christian background, which I still find useful.  Religion is for the most part good if it helps nurture along values that are positive.  But as a tool for historical reverence, religion is all about revising history to match whatever provided text is important to the cult in question—and over time, I have come to realize that much about history has been erased or distorted due to the rise and fall of Christianity.  Of particular complaint for me is the North American origins and actual history of the human race.  One of the most important books I have ever read was Forbidden Archaeology which chronicled the many relics of excavations that have been repressed from the historical record due to academic revision driven largely by government necessity and religious preservation.  To my mind the actions in the Bible are only lily pads of history with many more extending into the distant past, and there is archaeology to confirm it—so needless to say once you read Forbidden Archaeology it forces you to look at everything with a new lens toward reality.

And I’m far from alone.  A few years ago I was being criticized for my lack of involvement in a church of which I answered that I considered religion to be like a pair of shoes I wore when I was a child.  I’m happy to have had those shoes on my child-like feet.  But as an adult, my feet outgrew the shoes and I needed something that fits better—and currently no religion offers a shoe big enough to fit my very large feet.  I might keep my old shoes tucked away in a box thankful for the memories, but they would be of no use to me now as a fully grown adult.  To say that I’m an atheist would be completely inaccurate—it’s not even a category that applies.  Rather, I am part of a movement that is redefining religion and making new shoes for people to wear—intellectually and this is a movement that is picking up a lot of steam.

So it was much to my amazement that I ran across H.P. Lovecraft after falling in love with the board game Arkham Horror.  I never planned to like the game that much, but once I discovered that it was about monsters from other dimensional realities trying to come into the world of our own recollections and that it dealt with many different parallel worlds I started thinking more seriously of the writer H.P. Lovecraft who wrote pulp horror stories during the Roaring Twenties and was then considered a crack pot lunatic—a child of two parents who ended their lives in insane asylums.  Lovecraft was a young man haunted by terrible monsters in his dreams for his entire life, and he dealt with the beasts through literature.

Coming out of a heavily Christianized turn of the century with do-gooder progressives making their mark against the world of capitalism Lovecraft was way ahead of himself in his writing. He was essentially writing about the types of things that the modern David Icke is saying—that the monsters that haunt us are not of the type seen in Casper the Friendly Ghost.  They are ancient beings once considered gods that still haunt us through the mysteries of quantum mechanics.  They are like those in Poltergeist who bend dimensional reality to suit their needs, or like the Sumerian terrors in Ghostbusters who were able to come and pillage our planet in whatever form we feared the most.  Those films had fun with a subject matter that ultimately points back to the work of H.P. Lovecraft as he was clearly the start of a new way of looking at the things that terrify us from mysterious realms.  Most human beings seek to throw those gods into a religion hoping to appease to their sensibilities and give us luck at navigating their perilous objectives—but to those whose feet no longer fit in the confines of religion, something much deeper is needed.  For them, Lovecraft is becoming a literary giant a 100 years after his death.

Even before Forbidden Archaeology about a decade before that book was published I learned about the ancient city of Cahokia just outside of St. Louis.   I was stunned to learn about it being so large and having pyramids nearly the size of those in Mexico and Egypt and that they had such an advanced culture prior to the settling of America by Europeans. I wrote a screenplay about the place which won some awards, and no matter who ran across that story as I was shopping it around, nobody had ever heard of such a thing, yet the remains are right off the major highway that passes east to west straight into St Louis.  If science and politics were able to contain such information that was right out in the open, what were they really hiding, because experience said that they were hiding quite a lot?  When I was a kid, 10 to 15 years old I was a subscriber to Biblical Archaeology Review—so I knew quite a lot about various dig going on around the Holy Land.  But there was always a layer of haze over the reports that always bothered me.  Much of that cleared up as Forbidden Archaeology blew the doors off all the suppressed discoveries of the last century.  One of the great gods of worship at Cahokia was a thing called Bird Man.  I couldn’t help but wonder if Bird Man was the same thing that people in the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia—several hundred miles up the Ohio River from Cahokia called the Mothman.  After the popular film drove me to read one of the scariest books I’ve ever read in The Mothman Prophesies I realized that something very dark and sinister was going on behind the thin veil of historical documentation. My family actually went on Mothman hunts as I was determined to catch one and discover what it was all about.  What I learned was that the Mothman likely was not a creature of four dimensional realities, but something else.  That something else is the kind of monster that David Icke has been talking about—and in fictional literature, H.P. Lovecraft.  CLICK TO REVIEW.

