Tag: Butler County

I Fully endorse George Lang for the Senate District 4 seat in Ohio

I was quite excited to learn that George Lang was running for the Senate seat that Bill Coley had been occupying in Ohio for several years. The seat itself was terming out and George let me know that on Monday at noon he was going to announce his run for it, and it brought a lot of joy to me. I first learned of his candidacy while on vacation with my family in Charleston, South Carolina touring sites that many were reviewing as the best in the world. I kept hearing while on my weeklong stay in Charleston that this neighborhood, this beach, this restaurant, this shipping lane, this and that were the best anywhere. I had to admit that everything was very nice. Property values were certainly great, and shipping vessels seemed to come into the harbor every 30 minutes loaded to their max. Even at 3 in the morning from our Mt Pleasant home I could hear the cranes working and I found all that economic activity very exciting. Yet the town of Mt Pleasant across the harbor from downtown Charleston was quiet and very chic at that time of night, just as it was all other hours of the day. The people there were prosperous and happy, no crime was in sight. Prosperity tends to do that to a community. So I was a little sad to leave and come home, but then for comparison as my family hit Cincinnati starting at Florence then going up I-71 to avoid the traffic on I-75 it was a startling comparison which culminated into our last moments of the journey travelling down Butler County Regional Highway where for as far as the eye could see, there was prosperity, especially in West Chester. After coming from an extremely wealthy area full of vibrant economic activity, it was obvious that my hometown of Butler County, Ohio was even greater and that is something the rest of the nation hasn’t been talking about. And for the last twenty years, it was my friend George Lang who has had a tremendous hand in that success, which was why I was elated that he was running for that Ohio Senate seat.

It goes without saying then that I endorse George Lang for the Senate District 4 seat in Ohio, fully. I could tell stories all day about why he’s qualified, but the best part of his resume is in this opening paragraph. I had spent a week in one of America’s most prosperous communities and coming directly home to West Chester, where I work, and Liberty Township where I live it becomes obvious that we have it better than most anywhere else in the country and that is due to the very pro-business environment that Lang has championed for many years starting as a trustee in West Chester. Even when Lang was outvoted 2 to 1 on most issues in West Chester by the much more liberal trustees who were there at the time, Lee Wong being one of them, George managed to be a change agent for the betterment of business and the results are obvious today, and the spill over has poured over into neighboring Liberty Township and other regions connected directly to West Chester very positively.

I remember well when George benefited from Mark Welch getting elected into that second trustee seat knocking out a longtime incumbent so that a second vote could be obtained, and real growth could occur for business. For a few years George Lang and Mark Welch opened West Chester to a very positive pro-business culture that is now carrying over into our current conditions which rival any of the best in the entire country and now George wants to bring that culture to all of Ohio. When George was elected into the 52nd House of Representative seat, this was his ultimate goal which he has been working toward. However, as a Senator, he will have much greater leverage to make that pro-business platform more prominent and to take it above the noise of all the other political matters that permeate the state.

George really doesn’t have any competition for this spot, his rivals during the upcoming primary are Candice Keller out of Middletown, who I think is a wonderful person. But when it comes to experience, George has many of the same positions as her on conservative ideas, but his understanding of business and his pro-business platform just puts him on a higher level. Then as I’ve said about Lee Wong, he’s the kind of guy who is a liberal in a conservative area. He has no choice but to run as a Republican. His policy decisions are very much that of a Democrat. If he were running for office in Hamilton County or even Dayton, he’d be a Democrat without question. It was Lee who stood in the way of many of the growth ideas that George wanted to implement in West Chester. I seem to remember Wong’s campaign slogan was that you “Couldn’t go wrong with Wong.” Well, yes you can, in a big way. He’s a nice guy but he’s not on the level of Lang, in any category. In many ways Lee stood in the way of growth, it was George and Mark who broke through his resistance to give West Chester the great prosperity that it sees today.

So, if there is a theme to all this, management does matter and who we elect into these positions has a major impact on all our lives. Obviously in Charleston South Carolina they have a lot of good things going on. Essentially there they have a deep and rich history to draw from which has put politics on the efforts of preserving that history, and not getting in the way of businesses wanting to capitalize off that deep history. In West Chester, Ohio the situation was harder, while Butler County does have a great history going back to before the Revolution, just as Charleston does, we had to be good the old-fashioned way, in the middle of the country with great highway access. We needed our politicians to make the most of those advantages with low cost compliance and protections on upfront investment for businesses. In West Chester, George Lang alone for a long time, then later with a good support staff from a very good Republican Party presence, have created an economic boom that plugs straight into the Trump administration. There is a reason that President Trump enjoys coming to the southern Ohio area so much, and George Lang is more a part of that success than just about anybody. Not in what he has done, but in what he hasn’t.

Most politicians measure their success by what bills they sponsor and ultimately by how much they grow government. In George’s case, it’s the opposite, he measures his success by how much he can get government out of the way of business, allowing them to spend their time and energy on being profitable, which then allows a high quality of living for everyone. For people who have lived in the Butler County area for many years, its easy to take for granted just how good it is. But if you have traveled, the benefits are obvious in comparison. I am very excited to see George Lang do for Ohio as a Senator what he has done for West Chester. I personally think Ohio has an opportunity to become one of the great economic powerhouses of the world and it will take people like George to make it happen. So he has my endorsement and then some. I simply can’t wait to get him in that seat so he can start the work, for which we will all benefit.

