Tag: Business

The 2026 Ohio Gubernatorial Race: Vivek Ramaswamy’s Commanding Position Against Amy Acton’s COVID Legacy and the Democrat Playbook 

As the dust settles on Ohio’s May 5, 2026, primary election, the stage is set for one of the most consequential gubernatorial contests in the state’s recent history. Biotech entrepreneur and Trump-endorsed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy emerged as the overwhelming GOP nominee, crushing fringe challenger Casey Putsch with approximately 82.5% of the vote (673,902 votes to Putsch’s 143,257). Ramaswamy swept every single county in Ohio, a remarkable show of unity across urban, suburban, and rural areas. On the Democratic side, former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton secured the nomination unopposed, garnering around 742,000–760,000 votes in a low-energy primary. Overall voter turnout reached about 22.6% of registered voters, a modest uptick from recent midterm cycles. 

This matchup pits a dynamic, pro-growth outsider in Ramaswamy—backed by President Donald Trump and positioning Ohio as the nation’s top economic powerhouse—against Acton, whose public profile remains indelibly tied to the state’s aggressive COVID-19 response. As one conservative commentator noted in a recent podcast monologue, the race is far from the neck-and-neck horse race portrayed in some polling and media narratives. While recent surveys show a tight contest (with some giving Acton a slight edge or Ramaswamy a narrow lead), the ground game, Trump’s coattails, independent-voter outreach, and Acton’s historical liabilities suggest that Ramaswamy enters the general election with a structural advantage that could widen significantly by November 3, 2026. 

To fully appreciate this contest, we must delve into the candidates’ backgrounds, the primary results and their implications, the lingering economic scars from the pandemic era, comparative policy outcomes in neighboring states, and the broader political currents reshaping Ohio. This analysis expands on grassroots conservative perspectives—while incorporating verifiable data on turnout, economic metrics, investment challenges, and campaign tactics. Far from a replay of “yesteryear” Democrat strategies, this race highlights how progressive governance models have faltered in a post-Trump political landscape.

Candidate Profiles: Contrasting Visions for Ohio’s Future

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati native and biotech billionaire, represents a fresh face in Ohio politics despite his national profile from the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Born to Indian immigrant parents, Ramaswamy built a successful pharmaceutical company (Roivant Sciences) before pivoting to public service. His Trump endorsement came early and emphatically, framing him as a “young, strong, and smart” leader committed to meritocracy, deregulation, and economic revival. Ramaswamy’s campaign emphasizes making Ohio the “#1 state” through pro-business policies, workforce upskilling, and attracting high-tech investment in sectors like semiconductors and biotechnology. He campaigns on the “high road,” avoiding personal attacks while highlighting policy contrasts. Critics from the far-right fringes—such as Putsch, dubbed the “car guy” for his automotive-themed online persona—have leveled baseless claims about Ramaswamy’s heritage or loyalty, echoing outdated nativist arguments. Ramaswamy has dismissed these as irrelevant, noting his personal integrity and fair play: his running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, bolsters legislative experience. 

In stark contrast stands Dr. Amy Acton, a physician from Youngstown with a compelling personal story of overcoming hardship in a steel mill family. She rose through public health ranks to become Ohio’s Health Director in 2019 under Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Acton’s national visibility peaked during the early COVID-19 crisis, when she joined DeWine for daily briefings and advocated strict mitigation measures. These included Ohio’s first-in-the-nation school closures, stay-at-home orders (issued March 22, 2020), business shutdowns, and even the postponement of the state’s presidential primary. Supporters praised her as a calming, data-driven voice who “flattened the curve” and protected hospitals. However, detractors—including many business owners, parents, and conservatives—blame her policies for devastating economic and educational fallout, from mental health crises among youth to prolonged business closures. Acton resigned in June 2020 amid personal threats and protests, later serving briefly as a health advisor before entering the private sector and academia. Her 2026 campaign, with running mate and former Democratic Party chair David Pepper, focuses on “power back to the people,” affordability, and a critique of “billionaires and special interests.” Yet her record remains a focal point of Republican attacks, with Ramaswamy labeling her tenure an “abandonment of responsibility.” 

Acton’s campaign has leaned on traditional Democratic infrastructure, including legal support from figures like election attorney Mark Elias, who has been linked to aggressive tactics such as cease-and-desist letters targeting critics. Pepper, a vocal strategist, has served as an attack dog, pushing narratives that question Ramaswamy’s Ohio investment record or allege personal scandals (e.g., unsubstantiated claims of extramarital affairs, which can easily be dismissed as fabrications). These echo “yesteryear” playbook moves but risk backfiring in an era of heightened voter skepticism toward centralized government overreach. 

Primary Season: A Landslide for Ramaswamy, Unopposed for Acton

The May 5 primaries crystallized Republican enthusiasm. Ramaswamy’s 82.5% victory margin—far exceeding pre-primary polls showing him at 50-76%—demonstrated broad consolidation. He won 60-90%+ in nearly every county, from Democratic-leaning urban centers to deep-red rural areas, per county-by-county maps. Putsch, representing a self-described “radical right” element with fringe ideas (e.g., racial primacy in voting or extreme nativism), captured only 17.5% and never posed a serious threat. GOP insiders viewed him as illegitimate, akin to past primary spoilers. This sweep signals unified party backing, contrasting with historical GOP infighting (e.g., the 2016 Trump vs. Cruz/Rubio dynamics, in which critics eventually coalesced post-nomination). 

Acton’s uncontested path yielded solid but unremarkable Democratic turnout. Overall, the low primary participation (22.6%) underscores that the real battle begins now, targeting the 2-3% of independents and soft partisans who decide the general election. Ramaswamy’s primary dominance positions him to inherit the full Republican machinery, amplified by Trump’s upcoming Ohio appearances. 

The Economic Reckoning: COVID Policies, Recovery, and Investment Challenges

Central to the race is Acton’s COVID legacy and its economic toll. Ohio’s early lockdowns contributed to sharp job losses—hundreds of thousands in spring 2020—with uneven recovery. While statewide GDP rebounded (Ohio’s 2023 GDP was around $884 billion, according to BEA data), sectors such as hospitality, retail, and education lagged. Critics argue Acton’s orders exacerbated long-term damage: prolonged school closures harmed student outcomes, and business restrictions drove some enterprises to relocate. Ramaswamy has tied this to Ohio’s failure to recover fully, positioning his administration to reverse it through deregulation and investment incentives. 

Ohio’s business climate has improved—ranked No. 7 nationally and No. 1 in the Midwest in the 2026 Chief Executive CEO survey—but faces headwinds. The high-profile Intel semiconductor plant in New Albany (announced in 2022 with up to $20-100 billion promised) exemplifies stalled momentum: construction delays pushed first production from 2025/2026 to 2030-2031, with Intel investing $5+ billion by early 2026 but citing market and financial caution. Opponents blame pandemic-era policies and regulatory uncertainty; supporters note national chip shortages and the federal CHIPS Act. Regardless, such delays highlight the risk of capital flight if Ohio appears unstable. 

Comparisons to neighboring states underscore the stakes. Indiana, a right-to-work state since 2012, has often outperformed Ohio in manufacturing retention and unemployment (recently ~3.3% vs. Ohio’s ~4.1-4.2%). Studies on right-to-work show mixed but generally positive effects on job growth in competitive sectors. Michigan (post-right-to-work repeal) and Pennsylvania (swing state with union influence) have seen volatile recoveries, with Michigan’s auto sector still grappling with post-COVID supply chains. Kentucky, under GOP leadership but with its own challenges (e.g., successor dynamics under former Gov. Beshear), attracts some investment but lags in high-tech draws. Ohio, lacking right-to-work status despite past attempts (e.g., failed 2011 SB5), relies on tax incentives and workforce development—but Acton’s era amplified perceptions of anti-business hostility. Post-pandemic GDP growth has been comparable across the region (Ohio ~2.1% in recent years), yet Ohio’s unemployment edged higher in some BLS snapshots, and narratives of a business exodus persist. Ramaswamy’s platform—aligning with a potential Trump administration—promises to lure dollars from Indiana, Michigan, and beyond by emphasizing economic viability over lockdowns. 