My wife and I this past week celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary and we enjoyed it by buying two new expansions of the Arkham Horror game and a giant New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft book by Leslie S. Klinger.  Yes we had dinner, but the best parts of our evening was in hunting new H.P. Lovecraft material.  As crazy as H.P. Lovecraft seemed during his time in the 20s, in hindsight he obviously understood what was going on as the popular show Ancient Aliens and other fresh explorations into our hidden human history are paving the way to validate work that Lovecraft did that seemed like fantastical fiction at the time—but today is perhaps a bit too real.  For a family like mine that has spent time chasing UFOs, hunting Mothmen and climbing around in some of the most haunted corridors of our reality—mostly finding nothing literally, but a lot peripherally—Lovecraft is our idea of a great date night.  But I can’t help but wonder if his musings were not more historical than fiction.  My current leanings say the latter more than the former—and it takes removing the confining shoes of religion to actually wade into those depths.

It isn’t surprising that Lovecraft is making a comeback.  I have been shocked by how many people now read his stuff when at the time of his death he was mocked by critics and was penniless at the age of 46.  Today, it’s a different story.  More and more people are realizing that they have been lied to by their government schools, their political structure, and their religions—and they are dusting off those old books to see what people were saying before the progressive purge of the Twentieth Century wiped everything out and revised history to the sentiments of the radicals vying for power. But that time has come and went now, and H.P. Lovecraft is emerging from the hidden depths of our own thought into history.  His musings reflect my own, that somewhere hidden in our mythologies are historical truths long suppressed by the orthodox shaped by modern religion.  And in those stories is a key to the gates of knowledge and it is there that humanity must go to discover our next step.  But For that next step, we will need new shoes—and that is my current obsession. For those new shoes I will need some of the leather processed by H.P. Lovecraft—and working that leather is proving to be an interesting endeavor to say the least.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Fire Lakota’s Teachers: Protest over merit pay bad example to kids

I have written and said so much on this topic you’d think that the ridiculously arrogant teachers in the Lakota school system would have learned by now.  However, they apparently have the memory span of Dory from the Finding Nemo movie, and about the same politics—and they can’t remember anything from five minutes ago, let alone five years.  Like a bunch of children they protested in front of various Lakota schools over the implementation of merit pay—which is something that’s happening all over the nation, not just in Ohio—and is certainly not limited to Lakota.  I’ve said it before, I don’t mind paying a teacher $200,000 a year if they are really good, but I don’t want to pay a slug $65K per year just because they showed up and fulfilled a step schedule established by the labor union.  I want to see management deciding who gets paid what for an expected criterion.  I do not want to pay for collective bargaining which favors the lazy at the expense of the hard-working.

Of course the impact of these entire teacher antics in attempting to wreck the budget at Lakota will provoke another levy attempt, which I have been saying all along will happen right around the 2017 mark—if not sooner—since the school board knows it will likely meet resistance and may take a few years to pass.  What they are asking us to pay for is the same ridiculousness they have in the past—out-of-control employee costs that are directly linked to this kind of teacher behavior.  Because the union is protected by state and federal law management often caves under the collective pressure of protests like this recent one at Lakota and the tax payers are stuck with the bill—which means an increase in property taxes.  People new to the district don’t mind paying a bit more on taxes until they live in the area for a few years and are stuck with excessively high taxes.  It is then that they get buyer’s remorse—meanwhile all these radical union employees retire and move away leaving the mess to the rest of us to clean up.  I let the Pulse Journal know my thoughts about the Lakota protests with the following Letter to the Editor.

In a fair world every teacher who took part in the Friday April 24th demonstrations in front of the students at twenty of Lakota’s schools protesting merit pay, should have been terminated immediately.  However, we don’t live in a fair world and are currently stuck with an out-of-touch teacher’s union culture in these schools that feel they are entitled to district resources without the judgment of their job performance being established through a merit pay system. 

