Tag: Bullwhips

Justice Comes With The Crack of a Whip: Taking off the mask once again

l_cf11f2fa084e4701b57dd59b09cb8c40I know that especially lately, each new movie that comes out; I have had grand things to say about them which weaves back through my life to points of origin that are not only sentimental, but deliberately placed there by the important people in my life who raised me.  Part of being alive as opposed to half-dead or socially subdued is that you feel things.  And I feel things, lots of things—because I have never turned my mind off to the world. I love movies, I love music, I love visiting places, I love food, I love family, I love books, I love comic books, but probably more than anything in my life besides family, I love bullwhips, and I was elated to discover recently that one of the great whip makers with ties to Western Stage Props had made three bullwhips for the upcoming Disney film The Lone Ranger.  I was happy to hear that Joe Strain from his business The Northern Whip Company had supplied the whips for the grand revisit to the Old West by The Lone Ranger because it would not only help my friends in the bullwhip industry who make large parts of their livings off sharing their unique skills with the public, but that the modern makers of The Lone Ranger were going to pay tribute to the use of the whip in the classic stories that took place from the 1930s to the late 1950s.  Not only would the new Lone Ranger from Disney pay direct tribute to the classic silver bullet mythology, the tenacious horse named “Silver,” the “William Tell Overture,” a very ambitious rendition of Tonto played by Johnny Depp, but they were even going to put a few whip scenes in the film, which used to be a standard in westerns.

I watched every television episode of The Lone Ranger at some point of my life at least once.  I used to watch it with my grandfather when I was a very small child.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE.   When I was a kid it was a combination of The Lone Ranger, Disney’s Zorro, John Wayne westerns, and Clint Eastwood westerns that I watched with my family as entertainment before there was ever a Star Wars, or an Indiana Jones.  In most of those old westerns, a bullwhip was the secondary weapon of choice on many occasions.  So I grew up with a tremendous reverence for the bullwhip as have many of my friends from the bullwhip world who are seen scattered throughout this article in videos of their own displaying their love of a uniquely American art form.  In fact the only place in the world where the bullwhip holds even more reverence than in America is in Australia.  It is there that the whip maker who made the two whips seen hanging from my holsters in the picture above resides–Terry Jacka.

I know a lot of great whip makers in America, but I have a particular fondness for Terry Jacka’s whips.  In them he has put his 35 plus years of work into works of art that are extremely responsive, and very, very accurate.  They are among my two most valuable possessions in the entire world and are almost always with me no matter where I go.  When I travel, I travel with them.  When I stay at a hotel in some faraway land, the whips go with me, and I practice with them.  Without them, I feel incomplete.  And the most fulfilled that I feel each year is when I get to participate in the annual Annie Oakley Festival put on by my friend Gery Deer, because I get to wear my favorite Terry Jacka whips around everywhere I go for the day in public without it causing any kind of trouble.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  You can learn more about Terry and his Australian Whip Company at the link below.

 http://theaustralianwhipco.com/

In the typical Lone Ranger stories, the hero Texas Ranger Reid is gunned down with a group of fellow Rangers and left for dead by a group of thugs who wish to inject crony capitalism into their local business operations.  (Do not confuse this with pure capitalism which I support adamantly)  To do so, they gun down the legitimate law so that they can make easy prey of the people they wish to exploit.  It’s a classic theme that can be seen in virtually every western made and no matter how many hundreds of westerns I have seen, I never tire of the message.  It is a theme I resurrected in my novel The Symposium of Justice in 2004 which essentially was a modern western set in the current time, and featured the marketing slogan “Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip.”  I enjoyed tremendously the opportunities writing that novel gave me, the ability to do some stunt work for the World Stunt Association, make public appearances, and even do some consulting work in feature films, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  I understood why my bullwhip friends enjoyed traveling the country doing tricks for audiences and performing in large shows.  But from 2007 to 2009 I was getting the overwhelming feeling that something of a real Lone Ranger was needed in the actual world and I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.  As I looked around at the diminishing crowds at some of the western events I attended and my friends with their commitment to traditional western arts were looking more antiquated each year by audiences who were rapidly losing an understanding of the typical values displayed in film westerns, I had noticed that a similar evil that was clear in the old Lone Ranger episodes was sucking the life out of the world around us, and I wasn’t content to just write about it in books, and show up on movie sets earning acclaim from top actors, directors, and producers just because I had a unique talent.  I felt an overwhelming desire to not just talk about it, or write about it, but to actually fight for the values of the Lone Ranger in real life.

Obviously I didn’t put on a mask and grab a horse and run around in the middle of the night ripping the heads off bad guys with my whip.  The evil of our modern age—the social villain that is destroying the American western is not a direct enemy that required a direct fight.  It was a subtle one that was killing America with a thousand cuts, and I had to find a way to identify it, and fight it on terms I controlled.  In the middle of getting constant invitations to appear in very lucrative job assignments using my bullwhip to make a good living, I changed direction and did what all my friends would agree was a terrible move for anyone who wanted to work in the entertainment field—I became politically involved.   I picked the biggest bully on my personal block that was as close to the evil Cavendish gang from The Lone Ranger that I could see and pushed back against their tyranny.   I took my skills from years of working with bullwhips and applied it directly to a political fight that was desperately needed, because I wanted to defend my love of America from forces that wanted to eradicate it.  Sure it would harm my work in entertainment, and it would bring me personal anxiety, but then that is why the Lone Ranger had to wear a mask.  Ironically the villain in my neighborhood which was the greatest threat to my love of westerns and the values they articulate was my local school district of Lakota, a government school committed to draining the community of taxes, and programming children into progressive thought—the anti-western concept.  So I dialed up the media I had made with my contacts nurtured in entertainment and filmed the video below called   A Whip Trick to Save America.

The whip trick video was featured on The Blaze by Glenn Beck’s new enterprise during its opening weekend.  CLICK FOR REVIEW.  Just a few days later I did a personal interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer where I spoke out openly against the tax increases proposed by the school and I did whip tricks for the reporters knowing full well what would follow.  I knew that the established order of things would attempt to paint me as a radical traditionalist who was so in love with the “old days” that I couldn’t see the wonderful benefits of “progress” as it has been brought to America by intelligentsia, CLICK TO REVIEW.  At the time, I had been involved in many personal fights with others, one on one, or otherwise, and had no problem with direct conflict.  But as I was writing The Symposium of Justice and telling the story of Fletcher Finnegan, who was a modern masked outlaw named “Cliffhanger,” I had a persistent nagging desire to prove a theory that I had constructed in the book which had to be proven for the follow-up novel, which is how one man can take on a giant statist organization and survive.  In my novel, it was the heroics of Cliffhanger that inspired good people in the town of Fort Seven-Mile to join together and form Cliffhanger’s Fighting Legion, to fight tyranny all the way to the powers that pulled the strings of political puppets beyond the reach of Washington D.C.  Fletcher Finnegan was my modern version of The Lone Ranger, a masked man who instead of a silver bullet, used bullwhips to bring justice to the world.  But for me, that wasn’t enough.  I wanted to strike at the heart of the evil, not just the reaction to it, which had always bothered me about every western I had ever seen.  It was one thing to fight evil and stand for the good, but what was the cause of the evil?  To answer that I had to go on a dark quest of my own.

The bull whip video had started me down a road for justice and soon after I was doing many radio broadcasts, granting interviews to the AP, and speaking on television.  As I had been working with several local Tea Party groups, I had grown concerned that my work with the whips might draw bad publicity for them so I backed off some of my public bull whip presentations relying instead on my speaking ability to perform the pursuit of justice.   At this point I was already deep into my experimental theory which I am about to reveal the result.  Over the next couple of years I found that like the Lone Ranger, I had put on a kind of social mask to protect the people I cared about in the Tea Party movement, and traded business attire as my mask, keeping the whip hidden from a media that was looking for every opportunity to paint me as an extremist radical that wanted to destroy the lives of children—instead of saving them.

