Tag: Cincinnati

A Perspective on the Value of Money: What a long marriage can teach you

Perspective is an important thing, especially when its based on experience. And unless you live in a culture that can produce experience, it will be difficult to create a society that embraces any hope of wisdom.  Recently, I think it was a combination of the Kentucky Derby and all its festivities, where invites to that event created challenges to our schedule and the 36th anniversary of my marriage to my wife.  Many things get said, and stories are told, especially when people discover how long my wife and I have been married.  There are just assumptions that nobody stays married that long these days for any reason.  Our perspective on social values is very traditional, as well as our opinions on money, how it’s made, and what it says about people.  One story about our early days is worth some perspective and sharing, which is the point here.  I’ve told many stories about my past; it was unique.  To put it mildly, I worked for the mob, not because I wanted to work for mobsters, but because it was an excellent job to get some experience in Sharonville, Ohio, along the Chester Road corridor, which back then was the entertainment zone for the entire city of Cincinnati.  I was a very ambitious young man who wasn’t afraid of anything, which was very attractive to my employers.  I came to know many influential people in Cincinnati politics very early in my life, and some of the wealthiest people were people I called friends.  I was the private chauffeur for many local celebrities, especially team members of the Bengals at that time, so I had an early education about the value of people unique to my circumstances.  I was making more money before I turned 18 than my parents had, and I was just getting started. 

Naturally, once I left that job for something more traditional, income was a prime concern and I wanted to make as much as I possibly could at 18 years old as I was moving out on my own.  And again, I would make more money at this time than my parents which was important to me.  I was in a race to conquer the world the way that the world measured it.  I would go as far as to say that I was ruthless and was intent on having millions of dollars of hard-earned money in my bank account within a few months of working as a car salesman at a local Tri-County front group for money laundering.  That was common in those days and why I know so much about the current Ukraine operation that the government is involved in, and why I said that the mob moved into government.  I was on the front line of that movement and watched it happen up close.  My job was legitimate: sell new and used cars to people and make a commission off that effort.  Even if the job itself only existed to wash money from organized crime efforts at that time, the ownership and upper managers were all in on the effort.  And yes, at all these jobs, the police were involved, and judges, and I knew everyone.  Or, instead, they knew me and were proud to tell people they did.  As I have said before, I had a get-out-of-jail-free card in several communities that lasted as long as I made people a lot of money.   But the moment I didn’t, it was a different story. 

But I had moved out of the house and made more than most adults in the Cincinnati area.  However, along the way, I met my wife.  The timing was inconvenient.  I wasn’t looking for a wife then; she had everything you would look for.  She was a fashion model, her family was wealthy, and they were prominent Beckett Ridge Country Club members nearby.  So our relationship got serious quickly, and soon, she visited me at my job for lunch dates.  On one particular day, she came to my desk just as I was sending over one of the most significant commissions this dealership had ever seen; it was an older man I was selling a used truck to for over $5,000 over invoice and to show how strong I was at the sale, I had him going across the street to the bank to take out all the cash to pay for it with a pile of money.  It was a big deal, and it set the men from the boys in the sales world in that particular culture, and I thought my wife would be impressed.  But she wasn’t, she started crying.  She already knew many successful people and wanted to get out of that life.  She was being set up to be the trophy wife of some doctor in that Beckett Ridge Country Club who was older than her dad, and she wanted off that train at 17 years old.  And I was that rebellious ticket.  So, to make her happy, I redid the deal and gave the guy the truck for just a bit over margin, and he was pleased.  I went from hero to zero in that dealership within an hour, and many life lessons were learned that set the course for many years.  Just making money isn’t enough, especially with people like my wife.  How you make it matters more, and this will be a theme for us over the next four decades. 

It was hard; I went from living high on the hog and being the center of every social circle to the opposite life.  To make my wife happy, I worked at a series of complex manufacturing jobs to earn money as honestly as possible, and I learned a lot of precious experiences from that perspective.  My wife’s requirement to earn money honestly seriously crippled my lifestyle, and it has been challenging over the years.  But that standard has allowed me to have a perspective that few ever get or survive in life—especially the Kentucky Derbi crowd, where the goal is to see and be seen in the crowd.  But most of it is cosmetic and not what my wife values in people.  And naturally, with those values, we have a concise list of people we associate with.  Because most people are still at that phase I was in at 18, where money is the measure of your worth, so you do whatever you can to make it.  To advance beyond that is a journey that few ever get to.  But obviously, we have been married for 36 years for a reason, and if she hadn’t pushed me the way she did, I might never have learned some of those hard lessons about money and value sometimes, when someone gives you a 7 figure opportunity, its better not to take that job but to do something that fulfills other requirements in your life.  But before you can do that, you must have standards to live up to.  At an early age, we were both blessed to have had the chance to get that kind of life out of our systems.  By age 19, I was married, and we were working hard to start a life of our own together, which continues to this day.  But when I say that making money is easy, how you make it matters most; that is the context.  I have never been impressed with people who make a lot of money.  But money is a good measure of people’s value because it tells you a lot about the quality of the person making it.  If they are cheats or cutthroats, money will reveal it, as opposed to some communist centralized government that is entirely built around who you know and how much they like you.  My perspective comes from that critical experience at the dealership and the highlife that came with it.  And the value of an great woman to chase after took me on a wild ride that brought experiences wealth itself could never provide alone. 