 

Rich Hoffman

 

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Vote HELL No on the Butler County Safety Levy: It’s a money grab for ineffective school board members afraid to make hard decisions

Essentially if the school safety levy fails for the combined efforts of Fairfield schools, Hamilton, New Miami, Edgewood, and Monroe—Hamilton will vote to allow teachers to arm themselves. And the other school boards will have to follow because doing nothing simply isn’t an option. Out of Butler County, Ohio’s 10 school districts five of them are looking for this safety levy to hire more employees to keep the school boards from having to make a hard decision on how best to protect schools. At the core of the argument especially among young and inexperienced parents who have been taught all their lives that guns are bad, school boards are trying to appease them with a more centralized process. This involves spending millions of dollars on additional resource officers, mental health assessments and similar employee staffing increases which of course cost more money. Yet we know now from experience that the real solution is a more decentralized process where teachers can act as first responders the moment a crisis breaks out. And the good thing about that approach is that it doesn’t cost more money.

At the heart of the problem is that the basic assumption about public education is that it should not involve guns—because the aim of the progressive education philosophy is to live in a world where guns aren’t needed, value judgments are surrendered to equal rights and the people being educated are subjects of the state. Guns do not fit that view of the world. But in no way is that vision aligned with life in the real world, it’s an idea that mostly people who think politically left of center strive for. Most parents enroll their children in a school without thinking about politics or danger, because their primary concern is that their child is safe, and they want to believe that the schools themselves are free of any turmoil. School boards love to spend money, because its easy and when collections of people are in charge of administering finances, spending money is the only real way to get along because everyone loves to spend money, especially if it is other people’s money. So this issue is particularly challenging for school board members. The only way to make panicky parents happy is to give them more safety personnel, mental health specialists, social workers and counselors—because buying those types of employees give people the illusion of safety. It gives parents the feeling that the institution itself can keep their children safe, and as school board members yielding to that fantasy is safe in itself, until there is a real problem and a deranged shooter comes into the hallways that none of the new government employees could see coming.

Many of the gun rampages we have seen just this year, not to mention year’s past involved people who were considered mentally deranged in some form or another and the institutions of our society proved they were completely ineffective to stop such people from acting in a deadly way. To stop such a deranged mass murderer before the act occurs requires a decision based on judgments, and this is something that our modern institutions just don’t do, because they are so politically charged. Our modern institutions for which public schools are a part are more prone to trying to make a deranged lunatic feel more at home by attacking the normal kids into unnatural acts of compassion than in removing the threat from society by implementing a judgment that might seem unfair. So public schools are powerless to protect children from those who decide life isn’t worth living and they take to becoming mass murderers. By their reasoning, if they are going to kill themselves anyway, why not take a few people who made them feel terrible along the way pay too.

All the methods of implementing school safety as proposed by the Butler County safety levy is to deal with the aftermath of a mass shooting, not to prevent it from happening, and that is what needs to be clear about what people are voting for. There is only one way to ensure that a mass killer doesn’t gain an advantage over a student population of unarmed kids is to have teachers be the first responders to end the threat seconds after it has started, instead of minutes. That is the only way to properly protect students in a school from deranged killers which are becoming more common place these days from many influences. This idea that guns will be legislated out of existence is simply another liberal fantasy that they haven’t come to terms with yet. Guns are part of American life and children should learn to live with them, how to properly use them and what function they serve in the context of society. For instance, a serious course of study could be made of how the invention of gunpowder has changed the nature of human existence politically. Americans are living proof of that evolution, but the path to the political philosophy which created that American experiment is confirmation that no human society will retreat back into the compliance of a communist state, which as China is now and the Soviet Union used to be. Once people have tasted personal freedom, there is no way to erase it from their minds and over the last thousand years mankind has marched toward more personal freedom and much less aristocracy. Yet that is not what schools are teaching and that is also what makes them dangerous—because they are not aligned with the world around them.

For many the history of firearms and the nature of why people love them isn’t relevant to this discussion of school safety, but unfortunately for those utopian minded liberals, such an understanding is mandated for resolution on the safety issue. Is the security of a school more effective if it is more centrally controlled, or is it more effective if it is decentralized? The obvious answer of course is decentralization, we know that from lots of experience as a society. Guns are a part of world culture, they were invented out of human necessity to protect individual rights and that is why history says they are here to stay. We aren’t going to “uninvent” them. Therefore, to have a safe society we have to have a means to defend ourselves from people who may use them for malice and especially in education institutions, such instruction and awareness is paramount for tomorrow’s next generations. To defend them from harm, guns must be part of the solution, not mental health specialists, social workers, and counselors. Those are investments into what happens after a tragedy. We want to solve such problems before they become deadly.

Parents and teachers who are not comfortable with guns are going to have to adapt. Their sensitivities cannot be the contributing factors to making schools less safe due to their emotional condition toward guns. For those people I would suggest some classes on firearms, and to learn more about them aside from what they have seen in Hollywood productions over the last twenty years. Guns themselves are not dangerous, they are precision instruments which defend individual rights. If a teacher is responsible for the safety of a classroom and a crazed gunman is outside their door looking to commit mass murder against harmless, innocent people, that teacher should have the ability to end the threat right then and there. There won’t be time to call the police. A counselor or mental health specialist won’t stop a killer in the hall and talk them out of committing violence, only equal or superior firepower can do that. And that is the way of things in a free society—decentralized first responders who can slow down or stop a threat until the professionals arrive, just like in CPR. The only thing stopping this safety measure from being implemented for the good of everyone is the sensitivities of those who insist that guns not be part of a solution that only guns can solve. And not just guns, but guns in the hands of everyday people who are on the front lines and most prepared to take action when threats arise.