What I learned during this endeavor is exactly what I set out to understand.  Government statists spread their evil by creating anti-concepts.  If the American western was about creating in the mind of viewers a “concept” about tradition, and value, then the anti-concept was about destroying that value.  This was the cause of the declining popularity of the American western and why my bull whip friends were finding declining interest in their art form over the years.  This anti-concept theory is being taught in public schools to metaphorically deliver the souls of millions of young people to the slavery of a giant Cavendish gang represented in reality by statist governments all over the world.  Before I started all this activity the biggest fear that small government activists had was retaliation, particularly from labor unions set up like parasites in government institutions such as public schools, and IRS agencies.  These unions got what they wanted by acting identically to the gangs of the Old West who robbed trains, stole cattle, and harassed settlers.  They used force, or the threat of it, to take what they wanted and imposed fear on their victims so they could maintain their regional power.  These statists functioned from misleading facts through the formation of the “anti-concept”—by stripping away values from society.  The way to destroy a concept is with open attack, using the threat of force, or by subversion, by undercutting the value of an argument.  For instance with the public school mentioned, they failed to recognize the need for their tax increase was caused by their mismanaged finances.  They associated the value of education to money equaling goodness for children even though the facts had nothing to do with that reality.  If someone challenged that premise, the union would show up in collective force to protest the school board sending a message to the community that if anyone stood in their way, they’d be vandalized, personally harassed, their children would be tortured in various degrees, and they’d be turned into social outcasts.  Because of this threat, nobody challenged them, even the so-called wealthy elite who understood clearly what was happening but were unable to do anything about it for fear that their businesses would come under attack by union thugs and social radicals.  What the unions were doing was no different from what the Cavendish gang did in The Lone Ranger.  They used fear to impose their statist will on the innocent.

It is one thing to think such a thing, but quite another to speak out against it.  After all, nobody wants to be called a mean, selfish, or a diabolical menace to the fibers of an interconnected society which is how the villains in this case had destroyed the concept of goodness.  They had subverted entire communities into sitting on their hands and not speaking out in fear of being considered socially as an outcast—or even an outlaw.  I theorized in The Symposium of Justice that the way to beat these types of villains was to challenge their premise with the question “why.”  When the statist enemy cannot answer, which they never can, they then turn to force.  This is where my hero Fletcher Finnegan/Cliffhanger used his bullwhips to impose justice on those who tried to use force to remove the concept of goodness from society.  My problem was that I knew such an idea worked in small combat situations with fewer than ten combatants at a time from personal experience.  But I wasn’t sure if the same could be applied to statist government all the way to the top of the food chain which is what my next novel in the series is all about.

When I did the Enquirer interview Mike Clark asked me if I knew what I was doing in bringing my whips to the front page of Cincinnati’s largest paper.  I knew as he asked the question that I was looking at a future Judas, a betrayer who would pretend to be a friend just like the villain in The Lone Ranger who led the Texas Rangers to their deaths in the canyon trap set by the Cavendish gang.  But this time, I would use the bait to my advantage—and I did.  I knew that if the threat of personal harm was removed from the unions’ arsenal of weapons that they’d be defenseless against me because they certainly couldn’t answer any questions regarding “why.”  When I have my Terry Jacka whips, nobody is going to bring personal harm to me with any melee weapon.  For those hired thugs who don’t care to use a firearm, the decision of that kind falls into a level of thuggery that our current statist society still recognizes as bad, so it doesn’t happen often and that is when firearms are needed for defense.  But for all other circumstances, no gang of thugs can bring harm to a person who can use bullwhips in the fashion that I do.  By presenting my whips to the unions all across the State of Ohio through popular media, I had taken away the weapon that all statist organizations use to impose their will, the threat of force.  This allowed me to give many dozens of interviews to the media against unarmed opposition because the statist representatives of public schools could not answer the “why” and they could not stop me with force.  So they were unable to stop me and this remains the case to this day.  Without thuggish force, without bringing harm to others, they have no ground to stand on.  The way to beat them time and time again is to ask them “why” which they can never answer, and then to let it be known that physical force, social intimidation, and extortion will not serve them.  When they learn that, their game is over.  They cannot win with facts of any kind.

When I say, “Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip” this is what is meant; that statist villains have had their most important weapon removed from them—the ability to apply force.  This is why whips were so popular in the early westerns like The Lone Ranger and Zorro, because they represented the “concept” of justice in a way that does not involve killing your opponent.  The whip allows the wielder an ability to disarm those who wish to use force against others.  The bull whip cuts like a knife, is far faster than a pair of nunchucks, and much more versatile than a sword, staff, or baseball bat.    In short, a person who learns to use the bull whip anywhere close to the kind of people shown in the videos on this article know in their mind that nobody can harm them in one-on-one or group combat.  That self-assurance is a measure of freedom that allows goodness to be seen clearly, and solutions to statism are then solved.

As The Lone Ranger puts on his mask in the new Disney film, I’m taking mine off.  I am no longer concerned about what anybody thinks about my use of the bullwhip as I have made my point.  For me, the bull whip is a symbol of justice because it prevents those who wish to steal away righteousness from the innocent eliminating the ability to invoke any fear to do so.  It forces statist opponents to take the next step which involves more lethal force and in this way the “ground” to combat is controlled by the whip holder, because they know what their opponent is going to do since their options are so limited.  Before that next step, which obviously the Clinton’s have no problem utilizing, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW; decisions have to be made on how the public perception of such an action can be justified.   Most statist enemies lack this type of arrogance, or network to pull off such a feat, so they are paralyzed when threat of force is removed from their social holsters, and that is invoked by the bull whip.

There are many great whip makers in the world for my money; Terry Jacka is the absolute best.  Right up there with him is Joe Strain and my old friend Paul Nolan who was seen in the video on the pillars at sunset with his wife and friend T-Rex.  A lot of whip masters don’t talk about it, but when they put a whip in their hand the power they feel is not one to inflict pain and suffering on other people the way some statist slave master might think.  What they feel is the power to defend themselves from any melee force that might attempt to enter their barrier of protection.  Speaking personally, when you see a whip artist standing at the center of a two-handed Queensland Crossover, or other two-handed routine, they know they are standing in the middle of spinning knives that can cut to shreds anyone who tries to penetrate that parameter.  When I wear my Jacka whips with the long 12” handles pointing out like Samurai swords on both sides of my hip I do so to have quick access to them off my quick release holsters, which were specially designed for me by Gery Deer.  I know when I walk around with them that I have complete control over my life because the whip keeps anybody who might wish me harm from entering my parameter of individuality, and that is a wonderful feeling.

It is in this spirit that the bull whip was used in the Old West mythology as a symbol of justice instead of pain.  The greatest of them all was Lash LaRue who was known as The King of the Bullwhip.  He was another of my favorite western protagonists.  So it brought me great delight to see that Disney had purchased three whips from The Northern Whip Company to be featured in the new Lone Ranger film.  I would love to see a film where whips are used in them to the level that Lash LaRue or Zorro did, but I’ll be very happy to see a scene or two with the Lone Ranger bringing about a bullwhip to implement justice in a way that only bullwhip masters understand.

As for me, the bullwhip is an important part of my life, and I am taking the social mask I put on for a brief time off.  The justice I seek doesn’t require a mask, because in the hands of a bull whip master, there is nothing to fear.  It would be my hope that I could share this self-assurance with as many people possible so that they too could learn such a skill that would free them from the tyranny of fear that so cripples such vast majorities with the constant threat of personal harm while in pursuit of honor.