Unions add another layer. Traditionally Democratic strongholds (teachers, public sector) have shifted toward Trump-era populism on trade and energy. Acton’s ties to labor risk alienating moderates if framed as favoring centralized mandates over job creation. Ramaswamy’s pro-worker, anti-regulation stance could peel independents.

Campaign Tactics, Polling Realities, and Broader Ohio Politics

Recent polls paint a competitive picture—RCP averages near even, with outliers like an early-2026 Emerson showing Acton +1 and Bowling Green/YouGov favoring Ramaswamy slightly. Yet intuition will hold: horse-race media and ad buyers inflate closeness for engagement. Ramaswamy’s primary sweep, Trump rallies, and Acton’s baggage (framed as “COVID queen” by the GOP) suggest momentum. Early attacks—scandals, investment critiques—have already been deployed, leaving Democrats vulnerable to “October surprise” fatigue. Elias-style legal maneuvers and Pepper’s opposition research risk overreach, mirroring past Democratic missteps in red-leaning Ohio. 

Ohio’s political map favors Republicans in gubernatorial races—no Democrat has won since 2006. Trump carried the state handily in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Ramaswamy inherits this, plus Senate and House majorities for swift policy wins. Acton represents a “propped-up Biden figure”: big government, unions, and progressive holdouts hoping to stall MAGA momentum. But as unions court Trump and independents prioritize pocketbooks, her path narrows.

Outlook: Boots on the Ground and a Call to Action

The general election will hinge on turnout and independents. Ramaswamy’s personal appeal—honest, non-combative—contrasts with Acton’s defensive posture. As the monologue urges, do not take victory for granted: vote in November, rally behind the nominee. With Trump stumping and economic contrasts sharpening, Ramaswamy could pull away decisively. Ohio’s recovery from pandemic policies, Intel’s fate, and regional competition will define the narrative.

In sum, this race transcends personalities. It tests whether Ohio embraces pro-growth conservatism or reverts to centralized experimentation. Data favors the former; history and momentum reinforce it. As voters weigh track records, Ramaswamy’s vision aligns with a thriving Ohio, while Acton’s invites scrutiny of past costs. The coming months promise clarity—and opportunity, along with a lot of political drama.  Amy Acton will have a hard time surviving the intensity that is headed her way.

Footnotes

1.  AP projections and primary results, May 2026.

2.  Ramaswamy’s victory speech and Acton’s coverage of the criticism.

3.  BLS unemployment data (Feb/Mar 2026 snapshots).

4.  BEA GDP by state reports.

5.  Chief Executive 2026 Best States for Business survey.

6.  Ballotpedia and NYT poll aggregates.

(Additional citations drawn from campaign filings, historical COVID orders via Ohio Dept. of Health archives, and economic impact studies.)

Bibliography (Selected for Further Reading)

•  Associated Press. “Ohio Primary Election Results 2026.” May 6, 2026.

•  Ballotpedia. “2026 Ohio Gubernatorial Election.”

•  Bureau of Labor Statistics. “State Employment and Unemployment Summary.” 2026 releases.

•  Bureau of Economic Analysis. “GDP by State.” Annual updates through 2025/2026.

•  Chief Executive Magazine. “Best & Worst States for Business 2026.” April 2026.

•  NBC News / 10TV. Primary results coverage, May 2026.

•  New York Times. “Ohio Governor Election Polls 2026.”

•  Ohio Secretary of State. Official primary turnout and county results.

•  RealClearPolling. “2026 Ohio Governor: Ramaswamy vs. Acton.”

•  Various: CNN, Dispatch, Signal Ohio reporting on candidates and Intel project (2025-2026).

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

Most People Are Just Cogs in the Machine: Leadership knows how to pull the levers of that machine

This seems to come up every year when people are reflecting and sending each other motivational messages, such as they do on LinkedIn.  Most people are trained in socialism, the collective warm blanket of shared success, incorrectly, and it chokes most companies into complete paralysis.  Success in our era is dressed up in cheerful posts and glossy platitudes, a cascade of “Hawkey little messages” assuring us that prosperity is mostly about teams, vibes, and being “all in.” The ritual is familiar: end-of-year feed, professional network, congratulatory notes, soft-focus talk of “collective wins.” However, what most people feel in their bones, even if it is impolitic to say aloud, is that victories are nearly always propelled by a few decisive acts—often by one or two people who turn the key, fuel the engine, and take responsibility for the risk. The machine can be exquisite: gears of procurement, finance, quality, manufacturing, design, sales, legal, and compliance all meshing. However, machines, however sentimental, do not start themselves. Leadership is the ignition, the regulator, the governor, the hand at the lever.

If you want success, build a machine that reliably makes success. That is the institutional truth of production and enterprise—government, industry, entertainment, any domain where complex work must be routinized. Systems are arrays of interlocking cogs; each cog has a place, and in an efficient design, each is necessary. However, necessity is not sufficiency. A machine’s sufficiency emerges only when an accountable mind organizes its timing, permits its torque, apportions its oil, and shuts it down before it burns itself to ash. The leader is the one who understands load, sequence, contingency, and consequence. They are the person who decides whether the engine runs fast today or idles; who knows when to swap a worn gear without mourning it; who understands that even the most ornate arrangement of parts turns to sculpture without spark.

We train most people to be components. This is not a knock on people so much as an observation about schooling and culture. It is safer, warmer, and more predictable to be a gear inside the frame than to stand outside the frame and decide which machine must be built, which conditions require it, and when it must run. The collective promises comfort; the individual bears cost. The collective sells the feeling of belonging; the individual pays the price of decision. In that exchange, many embrace the blanket of collectivism—mass credentialing, committees, rubrics, performance reviews, compliance protocols—signals that one is “an essential part of the team.” Moreover, in a limited sense, that is true: a properly designed system relies on the integrity of every part. Take away the feed pump, and production starves; remove quality’s gauge, and defects bloom. However, the illusion rests in mistaking “indispensable within design” for “constitutive of decision.” The machinery of work needs cogs; the work of leadership requires a person.

Leadership is not consensus engineering. It is not the median of opinions distilled into approved action. Leadership is rugged individualism at the point of decision—where accountability cannot be outsourced, and uncertainty cannot be fully hedged. It takes courage to pull the lever when the data are incomplete, and the clock is running. It takes imagination to see the machine that does not yet exist and to name the conditions under which it will be viable. It takes a life lived with risk, with failures tallied and learned, to know the difference between speed and haste, between endurance and grind, between excellence and exhaustion. Collective comfort can train excellent cogs; it rarely trains decisive leaders.

Watch team sports if you need a working metaphor. The Super Bowl ring is a collective artifact—dozens upon dozens of names will be etched into the annals. Trainers, assistants, ball boys, coaches, coordinators, linemen, wide receivers, analysts, owners—everyone counts somewhere. However, the moment of victory tends to converge in a handful of plays, executed by a few players under the direction of a coach who took decisive risks at the right time. The ring belongs to all; the victory turns on the few. Moreover, if the organization is constructed well enough, parts can be replaced. Players retire or are traded; staff rotates. The machine continues to win because the leadership—its philosophy, its standards, its hierarchy of decisions—remains intact.

This is why strong organizations do not worship any single cog. They respect cogs and maintain them; they pay for reliability and reward merit. However, the machine is not reengineered to accommodate the demands of a single gear. Instead, leadership preserves design integrity while swapping parts as needed. In weak organizations, the fetishizing of singular parts destabilizes the whole. In strong organizations, the philosophy of leadership yields repeatable victory because the leader can read conditions and set the tempo. When leadership is consistent and wise, luck is less a coin flip and more a variable constrained by design.