Defenders of the action will declare that their gathering was a “peaceful demonstration” and they (the teachers) have the right under the First Amendment to “assemble.”  Yet the protesters in this case are district employees who consciously made a decision to impose their viewpoints in front of the same children they are supposed to be teaching which should be considered a breach of contract by attempting to radicalize students against value assessment—merit pay.  It is insulting that they’d even contemplate the protest at Lakota after that district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to repair their image after the last few years.  Talk about short memories—and a lack of gratitude.  The school board went to great measure to improve Lakota’s image and the teachers decided “collectively” to perform this task—in front of their students–amazingly short-sighted.

I’m looking forward to the further antics of the Lakota teachers over the coming summer.  Since we can’t fire them, they will make fighting the next levy attempt that much easier. 

Thanks,

Rich Hoffman

The judgment was so bad that all those employees should have been relieved of their duties and sent home on the spot.  But we don’t live in a fair world—but one where public employees like these people are used to getting what they want, when they want it.  They are spoiled brats—and that is putting it mildly.  The Lakota teachers participating in this demonstration are easily replaceable, and should have been treated justly.  They expect too much money for doing entirely too little—then they have the arrogance to be a disruptive force within the school.

It should be quite clear by now why I still think it was a teacher who left the note in the bathroom just days before the last election in Lakota threatening a shooting spree if voters didn’t pass a levy.  Even though the levy was to throw money at these same teachers as appeasement for maintaining a wage freeze at the time, the levy was sold as a way to keep our “kids” safe in school.  Conveniently, just days before the election a threatening note was left behind promising a shooting spree.  The FBI and Butler County Sheriff’s office offered no leads, no hand writing analysis, no arrests in their “investigation” because they knew what I did—that the investigation would have taken them to the classroom of one of these radical teachers instead of some disgruntled kid.  Heck, Sheriff Jones even put his name behind the passage of the levy.  But if it was a kid, where could we place the blame for learning the behavior—look at their teachers?

Much is said about the millennial generation and how bad they are regarding work ethic—how pretentious they are relative to generations from the past.  Granted, the parents are largely to blame for these screwed up kids.  But the public schools have sold themselves as an option to parenting—as a viable substitute.  Well, here is the proof of what kind of things those mentors are teaching kids.  No wonder kids grow up expecting the world to be handed to them on a silver platter; they learn it from their teachers.

Until Ohio becomes a Right-to-Work state these radical nutcases will have all the leverage against tax payers—because management of them is simply not possible—if teachers will protest merit pay—where good teachers get paid based on how good they are—they’ll protest a turtle crossing the street.  Their argument becomes so ridiculous that it’s almost science fiction.  What’s encouraging is that these Lakota teachers have shown so early in the game that they are willing to behave like a bunch of Saul Alinskey radicals just as they did in 2008 with a strike threat, which I brought up continuously in 2010 through the first three levy attempts, caused the budget problems at Lakota.  These latest actions by them will just give those of us willing to fight these idiots cannon fodder—so I welcome more of these antics.  But there is a bit of me that feels sorry for the management of the Lakota school system—which is an entity I have been very critical of—because of their willingness to stay away from the hard decisions like this merit pay issue.  They tried so hard and spent so much money extracting money from the community and this is how the teachers show their thanks.  It has to hurt.  But nobody can say they weren’t warned.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Whiskey Scam of Robert Reich: Students he taught should ask for their money back–because he doesn’t understand economics

If you really want to know what is behind the global push for $15 an hour wage increases at fast food restaurants and other entry-level jobs look no further than Robert Reich–the Clinton economist and academic liberal who has set the pace of the modern socialist movement using MoveOn.org as a platform for insurrection. MoveOn.org is the Soros funded enterprise and has in mind the fulfillment of the same brand of communism that was promised during the Red Decade only introduced with incremental bits of socialism over a long period of time. Professors like Reich are the reason that colleges are failing our young people because it is his nonsense that they have been taught. People like Reich funded by Soros are at war with American capitalism and seek to end it—and have from the very beginning. To understand why and how read the following article shown below from Reich where he introduced his economic theory in favor of a minimum wage increase. Because Reich is so “respected” and accredited, most people take his opinions hook line and sinker without considering the root implications, or source definitions. But to anybody who really understands money and how it’s made and measured, Reich is a functioning communist. He may not name himself that, but his actions define themselves. His major error in the following suggestion which apparently everyone misses is in properly defining productivity. I’ll explain more after the article and a bit of history about Reich.