Check out Joe Strain’s bull whips for yourself.  I’m sure he will have replicas of the ones he made for The Lone Ranger available soon.

http://northernwhipco.com/

Also, check out my friend Paul Nolan who also makes great whips.

http://midwestwhips.com/

Another great champion of the bull whip sport is Adam Winrich.  He is a wonderful whip maker, but spends most of his time these days doing professional gigs.  He also has dozens and dozens of instructional videos on technique some seen here on this article.

http://www.winrichwhips.com/index.html

Then of course there’s Chris Camp who laid the foundation for many world record endeavors and stays busy as a whip professional traveling the world with his family for many corporate clients.

  http://www.thewhipguy.com/WhipGuy.html

And if you want to take some classes on how to get started in a nice comfortable bull whip training studio that is just a short drive north of Cincinnati, contact my friend Gery Deer.  It’s the only one of its kind in the world.  Most of the names mentioned have attended Gery’s Annie Oakley Western Showcase event each year in Ohio during the last weekend of July.

http://www.thewhipstudio.com/

But the first step is in deciding not to live in fear, then learning what can be done about it.  Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip, and for each of us, there is nothing more important.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes With The Crack of a Whip’!”Bullwhip, Red and Black 24 Plait 2-tone

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The PRISM Program: How government hopes to “PURGE” the world of challengers to statism

Dear reader, I hate to say I told you so, but…………………..I told you so.  I stated many, many months ago that the government was watching everything you were doing, and that America was headed down a direction of the dystopian novel, Brave New World, and 1984.  CLICK TO REVIEW.   Now it is obvious to all that the government led by the NSA and many other organizations have been looking at phone records, email accounts, video conferencing between businesses and virtually every aspect of life of all Americans under The Patriot Act for the thinly disguised notion of bringing safety to the nation.  But like the IRS, the Justice Department, and virtually every government agency including the local teacher at your children’s school they are filled with incompetent employees operating with faulty minds.  The NSA is spying on the nude pictures of our children that are recklessly sent to their budding relationships, not for the protection of the nation, but for their own pleasure.  The NSA enjoys knowing the social connections of every adult of the American population because such knowledge is power and can be used against targets at their discretion.  Read all about the PRISM data collection scandal at the following link:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/06/bombshell-report-govt-also-tapping-servers-of-top-internet-companies-to-collect-americans-emails-photos-messages/

Maybe now skeptics won’t question what has been reported about Common Core education, Obamacare, Agenda 21, Muslim penetration of our government, global consensus effort to collapse the American dollar, communist influence of labor unions, a socialist take-over of American government, and many other controversial topics that have been regulated to conspiracy theory.  “They” are watching and “they” have their fingers in virtually every aspect of your life dear reader, and you let them do it.

For further proof of their vast network of manipulation and influence, let me draw your attention to the film released this weekend previous called The Purge.  I can personally attest that there are thousands of wonderful projects on the desks of Warner Brothers, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Disney right now yet Hollywood is in lock step with government statism for the same reason that the PRISM program has companies like Google, Yahoo, and MSN under their thumb, because of the power and reach of the Justice Department and tyranny of the IRS to make life miserable for large profitable companies.  It is easier for such companies to bow at the feet of their destroyer to preserve themselves and their small fortunes than to fight them toe-to-toe on idealistic premises.  Extremely creative filmmakers like Christopher Nolen have been able to rebel against the system while at the same time appearing to adhere to the rules, like Batman who plays Bruce Wayne in public, but becomes Batman at night.  But most Hollywood types regulate themselves to ass-kissing the statist regime of present government in the same ways that Mayan priests sacrificed prisoners of war to the god of feathered serpents.  In The Purge the movie is set in the year 2022 and the United States is governed by a group of multinational corporations called “the New Founding Fathers of America.” Because the nation is overwhelmed with crime and prisoners, the society allows an annual 12-hour period where all crimes are legal: theft, violence, murder, anything goes.  During the so-called “purge,” all emergency services are suspended and the only rule in place is that harming high-ranking government officials using “Class 4″ weaponry is not allowed.  The film is an obvious attempt to demonize the Tea Party and the arguments against small government by displaying a nightmare scenario illuminating what government services do for society. For confirmation on the film’s intentions, examine what the director James DeMonaco said about his motivations.

“I layered in these New Founding Fathers, this regime that we voted into power at some point, some kind of NRA-thing that took over the country…But I kind of left that to the audience. I think sometimes in my writing I try to spoon feed too much, it’s better to let the audience make their own decisions on things.”

DeMonaco knows that as a “B” movie director if he wants his projects funded, he must adhere to the rules.  Those rules dictate that statist oriented stories should be told in Hollywood.  CLICK HERE TO READ AYN RAND’S WARNING ABOUT THIS ALONG WITH WALT DISNEY AND JOHN WAYNE.  Clearly the criteria is not one of quality, as nobody in their right mind would ever declare that DeMonaco’s The Purge has more box office potential over my own Tail of the Dragon.  The difference is DeMonaco wrote a story against Tea Party ideas where I wrote a story in favor of them.  Through the labor unions of Hollywood, the statist network is already put in place and works lock step with the aims of the federal government.  Further, investors in such projects know that they are being watched, so they give their money to projects like The Purge over projects like Tail of the Dragon hoping that the IRS will not audit them for their other business dealings, and that the NSA will not reveal to the media the affair they are having with a Las Vegas showgirl.  Should such investors give their money to a project like Tail of the Dragon, suddenly their private emails from years ago would be passed along to their wife, their tax records blasted into the media, and harassment  from federal agents would cost them many times more their investment in progressive films through the legal fees incurred.  That is why the PRISM program by the federal government is so dangerous and why crappy movies like The Purge get made while better, and more conservative projects sit on the shelf in Hollywood.

 

The Purge sucks by the way, it’s a horrible film which hopes that millions of dim-witted teenagers will grow up and vote for more government into their lives so that they won’t have to suffer through the grim reality of The Purge.  It is unbelievable that this title actually got a summer release!  It belongs in the first week of February, or around the third week of October, a terrible decision that only demonstrates to what effect Hollywood is willing to sacrifice for the gods of statism.  What is most disconcerting is that such a terrible film could be made, and that statist government has penetrated the blank philosophies of America’s story tellers to such a reckless extent.   Filmmakers like DeMonaco have learned to shape their personal beliefs around those of statism because they lack personal philosophic principles.  They have weak epistemologies that are shaped by where the money for their projects comes from.  That money is influenced by programs like project PRISM who linger behind all of our lives threatening to reveal our secrets if extortion proves faulty.  In this way statism has taken control of many industries under the guise of personal liberty.  But the choices are really between suffering and living, and such choices are not those of free people, but of existing slaves, of which filmmakers like DeMonaco are a part.

You have been told dear reader how the world works, and now you are beginning to have proof that these things I have stated are not conspiracy.  So what are you going to do about it?  Will you continue to be an empty vessel of a mind seeking to defer your thoughts to the popularity which has been shaped by your friendly neighborhood statist government who has the reach to enter entertainment with an obvious film attempting to incite fear toward Tea Party causes?  Or will you fill your head with your own thoughts and fight for the right to have them against a statist regime that uses safety and security as excuses to look at your sexual habits, and personal interests for the sheer aim of gaining a tactical advantage over your very soul?

Is the decision so difficult?  Is it so scary?  Or are you just too lazy to care?  If so, take another drink, get “shit faced” at the local sports bar, and enjoy the fact that some pin headed geek at the NSA has nude pictures of your children and spouses pinned to their cubical, and they are enjoying their anonymity from your wrath.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Peter Facinelli’s ‘The Delivery’: My explosive contribution to a new graphic novel–coming soon!

set2I have kept the clip shown below to myself for the most part until now so not to interfere with the development of the motion picture The Delivery of which I served as a film consultant and stunt double performing all the fire whip stunts.  (CLICK TO REVIEW and see pictures from the set.)  A few years ago I was at a film festival collecting an award for a screenplay I wrote called The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia and was in the middle of filming a film adaption to my novel The Symposium of Justice.    Peter Facinelli and director Rob Gunnerson were at the same festival promoting their recently completed indie film called Arc, which won all kinds of awards and is considered one of the best of its kind.  Facinelli is of course known as  Dr. Carlisle Cullen, from the Twilight series and is a current highly sought after actor in Hollywood.  After a firewhip demonstration I did for the World Stunt Association Peter and Rob approached me about flying out to Los Angeles to work on a project the two were working on called The Delivery.  The result of that endeavor can be seen below.  Essentially they had a high concept idea that they wanted to make a pitch trailer out of for movie studios in conjunction with RealD 3D film equipment development.  The Delivery is a highly dynamic universe of Angels and Demons who inhabit the bodies of men and fight in modern times with swords and fire whips.  Peter wanted me to do the fire whip work for his project which I gladly obliged.