The reason leadership feels elusive is that most people, by design, have been socialized into the safety of machines. The world is complex; specialization is rational. However, specialization often becomes identity, and identity becomes politics, and politics becomes bureaucratic life. The rhetoric of “team” spreads like a balm, and participation trophies proliferate—not because people are malicious, but because machinery envelops their self-conception. Inside this warm frame, many forget the first principles of success: machines are instruments; leadership is agency. The machine is necessary; the leader is decisive.

Righteous leadership is not domination. It is stewardship under justice. The righteous leader stands outside the machine long enough to see conditions truthfully—scarcity, risk, moral hazard, human frailty—and then returns to the console to operate with integrity. Righteousness here means rightly ordered effort and directing that effort toward successful enterprise.  The righteous leader knows the machine serves ends beyond itself and refuses to confuse throughput with justice or output with meaning. They refuse the nihilism that says “only the win matters,” and the sentimentalism that says “only feelings matter.” Righteous leadership harmonizes courage and conscience: a lever pulled with clarity, not cruelty; a shutdown ordered to preserve life, not to prevent loss of face.

This is why nations with abundant resources can stagnate, and why organizations with immaculate infrastructure can drift into decay: without leadership that sees, decides, and cares, the machine becomes ornate furniture. Oil rigs rust; factories idle; supply chains fray. Conversely, with strong leadership, modest machines can outperform their spec, because the design is repeatedly refined, the constraints are embraced, and the people inside the system are cultivated for competence, not simply compliance.

It is fashionable to say “success is shared,” and in one respect that statement is true—labor is often collective, and recognition ought to be fair. However, success is not collectively decided. Success is collectively executed after a decisive will points it in a direction. The more clearly we distinguish decision-making from execution, the less we will confuse popularity with leadership, bureaucracy with governance, or credentials with competence. Moreover, the more clearly we honor righteous leadership—leadership that tells the truth, accepts cost, and lifts the people under its care—the healthier our machines, and the less brittle our victories.

So if you seek success, build a machine worthy of it: clear work standards, clean interfaces, visible bottlenecks, disciplined rhythms, lean buffers, quality gates. Then seek, become, or empower a leader of conscience. Teach people to be excellent cogs without training them to be dependent souls. Reward initiative alongside reliability. Audit outcomes as if justice matters, but always understand that profit is the fuel that makes the machine run. Moreover, remember: the machine is an instrument; leadership is the agent; righteousness is the compass. When those three align, the lever is pulled at the right time—and the win, when it comes, is more than luck and more than noise. It is the visible fruit of invisible virtues: courage, clarity, and care.  However, just because it is invisible, does not mean it does not exist.  Only that people from their perspective do not see it, because they are just cogs in the wheel, and their understanding of the big picture is severely limited.

—

Footnotes

[1] Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive (HarperBusiness, 2006).

[2] W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (MIT Press, 2000).

[3] Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal (North River Press, 2014).

[4] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon & Schuster, 2013).

[5] Brendan Ballou, Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America (PublicAffairs, 2023).

[6] Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman, The Oz Principle (Portfolio, 2004).

[7] F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

[8] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Penguin Classics, 2003).

[9] Jim Collins, Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001).

[10] Andrew Grove, High Output Management (Vintage, 2015).

—

Bibliography

Ballou, Brendan. Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America. New York: PublicAffairs, 2023.

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Do not. New York: HarperBusiness, 2001.

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

Drucker, Peter F. The Effective Executive. New York: HarperBusiness, 2006.

Goldratt, Eliyahu M. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press, 2014.

Grove, Andrew S. High Output Management. New York: Vintage, 2015.

Hayek, F. A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.

Connors, Roger, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman. The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability. New York: Portfolio, 2004.

Rich Hoffman

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

Under New Management: The difference between the back of the train and the front

It was a good accident while I was shooting the video for this article, when a train came by.  I tried to wait for a previous, huge train to go by, but about 10 minutes later, another came, almost as if the trains wanted to help me make my point.  Because I was discussing the Metaphysics of Quality, a favorite topic of mine from Robert Persig’s famous book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think it’s one of the most important books that the human race has ever produced because it puts its finger on a very allusive idea, which is why some people are better than others, especially in the field of business management.  And these days, now several years out of Covid, and a world obviously not prepared for Trump to be in the White House, a lot of companies are flat-footed on this current economy.  There was an assumption during the COVID pandemic, and all the way up to last week, that different rules would govern the world, a kind of socialist administrative state where work was bent to the preferences of the workers instead of the needs of the business.  And people are shocked by these very capitalist rules.  All over my town, signs are going up to let the public know that their companies are under new management.  Most of them are restaurants that have been too slow and understaffed for too long. Many people thought they would be able to work from home to stop the spread of COVID, which, in retrospect, was a laughable endeavor.   Yet the entire world tried to think it and actually put it into practice, which was one of the dumbest things ever.  To my point, which is why I can say that our COVID response, even as it was artificial, was really dumb. That train helped me make the point right on time, leaving a perfect demonstration of what the heart of the problem is with all these restructurings. 

What the world needs, especially from every company and every family, is a leader who leads from the front, where all the action happens.  Using a train metaphor, the front of the train, at the cutting edge, is where all the critical decisions are made. For instance, how fast should the train be going? Does it need to turn onto a different track in case something falls across it, posing a danger to the entire train?  Operating the train needs to happen from the front, where all the controls are, and the leader can see what’s coming before anybody else.  However, most leadership cultures, and I can say this after dealing with many tens of thousands of people, most of whom have advanced degrees and extensive experience in high-tech sectors, are behind-the-scenes people.  People who sit in the caboose collect data and report the contents of the train as it moves along.  The information they process can be helpful, but by the time they see it, the front of the train, especially on a very long one, has already passed the point where something was observed.  For exemplary leadership, by the time the people in the back of the train see it, it’s too late to do anything different.  Most management in the world, whether it’s a small company like a private restaurant, or a large company, or a government, functions from the back of the train because that’s where it’s safest, and people generally don’t like danger.  That is why good leadership, let alone outstanding leadership, is so rare in any industry.  It takes a lot of guts to run things from the front of the train. 

When people say they are under new management, they are trying to tell their customers that things are different and that they’ll get more responsive service from the organization, and they allude to this leadership quality.  As if to say that their management is new, and therefore the opportunity to be better is in the future.  But to be honest, the ownership is usually just throwing darts in the dark, and they don’t know the difference between good leadership and bad, because they are too afraid of the cutting edge at the front of the train to make decisions there.  It’s scary at the front, and most people in the world, more than 99% of them, would rather be in the back of the train.  I have literally dealt with consultants at every level who proclaim to know a lot about these things, who are in that consulting business because they are afraid of life at the front of the train, where all the scary stuff happens.  They don’t want scary things in their lives, so they do what many people do who aren’t very good at life: they teach.  Nothing is safer than putting the train on pause and studying its contents while it’s not moving, in a classroom environment where there are no dangers of driving through day-to-day life.  And this isn’t some fluke opinion; it’s actually a flaw in the way we teach generations of people in a classroom environment, and why those who survive the schools of hard knocks are actually better prepared for authentic leadership.  Leadership isn’t taught as much as it is learned in the challenging places that the world presents. 

The problem with all the COVID protocols and the obsession with moving the world into an administrative state management condition, where people could sit in their living rooms in their pajamas and tell others things from a Teams call, was absurdly stupid.  Yet, that is why so many companies are now struggling to meet customer demands.  The marketplace did not go the way it was expected to, and virtually everyone is struggling to catch up.  Many organizations are seeking new management to replace the old one, and they are posting signs to let their customers know that they are trying to find effective leadership, even if the kind of leadership they are looking for is actually one of the rarest commodities in the world.  Good leadership thrives at the front of the train while most of the world desires to hide in the back.  They might make a lot of noise back there and bark out commands, but on a fast-moving train, by the time they see them, the train has already moved well beyond the point of decision-making.  And that is the core of the problem; it takes courage to run things from the front of the train.  And our schools don’t and can’t teach courage.  They teach people to be in the back of the train, where the bootlickers and con artists reside. They are that way because they lack courage and have to fake it to make it.  They learn to appease the teacher in a static classroom, and once in the world, they do the same from the back of the train.  And that is why most management in the world is ineffective.  But then we marvel when we see individuals who have great success at almost everything they do.  This is why it’s called “Metaphysics of Quality” by Robert Pirsig, and it’s one of the most outstanding books on the subject of business that has ever been written or thought about.  I’ve read numerous books on business, including some of the most popular titles on Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma.  All that means nothing if your organization doesn’t have a leader at the front of the train.  And you can put all the signs out about new leadership, but it doesn’t matter if all that leadership is where most leadership is in the world today – at the back of the train, hiding, where it’s safe.  Leaders need to love danger and to make decisions unafraid as they face it moment by moment.  That is the difference between success and failure.