For many, obviously the case with the school boards of the participating schools, the responsibility for such security in their minds fall on the professionals we hire in society to deal with these kinds of things. But it is that over-reliance on institutional safety that many of these mass killers exploit to instigate their wrath. Guns are not a particularly American idea, but the personal use of them is, which means that in order to have a properly safe society that is living in harmony with the invention of guns, that personal participation of guns is something we should use to solve the gun violence problem. The solution is in decentralization within our institutions so to make them safer. More centralization will give us the opposite, the likelihood of more violence. If we really want to solve the problem of mass shootings, especially in public schools, and especially in Butler County which is the focus of this unique tax increase for the five-schools mentioned, then we need to allow teachers to be that layer of security. Throwing more money at more centralized control will do nothing but waste money, which the school boards participating in this horrendous tax and spend approach should have already had in their budgets to begin with. Ultimately what the school boards are asking for in this levy request is for Butler County voters to bail them out of having to make a hard decision—whether or not to cut some expenses out of their budget to hire more safety personnel, which is what they should be doing. Or in having to make a decision in arming teachers which would hurt the sensibilities of some neurotic parents who need an education of their own to get up to speed with the modern world. But nothing about the Butler County safety levy will make schools safer from a potential shooter who might want to attack schools and the children within it.

If I had loved ones in these schools, which I personally do, and a lunatic comes to that school with a gun to shoot up the innocent, I expect a teacher or administrator to be carrying a gun and to stop that situation before mass carnage occurs. There isn’t time to call for help when something like that happens. The situation must be dealt with right then and there. I don’t need a counselor to talk me through the grieving process after a bunch of kids have been killed. I don’t need a mental health professional to rationalize the mind of the killer before the smoke has left the scene of the crime. I just need the threat neutralized and that loved one home safe every day. And just having teachers carrying guns concealed during their professional business makes the chances of a safe day at school much more of a reality.
Vote not only NO on the Butler County Safety Levy, but………………………….HELL NO!

Rich Hoffman

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I Stand With Sheriff Jones–ARM THE TEACHERS: HELL NO on the 1.5-mill Butler County school security levy

Of course, people want to know what I think of the 1.5-mill levy that five Butler County schools are trying to pass together to boost school security. The five schools are Hamilton, Fairfield, Monroe, Edgewood and New Miami, and if the levy passes they intend to increase their school entry security, and hire mental health employees to help in what they think will help make schools safer. It’s a ten-year deal which effectively avoids the entire problem. As a long-term anti-levy advocate for public schools I am on the record at Lakota as saying if they allowed a policy of arming their teachers that I would support a levy to increase teacher compensation and help them purchase firearms. As anti-tax as I am, I support the Betsy DeVos federal purchase of firearms to help teachers get their hands on them so obviously this issue means a great deal to me. I think firearms on a teacher makes schools much safer and ultimately prepares children for the kind of world they are going to have to live in as adults. The Hamilton school board actually yielded rightly to Sheriff Jones and his billboards by voting to support arming teachers, then under great pressure and in hoping that this levy would pass, they backtracked to await the results of this election. That pulled Jones off the fence of neutrality on this particular levy to speak against it. And on that issue Sheriff Jones and I might as well be identical twins. I am with him in saying what I have said many, many times in the past. This school levy is a money grab by these school districts who are very intent to ignore the problem of school shootings and are attempting to yield to the pressure of the teacher unions and their anti-gun progressive political philosophy against the nature of this threat.

https://www.journal-news.com/news/butler-county-sheriff-calls-school-security-levy-districts-money-grab/PjwIrmBL109j8U0jctoA1O/

Guns and how people think of them has largely been shaped by our public education system and ultimately the liberalism of modern politics. That essential vantage point is that guns are dangerous and just looking at one is a kind of taboo and that is a far cry from how things have traditionally been in this country. As an example, obtaining a gun in America was like getting the first responsibilities into adulthood, which is the central premise to the movie that comes out every year on all our televisions during the Holiday season, A Christmas Story. Getting a gun and learning to use it responsibly was the first access that many had in their journey toward adulthood. But since that movie and the period it covers, American youth have lost that basic stepping stone into adulthood and public schools have attempted to steer minds away from such individualized ritual into accepting more state control, which is what you hear from virtually every school official as pressure mounts to arm teachers. The positions of government schools are to rely on centralized authority as opposed to individualized first responders.

Hoping to ride public emotion away from making that critical decision to individualize security in the hands of first responder teachers this Butler County school levy is one last leap to keeping that centralized authority model alive in the context of the core philosophy of public education. That assumption is a progressive belief that guns should be removed from society and that children should grow up into adults and not have their minds on guns at all—so that an eventual federal ban will occur by those future voters. By allowing guns to be part of the solution, the fear is that this new generation of young people will grow up once again accepting that guns are a critical part of American society, which of course they always have been.

I have come to think of guns as more of a philosophy than an imminent threat. Personal firearm ownership is a declaration of independence in a lot of ways and a commitment as a first responder to law enforcement. Gun ownership is not a threat to law enforcement, it is a great assistance if done properly and it is that reality for which Sheriff Jones and President Trump support arming teachers in schools to put the whole school security issue to bed for good, before more people get hurt.