The status of that film is Peter and Rob is developing the concept now as a graphic novel which is the current trend in Hollywood.  Hollywood likes to purchase proven commodities since budgets are so incredibly expensive, and film concepts must be fleshed out in advance these days.

The whip work I did was shopped around Hollywood with the RealD 3D stock footage captured during that shoot and became animation templates for films like Iron Man 2 and the Immortals.  Below Rob talks more about the future direction of The Delivery in an interview.  The entire interview can be seen at the hotlink below:

Interview with Robert Ethan Gunnerson

Producer, Director, Editor of the movie ARC

February 27th 2012

You’ve met with some artists to begin discussions of making “The Delivery” into a comic book, which is a cool idea in my opinion and we would love if you can hold us up to date about this. Back to my question… Have you ever thought about to make “The Delivery” as an animation movie?

Let me use THE AVENGERS as an example here. This summer THE AVENGERS will be released to what will undoubtedly be great success (at least from a financial standpoint, but hopefully from a critical standpoint as well.) It will feature some of today’s most popular actors. But let’s imagine for a moment that THE AVENGERS is a brand new idea that nobody has ever heard of. And imagine Stan Lee walking into a pitch meeting with a studio.Firewhips

“So I’ve got this movie about a group of superheroes,” he says. “One of them is called IRON MAN. He’s this recovering alcohol who has a fake heart of sorts and flies around in a suit of iron. And there’s this other guy called THE HULK. He’s a dude who gets angry and turns into a green, muscular giant who can pick up a car with one hand. And there’s THOR, a Norse God who walks around in the modern world with a giant hammer and wings on his helmet.”

By this point, I guarantee the executives in the room are saying, “Um…no, thanks. Too expensive. Too weird-sounding. Too much of a risk. Too much money. And we don’t get it. Sounds like fun. And maybe if you brought it to us with an audience already built-in, then we would talk. But to do this from scratch? No way.”

That’s what we have with THE DELIVERY. A new concept that needs time so people can get it and Hollywood can “see it.” We have a screenplay for the first movie. We have a 3-D pitch trailer for the first movie. We are talking to artists about creating either a series of comic books or a graphic novel to develop an audience. We have, in fact, talked about doing an animated series for the project. But we need to build from the ground up and handle things in the most reasonable financial fashion. It starts with artwork in still images, and then we will move forward to animation/feature films/etc. as we build followers.

The film adaption I had been working on with a film professor who loved my Symposium novel and wanted to try their hand at producing and directing a movie version of it disintegrated when they failed to produce a finished clip to show at a film festival, which was needed to secure investors.  The film professor learned the hard way why they teach film studies and aren’t actually in the “film business.”  So my project was put on the shelf awaiting more competent hands as the money window opened and closed.  The same thing happened to Peter Facinelli  even with his superstar status after Twilight.  Film studios are taking the safe bets for big budget action pictures with proven action stars and comic book material after the smashing success of Iron Man and the other Marvel Comic characters.  Peter and Rob made their pitch trailer just ahead of the “Marvel wave” so the funding window closed on them as well.

But that doesn’t change the fact that doing such things was and is a lot of fun.  Rob ran a great set and the project was a blast–literally.  Without question we captured the best three-dimensional fireball ever recorded in 3D.  They asked me to give them a 5 to 7 foot fireball that was as deep as it was wide, and I gave it to them.  We shot the scene at about 4 AM as we were on a 12 hour shooting schedule over two days.  When I cracked the fire whip sending a roaring air splitting explosion through the neighborhoods of Burbank, California the set gasp in awe as hundreds of people forgot to breathe for just a moment.  It was the climax of The Delivery trailer shoot and was worth the entire effort.  The RealD 3D execs in the director’s tent all rushed over to shake my hand as they realized what they had captured on film with their state-of-the-art camera system.    Director Gunnerson yelled………………”F**KING AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  His proclamation was nearly as loud as the whip explosion.img_3402

Many people ask me if it makes me angry to see that RealD 3D used that footage captured that night to shop their camera system around to studios and that those same studios did not invite me to do the same work for them on other film projects.  Instead they handed the footage over to animators to copy off of.  So the answer is no.  There is nothing like real life effects, and whenever possible real effects should be done in physical reality.  Animation never looks quite as good second-hand.  However, I cannot blame studios, as I am expensive.   If a kid can animate a fire whip on a computer screen while eating a hamburger from a Burger King drive thru window while copying stock footage of me more power to him.  I am happy to help promote whip art any way possible, and projects like The Delivery and everything that spawns off it do in very positive ways.

However, it might be a while before Peter and Rob can get their film “delivered” to theaters.  They need to build up a Comic Con following, and Peter understands how to do that.  It will take a little time, but will eventually get done.  Meanwhile I have to do the same with my own projects.  In the film business it is like a merry-go-round where the point of opportunity may be seen, but quickly passes as the ride spins around. The way to approach is to wait for that opportunity to present itself again on the upstroke instead of trying to act too late and force a project through before its ready.  Stan Lee at Marvel Comics spent decades building up the demand for his characters, and sometimes it takes that.  I am happy to see that Peter and Rob are planning to do the same, and to take their time with their idea—because it is theirs—and gives it value that is almost always missing from stories that are brought to production too quickly by industry barnacles who only care about the money they can make off a project.  A film must be able to do both, and in the end, The Delivery will “deliver.”

Peter Facinelli’s The Delivery Movie Trailer by CullensNews

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Cincinnati Freedom Expo Speech by K Carl Smith: Ending modern slavery to a government master

One of the most inspiring speeches at the 2013 Cincinnati Freedom Expo came from K Carl Smith founder of the Frederick Douglass Republicans.  Smith as a father and grandfather is an unyielding defender of the Constitution, who has been deeply inspired by the Founding Fathers—a message that has the political left terrified.  As a man of color, Smith has taken the very bold steps of declaring his individuality of thought into advocating his beliefs which unfortunately is unique among African-American demographics who overwhelmingly support the current president Barack Obama not from principle, but due to skin color.  K Carl Smith during his speech to a crowd of thousands was a breath of fresh air as he proudly set the record straight on a number of misconceptions not just related to race, but the little known history of Fredrick Douglass which many in the African-American communities of today are deliberately prevented from learning about in government-run schools.  Such an attempt would logically appear to be one not much different from when slavery in America was practiced, as slave holders attempted to prevent human beings from learning to read, so slaves would not gain the mental capacity to advance their social position.  In the absence of thought, human beings of all color regulate themselves to collectivism and tribal behavior.  Public schools, especially in inner cities are more committed to political preservation and demographic bloc votes than lighting up the young minds of millions with the truth about Frederick Douglass.  That is………..until K Carl Smith came on the scene in 2009 with a message that threatens to ignite a revolution of conservatism in African-American circles and truly end the kind of education slavery that is currently under way in the world of politics.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), was an American abolitionist, orator, and writer, who escaped slavery and urged other blacks to do likewise before and during the American Civil War (1861-1865). He was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, the son of a slave. In 1838 Douglass escaped slavery and reached New Bedford, Massachusetts. Following an antislavery convention in 1841, he became an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His work for the Underground Railroad, a network that helped slaves escape to free areas, did much to further the cause of the abolitionists and made his name a symbol of freedom.

In 1845 Douglass went to England to escape the danger of seizure under the Fugitive Slave Laws. His lectures on the question of slavery in the United States prompted his admirers to raise funds to purchase his freedom. After returning to the United States in 1847, Douglass became the leader of the Underground Railroad in Rochester, New York. There he established the abolitionist newspaper North Star, which he edited until 1860.