Rich Hoffman

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

Gavin Newsom is Lost: Why Democrats have nobody like Trump

Gavin Newsom has been in the news frequently lately, and he has something to say about almost everything.  And nobody believes any of it.  As governor of California, and this isn’t a political comment, just a logical one, he lost all credibility during COVID and has barely managed to hang on despite several challenges in a state that leaned far left, when it was fashionable.  But we are talking now about a world where Democrats have lost around 2.5 million registered voters and Republicans have gained about as many, and that is just a few months into Trump’s second presidency.  Gavin Newsom is a phony, like many politicians who have gotten away with it over the years, and if politics hadn’t changed as much as we’ve seen, Newsom could probably be considered a candidate for president in 2028, which he clearly aspires to be.  However, he has a poor track record, culminating in the LA fires.  But it was the way he handled COVID that set his future in stone.  The people in California won’t let him live it down, let alone a national campaign.  COVID-19 changed many people and the way they think about politics.  Today’s baby-kissing politician could be tomorrow’s lockdown governor violating all our personal rights over some virus released from China.  And of all the lockdown governors, Gavin Newsom was one of the worst.  It’s almost comical to watch him now trying to build a campaign for the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination.  That is obviously what his plans are, but the political order changed under his feet, and he seems lost to capture any message, because all the old stuff just isn’t working.  The buzzwords have died, and he has no new ones to offer.  Leaving him bouncing around from topic to topic aimlessly. 

The difference between President Trump and everyone else is essentially authenticity.  Trump can drop an F bomb during a speech, and people can relate to it.  Gavin Newsom can do the same, and people perceive it as insincere.  And that’s what’s new now, Trump is a product of the times and the people.  Politicians like Gavin Newsom are completely do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do types who count completely on manipulating the public to exist.  And people are too battle-hardened to accept that premise anymore.  And, there is too much media these days for shaky commentary.  With all the podcasts and startup news shows, especially on Trump’s Truth Social media platform, politicians like Gavin Newsom cannot withstand the constant scrutiny.  In the past, when there were only a few news stations and some talk radio to discuss these topics, Newsom got away with having a shiny exterior because there was never any time to get into the details.  But not these days.  And Trump has shown the world what a real person in a powerful position can accomplish.  And nobody the Democrats have will be able to duplicate it.  And Newsom is among the best that the Democrats have to offer.  They have big problems that are worth considering.  Watching Newsom try to adjust is actually very revealing because it points to a much deeper problem for all Democrats.  Why don’t they have their own version of Trump?  Well, because the new standards require authenticity as a person, not the kind of showboating that was once accepted as usual.  And Democrats as a party have sought to exploit people through emotions.  They have not actually done anything.  The world is looking for doers, not more administrative types who lock down their states, then get caught at social gatherings drinking wine as the world burns down outside. 

Gavin Newsom, in a remarkably short time, as he has been trying everything to capture a national audience, has appeared on the Charlie Kirk Show, attempting to appeal to Trump voters, and has since turned to the radical left, becoming as anti-Trump as anyone could be.  He’s tried to be overly friendly, radically mean, even violent, trying to draw a crowd.  And it’s just not working.  And that’s the main problem.  With Trump, nobody doubts what he’s thinking, and he built that brand over a long time with constant repetition.  Gavin Newsom has changed many times, and nobody really knows who he is, because he’s so inconsistent on topics.  I recall when Gavin Newsom was one of the first to join Trump’s Truth Social platform, going where voters who wouldn’t vote for him were, and trying to win them over.  He has maintained a relationship with Sean Hannity to appear more appealing.  He has tried to debate DeSantis, and that didn’t work well.  He’s tried everything, and nothing has worked, leaving him scrambling now that the clock is ticking toward the midterms and Democrats are bleeding support.  Not gaining any.  And this isn’t just a Newsom problem, but a party problem that even Republicans have.  Politics has changed a lot over the last five years, since establishment types tried to exile Trump and his supporters forever.  And what ended up happening was that it strengthened, and a new standard was set that few politicians who came before could follow.  What is going on behind the scenes is literally revealed in the nervous hand movements of Newsom, which are evident during interviews and give away a lot that nobody sees when the cameras aren’t rolling. 

In sales, it’s a fine line between enthusiasm and overemphasis.  And when someone knows they are selling something that people don’t want, they have to resort to body language to emotionally pull the people they are talking to past the doubt phase, and into the subconscious utterances of hand movements.  Using the hands a lot in communication is an attempt to remind the person you are talking to that you could grab them forcefully and make them listen to you.  Excessive hand movement is a big no in communication, as it forces the people listening to put up emotional barriers. And if the person using hand movements is trying to lie or manipulate an audience, it becomes quickly exposed by overplaying the situation.  In Trump’s case, he believes in the products he has sold, so his communication works, and people can feel it.  With Newsom, he clearly doesn’t, as he is constantly changing his positions and approach.  He doubts it himself, so he tries to hide it with excessive hand movements.  And instinctively, people think of his hands as something that is trying to attack them, so they put up barriers to that reception.  It’s a major turnoff for people listening to a politician like that.  In the past, the media would cover the distance, but they can no longer do so, as they have lost their power too.  There are many differences now compared to when Newsom first started as governor.  And it will only get worse for him and all Democrats.  And Democrats have nobody else but Newsom.  There isn’t anybody coming up in the background.  All the buzzword politics have worn out, leaving them completely unprepared.  And that desperation in messaging is now showing itself in rapid succession.  All they have is an attempt to tear down President Trump and his accomplishments.  They have nothing to offer as a replacement.  And in knowing that, they have a desperate message that can’t go anywhere, and is losing support by the day.  And even worse, their track record is horrendous, especially in California.  Blue states and cities have performed poorly, so Democrats have a lot of huge problems.  And after all that we’ve been through to get here, it’s actually fun to watch. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Trump’s West Point Speech: Its all about gaining “momentum” in life

I thought Trump’s speech to West Point for their commencement was remarkable and not discussed enough.  The theme of the entire speech was momentum, which was excellent advice that you usually don’t hear coming from a President of the United States, nor do you hear such a thing discussed at any military academy.  Military endeavors, like political experiences, are typically about conformance to a static norm.  Not gaining momentum in life by challenging that static order.  And as examples of capturing momentum in life, Trump mentioned military figures like Billy Mitchell, who was court-martialed and forced into retirement for insisting that the army adopt aerial strategies that utilized the airplane.  Trump mentioned Patten and others who openly challenged the static norms of their day to gain strategic momentum for a tactical advantage, which was excellent advice.  As he was speaking, I thought of the way the great Claire Lee Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers, was treated by the military.  There is a long history of clashes between inside-the-box thinking and challengers from the outside.  Yet what is being celebrated at any graduation ceremony is conformance.  The school you are graduating from sets up rules you must learn and comply with, and if you successfully do so, you get a paper from them saying you graduated, and that the world can trust you to play by the rules that are set up.  That’s what employers think they are looking for when they hire people through their human resources department.  If they want a college graduate, they want someone who will follow the rules and not challenge them, and their graduation from an educational institution provides that proof.  However, instead of celebrating compliance, Trump was advocating for rebellion. 