We have all talked about doing something after the most recent rash of school shootings, but the real answer is to decentralize the process and give teachers the ability to be those critical first responders when danger happens. The philosophy of guns is that by owning them, we make each owner an extension of law and order rather than hiding under a desk or behind a door while we wait five to ten minutes for the police to arrive. The fantasy that many progressive people have, which many school board members are dedicated to, is that guns will be removed from American society at some point and they think by resisting a move to the other direction that they are facilitating that inevitability. But I would point out correctly that the trajectory of gun legislation is not getting more restrictive, it is getting less so. If you track gun laws back to 1992 it will become apparent that the Second Amendment has been strengthened even under the most rigorous debate, because as an invention of individual protections, guns are at the core of everything our American society stands for. And schools should be part of that instruction, working with the NRA and even gun manufacturers to facilitate great understanding of what guns are all about and how to properly use them so that young people grow up to be good gun owners in the future. Denying this reality is where all these school board members are going wrong, because they are missing the essence of educating young people in modern-day America. Taking a political stand is reckless when the evidence shows that the world is wrong on this issue. We need more guns and gun ownership, not less to make a society built on justice, honesty, and valor.

The five schools mentioned are avoiding the inevitable. They are hoping to take this money grab to appease the unionized teachers but to act as an insurance policy if something does go wrong, because they can at least say then that they tried. But we are looking for more than trying, I certainly expect there to never be a school shooting in my county schools. And if someone tries, then I expect some first responder to put down the threat right then and there and get the students back to class learning valuable things, not sitting around crying about how emotional everyone is. There shouldn’t be a need for more mental health experts in schools because the message would be quite clear, if danger erupts, the teachers are armed. And that the way to better mental health is in conducting lives in a more individualized responsible manner. In their most basic form, firearms teach their users to be more responsible people which translates to every action a person participates in. So, the benefits are many in arming teachers in public schools.

That leaves the point of this article as to whether or not the Butler County school security tax should be passed, to be answered. And I say HELL NO! It’s a chicken approach to a hard problem and for the schools themselves it is just as Sheriff Jones articulated, it’s a money grab. I hate tax increases and I think the schools cost way too much money currently, and kids don’t learn nearly enough of what they need. I would argue that the entire government school system needs to be rethought. But I stand by my previous statements on approving levies if school boards adopt arming teachers. I sympathize with the tremendous intellectual challenge it takes for them to make the switch in thinking from a centralized safety response to a more individualized one. So I’m willing to sweeten the pot for them to bring them to the right side of the argument. I personally think everyone should learn to shoot a gun. There is nothing like going to a range and respecting the people around you who are all armed with deadly weapons because it teaches the process of being safe and conducting yourself responsibly. Those basic procedural respects are missing from today’s youth and I think they would do well to get it from their teachers in school. But better yet, it is best for kids to know that their schools are truly safe because any teacher could be armed and if danger breaks out, someone is there to respond in seconds rather than minutes. And that has a direct impact on whether there is a body count or not.

Rich Hoffman

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The Wonderful Idea Sheriff Jones Has: I’m willing to make a deal to see it happen at Lakota

Let me say that I am very proud of Sheriff Jones from my county of Butler, Ohio. In the wake of the school shootings in Florida, and elsewhere, Jones has stepped forward to offer CCW classes for school employees free of charge so if such a catastrophic event should happen while they are employed within the schools when an attack happened, they’d be prepared to take action to stop the carnage. What Sheriff Jones is talking about is a real solution to a real problem and it shows leadership that the country as a whole could follow. I am very enthusiastic about his proposal, so much so that I am willing to make a deal to my own school district of Lakota—to support this generous offering from Sheriff Jones. If 5% of the school employees within the Lakota school system take the Sheriff Jones CCW class, when it comes time to pass the next school levy, I won’t stand in the way with opposition. That wouldn’t be due to a sudden support for higher taxes, but years ago when people asked me what it would take to get me to support a school levy at Lakota, well, this is it. I could actually feel good about how my money was spent if my local school district was the first in the country to adopt a policy that could show everyone else how to solve this dire problem.

Everyone who knows me understands how much I am against out of control budgets and escalating costs of public employee contracts, so this is no small matter. But bigger than that is this very much-needed expansion of understanding firearms and using them for personal protection in the name of everything that is good. What Sheriff Jones is proposing is a very good idea that has behind it a desire to protect the best and brightest in all of us, and a CCW is the best way in these modern times to accomplish that task. The more good people who are a part of the concealed carry community, the better, and safer everyone is. It is no different from training to be a first responder in your place of business. Nobody would argue that learning how to perform CPR or general first aid to a co-worker in need could be a bad thing. When the fire department and police arrive, such scenes are turned over to the professionals, and the same would happen with concealed carry holders. They would serve as first responders to a threatening situation and protect those around them from the kind of carnage that happens when bad people turn to evil to wreak ill intentions. In the grand scheme of things, I can’t think of anything better than this idea from Sheriff Jones to help solve a problem that is only getting worse, because the indecision and fear of guns that most people have prevents a solution. Learning how to control that fear is the first step to solving this crisis and I would be willing to bend a little bit to see it happen.

Rich Hoffman
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Who Knew there were Marxist Democrats in Butler County, Ohio: Jocelyn Bucaro attacking George Lang because she has nothing else

First of all, I didn’t think there were any Democrats in Butler County, Ohio.  Then I remembered that there is a Hustler of Hollywood store in Monroe, so there are probably some there.  There are probably some at the casino outside of the Lebanon prison, also in Monroe. There are school teachers who live in the area who are members of the radical Marxists labor unions—probably a few drug addicts who live in some of the local trailer parks—but other than that I didn’t know there were enough of them to actually have a Democratic Party in what is likely one of the strongest Republican areas in the country.  But there is and the Marxist radical leading it is Jocelyn Bucaro.  Jocelyn has opened her mouth regarding the Republican Party’s backing of George Lang who is poised to take the departing Margy Conditt state seat who just resigned to spend more time with her family.  George of course is someone I have always supported and has done a great job as a trustee in West Chester. Here’s the story the way the Journal News reported it:

West Chester Twp. George Lang is now the presumptive front-runner to succeed Ohio Rep. Margy Conditt, R-Liberty Twp., who resigns Friday.