WHY THE MINIMUM WAGE SHOULD REALLY BE RAISED TO $15 AN HOUR

Momentum is building to raise the minimum wage. Several states have already taken action  – Connecticut has boosted it to $10.10 by 2017, the Maryland legislature just approved a similar measure, Minnesota lawmakers just reached a deal to hike it to $9.50. A few cities have been more ambitious – Washington, D.C. and its surrounding counties raised it to $11.50, Seattle is considering $15.00

Senate Democrats will soon introduce legislation raising it nationally to $10.10, from the current $7.25 an hour.

All this is fine as far as it goes. But we need to be more ambitious. We should be raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour.

Here are seven reasons why:

  1. Had the minimum wage of 1968 simply stayed even with inflation, it would be more than $10 an hour today. But the typical worker is also about twice as productive as then. Some of those productivity gains should go to workers at the bottom.
  2. $10.10 isn’t enough to lift all workers and their families out of poverty. Most low-wage workers aren’t young teenagers; they’re major breadwinners for their families, and many are women. And they and their families need a higher minimum.
  3.  For this reason, a $10.10 minimum would also still require the rest of us to pay Medicaid, food-stamps, and other programs necessary to get poor families out of poverty – thereby indirectly subsidizing employers who refuse to pay more. Bloomberg View describes McDonalds and Walmart as “America’s biggest welfare queens” because their employees receive so much public assistance. (Some, like McDonalds, even advise their employees to use public programs because their pay is so low.)
  4. A $15/hour minimum won’t result in major job losses because it would put money in the pockets of millions of low-wage workers who will spend it – thereby giving working families and the overall economy a boost, and creating jobs. (When I was Labor Secretary in 1996 and we raised the minimum wage, business predicted millions of job losses; in fact, we had more job gains over the next four years than in any comparable period in American history.)
  5. A $15/hour minimum is unlikely to result in higher prices because most businesses directly affected by it are in intense competition for consumers, and will take the raise out of profits rather than raise their prices. But because the higher minimum will also attract more workers into the job market, employers will have more choice of whom to hire, and thereby have more reliable employees – resulting in lower turnover costs and higher productivity.
  6. Since Republicans will push Democrats to go even lower than $10.10, it’s doubly important to be clear about what’s right in the first place. Democrats should be going for a higher minimum rather than listening to Republican demands for a smaller one.
  7. At a time in our history when 95 percent of all economic gains are going to the top 1 percent, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour isn’t just smart economics and good politics. It’s also the morally right thing to do.

 

 

http://front.moveon.org/robert-reich-explains-why-we-should-raise-the-minimum-wage-to-15-per-hour/

 

http://robertreich.org/post/82134788482

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me&_r=0

 

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

 

Robert Bernard Reich (/ˈraɪʃ/;[1] born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University‘s John F. Kennedy School of Government[2] and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with The New York Times, he explained that “I don’t believe in redistribution of wealth for the sake of redistributing wealth. But I am concerned about how we can afford to pay for what we as a nation need to do…[Taxes should pay] for what we need in order to be safe and productive. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”[25]

In response to a question as to what to recommend to the incoming president regarding a fair and sustainable income and wealth distribution, Reich said, “Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage supplement for lower-income people, and finance it with a higher marginal income tax on the top five percent. For the longer term, invest in education for lower-income communities, starting with early-childhood education and extending all the way up to better access to post-secondary education.”[25]

Reich is pro-union, saying “Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States.”[26][27] He also favors raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour over three years, believing that it will not adversely impact big business and will enhance the availability of higher value workers for companies.[28]