Trump told the inspiring story, but with a sad ending, of William Levitt, who developed Levittown with his family’s company, Levitt & Sons, on Long Island from 1947 to 1951. This development defined the concept of a planned community that has been copied all over the United States ever since.  Bill Levitt was known for walking his building sites picking up nails to save money and pushing his teams to be very frugal on expenses, and Trump indicated that the key to the success of Levitt was his strong work ethic that captured momentum in life and that through that momentum, he achieved a lot of success.  However, Levitt found it challenging to sustain that momentum after achieving success, and by 1968, they were facing mounting debts and struggling to manage the company’s growth.  They got too far out over their skis and started failing with everything they worked on, leaving Levitt as a crumpled-up old man by the time Trump met him in the 1980s at a party with other very influential real estate developers.   Trump found him in the corner of the party of the big shots, sitting alone, with nobody talking to him.  And when President Trump spoke with him, Levitt told him regretfully that he had lost momentum in life and didn’t have it in him anymore, which is an unfortunate story, but it’s essential and motivational because of what it means to the human race.  Playing it safe is not the path to success.  Neither is doing what other people tell you.  Most people who experience the most tremendous success in life work very hard, take a lot of risks, and manage those risks with significant momentum, riding one success story to another with sheer force.  And if they lose their edge, they start to find all their projects failing. 

Remarkably, Trump discussed the momentum killers in life that impacted Bill Levitt, such as his three marriages, most of which were under the strain of collapsing financial circumstances, and the sale of Levitt & Sons to ITT in 1968 for $92 million.  Levitt had gone from that frugal construction site leader picking up nails to buying lavish mansions and purchasing a yacht.  Then, he moved to a house in southern France.  And he blew through his money quickly and wanted to get back into the game, but had to wait ten years due to a non-compete clause preventing him from developing any real estate in the U.S. until 1978.  And after this period, Levitt tried to make his comeback, but failed miserably, until he was the crumpled mess that Trump saw at the party of tycoons in New York City, broken and pushed aside.  And when Trump asked him what happened, the old man said that “he had lost his momentum.”  This was very valuable information for a group of graduating students from a military academy.  Not the kind of things they typically teach in places like West Point.  However, it is very accurate, and one of those topics we should study more.  And Trump would know.  His life had gone through many of those same types of momentum killers.  However, Trump, guided by his basic philosophy of the Power of Positive Thinking, never lost his momentum.  No matter how bad things got, Trump never stopped being that guy on a construction site who picked up nails.  And he always worked hard and long.  Sure, he married three times, but the women could wait until he was done with work for the day, long after most people go to bed.  Rising early and working until everyone else is sleeping is a great way to maintain momentum in life.

And that’s the point of Trump’s commencement speech to the graduates of West Point in 2025.  It’s one thing to bring in a motivational speaker who says these things, and many consultants out there talk a big game, but they don’t stick around long enough to fight through things and do real work.  The world is starving for these kinds of people who say lots of pretty words, but lack the work ethic to be on a job site picking up nails to save money.  I receive numerous offers to be one of those talkers.  But to Trump’s point, you have to do more than talk in life.  You must be genuinely successful, and one key to achieving this is maintaining momentum.  Not to get sidetracked with fancy boats and expensive vacations, or to live in a house in the south of France.  But to think out of the box and break the rules with an all-in bid to gain momentum.  And once you get it, to keep it, you must work harder than everyone else.  And not listening to the negative people who want to break your momentum so that they can compete with you.  Trump’s West Point speech was wonderfully anti-institutional to a group of people who were graduating from a very rigid institution.  The advice about success is one that few people ever realize in life, but Trump, as a President who had to overcome a lot to even be in that position, gave free advice that was worth many millions of dollars.  And it is valuable to anyone who listens, and it is the key to making America Great Again.  Greatness is not achieved by doing what people tell you to do.  It is achieved by capturing momentum and using it to achieve success where others fail, and avoiding challenges to momentum that might stop it and force people to be just like everyone else in life, stuck in the mud, and complaining that their life is meaningless.  Some people gain momentum in life for a short period, such as when they are teenagers moving out of their parents’ home.  Or as business leaders who happen upon a good thing.  But few people ever get it and maintain it.  And Trump’s advice to the West Point graduates was good in that it told them how to keep it so that their graduation ceremony wouldn’t be the best thing to ever happen to them, but rather, just the beginning of an extraordinary life to come. 

Rich Hoffman

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

The Future CEO: They won’t come from the Linkedln losers

When I was in college, I majored in economics and philosophy, and it was apparent even then that a significant shortage was headed our way: a CEO shortage of strong, viable leadership.  And that the attack on our culture that was creating that shortage was purposeful and malicious.  And now we see it everywhere, from failed companies ranging from everything, whether we are talking about the collapse of the Frisch’s restaurant chain, Tupperware, or the Hollywood movie industry.  In every form of business, we see a class of CEOs who were taught weak politics, put in place over those reasons alone, and have choked off and killed huge portions of business sector economies.  I used to warn everyone back then, and people would laugh and giggle and call me a conspiracy theorist for what I was saying.  But as it turned out, everything was true.  We are not making Jack Welch-type CEOs anymore; clearly, people are yearning for it, which is one of the reasons why President Trump was elected back into the White House.  People don’t like the lack of leadership in the world, or what has happened to their businesses.  But if you talk to company heads from top to bottom worldwide, especially in the United States, you find these trained monkeys who don’t know what they are doing and couldn’t lead an ant colony to a breadbasket at a picnic.  Reflecting on my college days, they were only teaching Marxism as an economic viability which I thought was ridiculous and it didn’t take much to figure out that an entire generation learning that kind of garbage was of course going to be crippled in their adult lives, which is precisely the case we are seeing now.  The biggest challenge in the modern age is not returning our economy to our hands, which is occurring rapidly under Trump’s policies.  The shortage of leadership is coming out of the CEO class now, who aren’t prepared to lead companies into healthy sustainability.

Another thing that I am very critical of, just as I was of the college teaching methods, is the new trend of LinkedIn, the professional networking site.  There is a lot wrong with it, which was designed to pull leadership-oriented professionals toward a social score of acceptance that is very China-like.  It’s more about uniformity than exceptionalism, and the deficiency is certainly showing up in our culture today.  We can bring back our jobs from the impact of globalism, but can we put CEOs in place to run those companies in time to run them?  I have a lot of faith in the adaptability of human beings, especially when they are under pressure.  And I would say that we can.  However, the current recruitment method and implementation of a leadership culture, as seen on LinkedIn, is not where the future is.  Consensus building with other losers hiding behind professional titles will be smoked out quickly under the scrutiny of marketplace competition.  And companies that have gone down that road are finding themselves lacking, which is evident in the failures of so many companies these days, who followed the rules of the Obama administration and found themselves closed and bankrupt, which was always part of the plan.  Who needs an army to attack an enemy country when you can train a generation of leadership to lead their economy down the drain?  It could be argued that many of the failures we are seeing from older companies are because they are at the end of their business cycle, and new opportunities are squeezing out the old-fashioned companies with tired brand recognition.  But I would say it’s more than that.

I used to get a lot of flak for my interest in philosophy, even when majoring in it, from the same type of losers today who think LinkedIn is their key to networking salvation.  But I will say now what I said then: what you think matters, and why you think it.  Not following the orders of what some professor committed to Keynesian economics and Marxist social diatribes tells you will be important when it wasn’t going to be.  Probably the best thing I have ever done was spend those college years reading so much philosophy independently, without being told to do so by anybody.   And if more people had prepared themselves independently of the established institutionalism, they’d be better prepared for this significant change in leadership necessity, now.  And I am enjoying a certain satisfaction now because of all the criticism I endured.  The world will find a way for sure.  But it won’t come from those most trained to do it.  The market rejects bad CEOs in favor of innovation, hard work, and merit. It is not the LinkedIn values of a fancy profile picture and a padded resume that looks and sounds impressive, but it is essentially representative of a trained failure made that way by institutionalism to hit the market as a failure and bring down our entire society.  When what you learn philosophically leads to ruin, don’t be surprised when bad leaders ruin companies.  As I say that, I’m thinking of Bob Iger at Disney, who has pretty much ruined that company with bad social philosophy and a reckless assumption that the power of the company would always remain, and would never feel the effects of competition.