Lang was the overwhelming recommended choice of the Butler County Republican Party’s Central Committee members that live in the 52nd Ohio House District, receiving 46 of 69 votes cast.

FIRST REPORT: Butler County lawmaker to resign in September

Butler County State Central Committeewoman Ann Becker, of West Chester Twp., received 19 votes, followed by Jeff Kursman, of Liberty Twp. (3), Dr. Anu Mital, of Liberty Twp., (1) and West Chester Twp. Trustee Lee Wong (none).

District residents of the GOP’s Central Committee listened to the five candidates seeking the party’s recommendation. There are seven candidates seeking the seat, but John Haberer and Grace Kendrick, both of West Chester Twp., did not seek the party’s recommendation.

http://www.whio.com/news/local/butler-gop-recommend-west-chester-trustee-george-lang-for-statehouse/dEzOuTYRP7bla2dUIm0BfI/

http://www.journal-news.com/news/butler-democrats-lang-unfit-serve-statehouse/8HTtHTZRVZqq6tpILPDQgJ/

http://www.journal-news.com/news/crime–law/trustee-george-lang-not-guilty-federal-perjury-trial/v4toqPLtJKDNMUa22Fy0YJ/

Butler County Democratic Party Chairwoman Jocelyn Bucaro has expressed her disappointment in Conditt’s resignation and said it opens the door “to enable Republican Party insiders to anoint yet another successor who answers to party bosses and not the voters they’re supposed to represent.”

She later said Lang was “unfit to serve” in the Statehouse, alleging he “traded access” to local Republicans to aid the defunct Dynus tech company.

Some of Dynus’ executives were tried and found guilty of defrauding the county millions of dollars. Lang, who eventually became a Dynus executive after being a lobbyist for the company, was never indicted for his role in the company and was found not guilty on a perjury charge stemming from his testimony of former Dynus owner

I can say regarding George that he’s the last person who should be in jail over a crime and as to being fit for office, what he has done as a trustee in West Chester is something everyone should be proud of, and if he could do more of it from the State House in Ohio, then we’d all be better off.  I remember that Dyrus case and if there was ever a politically charged witch hunt like we are now seeing against the Trump administration, that was it, and I felt bad for what George and his wife Debbie had to go through during that perjury trail.  For the vile Democrat Jocelyn Bucaro to even bring it up shows the level of character that we are dealing with in that party.  If there was an ounce of guilt by George Lang the FBI would have found it and presented it as evidence during that two-year investigation.  A jury found George not guilty which for the Langs was a nerve-wracking experience.  If the jury had found George guilty he was facing several years in prison, so it was hard to stand through that experience.  We always knew it was a political hit job, but you never really know what the impact on your life will be when it is up to other people whether or not you go free.  George was accused of perjury simply to get at him and other members of the local GOP by political enemies; it’s as simple as that.  Yes it was extremely unfair, but George came out of it OK and he went on to make West Chester, Ohio one of the most business friendly regions in the country and now he wants to bring that experience to the State House as a congressional representative.

Democrats like Jocelyn and Joan Powell who are seeking one of the West Chester seats for trustee in this year’s election hate talk about business.  As foundational Marxists they really have only four terms they understand, American progressivism, socialism, communism or fascism—all which come directly from the pages of Karl Marx philosophy.  They want the public to own the means of production which has been proven to be an idiotic foundation of thought.  The “public” does not have superior intelligence over highly motivated individuals which is the foundational premise of the Republican Party established on the essentials of capitalism espoused by Adam Smith—from the period before Karl Marx.  You can just look at the GDP of the world’s nations and you can see quickly what works and what doesn’t.

Given that understanding it is a badge of honor if Democrats who are essentially functioning Marxists put a political hit on you, because it means you are doing something right. The way you can tell that George Lang is a good person—and he is because I have known him for quite a long time—is that the Democratic Party put the hit on him to begin with and in a flimsy attempt to stop his rise to a new and important state seat are trying to drum up an issue from the past for which he was found innocent, as their only ammunition in stopping him.  I mean what else is Jocelyn Bucaro going to do to let people in Butler County know there is even a Democratic Party?  Even liberals like Joan Powell and Lee Wong are attempting to put their name next to Republicans because without that—they wouldn’t get their names mentioned as serious contenders.  Nobody in Butler County who wants to be considered reputable, and serious, calls themselves a Democrat.

George is a pro business guy which is why Democrats came after him. Without business, there really isn’t anything for anybody to do—we’d all be cast back to the Stone Age.  People don’t move to areas where there is nothing going on—it is business first that makes an area “successful” or not.  People move to areas for the jobs that are in them not for the trees, creeks and rivers.  People who do move to areas for those kinds of things move out into the country.  But a culture that is associated with success–places like West Chester, or even New York City, are for the culture that comes from human innovation and that always is tied directly to business.  Marxists in the Democratic Party like Jocelyn Bucaro have no idea about how business works so they of course attack people who are involved in business, and George Lang is undoubtedly that kind of person. Having George operating at the state level is exciting to me because he understands business and would be a wonderful addition to the type of GOP that is forming under the very pro-business president, Donald Trump.  George is perfect for that role, but that is also why the Democrats attacked him.  For me, that’s good enough reason all by itself to vote for him.  But for the Marxist Democrats, George is someone to be feared because he’s not only a very pro-business guy, but he’s also a good person—and that is something that truly scares liberals.  That is why they have and will always attack him.