Reich is only a modern snake oil salesman trying to palm off whisky as a cure-all medicine. His economic product is Karl Marx communism and socialism implemented through twists and turns of Keynesian economics shaped by the philosophies of Immanuel Kant. And guess what—they are all wrong in their premise. Reich goes wrong in his very first assumption when he states above that “the typical worker is about twice as productive now as they were in 1968.” The worker isn’t more efficient or better, their productive output did not increase—their actual work, and the energy output to produce that work is statistically much less than it was in 1968. For instance, at a typical McDonald’s founded first in 1940 the amount of work a worker had to exert in 1968 meant that all the hamburgers had to be grilled by hand, the buns individually toasted, most of the labor had to be implemented with the touch time of a human hand. But by 2015 most of the food making operation was automated. The average McDonald’s today is very much more productive than the 1968 version, but it isn’t because the worker is better. Arguably, ethically, morally, and in all categories of make-up it should be easy to prove by some academic like Reich that the quality of people available to work is much lower today than they were in 1968. So his comment about the average worker being twice as productive is complete nonsense—it’s a statement made up in the halls of academia for the sole purpose of eating money out of George Soros’ hand and his aims for global communism.

The Reich formula for determining productive output ignores completely the value of individuals, whether those individuals are the CEOs of companies, or are hard-working employees who carry the rest of their workforce on their backs on a daily basis. The socialist utopia that Reich preaches about in his economic efforts is a theoretical fantasy that falls apart the moment that theory is applied to real people. And Reich has ignored these failures for years.

When Reich was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997 the economic success that Clinton and Reich enjoyed were not because of their socialist policies, it was because Clinton was forced to compromise with a Republican congress to get their fiscal house in order. Ross Perot was challenging both parties in 1996 so both wanted to squeeze him out of the debate and after the Lewinsky scandal “Bubba” played ball with House and Senate Republicans and things actually improved a bit economically. However the biggest contributors were the invention of the personal PC market and the spread of the Internet which was still a very new thing back then. The market expansion that occurred under tech sector economies happened on Clinton’s watch, and he got the credit. Most of that tech work was done in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan where the stage was set for such Silicone Valley creations—it didn’t have anything to do with Robert Reich.

Yet Reich stood in front of his Harvard and Berkley economic classes all this time teaching socialism to thousands of young students taking credit for that period of time without telling anybody the whole truth. The guy has lied and taken credit for the work of others for years, and now the communist utopia that George Soros wants to create needs the snake oil salesmanship of the con artist Reich. And that is how the minimum wage debate emerged and how the stage was set for the outrageous sum of $15 an hour fast food jobs. These are ideals proposed by shells of actual people who espouse anti-capitalist sentiments with the purposeful destruction of America’s economic power. They should be seen for what they are, and geniuses they are not. Reich can use a lot of big word and charts to explain his theories but in essence he is just a snake oil salesman proclaiming that whiskey has magical properties to a largely uninformed population. What’s worse is that he seeks to keep people in such a state so that not only he can resume gaining attention and accolades, but that he can advance a progressive agenda that seeks an end to our country as a capitalist power house. His failure is specifically in defining value in productivity assuming that all gains belong to human workers. Rather, the real truth in increases in productivity is from the minority of minds who invented the tools to increase productivity in spite of a declining social intellect. That trick is a masterpiece, and it has nothing to do with the American worker, or the gains made toward justification for a minimum wage hike first started in 1968 under deceitful measures.

If you are one of the many poor fools who have taken an economic class by Robert Reich, then you should ask for your money back. Because he sold you whiskey as medicine that only a drunk would accept as legitimate.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

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

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

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

Something for Everyone in the Community

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

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

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

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

Library Budgeting

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

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

Levy Details

  • The levy on the May 5 ballot is a renewal. This is not a new tax.
  • Levy funds make up 40% of MidPointe’s budget.
  • Levy Millage:  .75 mill
  • Length of Levy:  5 years
  • Cost: The cost of this levy to the owner of a $100,000 home is approximately $22.97 a year(less than the cost of one hardback book).