The world’s future leaders will not come from institutionalism; they will come from the pressure cooker of life.  Those who have survived the pitfalls of globalism with their take will be the most viable to adapt to these rapidly changing economic standards.  The marketplace will find leaders to run all these new companies.  But it won’t be by the old networking ways, but in the philosophy of success that is at the foundation of all endeavors.  Process fulfillment can’t allow group consensus to hide Marxism in the shadows, which is what has been happening.  It can’t allow the losers of LinkedIn to pad a resume and say some fancy things here and there without actually leading people to victory.  No, in a competitive environment, good leadership will be driven by a proper philosophy of success that wins the day.  Not the CEO who wanted to check all the DEI boxes and led their companies to ruin following it, as Bob Iger did at Disney, and many other huge companies suddenly struggling to maintain their markets.  The brownnoser, the boot licker, the social appeaser will not find a world conducive to their back-footed strategy.  Only the strong and wise will adapt to this rapidly changing market.  There will be a lot of failures, but those who do succeed are those who weren’t taught by institutionalism to fail, purposely.  But those who didn’t listen.  And as I look around, I am happy that I never did.  It’s easy to criticize now with hindsight being what it is.  I feel a little sorry for those who thought they had a handle on all this, because the suffering is hard on them.  But that’s how the ball bounces in a wild and woolly world.  Competition will root out the bad.  Marxism can’t hide them from the world as they have been doing.  But we will be far better off for it. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Air Taxis in West Chester, Ohio: The future is now, and its very exciting

The future is now

It’s going to happen at this point anyway.  My bringing it up now is more of a formality of connecting the dots and explaining to anybody who will listen how the future economy under President Trump will look.  I have conversations about making Ohio the number one state for business-friendly conditions all the time.  I attend many seminars on economic development and Chamber of Commerce incentives for depressed areas looking to rebound.  And when I say the only thing holding back this technology is the FAA, politics has changed.  Deregulation under Trump will get stuffy bureaucrats out of the way, and a second wave of aviation and aerospace development will be unleashed.  The other day, I talked a lot about Hyperloop and how and why a terminal should be built in Monroe, Ohio. But today, I’m talking about an old idea that is about to be unleashed and create an all-new transportation mode: skycars, or more technically speaking, VTOL air taxis.  I can say from personal experience that Joby Aviation, up the road from West Chester and Liberty Township, is at the front of the market.  They have air taxis ready to go, built, tested, flushed out, and prepared for delivery to market in 2025/2026; essentially, all that is standing in the way is the FAA approval process.  Joby Aviation is making a piloted version, but they will quickly become fully automatic and will work by calling one on your phone and having them pick you up and perform just like an Uber.  The future is here, now.  All that needed to happen was that politics would have to get behind it.  We don’t already have these air taxis in use because the Biden administration was a slow and Marxist micromanager that stalled all these efforts.  If Trump had stayed in the White House in 2020, these Joby air taxis would have been out for a few years by now.  So once we get a Trump administration back in the White House and install a pro-business mindset back into America, Joby and a few other companies are going to move quickly, and technical innovation on this front will happen at a blistering pace. 

Knowing all that, I would propose that we get all the minds together in West Chester and Liberty Township and become the first areas in the world to develop official Sky Ports.  Abu Dhabi and China are already deep in development.  And Europe is already all over it.  But they don’t have Joby Aviation right down the road and a stable environment to perform the early day development of the technology, which could make Ohio the first to fly again.  Here’s how and why it would work.  For instance, there is a nice little piece of property across from Ikea in West Chester that is just big enough for a sky port, a mini runway kind of helipad where these air taxis would land and take off like a helicopter, but much quieter and with much more stable flight.  This always happens to me; people come and see me from out of town.  They stay at the many hotels and have to get back and forth between CVG and West Chester, and their biggest problem is the traffic down I-75, which gets back to the airport to catch their flight when doing business in West Chester.  This air taxi system would take all that worry away and improve life for many people. 

For instance, when business guests were ready to leave their hotel, they would walk or catch a little transport from their hotel to Sky Port by Ikea. Theoretically, a sky taxi would be waiting for them.  In this case, a piloted version of the Joby VTOL vehicle would be waiting for them just like an Uber, dialed up by their phone with the ticket, and everything would be paid.  The guests would arrive and get into the craft like a car.  The sky taxi would fly them down to the airport at CVG and land at the front of the terminal, likely on top of the parking garage there, and fly over all the traffic, making the trip in about 15 minutes, which usually takes over 50 minutes.  Another problem I have is bringing people from West Chester who are in town without a car to sporting events.  I typically pick them up and drive to the Great American Ballpark to attend a game for the evening.  Getting downtown with all the rush hour traffic is a pain in the neck.  It would be much better to get into an air taxi and fly straight to the stadium, land in a nice, safe place along the river, and get to the game in about 10 minutes instead of an hour during those peak hours of 5 to 6 PM.  When the game was over, the passengers would just let the air taxi service know you were about to leave, and they would come and pick you up just like an Uber driver now.  Only it would be a VTOL instead of a car.  The same air taxi service could be set up to get to Kings Island from all over Cincinnati.  It could also be set up to serve politicians from their districts directly to the Ohio Statehouse.  There are a vast number of immediate applications that would benefit immediately from the low price of freshly poured concrete. 

After the FAA permit process, the next barrier would be to win over the public.  So, the sooner people see these vehicles working and overcome their fear of flying, the more the concept will expand rapidly.  At first, it would be similar to a helicopter ride experience that you see in very safe tourist areas.  Only this air taxi concept is even safer and much quieter.  It would be at a small volume, maybe a few flights every hour throughout the peak hours of a business day.  But enough people are interested now to make that happen with the Joby Aviation vehicles right out of the box.  However, the flight frequency would quickly increase to a flight every couple of minutes, and even several flights from several pads at the Skyport would come and go all the time.  It will also greatly enhance the business climate wherever sports reside.  So, I think Ohio has a unique opportunity to be the first.  West Chester, precisely because of its hotels and business traffic, could be the first in the world to demonstrate this technology and benefit economically from the visionary approach.  I’m just connecting the dots here for the many people I know in this business who need to know about each other.  And to explain that this isn’t some far off Jetson’s fantasy concept.  I’ve been involved in these Skycars for over three decades now, so when I say that they are here, I can say it with confidence.  Air taxis are here; they will happen and will be the hottest ticket in town for the next half of a decade.  People will find them very convenient, safe, and pleasant.  And they will become nearly as common as a personal car in a very short time.  The VTOL market needed a president like Trump in the White House.  The rest was waiting for the permit approval, which is about to happen as you read this.  If not sooner. 

Rich Hoffman

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

The Evil of Sandbagging: Why a $359 Steak is good and well worth it

For many reasons, the problem of sandbagging came up over this last week on several fronts, and as I say in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and everywhere I go, all the time, one of the most evil things you can do in life is under commit and over perform, or at least, intend to.  Even under the most optimal conditions, people never end up overperforming once they realize their efforts’ expectations have been removed from them.  In short, this practice is called sandbagging, which I have never done as a person, and I never will.  Even under conditions where I was the only person doing the work, just good enough, or putting forth a lackluster effort was never acceptable.  This topic came up as people were telling stories of my past and why I used to ride bicycles to work while sick, through the snow, and under all kinds of horrendous conditions.  And from their point of view, it might have looked a little wild.  There are a lot of stories from my past that people like to tell because many of the things I do and have done are considered excessively pro-work.  So, of course, this provoked biblical reference because people seem to understand them as a common source of information, and I went on a long explanation that seemed to explain things well to those listening.  Keep in mind, the reason I hate organized labor so much is that they come from communist backgrounds, and, of course, they have a very anti-Christian view of the world.  Their practice as a communist organization is to withhold work from an employer to gain leverage for their financial position, and that is what Marxism is all about.  They are God haters and withdraw work to get some advantage in negotiating their terms.  This is why I call it evil; a lack of work is detrimental to the human race. 