Rich Hoffman

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CNN in Butler County, Ohio at Rick’s Tavern: From Eliot Ness to Ian Flemming–Comey is in trouble

IMG_4642Of course when CNN came to Butler County to do a piece on the James Comey hearings seeking the reaction of Trump supporters I wasn’t going to pass up on the opportunity.  CNN has been hostile to Trump and they were coming to my turf—and I got an invite.  So I spent the day with several other Trump troops from southern Ohio at Rick’s Tavern in Fairfield watching the Comey hearings which CNN set up as a kind of watch party and we stuck around to give our live reaction on Anderson Cooper’s show later that night.  The CNN people were very professional and accommodating so the event went off without any contention.  We originally were supposed to be on the Anderson Cooper show for two 15 minute segments, but because of the busy news day that was whittled down to a 4 minute piece at 9:35 PM.   So we had a problem, we had nine Trump people at Rick’s Tavern to do live television and we all had a few pages of notes that we had taken from the testimony to fill a half hour of air time.  But somehow we had to narrow all that down into a 20 second statement.  So when the camera turned to me I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or even where to start about my various thoughts–I said this.

I’ll get more into the details of the Comey hearing itself in the days to come but for this occasion, I’ll share my notes for future reference and focus on the positive experience we had with CNN at Rick’s Tavern as Americans.

Comey Notes taken on 6/8/2017:

  • Mark Warner made a dangerous assertion with the resolute conclusion of the Russian investigation as his foundation argument. How would he know that?

  • In a world where international cooperation and compromise are praised, it is interesting that working with the Russians is even something that would cause suspicion in the first place.

  • Comey says that the impression of the FBI was not in dismay, which is a purely emotional response. Saying something doesn’t make it true.

  • Russian cyber intrusion by the Russians according to Comey, started in 2015 under Obama.

  • Comey said that Trump lied about him and the FBI. That perspective comes from a guy who was in charge at the time and is now an ex-employee speaking from hurt feelings.

  • Judgment of Trump’s character was that Trump might lie about him—based again purely on feelings.

  • Comey assumes that the Trump dinner was a way to get something on the FBI director to use his job as a bargaining chip to control Comey’s investigations. Again, this was purely emotionally based.   Comey made a lot of assumptions.

  • Don’t remember that Comey specifically said “chose to defame me.”

  • How did Comey know he needed to write down everything—the premise was rooted in mistrust from the beginning? The interesting thing is that Comey did not have the same level of conviction when Attorney General Loretta Lynch told him to handle the Hillary Clinton case as a “matter.”  Lynch was clearly trying to shape the FBI case, yet Comey did not respond with indignation the way he did with Trump.  He obviously had made up his mind about Trump before the president took office.

  • Comey said he was uncomfortable with Trump after the meeting with him on January 6th.

    https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/873295786834108417

  • Trump and Comey never spoke after April 11th.

  • Comey said he’d be “honestly loyal,” to Trump.

  • Comey didn’t do his duty because of the pressure from Lynch. Shows a history of bad decisions by over thinking things.

  • FBI leadership team didn’t want to speak with Jeff Sessions.

  • “Gut feel of the nature of the person I was interacting with.” This is how Comey referred to Trump.

  • Comey asked a friend that is a professor at Columbia school of journalism to leak his personal notes to the press hoping to invoke a special investigation.

  • Comey says that Russia actively participated in American elections with a great level of sophistication. But that’s nothing new, the United States does the same.  The problem is with the DNC letting themselves become victims with loose information.

  • Why would the president kick everyone out of the room—because business guys know from experience that it’s a good way to communicate and size people up—not letting them hide behind other people.

  • What is the difference in speaking one on one in a private setting and speaking on the phone with someone. This is something that Roy Blunt brought up—why would Comey feel different in person than on a phone call?

  • Comey leaked info to a friend—guilty of activism—seeking a special counsel to do what he didn’t have the courage to do himself. While he showed caution in not having a special investigation occur with Hillary Clinton, but had no problem letting one happen to President Trump.

  • Comey established a pattern of very weak behavior which likely has more to do with his firing than anything otherwise contemplated.

  • Likely, notes leaked to The New York Times are still in the possession of Comey’s friend. Seriously bad judgment.

  • Case is on obstruction of justice only if the intent was to cover up the Russian investigation. It assumes that job performance was not a factor.

  • Comey referred to himself as “captain courageous.”

As we went on the air many other Trump supporters showed up to fill in the background of the bar—specifically the Biker’s for Trump guys—so there was an ambiance of positivity that was distinctly patriotic.  The news coverage all day long had been very negative for Trump, but I didn’t see things that way, which is why I answered my question the way I did.  Clearly Comey wasn’t an honest Boy Scout as he had been playing.  He was in fact one of the big Washington Beltway leakers and he was doing it from a very high level.

He was in trouble—serious trouble and that wasn’t lost to me during the testimony.  When Comey had said he leaked his memo to a friend who then leaked it to the press, I made eye contact with the CNN producer Stephen Samaniego and he knew it too.  This wasn’t a partisan issue or a group of Ohio Trump supporters living in the bubble of regional conservatism.  Comey had admitted to something that was very serious and Trump had nailed him to the wall with Comey’s own show boating.  Once the smoke cleared from the day’s events, to the time we went on live with Anderson Cooper—that was the story.