During the presidential election of 1860 Douglass campaigned for Abraham Lincoln. Following the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865), he helped raise two regiments of black soldiers. After the war, Douglass fought for enactment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. He later served in governmental positions, including U.S. minister to Haiti (1889-1891).[1]

Douglass supported the Republican Abraham Lincoln who finished the work started by Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers in 1770 when Jefferson represented a slave in court arguing for his freedom stating “Under the law of nature, all men are born free.  Everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will.  This is what is called personal liberty, and is giving him by the Author of Nature.” Tragically Jefferson lost the case.  In 1772, he also argued a similar case.  In 1773 and 1774 a number of American colonies, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, passed antislavery laws, all of which were struck down by the King in 1774.  That year according to David Barton in his book The Jefferson Lies, Jefferson penned “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.”  His purpose was to remind the British that legitimate American concerns were being ignored—one of which was the king’s veto of American antislavery laws.  Jefferson wrote, “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state (by Britain).  But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa.  Yet our repeated attempts to effect this…have been hitherto defeated by His Majesty’s negative (veto).”  It was the King of England at the time who imposed slavery on America against the will and desires of people like Jefferson who inherited his slaves.  As considered property he could not release his slaves to the world to be free, but he could allow them to reside as such on his real estate—which was how many abolitionists were forced to conduct their rebellion against the King and England’s pro slave policies.

Anti-slavery was one of the key reasons for igniting the American Revolution, and if that act of rebellion had not occurred, it is most likely that slavery would still be openly practiced throughout the world.  The Founding Fathers started the dialogue and created the means for patriots like Frederick Douglas to escape slavery and help self-taught politicians like Abraham Lincoln get elected and fight the second part of the American Revolution, the final nail in the coffin of slavery, the Civil War.  It was capitalism that set the slaves free in the north by creating a Constitution that allowed for laissez-faire capitalism.  Machines, innovation, and improved manufacturing techniques allowed the north to show the world that production could be obtained without statism and forced breaking the chains of enslavement on the human mind for the first time in the history of the world, and the revolution of which Frederick Douglass participated in by helping Lincoln become President was one to wipe the last remnants of European slave culture off the North American continent once and for all.

However, jealous Europeans settled America after the War of 1812 and determined to end American independence with education instead of guns—as the later did not work as the British were again defeated in 1815 for good by Andrew Jackson and a band of hearty pirates lead by Jean Lafitte (c. 1776 – c. 1823)  These Victorians entered New England and brought with them the work of Karl Marx and a not so disguised notion of new slavery through the destruction of capitalism in favor of a political system that would preserve European domination of the world through socialism.  As Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln worked to free the slaves, European socialists immigrating into the United States seeking work as educators sought the return of all human beings to the psychological chains of socialism.   The chains of slavery had evolved simply from literal chains to the mental ones of progressivism.   The intent of both was to control the thoughts of mankind in service to collective ideology.

When K Carl Smith spoke in his speech about modern slavery, this was his frame of reference.  When racism is used by the political left and progressive groups to hold as a rally cry historical revision completely made up by left-leaning educators to hold the demographic voting bloc of African-Americans they are practicing modern slavery that is little different from the slavery practiced by the American South sanctioned by the King of England prior to the Revolutionary War.  When public education deliberately attempts to manipulate history, or deny knowledge to young people, especially young African-Americans so that they will vote for Barack Obama because of skin color and loyalty to civil rights causes ignoring the obvious commitment of the American President to socialism, they are guilty of modern slavery.  The practice of teaching revisionist history is no different from the slave owner who prevented their slaves from learning to read so they could keep them ignorant, and thus dependent on the master for their life and earnings.  Any political group that attempts to hold the mind of another in a suppressed state is guilty of slavery and in modern politics, it happens all the time.  This is what K Carl Smith is fighting against, the modern slavery of suppressing the human mind from thinking, and knowing history and the realities of the American Constitution.

When a statist regime, such as what the current American government is, attempts to pay women to have babies, take control of their health care, their financial resources, and even their housing, the government is performing the same task as the slave master who tells their slaves that it is they who puts a roof over their head, feeds them, and gives them life.  The slave master can continue this only if they keep those slaves from knowing the truth, from learning to read or interacting with other minds.  The ghettos of inner cities are in the state they are not because the people who live there are free, but because they are still slaves.  The real shackles and whips that were used in the past to draw blood have been traded in for ignorance preached in public schools, and financial dependency which arrives in their mailboxes in the form of a check from government.   In this way, the chains are not needed, because the minds of the slave have been suppressed so that they never stray too far from their mailboxes, where the money arrives.  In return, the slave holding government gets not labor, but votes so that they can continue to stay in office for the same intimidating reasons that the King of England denied Jefferson the abolition of slaves in 1770.  The goal of all statist governments is to convince their slaves to do their labor under coercion for the strategic aims of the ruling minority.  The slaves can be literal, or figurative, but the behavior and aims are all the same.  K Carl Smith is preaching against modern slavery, and is using the example of Frederick Douglass to bring freedom to all men and women of all colors, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak.  He is a wonderful advocate of freedom that is performing a monumental modern feat that is in essence the third step of removing slavery from the world.  K Carl Smith is attacking through his Frederick Douglass Republicans the notion that slavery of a human being is not being done today in the traditional sense, but through the human mind, and real freedom begins and ends there.  It is his effort to break that slavery once and for all in the African-American communities and for that he is a modern hero that will earn a place in history comparable to the giants of history hitherto mentioned.

Read more at K Carl Smith’s website

http://frederickdouglassrepublican.com/Walter Williams

[1]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Second Call Defense: The first defense is a firearm, the second is from the parasites that follow

One of the great themes of this site is to highlight the many ways that progressives have attacked traditional American culture.  Progressives have an intense desire to wean Americans away from all forms of self-reliance so that national collectivism and addiction to government services are provoked.  This has never been more evident than in relation to The Second Amendment of The United States Constitution.  In the good ol’ days when a criminal nut-case broke into a home to steal a loaf of bread and was shot dead by the homeowner on the front porch of their property, the sheriff might come out—make a record of the case while enjoying some corn whisky brewed from a room in the back of the home.  The homeowner would be treated respectfully and with honor and the assumption of guilt would be placed squarely on the character lying on the porch stiffening up due to rigor mortis.  However, not any more—as progressives have seeped like viral insects into every aspect of American culture, legal, media, education, elected office, etc.  The homeowner shooting intruders on their property have become saturated with panicky analysis and over-zealot gun grabbing politicians who want to build careers off their suffering.  Progressives directly and indirectly have destroyed the very concept of individual rights in America for which The Second Amendment seeks to protect.  In 2013 if a homeowner shoots a criminal nut case on their front porch the homeowner will be arrested aggressively and thrown into the back of a police car.  Their computers and personal possessions will be confiscated and scrutinized and the property held by the state until prosecution of the shooter is concluded.  The shooter will be charged with murder as the attacker wasn’t inside the home.  The situation will be made worse when it is discussed that the attacker was only armed with a knife deeming no immediate threat to the homeowner who could have avoided opening the door and hoped the attacker would move away on their own.  Progressive groups would then attack the homeowner in court through testimony stating that the attacker was simply hungry because they lost their job and needed food.  Media outlets will then broadcast the story all over America about how the attacker had a “collective right” to the possessions of the homeowner and that if the shooter had only been willing to share his assets with the attacker both would be alive and free today saving the tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs.    When the frustrated defendant proclaims on the stand that “it’s not fair that a nut-case trying to attack their private property had more rights than they did,” the prosecuting attorney would simply respond, “how do you know the slain victim was a nut case?  Are you a psychologist?  Where did you study?  What degree do you hold that enables you to proclaim that the victim was a so-called nut-case?  These are the kind of things only professions are qualified to answer.”  This is why George Lang along with a fistful of other patriots has started a new legal group called Second Call Defense.