I think a lot of people go to church, and they read the Bible.  But I don’t think they understand the point of many stories.  They learn the basics and believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins so they can do whatever they want and still get into Heaven.  Which, of course, isn’t true.  It’s a fantasy for bad people to continue to be lazy slugs.  Most people do not understand the story of Cain and Able, the first kids of Adam and Eve, and why God was so insistent that the land of Canaan, named after the son Cain and all his descendants, why God wanted to punish the kid so emphatically.  It all started with two sacrificial offerings.  Able was a shepherd who offered God the best of his flock.  And God saw that he put that extra effort into what he dedicated to God and that Able was good.  On the other hand, Cain threw together just any old sacrifice as a farmer.  And what he gave to God was not the best of himself.  Sure, he gave what he was required, but he withheld his sacrifice, and that angered God immensely.  Something he never got over, as Yahweh of the Bible.  Now, God wasn’t mad because he wanted more.  He was the creator of the universe; he could have anything he wanted.  What he was angry at was the effort between the two boys.  One gave everything he had.  The other held back and sandbagged the efforts, keeping the best for himself.  Of course, Cain didn’t like being shown up by his brother Able, so he killed him, and this is something we see even today.  People who sandbag their efforts seek to destroy those who want to work hard and do well in the world.  And from this straightforward sentiment, most of the evil in the world is born.

Even in sexual practices, much of the evil in the world comes from the basic notion of sandbagging.  A man doesn’t want to work hard to have a wife.  So he hires a prostitute or goes to a strip joint.  Or develops a porn addiction.  A man doesn’t want to work hard to earn a woman’s attention, so he drinks too much and seeks to get her drunk so that she lowers her standards of him.  A person can’t deal with reality because they shrug away the pressure of responsibility, so they turn to drugs and alcohol for relief from social judgment.  Essentially, most of the evil done in the world comes from a sandbagging mentality.  And this is why each time God had to deal with the vile evil of the original sin, from Adam and Eve and their kids, it is the efforts of Cain that Yahweh sought to destroy.  Because Cain was lazy and a sandbagger, all his descendants had the same trait, which led to the massive amount of evil in the world before the flood came and tried to wipe them all away.  But then again, they would rise into Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, and even the Giants in the Land of Canaan that God told the Hebrew people to destroy completely.  The evil God was mad at was the lazy, sandbagging nature of the descendants of Cain.  Jesus, on the other hand, was born from the line of Seth, a third child that Adam and Eve had to replace their murdered son, Able.

That is always how I have seen work and why I say that lazy people who sandbag, those who hold back their good work for better pay or some social leverage, are evil.  I’ve never been a sandbagger in any way, and I find the trait repulsive in people.  Those who withhold their effort are like the descendants of Cain, and I don’t like them.  I may put up with them in the world.  But I don’t respect or enjoy them as people, and I think of them like Yahweh did in the Bible.  I understood the story of Cain and Able as a very young person and took it to heart, and I have always worked hard because there is goodness in the effort.  But people who like the bad guys in the world are the sandbaggers, and they defend their position by withholding good work for leverage in the world that is essentially evil and leads to most of the bad things humans do to each other, some of which have been described here.  Sandbagging leads to evil.  People who don’t like good work tend to desire to be bad and sell it like cheap cologne at a flea market.  And justify its cheapness as a bargain.  Rather than enjoy something at full price because they worked hard for it.  They are always looking for a way to give as little amount of something as possible, which makes the effort evil. 

This particular story of Cain and Able came up while I was dining with friends at the excellent restaurant Son of a Butcher at Liberty Center in Butler County, Ohio.  There are a lot of great steak restaurants in the city of Cincinnati, but many are saying the steaks at this place are the best.  These guests were well-traveled as we discussed nice restaurants in India, London, China, Paris, and Japan.  These people traveled everywhere and were used to the best. They told me that the steak they had at The Son of the Butcher was the best they had ever had.  I recommended one that cost over $359 each, and we bought a whole table full of them.  So we talked about why that steak was so much better than other steaks in nice restaurants worldwide.  And if you’ve ever been to the S.O.B. restaurant, you would know it’s a pretty crazy place.  But what it all comes down to at that restaurant is that they work hard in the front of the house and the back, in the kitchen.  The food shows they do a good job and give their best.  It’s worth $359, and a check for around $3k instead of a trip to Dollar General and a hamburger at Burger King.  It’s all food, but some comes from hard work, and some from just doing the basics and barely getting by.  So I told them the story of Cain and Able, and they understood, even if they hadn’t been thinking about hard work in quite the same way.  In many ways, it all comes down to embracing evil to make the least effort in the world.  Or to put forth the best and to expect the best, not because it’s expensive or fancy.  But because it is moral and sound, it represents God’s good intentions in the world and a people worth making an effort to do work in the world that everyone can and should be proud of.  Evil people, like Cain, would hear that people worked hard and went to a place like S.O.B. for a $359 steak, and they would plot a way to steal from them, just as Cain killed Able for making him look bad instead of giving their best and earning their right to get a nice steak dinner.  They would put more effort into plotting and scheming for collective bargaining contracts to do the least work to get as much for nothing as possible.  And they would do that because they are the bad guys in the world.  And for me, they deserve to be wiped away just as Yahweh has done in the past because they are worthless hindrances to the perpetuation of the human race. After all, they are evil sandbaggers.

Rich Hoffman

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

Smoke Shops in Ohio: Nothing says ‘Loserville’ more than a pot economy

Nothing says loser like a smoke shop.  I used to make fun of them while traveling through states that had legalized pot, such as Colorado.  They trash up a community.  But now they are in Ohio because a bunch of leftist losers took advantage of a bunch of stupid and naive people and convinced them to pass marijuana in the state, which then says to the world, our community is a bunch of dope-smoking losers.  I can avoid them daily, but recently, while going to Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast for my grandchildren, my wife had to look at two of them right by our house.  Smoke shops have become the new go-to for brick-and-mortar plazas, struggling to find tenants as most companies compete against online sales.  I understand that, too; I was shopping at a brick-and-mortar store in Columbus, Ohio, with a long list of needed items, mostly books.  But they didn’t have everything.  I ordered on Amazon and was able to get everything I needed, fast.  So brick and mortar’s are struggling.  Plaza builders and strip mall operators have too many products chasing too few goods.  Most of them have their usual nail salons and Chinese restaurants in them.  Or if not one of those, a Mexican restaurant.  But it’s been tough to keep them filled with all the brick-and-mortar failures.  Add to that the effects of a Biden economy with massive inflation and over-regulation that has crippled economic flow and you end up with a lot of strip malls at 60% occupancy.  It probably would have been a good idea in our economic planning to say no to some of them before they were built.  But the plans were all rubber stamped and now the owners of those developments are hard pressed to fill them.  So, to save the day, comes smoke shops along with Cheech and Chong to sell pot to a desperate public dazed and confused being taking full advantage of by a criminal government exploiting them until the public rots away with pain and betrayal. 

If I have to look at pot smokers and smoke shops, I can assure everyone that I’m going to be a far less nice person.  I despise pot.  I once had a group of friends in my very first apartment who smoked pot in it while I was gone.  I was 18 then, so I was in the prime age for people who did that kind of thing.  It was everywhere, especially at rock concerts.  I always had, and continue to now, a strict policy of no pot, anytime, anywhere, under any condition.  I had a little parakeet that I kept in a cage in my bedroom.  Yes, I was a weird teenager.  I liked those kinds of things, and while the apartment was a bachelor pad intended to pick up many chicks and have wild nights, I wanted to be married and start a family.  I was tired of party life, and I never liked it.  So that little bird was special to me, and a good companion as I started in life.  When I came home one particular day, after working very hard on one of my first sales jobs, three of my friends had smoked pot and tried to get the little bird stoned.  I was furious.  Actually, beyond furious.  Not only had they gone into my room with pot, knowing how much I hated the stuff.  But they blew smoke onto my little bird to get it stoned.  I had been friends with some of these guys since childhood.  That was the last day I ever spoke to them.  They reached out over the years, but I did not reach back.  Some found the light much later in life, but I did not forgive them.  If Jesus wants to be an idiot and forgive people like that, have at it.  I despise people who do things like that, and I, in general, despise pot users. 