Rich Hoffman

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

What the 2023 Macy’s Parade Tells us About the Economy: It’s Back to the 80s

I watch the Macy’s Parade from New York on Thanksgiving Day as a measuring device for our public health every year.  I usually comment on the kind of balloons they have on the parade route and what type of music they feature creatively.  And also, what is the tone of the broadcasts, and the commercials?  There is usually a lot going on to report that provides a good indicator of other economic factors that say a lot about us as a culture.  And sure enough, the 2023 Macy’s Day Parade had a lot to say.  If I had to pick a theme that was decidedly a major part of the decision-making process in putting the parade on this year, it was “Remember the 80s.”  Because most of the musical acts and creative selections were attempting to rub off the magic and music of the 80s to bring happiness back to the consumer culture, in the past, it was always common to exhibit very progressive themes, like “gays teaching class,” “drag queens make a cake,” or some similar social intrusion.  But I’m telling you, and Disney is a great example of this; going woke has made a lot of corporations go broke.  And that’s more than a catchy tagline.  You can see in the behavior of most corporations that they are reeling from terrible advice from Larry Fink and the gang at BlackRock and, ultimately, the intruders at the World Economic Forum.  By this point in the global insurrection process, we were supposed to be on another currency controlled by the centralized banks, digitally, China was to have surpassed America as the dominant economy, and President Trump was supposed to be in jail, and have all his political capital removed.  So there is a lot of soul-searching going on that many people who thought they controlled the world are embarking on, and it’s not a pleasant experience for them.  And all that shows in the creative decisions at this year’s Macy’s Day Parade. 

I’ll go even further than that, this Taylor Swift lunacy with the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs is part of the story.  It’s a constructed monstrosity from a corporate brand that needs something to spark interest in the product, and predictably, because Taylor Swift is suddenly at NFL games dating a famous player, women are watching football.  European soccer has been appealing to this younger generation, and the NFL had to do something, so there is nothing better than a romance between the most popular “anti-Trump” pop star on the planet now, where they play her music during NFL games abundantly, and one of the premier players in Travis Kelce.  I noticed that this romance didn’t start until shortly after Taylor Swift played her concert series in Cincinnati, which is a kind of melting pot of heartland sentiment.  It just so happens that Travis used to be a Cincinnati Bearcat football player, so there is something of a connection with Cincinnati that they both have, in some ways, they are wholesome products of one of America’s most wholesome cities.  Some people measure such things as obsessions.  I believe the matchmakers who put these two together, such as Erin Andrews, played a role in understanding corporate politics through such imaging.  “Hey, you guys should date, it would be great for the game and for your careers.”  Taylor Swift and Kelce go on a few dates, talk about how great Cincinnati is, and pretty soon, they are swapping spit in the shower and sharing a towel.  A new corporate romance is born, meant to carry public sentiment positively.

The musical selections at the Macy’s Parade were along the same lines.  They had Cher, references to Back to the Future, and many Broadway plays with people in cowboy hats, as if they were trying to appeal hard to mainstream America but weren’t sure they knew what it was.  What they didn’t talk a lot about was progressive politics, to the point where it was avoided by everyone involved in the presentation.  At the beginning of the parade, a bunch of Palestinian protestors were blocking the route, and they were disposed of quickly so as not to impact the show, which I thought was great.  The show must always go on.  And if you were watching it on television, you never would have known.  It was interesting to watch Cher perform because she is one of the biggest Never Trumpers out there and would generally be one who would throw support to Palestinian supporters, but here was a 70-year-old all dressed up singing sexy songs from the 80s.  Later that day, I might add, Dolly Parton dressed up like a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader in her 70s, trying to show that age and sexiness were not lost during the Thanksgiving Day tradition of the Cowboys playing football during a halftime show.  The NFL could have picked thousands of other people.  Entertainment had millions of different options, but they decided on Cher, Dolly, and the safe music of Taylor Swift to sell their corporate image.  There were no Black Lives Matter references, no bending the knee at the National Anthem.  There was almost a desperate hope that these corporate images might politely be invited into the public trust again by giving audiences everything they sought and more. 