In fact that was George Lang playing the hypothetical role of a homeowner defending his property from an attacker.  In the video several examples were given about real life tragedies where the homeowner used a gun to defend their life yet found themselves in financial ruin because of the legal aftermath where parasitic entities sought to capitalize off progressive gun legislation that is entirely too aggressive.  Lang knows a lot from an insider’s track about how the legal system can be just as much of a parasite attacking personal liberty as an intruder in a home.  He is a trustee of West Chester Twp, in Ohio where the community pays its police department better wages than any place else from Pittsburg to Indianapolis.  George has seen firsthand many cases similar to the example above cross his desk not just in his home town but all across America.   This is the primary reason that Lang and his group have teamed up with The Buckeye Firearms Foundation to offer gun owners, supporters of The Second Amendment, and property owners’ legal help through Second Call Defense.  They also offer preventative measures against the progressive encroachment of a legal system gone mad.

http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/8823

Progressives wish to believe that government has all the answers and can 100% of the time be relied upon to correct social debaucheries.  Do-gooder politicians like Senator Diane Feinstein have built their careers injecting their progressive beliefs into every tragedy that strategically seeks to focus legal analysis away from individual liberty toward collective salvation.   For well over 100 years now this gradual eroding of personal liberty has shifted the focus of behavioral studies away from any form of property ownership toward collective necessity.  In court shooters will be grilled on the stand as to “how did they knew the attacker was a threat if they were simply on the porch and not brandishing a knife?” The burden of proof falls on the homeowner and not the dead victim as progressive legal interpretations have given the attacker the right to do as they please on the homeowner’s front porch.  The homeowner has an obligation to call the “authorities” who will then inject themselves into the business of the homeowner and supersede their authority on their own property.  To the progressive, the issue is not about guns, or the rights of the shooter, or even the dead body on the porch—the real villain is their hatred of private property and a sinister desire to erase the concept of it from the minds of Americans.

Yet, even if the homeowner called the authorities, there is no guarantee that they will act honorably and in the best interest of the caller.  As George Lang knows all too well, the cops sometimes find that they are not too far away from the decrepit mind of an attacker and are all too tempted to abuse their power at the expense of the homeowner.  Lang had to participate recently in a West Chester Township financial settlement where over-zealous young cops seemingly hungry to prove their manhood beat an un-armed drunk after a fight at a late night sports bar.  The drunk wasn’t even part of the fight that had occurred much earlier but was simply the last person left on the scene.   The cops wanted to exert their authority on someone abusing the man beating him senseless.  Even with video evidence telling the story convincingly the superiors sided with the officers proving beyond doubt that in a court of law, the drunk had little chance of defending himself as all the cops had their stories aligned.  It was when a grand jury examined the case that Lang realized the cops were in the wrong and the decision had to be made to pay the victim in a settlement to avoid further financial detriment to the community because of the police mistake.  CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE ON THE STORY WITH VIDEO.  So even if the cops are called to save the property of a homeowner, there is no way to know what type of officer might show up in a police car these days in a society that values deception over honor.

Second Call Defense was created to provide some help with these types of gun related cases.  Once an attacker decides they want whatever it is that a property owner has, only one threat has been contained if the property owner uses a gun to stop that threat.  From there an entire legal system of progressive activists, deal making politicians, morally deficient law enforcement, and presiding family members who may not have cared one ounce for the life of the defeated attacker, but in death through civil lawsuits and the promise of easy money the life of a typical scum-bag suddenly becomes worth a king’s ransom.  A shooter protecting their property in 2013 America not only must protect themselves from attackers in the middle of the night as shown in the video above, but from the legal parasites who wish to make their careers off the backs of tragedy which is often the real threat.  It is that second threat that Second Call Defense seeks to protect its members from.  No other organization offers such a service in all of America.  Second Call Defense offers training and education on legal firearm use, emergency resources such as a 24/7 legal hotline and upfront cash for attorney retainers and bonds.  Insurance coverage for criminal and civil protection that is backed by the NRA endorsed insurance program is also offered.  Most people can’t afford to put up thousands of dollars to get up to $10,000 upfront for an attorney retainer, immediate cash for a bond up to $250,000, up to $500 per day in wage compensation while in court, up to 40 sessions of psychological support, and up to $250,000 accidental shooting protection, $50,000 criminal defense reimbursement, unlimited civil suit defense protection, and $250,000 civil suit damages protection.  Second Call Defense does all this and more.  The first defense is in the property owner defending their life with a firearm.  The second defense is from the parasites who seek to make livings off the misery left in the wake.  From those, a gun cannot protect anyone.  But now there is a group that can, Second Call Defense.

For more about Second Call Defense check out their website:

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20007

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Palaces of Evil and Factories of Fear: Kim Grant tells the story of alleged Kings School System abuse

For me, it began with only a curious inquiry of why my school district seemed to always be out of money no matter how high the taxes were, or how many levies were passed in the name of children.  I would engage in debates publicly about the nature of education, speak on television and do a lot of radio addressing many of the conditions I saw that would improve education in general, and I hoped that by simply pointing these things out, things might improve discreetly for the better.  But what I discovered with each rock unturned were a pack of some of the most vicious bullies laying in concealment that I have ever seen and it was quickly realized that much of the money spent on public education gets soaked up in the bureaucracy of bullies.  If it’s not the members of the school administration seeking to cover-up every bad deed done by a teacher—and stopping at little to execute the task, it is the radical teachers unions themselves who stop at nothing to advance a progressive education agenda.  Often the school board members in almost every case will go right along with the many acts of villainy they witness to protect the public image of their school—because in public education image is everything.  Like chess board pawns, the guilty parents who feel deeply bad about the role they play in their own child’s life rally to the cause of the school because the neurotic parents wish to believe that they can “purchase” for their children a good life—which they can’t.  Parent/Teacher groups often align to become bullies against the community putting pressure on businesses who don’t support tax increases, stealing thousands of dollars of any political propaganda against their cause without legal recourse and stopping at nothing to destroy the lives of those who stand in their way.  I have personally seen massive cover-ups, destroyed property, harassed businesses, extremely organized smear campaigns equivalent to what might be seen in a presidential election, and a mafia like approach to education that has caused me to move from a moderate reformer of public education to one who despises the entire process and everyone in it.  But don’t take my word for it, and don’t think for a second dear reader that these things are only indicative to my school.  I live in one of the best.  These problems are in every public school and are the largest modern social issue that the human being has in modern times—even bigger than the national debt issue.  To gain a perspective on just how big the problem is, listen below to Kim Grant who was a former teacher union president describe her reasons for blowing the whistle on an alleged bully case at Kings Local Schools involving a teacher sadistically torturing her special needs students.  During the course of the broadcast below Kim will discuss much of what I just stated, which might be a shock to the ears.  So beware.

The number one reason that more people do not come forward to stand up to these bullies who run public education are the same reasons that people do not stand up to the mob—self preservation.  Most people fear the retaliation that often comes, and the social stigma that has protected public education for years.  I could write an entire book about my personal experiences alone.  Many residents like Kim said are afraid that the school will take out their wrath on the students, so they do not make public statements at school board meetings and they certainly don’t go on record in the newspaper.  Also, many parents know at least one person whether it be a mother, a sibling, an aunt or uncle—somebody who works for a school system somewhere, and this makes Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners especially difficult—I have in my family four that I have to speak to a few times a year—and I know how hard it is for me, so I can sympathize how it is for most people.  Many parents just keep quiet to save the peace in their families.  I have even had people who directly supported my efforts with thousands of dollars wish to keep their activity disguised for fear that they might run into the opposition at their local church, or have the teachers union minions—the “latte sipping prostitutes” as I call them, boycott their businesses with revenue shattering collective withdrawal hoping to crush them out of existence.  Further parents are afraid that if they come out against public education that their boss or co-workers might retaliate against them in the workplace.  The incentive to keep one’s thoughts to oneself is very high even when they see many wrongs happening around them.  The need to protect ones career, and social status often takes precedence over righteousness.  These are the grim realities of public education, and it is no wonder that children aren’t learning anything and growing up lost and confused about their roles in the world.  They watch their parents cave under the pressure of this massive machine, and they seek to rebel against it for a while, but in the end, they become part of the machine themselves only to walk through life in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.

I have had many document requests pulled at my school of Lakota, some of which can be seen here.  (CLICK)  There is a reason that much of the information involving public education is “public.” It is so that people like Kim Grant can pull those records and expose wrong doing in order to protect the children of the school from activity that might be unbecoming.  Kim being a former insider knows the tricks, where normal parents do not, or don’t want to know for fear of the responsibility that such knowledge might bring.  The schools are set up like mafias to prevent parents and other tax payers from doing what Kim did.  The schools cannot legally stop the request, they must comply, but they will put a target on the people who try to look into their affairs.  That is how they prevent the “will” to investigate and there isn’t a reporter in any community who wants to be blacklisted from future work because they exposed some wrong at their local school.  Most parents have children in the district and fear the recourse against those children if they make trouble.  I have been in meetings where professional, highly educated school officials turned into beasts from the depths of Hell within one sentence of discussion once they realized that my temper could not be quelled by good tidings.