As I watched the CNN guys and the live show on the monitor as we were finally set-up for our official shots it was clear to me that this was all part of making America Great Again.  The epic showdown on Capital Hill with Comey–flushing him out as a leaker, getting him to reveal what Loretta Lynch had revealed about the Hillary Clinton case—which we all suspected—was all part of this new Trump approach to things.  Now we had proof—testimony anyway—it all occurred because of the way Trump does things. None of this would have happened with any other president.  The Iran Contra hearings nearly destroyed all the good things that Reagan did—and here was Trump plowing through everything relentlessly and the political left was making major mistakes under the pressure of Trump.  And here was CNN honestly soul-searching for an understanding of how people think from the heartland of the Trump voter—Butler Country, Ohio with some of the leaders of the ground game there to talk.

They were truly curious whether or not we’d still be with him and they picked Rick’s Tavern with its big America flag hanging out front to understand why. They asked good questions and we answered them the best we could in 20 seconds.  When it came to me I said what I did, Comey portrayed himself as an honest Eliot Ness FBI agent from the Untouchables.  But what he ended up being was just a 6’8” cowering bureaucrat who knew how to talk a good game, but when the rubber hit the road, he was lost.  Trump was exposing that month by month making it so that Comey couldn’t hide it any more.  Barack Obama had no idea what competency was but here was a real businessman who knew value in people and Comey knew he was in trouble. So he decided to become the villain of a spy novel and go about passive aggressively leaking information about Trump to take down the new president—and Trump sniffed him out.  That’s when Comey made the biggest mistake of his life—he leaked his notes to a Columbia professor friend to leak the story to The New York Times.  That’s how I came up with the Ian Flemming reference—because Comey was far more interested with images and storylines than substance and facts.

I think there were around 5 million people watching CNN at that time slot so I was very proud of the opportunity to defend President Trump in the trenches, even if it was only 20 seconds—the comments did what they were supposed to do.  And for those who read here everyday, they know that there is a lot more where that came from.  I’d do it again in a second.  Trump is doing a great job, and I appreciate it, and will fight for him all day long so that he can keep doing that job.

Rich Hoffman

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The Lakota School Levy and the Infamy of Bad Decisions.

I have said a lot about education, and the danger of institutional behavior.  But this is not intended to further analyze that issue.  This is to cover the Lakota School Levy which is on its second attempt in 6 months and promises to be a particularly bloody fight this time around. 

So let me set the stage:

The teachers have just agreed to a pay freeze under a union contract that took months to arrive at.  The districts developers are looking at a tanked economy where many, many properties are left without tenants to support the tax requirements.  The public in general are also feeling the heat of the recession, which after the smoke clears in historical context, is probably a legitimate depression, and many are barely hanging on to their homes as they are victims of the housing bubble.  Lakota has been around a while, so there are a large number of senior citizens in the district that are on fixed incomes and without children in the district, and their charity is strained to a breaking point.  There is a governor in Strickland that is a big government guy, who is tight with labor unions as his base support, and is very close to the president of the United States, who shares much in common with Ohio’s governor.  To both men, Ohio is a battle ground state where much is at stake politically and the nation is watching closely.  And in that context, Lakota is the 7th largest school system in the state.  It is Ohio’s largest “Excellent” district nine years running with distinction two years in a row. 

I contemplated this heavily while practicing in my back yard.

And it really is that simple if you take the emotion away.

The opponents of the levy have joined together, with myself being in that category.  We’re against it for all different reasons.  Mine are that I see the school system displaying the same types of problems we have in government, where accountability is hard to come by, and everything is fixed by spending more money.  And the school government is so big; it’s folding over its own weight financially.         

The Pro Levy people are typically residents that have children in the school system, and many of them moved to the district because of the schools.  And they are threatening to move if the levy fails to a district that supports levies.  The rest of the supporters are employees of the school system in some way and of course they are concerned about the passage of the levy for their own financial stability. 

I listen to the values of the school system and the things they are proud of, like a 90% college attendance rate, a graduation rate of 94.7%.  A student attendance rate of 96.5%.  During 2009-2010 there were 11 National Merit Semi-Finalists.  There was 1 Presidential Scholar in 2008.  They operate at a spending rate per pupil of $9,503 while the State average is $10,253, so on paper, everything sounds profitable. 

But to my thinking, all those statistics are a smoke screen.  All the attendance stats are to the credit of the parents, who obviously care enough about their children to buy a home in a great school district, so naturally, those kids will go to college, attendance will be great, and there will be national honors in a group that has parents that takes education seriously.  And while it is commendable that the school district does operate under the average, it does not question whether or not $9,000 per child actually translates to true excellence.  It doesn’t take much to poke holes in the aspects of their public service that they take pride in; because most of the merit is simply items they are taking credit for.  In fact, I think it is cowardly, to ride on the back of exceptional students, and caring parents, in order to secure funding for an institutional giant that serves as a catalyst for a powerful union. 

That is the beginning of the problem.  Over the years, the Lakota Education Association has grown in power and influence, and this of course leads to the overall problem of political backing of the National Teachers Union which is an organization that I don’t wish to endorse, because the money given to this organization often goes to political agenda’s that I do not support.  Judy Buschle, who just recently announced she was stepping down as the LEA President, has served as the Ohio Education Association board of directors and the National Education Association Resolutions Committee and is a particularly powerful influence locally, and has successfully negotiated many contracts with a bewildered Lakota board of education committee and lap dog superintendants obviously intimidated by the power of the LEA.  In fact, Buschle has been so successful, that the average wage for a teacher at Lakota is $59,000 without any further benefits considered.  And I make that assessment by attending a school board meeting.   I did so after the last levy failure to see if my opinion of the whole situation had been wrong.  I left that June meeting utterly disgusted.  The board was completely outmatched by the union presence.  Don’t believe me, watch the tape.  They film it and have it available for you to judge.  The union people including Mrs. Buschle sat right behind me and were absolutely disrespectful during the meeting.  It was so bad that a parent took the podium and shouted down the union people, blaming them for the anger from the community as to why the levy failed in May.  I left that meeting realizing that everyone in the administration was over their head with the size of the problems they were trying to solve, and the union controlled everything.  So there wasn’t anything they could tell me that would earn my vote until they made serious changes to their leadership structure and outside influence.   