Just because a bunch of loser politicians listened to their donors about the need to get into the pot business, it doesn’t change my sheer hatred of the stuff.  I’ve heard all the arguments; believe me, some really intelligent and powerful people have worked hard to change my mind.  After all, Speaker John Boehner, who is a neighbor and we share many mutual friends, left Congress because he saw the writing on the wall with Trump entering politics, and he became a pot lobbyist.  People like him for years have been talking about the medicinal properties of pot smoke and how you can make a rope out of it.  They have looked for every excuse to use the pot industry as some expansion of business in the state of Ohio, to make it a business-friendly concept to attract businesses to the state.  They tried to justify pot advocacy with economic expansion.  To me, if that is the best you have, then you are a dying economy with a dying workforce run by a bunch of suckers and losers.  John Boehner cries a lot, smokes too much, and was a globalist sellout when he had the third most powerful seat in the world as Speaker of the House.  And he went from that to being an advocate for pot in Ohio, and now we are seeing the results of what people like him have brought to our state.  Smoke shops everywhere. 

My wife is less tolerant about pot than I am.  We have family members who have bought into the whole “I need pot for my chronic pain” argument, and we have no respect for them or anybody who uses pot for that matter.  We’ve heard that the Indians used pot, so we should too, to be more aligned with “nature,” is what they say.  The Indians ended up a culture driven to extinction with their rain dancing and peace pipes.  And that’s what happens to all cultures that embrace intoxication in any fashion as a driver of economic means.  And my wife returned from that particular visit to Dunkin Donuts very upset that she had to look at those smoke shops because they were signs of an invasion into our community.  We’ve lived in Liberty Township for a long time, me much longer than her.  So we have watched the changes to the negative as all these East Coast people bring with them their Democrat ideas from socialist influence in the places they moved from.  Generally, we put up with it with as much understanding as possible. But seeing those Loserville smoke shops in our nice little community was too much that day.  And for me, it’s the parakeet all over again.  I have no tolerance for evil, and certainly not vehicles of evil, such as pot consumption.  I see nothing good about it, not medicinal, not by making rope, not in a Cheech and Chong movie.  And a pot economy is a drain on all other aspects of economic growth.  Any society that is built on the degradation of the mind, which is what pot is, even as a pain killer, will destroy your society.  And when you see a smoke shop catering to pot consumers, that is the kind of world you are building.  It is disgusting to see and hear about it from people who should know better. 

Rich Hoffman

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

The Fall of the Credentialed Class: People are tired of worthless losers running their lives

I know it’s scary, but I have been telling this story for over four decades. It’s just that people didn’t want to hear it—not that it wasn’t a problem all along.  Communism and Marxism, along with all varieties of socialism, have been running in the background of all institutional society for more than 100 years, so what is happening now is nothing surprising.  It’s new because people assume everyone plays according to the same rules.  But they never were, and that will put us all in a modern form of the American Revolution, which will be fought in our present time.  Which for many people is scary.  But if you love war and conflict, which I happen to, this is the best time to be alive that anybody could imagine.  And the direction in which everything is heading, aside from the usual chicken little conversations about the end of the world, is obvious.  You can see it clearly in the massive failures happening all across society, but it is never more apparent than in the failures of the ”credentialed class.”  Those who could equally purchase social status by participating in progressive society protocols, such as attending college, joining a fraternity, and following the directions of our education system left behind by such socialist pioneers as John Dewey.  While the path to Hell is always paved with good intentions, and yes, the intentions were good, “fairness for all” and all those ridiculous assumptions, Hell is what the path toward a credentialed society has given us.  And now people want their money back.  All the things the communists of the world told us to do, we have found out, do not give us a perfect society.  And people are turning away from it, which is the violent rejection we are seeing now and the hurt feelings of those who have invested their entire lives toward that credentialed society.  There are a lot of regrets, which was inevitable. 

Communism was everywhere leading up to World War II.  Socialists and Marxists from Europe were haughtily flowing their European viewpoints through high society, and our political class, fresh off their years of Western expansion and criticism over how the Indians were treated, were soaking in guilt and wanting to show the rest of the world they could name wines at wine tastings and eat fancy dinners with the best of them, so they came up with this plan for all of American life, to show the world that the United States deserved respect too.  And that we could go to college and function like civilized people all over the earth have been doing.  So we endeavored to adopt many of their methods, which was to create a credentialed society and create classes of people based on that tiered system, and there are still plenty of people who still think this way.  The communist belief was that skills were an unequal way to elevate in society because some people might be better at things than other people, so to correct that situation, they came up with this credentialed system where people could take a class, get a piece of paper, hang it on their wall, then get jobs based on that effort.  That way, people who were losers but paid the money to get a credential in the education system could have access to a job and climb their way into “elite” society.  So, people who weren’t very good at things in life or who didn’t want to work very hard to acquire a skill loved this system.  All they had to do was pay money and get their piece of paper; then, they could live the rest of their days as a respected member of society because they attended some college or another method of achieving credentials. 

There is a lot of talk about corporations being part of so much evil in this New World Order, which is a shame because I like capitalism and all manner of making money.  Unfortunately, corporations are usually run by lazy people with walls full of credentials but not much skill in performing a job.  So their entire lives are filled with trying to hide that embarrassing fact from the world.  So, they have plunged themselves into more and more socialism and communism in their corporate structure and have taken their companies more toward a Chinese model of authoritarian control by default.  I call these types of people bottom feeders, even when they hold high office in an essential position, because fundamentally, everything they are was built on this premise of a credentialed society.  As long as everyone played by the same rules, nobody would find out what phonies these people were.  They can maintain the illusion as long as a credentialed society protects them from actual results.  So this is how it has been for many years, certainly coming out of World War II and the push to adopt a Middle Class and a tiered education class, which is talked about all the time now, because the belief is that if only more people had gone to college, they wouldn’t be voting for President Trump, as uttered by Katie Couric recently in frustration that nothing seems to be stopping the former President and billionaire from returning to office.  The belief all along from the communist left was that their “credentialed society” would protect them from market expectations. 

But people have now admitted that they don’t like this world created by “credentialed society,” and market forces of need are finally catching up.  Kids coming out of high school now are watching what their dumb parents did, and they don’t want any part of that mess. They certainly don’t want the debt that comes with the buy-in to credentialed society.  And they don’t like the kind of people that credentialed society makes.  The world is starving for the good old-fashioned merit-based society where the best and brightest work hard to climb to success, and the results benefit everyone.  However, the key is to unlock hard work through merit to true innovation, which credentialed society is not inspired to utilize.  For them, it was about equality and the ability to buy your way into advanced society and respect.  For the merit-based capitalist system, it was hard work and perseverance.  The equalization model has left everyone but the lazy starving for better options.  So, as we speak, that credentialed society is falling apart.  They are making a lot of noise about it, but in essence, the trend of the world is moving toward skills and hard work, perseverance, and competency.  Much to the anxiety of the communists and lazy losers of the world who thought they could buy their way into social respect.  As that trend falls apart, the screams are loud.  But it doesn’t change the fact that people want quality and effort in their social interactions, not losers who live in a higher social class just because they attended a school and received a “receipt” in the form of a diploma.  As it has turned out, that paper has shown itself worthless.  And the people hanging it on their walls who paid fortunes to get it weren’t any better off than if they hadn’t done anything.  They still didn’t have the skills to be professional because they didn’t have the guts to do the work.  They tried to cheat it by hiding in the credentialed class.  And the world is tired of it. 

Rich Hoffman

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