Public education is a terrible scam that is not helping kids at all in its current state.   It needs a complete overhaul, and time will reveal that to everyone, as more and more stories like the one in Kings is told publicly.  The issue is not isolated to Kings by any stretch of the imagination.  Every public school has these types of scandalous abusers within their walls—and to some extent it is human nature to have such personalities.  But the job of the administrators and school boards is to remove those people from employment in defense of the children—and that is not happening in almost every case.  Instead, the school as a collective unit rallies behind the evil to suppress it from view, and this is what children have been learning in public education and our society will pay gravely for it.  There are not enough Kim Grants out there fighting on behalf of all children and their cowardly parents are too fearful of being targeted as a “reprehensible” for stating the obvious.  Until there are, public schools will be palaces of evil and factories of fear.  In their current state they only serve the employees at the expense of children, and that is a folly that needs to be corrected without concern for personal reputations, or internal family politics.  Thank goodness at Kings at least Kim Grant did the right thing which began with a public records request.  The same could be done at every single school in The United States with a simple request by a bold district resident—which in the end is the best thing for children that any grown adult can do for their educations—expose them to goodness, and the system of checks and balances that they see lacking every day, so that they can trust that the world does contain justice and people with the courage to wield it.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

How A School Board Should Work: The Success of Kelly Kohls in Springboro

With all that I have said about the proper way to manage a public school system the birth place of such thoughts has not previously been revealed.  But I am happy to reveal now that birthplace after my friend Kelly Kohls spoke at the West Chester Tea Party to a packed house on February 19th 2013.  Several years ago Kelly invited my wife and I to The Golden Lamb for a special meeting in one of the upstairs banquet rooms for a group she started with other Ohio school board members called Educate Ohio.  Kelly had recently become a member of the Springboro school board and had a lot of ideas on how to improve education quality for children while driving down the costs for the taxpayers.  Since that very innovative meeting Kelly has went on to become the head of the Warren County Tea Party and is now president of the Springboro school board and managed to drive the per pupil cost of their district downward.  Kelly has become everything that I would consider to be the most pristine example of what a school board president should be for every school in Ohio.  Watch the video below to see how she did it, and how the same type of thing could be duplicated in any district.  Her style of management should be the example that every school in the United States should follow.  But it’s not easy, if it was, everyone would do it.  And as Kelly will describe below she has faced many challenges.  In fact, on the eve of the below speech the SEA, (Springboro Education Association) filed a complaint against Kelly’s school board for unfair labor practices—which I will get into more detail in a bit.

I knew when I attended The Golden Lamb meeting years ago that good things were going to come out of Kelly Kohls and I am very proud of the very good work she has done.  It is far from easy to stand up to organized labor the way she has, but her district is much, much better for it.  If you watched the video above, you learned that Springboro’s per pupil costs are on a downward trend.  They are now into the $7,000 range down from the mid $8,000 range and this is unprecedented for any school board anywhere in Ohio.  They are actually now projecting a budget surplus which is also unprecedented.  In addition, Kelly has managed to bring up the weaknesses in the district rating system and performance of students by setting new standards of performance that are not driven by union controlled lobby expectations, but instead by common sense.

One of the major ways that Kelly has managed to gain control of the costs in Springboro is that she convinced her school board to drop out of the OSBA organization.  The Ohio School Board Association is a membership driven entity that is locked arm and arm with the Ohio Education Association, the largest teacher labor union in Ohio.  The goal of the OSBA is to train new school board members to show the community a unified front while actually taking direction from the teacher union leadership.  As soon as school board members are elected they are whisked away to Columbus for a weekend of “bonding” with other education professionals so that loyalties can be achieved and consensus delivered.  This always works against the tax payers and does absolutely no good in controlling education budgets.  Kelly’s school board has cancelled their membership to the OSBA and instead has started her own leadership group designed to teach school board members to think independently of the OSBA and the OEA.

Another thing that Kelly revealed in her speech that was very illuminating was that Ohio no longer requires teachers to have a master’s degree from college to teach—which is contrary to what many districts have been telling the public when levy pushes are provoked.  If I had a quarter for every time a teacher stated that they had to pursue a master’s degree to become a kindergarten teacher at Lakota there would be enough money to fund that school for decades with the result.  The required master’s degree mandate uttered from public schools has been deliberately misleading.  Ohio for four years now has dropped the requirement for master’s degrees for public education teachers.  The pursuit of master’s degrees has artificially driven up the labor costs of teachers through step increases which amplify budget costs.  Kelly has begun to make decisions from her school board with that knowledge which has led to a savings of the overall district financial requirements.

Of course the labor unions have had many problems with Kelly Kohls.  After the meeting shown above Kelly and I had a good laugh reminiscing about all the reporters we know who eat out of the hand of the OSBA and local teacher unions.  For Kelly it is the Dayton Daily News, a Cox Media division that writes many hit pieces against her.  For me it has become The Cincinnati Enquirer which has been chronicled with much fanfare.  The newspapers are functioning from a position of desperation.  They need content to fill their paper and they often get that content from the local school system.  They need a good relationship with the school system more than they need a relationship with the reformers of education, so loyalties fall in line accordingly.  But in Kelly’s case, especially now that she’s the president of her school board, the media needs her again, but she doesn’t need them—so they are in a precarious situation in Springboro, Ohio.

The unions see the writing on the wall under the leadership of Kelly Kohls, and know that they are losing their power and influence.  There is no public tolerance for a strike in Springboro or any of the Southern Ohio districts, so they know they cannot play that card in the future to extort more money from the district.  Unions are also losing the power of the media, because the negative press they attempt to wield has only helped Kelly Kohls and those like her become stronger and more influential.   So when Kelly indicated that the school board wished to begin negotiations on a contract that is up in June of 2013 the SEA union filed a motion against Kelly’s school board with an “unfair labor practice” complaint.  The union desires to not negotiate the new union contract until the last minute, using chaos to drive up the costs in their favor, which is an old union tactic. Kelly, being a good manager is trying to get the contract negotiated well before hand so that the numbers come out in favor of the district—which is what she is supposed to do.  The action taken by the union is a toothless gesture.  Without question they will attempt the same tactic again and again in the months to come trying to turn the public sentiment against Kohls, but it won’t work.  Kelly will gain in popularity with each labor attempt because normal people admire courage, and respect people who stand squarely against adversity.  So the more the Dayton Daily News writes about the labor dispute in Springboro, the stronger the public will lean in Kelly’s direction.  This has placed the Springboro school board for the first time in perhaps 100 years in a position of strength, and is certainly a modern first in Ohio.  Kelly’s Springboro school board is the shining modern example of how a school board should operate, and they are having immediate and noticeable success that is very dramatic.

The success of Springboro is dispelling all the myths that levy advocates for public education have been using to increase property taxes with an ultimate subtle aim of fulfilling Agenda 21 goals by collapsing suburbs through taxation using progressive groups like labor unions to set the mechanisms in place.  The unfortunate victims have been the children who by Kelly’s charts have been denied proper educations in favor of an education system designed to benefit the adult employees at the expense of youth.  The fight that Kelly has been combating is one that is of the highest honor, because in the history of Ohio far into the future, it will be remembered who fought on behalf of the children, and the future of not only Ohio, Springboro, or education in general, but the future of all mankind in the minds of our youth.  Kelly Kohls is fighting that fight and has been successful.  Now all the children of the world need is more brave souls to join Kelly in this fight against education tyranny so that proper management of tax payer resources can be provided, and the children can directly benefit.  The thieves of public education need to be put out of business, and it takes tough ladies like Kelly Kohls and a handful of others to advance that cause in order to preserve our species from the downward spiral that is currently engulfing us all in public education.

If you are a school board member or would like to become one and need guidance, please feel free to contact Kelly Kohls and the other members of the OSBLC (Ohio School board Leadership Council) at the link below.

http://ohioschoolboardleadershipcouncil.com/board.htm

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Obama Found Unconstitutional: Do I have to say “I told you so?”