If you’re like me, a person that loves traditional American values, small government, and is suspicious of institutional influence, it is not an option to indirectly supply money to an organization that will then support a governor like Ted Strickland, or a President like Obama.  Even if I did want to give money to the school, because I don’t want my money indirectly converted to union support for a politician that will then in turn come after the way of life that I personally value.  The presence of the powerful union creates a barrier between a person like me, and the school system that I value because I disagree with the philosophy of that union and the politics they represent.  They certainly have a right to exist, but not from the funding of my tax dollars.    

The indirect nature of course comes from the union dues of the teachers, which are paid with our tax dollars.  And because their contracts make them very secure, and keep the highest paid workers the longest, letting go of the teachers with less tenure when they must, those union dues are then funneled to political activity.  Not the kids.  Nothing against Mrs. Buschle, but my political affiliation is much different than her’s, and I don’t wish to support her activity with my money.  So for me, that is the number one reason for not voting for the levy.  No matter how many presentations they present to plead to the public, they still have a costly union that stands between the school system and the public.  As long as that exists, it prevents my full support in a school system.

This isn’t new for me.  I’ve been against union activity for many, many years.  I worked for one once, and it was very contentious and filled with many stories that will be told around water coolers for years.  Many of those stories involve conflict.  I have no tolerance for thug like behavior that comes from pack mentality that often comes out in strikes and threatened union stewards.  I personally blame that type of organization for making America less competitive and responding slowly to changing economic conditions which have resulted in exporting jobs to China, and India.  And such an organization even locally migrates influence up the ladder to large global affiliations that conduct political movement that by-passes our ability to vote.  I can see a time when unions did some good, but as they’ve evolved, they just kept growing to where they became as bad as the companies they originally sought to protect people from.    

But many dissenters to the levy are voting strictly on cost.  They may have been generous in the past, but can no longer say yes because now they are hanging on in a tough economy.  And while many would love to pay the levy, they simply can’t because the taxes are just too high.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a business, or a residential property, the taxes have reached a place where too much is just too much. 

In response the school system is doing the predictable thing; they are making threats, by passing out on the first day of school literature for kids to send home to their parents lobbying for the levy.  Such literature professes that the school system will have to cut an additional $12 million to the $13 million that have been made already.  There will be increases in class size, cuts to two thirds of the athletic budget including elimination of junior high athletics, the termination of 130+ additional teachers and staff, and many other issues.  Superintendent Mike Taylor made the comment that people can’t expect to see the same good school system if all these cuts are made. 

The reality is that the State and Lakota are pointing to one another.  The state needs Lakota and its success.  And Lakota blames the state for unfunded mandates as a rationale for funding.  And they count on the naïveté of the public to not look closely at the shell game.  The confusion has essentially created a revenue stream that is very lucrative to those who work in education.  And because of the union contract, most of the district’s funding is locked up.  So they can only be minimally efficient. 

Stories like we’ve heard of Butler Country Auditor Roger Reynolds who just refunded $502,186 back to the community, won’t happen in Lakota.  In fact, Lakota is getting back $120,600 from Roger’s office.  Roger achieved this savings by reducing overhead and administrative costs by 35% or otherwise $2.1 million since he took office in 2008.  When Lakota cuts, they say we are losing services.  When Roger does it, he is giving money back to the community.  That’s the philosophic difference.  The cuts Mr. Reynolds did were true, efficient cuts and quite extraordinary taking into account that the size of the Auditor’s office doesn’t come close to the enormous size of the Lakota school system.  The cuts Lakota did are cosmetic cuts that should have been done all along. 

For my support, Lakota would have to separate itself from a teachers union.  There is nothing about that relationship that I feel good about.  I simply don’t want my hard earned money going to union support that will be used against me politically.  That would be foolish.  But I suspect that the rest of the community would require a business manager that could come into the school system and dramatically cut costs in a way that Jack Welsh did for GE, and similar personalities have done when costs migrate to unsustainable levels in large organizations.  The community just doesn’t have the money to support levies the way they have in the past, and now we’ve reached a diminishing return.  The growth was caused by aggressive development, and the school system grew because the people moving to the district came here for the schools.  The funding problem comes from the fact that wages migrated out of a zone that a community can fund, and the school system, and the rest of public education is guilty as well, did not stay within a reasonable budget, but allowed things to get out of control.  Dramatic restructuring of their funding practices and revenue stream will have to be implemented, and they’ll have to do it while still performing at a high level.  And the state of Ohio has to properly fund our schools, because we also pay taxes to the state and expect that money to be used where we need it.  And our schools need it.    

If the levy fails, and the pro levy people leave, like they threaten I know the district will survive.  I lived in the district back in the days when Lakota was rural.  Lakota was a good school then, and it will always be, because a school reflects the community, and the community has good people in it.  If the new comers move out, they’ll just overload another district the way they have Lakota, in search of quick and easy answers which never come.

It is naive to even consider that throwing money at Lakota’s problem will solve anything. The solution to the problem will be tough, but starts with understanding that the school system is not the community.  The community will always be good if the people in it are excellent.  It is only natural that kids that come from good people will make a school system good too. 
But the teachers and administrators don’t make good kids or good people.  Parents do that.  Don’t let them take credit for the things you’ve done as a parent.

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com