Levy funds will:

  • Maintain services and materials at all MidPointe locations.
  • Continue to provide current technological resources to the public.
  • Allow for sensible expansion in our growing community.
  • Sustain programs for children, teens and adults.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Art of Playing: Celebrating life and happiness

imageIt was my 47th birthday today and I spent it in an unusual fashion compared to some, but quite the standard within my family. During it I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with some pretty important and powerful people about the nature of living and how I manage to do so many things at several layers of severity and risk,  but still manage to lay my head down on my pillow each night for sleep without wanting to jump off a roof. It’s a secret that I feel compelled to teach the world, just so that I might remove just a bit of their suffering and change the direction of their life’s focus. It’s a method that everyone would benefit from if they embraced it more and would drop the broken stereotypes of the past—because they don’t work. As a brief intro to the concept please understand that my wife could have given me just about anything for my birthday—a new Apple Watch, an expensive vacation, a dinner at Cincinnati’s exclusive restaurants, even a new car—but what she did give me was infinitely more interesting and fun. She gave me a Zoomer Dinosaur. She has been watching my grandson and he knew what she had bought me, and at just over 2 years old, he couldn’t wait to tell me. So he guided me to where she was hiding it and we opened it up. She didn’t care because he was so excited to see it move. After opening it, we put the little dinosaur on the ground and began playing with it—which set the tone for the entire birthday celebration.

My mother taught her kids how to play, even late in life. Growing up we played a lot and had very diverse interests. My grandmother also played at life a lot and made growing up very fun. Every trip to the grocery store was fun because they made it that way, and as a result I carry that into my own life-even in tragic situations. I try to have fun every day of my life—no matter what is going on. That is a pattern started in my childhood by my mom. My brother and sister have a similar love of playing and as a result as grown adults, they don’t have any mental problems or issues with social interaction. They are not drug abusers of even a slight nature and have no real insecurities of any mention. Now with kids of their own, they are bringing that element of play to their own offspring with very positive results. But out of all the members of my family, I learned to play more than the others and I am more obvious in my dedication to it.

One of my best memories as a kid was when I had to go to soccer practice one evening when I really didn’t want to. I always loved sports, but only the games themselves. I didn’t like all the team work crap—ever, or the social infusion with the community. When my team would win the parents were always excited for some mysterious reason and used the word “we” a lot. Yet they never did anything to help win the game except yell like a bunch of idiots on the sideline. It never made sense to me, and as the years moved on, I stepped away from sports because of the heavy emphasis on team building and derision on individual achievement. If I had different teachers and social influences as a young kid I might have moved into professional sports of my choosing, but because the wrong influences were around me focused on the wrong things, I abandon sports at my first opportunity—as a freshman in high school. But of that wonderful memory, I was at soccer practice, miserable because honestly I had a huge set-up in the basement of my home dedicated to Star Wars and I wanted to be there playing with all my toys rather than running around at soccer practice. It was spring time, my dad was out-of-town on business, and I was hoping to be home so I could have some play time before bed. It was the middle of the week and I had school the next day, so my time to play at the things was short. My mom picked me up from practice and we headed home. Only this was different, my brother and sister were in the car dressed like we were going somewhere, and there was the smell of popcorn from the trunk. I didn’t think much about it until we took a different route home and ended up on roads I wasn’t familiar with. Those roads eventually took us to a drive-in theater in Hamilton that was playing the very first Star Wars movie as a re-release. My mom took us all to see it for what I think was the 7th time at that point. It was wonderful and I cherished deeply every frame of film. During the scene where Han Solo and Luke were rescuing the princess, which is the high point of the film for me, I was sitting in a lawn chair with my soccer cloths still on listening to the echo of all the portable speakers around the drive-in playing the sound of the movie with a slight delay during that specific scene—the clouds were high in the sky and slightly blotting out a big bright moon on a spring night—and I thought about how wonderful life was. It really didn’t get any better than that.