In case you may have missed it due to the fact that 90% of the media both national and local are in the zipper of Barack Obama—because they were all taught in the same progressive institutions under the same progressive guidelines–some of Obama’s appointments made one year ago were recently found to be unconstitutional.  Well, this is no surprise to me as I covered the issue here at the OW with a direct letter to the office of John Boehner, which of course he ignored.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Boehner if he had listened to me, and about a dozen other people from his district might have led the GOP to properly reel in the power grabbing Obama under the authority given to the House Speaker, and would most likely be working with a Republican White House by this time instead left-wing Weather Underground radicals.  The courts would have sided with Boehner if he had made a bold move one year ago, but instead he decided to play it safe–to play golf and take polite little jabs at his good buddy, Barack Obama publicly, while back slapping with him privately.  What was it that Biden said to Boehner not that long ago——“We’re at the gate, man.  We’re at the gate.”  Hmmmm, what do you suppose Vice President Biden meant by that?  Boehner ignored my message—because I’m not “at the gate………………” and dismissed my suggestions and warnings as those of a radical “right winger” from his home district who likes to hang out with those Constitutional purists in the Tea Party.

When Boehner’s office workers spoke to me they had that look of amusement on their faces that is so common with politicians these days.  After all, they had a plan.  Boehner and Ohio Republicans from John Kasich all the way down to the local trustees and commissioners were going to play it cool, take the high ground, let the Supreme Court overturn Obamacare during the summer of 2012, then run Mitt Romney against Obama in the fall where they would attack the President’s economic record.  Boehner’s office had “big plans” and they didn’t want to listen to crazy Rich Hoffman standing in their office dripping wet from a rare January thunderstorm where I rode to his office on my motorcycle and was asking Boehner to uphold the Constitution against Obama and his friends of American reformers.

Now here we are in 2013, Republicans lost to the White House due to the emotional pleas of the mentally unfortunate, they lost Obamacare to the bizarre ruling by Justice Roberts.  Now Republicans have to worry about Obama appointing more liberals to the Supreme Court—forget the 5-4 rulings in their favor in the future, because as Roberts proved, all it takes is one or two Supreme Court Justices to turn the whole world upside down.  And because of the Roberts opinion there is no doubt drool running from the mouths of Obama’s legal team who will challenge the unconstitutional rulings cited against The White House—after all, history cannot be allowed to remember such things, because in lawyer circles it is case-law that matters, not the original laws.

But as for now at least someone had the courage to defend the Constitution, and not snicker at the naiveté of a constituent who expected justice to be upheld on a rainy January day in 2012.   As the law stands today, President Obama has been found to have acted unconstitutionally, and my comments about Obama in my letter to John were not out-of-line in the least.  They were what all Americans should expect, if they intended to live within the letters of the law, and not be afraid to piss off the President and miss the next golf outing so they can all pretend they are masters of the universe when the actual money they are spending came from the American treasury.  Boehner had his shot, and he didn’t take it…………………..and I’m not talking about golf swings.  His personal loss was a tremendous loss to the Republican Party.  But more than anything, America loses when people like the pretentious “political class” look down their noses at Constitutional purists with a disdain more fitting in Nottingham England than West Chester, Ohio on the eve of the second Civil War.  Next time I won’t write a letter and hope for the legal system to listen.  I’ll just exercise my Constitutional rights on my own—before I lose them in a golf bet between John Boehner and Barack Obama.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Belching, Farting, and Eating Chicken Wings: The greatest threat on Earth is stupid people

The reason I am so hard on public education and the college system in America is because they have let us down.  I mean educators are always talking about how important education is to our society, but look around.  Just a quick glance around the grocery store would seem to indicate massive failure of our education system that is unquestionable.  The greed, and politics involved in all of education has left our society dangerously dim-witted as a nation, and I do not care if it hurts the feelings of the people who I’m thinking of.  We are well beyond a point of no return and the quality of the people in America today is a direct result of our educational system.  The American people are the direct result of the kind of things they pour into their brains, and much of the garbage that we see today can be blamed on politics and the kind of education shaped by it.  Education does not get a free pass because of the children involved.  Quite the contrary, we should look hard at ourselves for our future generations and consider if this is the best that we can do, because if it is—we might as well fold up the tent and go home.

The situation is so bad in America that I am actually surprised when I meet someone with half a brain and that should not be the case.  We have allowed ourselves to believe that being “cool” is being stupid, and this is the heart of the problem.  This is also why I have so much anger at progressives, because it is they who have advocated such nonsense.  No civilization can aspire to new heights when stupidity is craved and intelligence is punished.  The math just does not add up, and anyone who supports such a structure is an enemy of the state.

Peter Griffin from Family Guy and Homer Simpson from the Simpsons do not represent life in my family.  I find Homer and Peter reprehensible.  I do laugh at the jokes because there is truth in them, but there is also sadness.  These days whenever an opinion is given, people feel they must add the small line—“I’m no expert but—“ before giving their opinion.  This is because our legal culture has turned everyone into an expert in a specialized field.  If one is not an expert, then they are not qualified to provide their opinion.   This has led our society to behave like a bunch of mindless drones ill-equipped to pass any kind of judgment or opinion, and under such eyes evil spreads, because there is nobody to check it.  Nobody feels “qualified” to cast an opinion so they don’t. Instead they just go with the flow as a brainless blob of energy whisks everyone through life aimlessly.  As a result, society is regressing at an astonishing rate and there may be no repair for it.  I am beginning to think that Armageddon won’t be a fabulously evil chapter of fire and brimstone emanating from devils as they roam the earth, but a bunch of brainless thugs chanting for their union rights as their minds refuse to instruct them how to walk to the end of their driveways.  These minds of the future may only be capable of stuffing their faces with food, while laughing endlessly at their ability to belch and fart.

Since I was a very small child, I have despised belching and farting—because there is something about those basic human tasks that point to un-sophistication.  When a baby craps in their diaper they smile because they are aware that they did something.  Their mind produced an action that they see, feel and smell manifesting in reality.  But when a 10-year-old does the same, it is an insult to the intelligence that the youth has achieved so far in their life.  Such things should no longer be funny to them at age ten.  They should be smarter, and striving for higher pleasures.  But the situation is even worse when a 40-year-old man does such a thing.  A man should be proud of the products of their minds, not their ability to shit their pants or pass digestive gases from their mouths.  That is the world we live in today, just visit a sports bar during a football playoff game.  Farting is more honorable than reading a book, and that is why our society is so damn stupid.

Many expect me to apologize for some of my insulting comments, but I won’t do it, because many people insult me just by their public exhibition of stupidity.  I place the blame on the backs of politicians and education squarely.  Both have failed miserably, and do not deserve money, pity, or a continuation of their destructive behavior.  If there was ever an enemy to the human race, it is the belching 40-year-old who is too stupid to pay attention to anything but a sports score.  But worse than that are the people who failed to teach that poor soul that he was more than just a biological entity that could eat, have sex, and exhaust bodily gases.  Our society is full of these Homer Simpson’s and it is one of the greatest tragedies the human race has ever suffered that so many of them exist at the same time.

Who else is there to blame but those who taught them to be that way?

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Difference between Us and Them: Morning Joe Team shocked by NRA advertisement

‘One of the grossest things they have ever seen?’ This is what the Morning Joe Team on the Progressive channel MSNBC said in regard to a recent NRA advertisement. Obviously these people don’t remember how poorly George Bush’s children were treated when he was president. But they have conveniently forgotten all about that now. Watch and listen how shallow the minds and memory of these progressives are.

There is no dealing with people like this from the “lean forward” channel. Wasn’t that the campaign slogan for the last Lakota school levy, and Barry Obama’s latest run for President? Progressivism is for these mush minded types, not real Americans. They haven’t a clue as to what the Constitution is about, nor do they care to learn. They wish us all to “lean forward” straight into the same brick wall that all of Europe is hitting. They are the primary example of why America must never give up their guns, because it will be these types of people who will run everything.

They can’t even remember the Bush Presidency which was only 5 years ago.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com