But every day I try to make the day better than that day at the drive-in, and most days I come close. I am always looking for a way to have fun with a situation, and most of the time I do. I avoid people who don’t know how to have fun. If they are depressed people trapped in emotions constructed around neurosis, I usually paint them out of my life for my own preservation. If they can’t keep up, I leave them behind without looking back. I like to have fun, I love to play, and I hate people who don’t know how. I’m happy to teach “happiness” to them, but if they don’t show much of an effort, I drop them quickly. I understand and sympathize that they didn’t have a mom like mine who showed them how to play, even as adults, so I take the time to teach them. But I won’t sacrifice myself to their misery. If they want to be miserable, I leave them to it. I might write an article like this to help show them the way, but I won’t take their burden on myself if they wish to be stubborn about it.

I have known many adults who give Rolexes to their spouses and new cars for birthdays—but most of the time those gifts are laced with a desire for social approval more than developing happiness in the recipient. Behind such gifts is the desire to brag to someone else about the value of the gift, and thus, the amount of social pull that person has in the world of mixed economies. So it means quite a lot that my wife out of all the things she could have given me picked the cute little dinosaur which I think is quite a leap in scientific development. The little sensors in it for a kids play toy are very advanced, and the gyroscope system which balances it on two wheels is quite extraordinary. I could play with it all day and night if left to my own devices. It is intriguing, and intellectually stimulating. I love it!

imageBut of course there was a gathering with my family like we usually do later in the day during my birthday. This year we went to Dave and Busters so that we could……………play…………….as a family. Specifically there is a new video game called Star Wars Battle Pod which is a kind of flight simulator for Star Wars. It is the newest, and greatest of what technology has to offer, complete with a breeze simulator to replicate actual environmental conditions. It has a wrap around screen that totally engulfs your vision allowing you to invest your intellect into the experience without distraction. The food was great, as it usually is at Dave and Busters, but playing Battle Pod was for me the best thing I’ve done for a birthday in years. In my family, most of us are intense Star Wars fans so we loved taking time to play it together. It was a stunning game to play, and fly. I had to reflect back to that drive-in surprise where my mom played like she was just picking me up from soccer practice on a school night, but instead took us all to see Star Wars one more time on a big screen, before it was gone forever—or so we thought at the time. Now, because of Battle Pod, people can play in the Star Wars universe in a way that was only a remote fantasy for someone like me years ago.

At Hollywood Studios my favorite restaurant is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. It tries to simulate the drive-in movie experience I had in my youth, with my best memory being that Star Wars outing. There are still drive-ins, but they don’t carry the same impact as they did when I was a kid. Now they are viewed as a cheap alternative to the cinema experience as opposed to a first-rate experience. But when I go to Hollywood Studios, I have to stop by the Dine-In Theater and have a hamburger. It reminds me of that Star Wars presentation after the soccer game, and reminds me of the importance of playing at life instead of taking things too serious.

In reference to the important people I was talking about the best of us realize hopefully before they arrive at 60 years of age that career climbing and ass-kissing doesn’t get anybody anywhere. People are most effective and ultimately better when they retrain, or relearn the art of playing—as they did when they were kids. Typically, I don’t get along very well with people in my own age group, because most of them suffer from socially created illnesses. The people I most get along with are kids and old people because generally they aren’t worried about the ridiculous social rules which construct our network of associations. They would do far better for themselves to spend their time playing with other members of their families than in chasing the tail of someone higher in the peaking order hoping to schmooze their way to the top instead of letting their actions speak for themselves. One of the people I was talking to is a guy I enjoy quite a lot. He has a PHD in an advanced field of endeavor, but has not lost his love of playing. He’s is the grandpa of some lucky grandkids and the father to some fortunate children. Yet he solves problems like they don’t even exist, the kind of problems that might hang up regular people in the related field of endeavor. The difference is that this smart guy never forgot how to play at life, and therefore solves problems the way a child does, with resiliency and creativity. We teach our children to stop doing these things, and that is our first mistake. Instead, we should be teaching them to develop it further and to do so through their infantile 20s and 30s. But until everyone else gets on that page and recognizes that this is the way to conduct their lives—with playing at life for their entire lives—then I will continue to recharge myself the way I have. And for that, the little dinosaur my wife gave me along with Star Wars at Dave and Busters was a wonderful experience that gives me more than anything money can buy–a chance to play.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.