As I have been saying for a long time now, the BlackRock stakeholder capitalism idea was never going to work, all that goofy stuff they have been yacking about at Davos was never going to be accepted by the American public, and it is there that world cultures trend.  European rock bands and entertainment must export their art to America to make money.  Not China, as the entertainment industry used to think it was possible to sell to the public.  Not Africa, Russia, or Europe.  If you can’t tap into the greatest economy in the world, the one that every economist everywhere should be studying instead of trying to change into a socialist utopia, then there is no market.  And the ultimate feature of that art is the Mainstreet options seen in features like the Macy’s Day Parade.  This year, it was all about an olive branch to the MAGA voters.  Over the last three years of Biden, it’s evident that the public wasn’t seduced into the World Economic Forum monstrosities cooked up under their economic view.  And people wanted optimism in their art again, in their music, movies, and Broadway plays.  It wasn’t that long ago when Broadway was utterly shut down due to COVID-19.  Well, people moved on to other interests, and getting a ticket to a Broadway play isn’t so hard now, just like Disney Parks, where attendance is low.  People didn’t need the corporations.  They don’t need NFL football; all the progressive activism has hurt their brand.  They are turning to Taylor Swift to help them recapture the magic, but it looks like there is permanent damage to the NFL because of their anti-Trump activism that will never come back.  The Macy’s Parade of 2023 clearly states that significant changes were on the horizon, not the kind they politically support.  Yet that is the world of tomorrow, and they are trying to embrace it today.  Their actions are an admission of good things to come that they aren’t all that happy about, but if they want to be in business, they had better embrace it.

Rich Hoffman

The Vivek Ramaswamy I Know: He’s a good guy who wants to help save America for all the right reasons

It’s tough to be a front-runner, which is where Vivek Ramaswamy finds himself among the second-place contenders for President of the United States. As much as I like Vivek, I’m a Trump guy, and from the beginning, it has always been for me Trump, Trump, and more Trump when it comes to the White House. It’s Trump, or something much harsher, that does not consider civility. Trump was treated wrong during his first four years and has been treated wrong since he left office. And to set things right in America, Trump must be back in the White House. So, I have not covered Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign because he has been running against Trump. However, now that the smoke is starting to clear, and Vivek has shown that he’s never betrayed Trump and has adopted a very MAGA platform in the running for president, there are some things that we can talk about that have come up regarding his character. Now that the world has come to know Vivek Ramaswamy, there are concerns that he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the picked insurgent from Wall Street. After all, he is worth nearly a billion dollars, so he doesn’t exactly fit the profile of “one of us.” But then again, Trump is a billionaire, and as I’ve said many times, the Trump of the 80s and 90s is not the kind of person I would have voted for President. And Vivek is still a very young person, not yet 40. But now that he has overcome DeSantis in most polling, and everyone else, all the presidential candidates likely running to be vice president, Vivek is getting more negative media attention, which requires some clarity.

Before there was a book there was a bright young man who wanted to do something good.

I don’t think Vivek Ramaswamy is anything but sincere in his efforts to run for president and have a political future to continue something good that Trump has started. I know Vivek to a degree and have met him several times. He’s from my area of Cincinnati, so our paths have crossed a lot. I remember very well when he launched his political career at the Middletown Republican Party headquarters, talking about a book he was about to release called Woke Inc, which has gone on to bring great awareness to the dangers of corporate Marxism run by people like Larry Fink from the World Economic Forum. Vivek is a person of magnificent intelligence, and I would look to him as the next great economic advisor in the Trump administration. Vivek Ramaswamy has started Strive Management as an offering to take on the prominent money managers in BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, operating out of Columbus, Ohio, instead of Wall Street, New York. Strive Management, I think, is the solution to the monster that the Federal Reserve has created. So, Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t just some dreamy Republican looking for attention. His heart is undoubtedly in the right place, and I can say that because of my interactions with him. Vivek came to an event that I was a part of organizing, and as he explained to me, it was there at that point in his life that he began to see the other side of things, and it inspired him to step away from being a CEO of biotech companies and instead do his part to save America. So, just because people are wealthy and successful, it doesn’t mean they have sold their souls away and are useless for the rest of their lives. People are always on a journey; they seldom stay the same throughout their lives. They evolve as they learn, and Vivek is still a young man and learning who he is.

I like Vivek quite a lot

Vivek Ramaswamy is a great talent, and I am not surprised he’s getting much serious attention as a presidential candidate.  I hope he is in that kind of position for many years.  As much as I support President Trump, it is time to start thinking about 2028 and beyond.  And I believe Vivek Ramaswamy is there to continue a MAGA platform that can help correct America’s severe problem with international finance, where America’s real problems start.  It’s not some faraway country that is the next military threat to American interests; it’s the local bank and the money manager of our 401K plans, and few people in the world understand that better than Vivek Ramaswamy.  And that will be just as much of a problem four years from now as it is currently.  So, I am very supportive of Vivek Ramaswamy, and I want him to succeed in this presidential venture so that he continues to offer his talents to politics to carry a MAGA platform well into the future.  And I have enough personal information about him by knowing him and talking to him to give my opinion on his motives in all this.  I think he’s a young person who has had great success and realized it wasn’t enough.  He has a gift for communication and wants to use it to save a country he loves.  I know the event that he told me about helped shape that moment for him in stepping away from being a wealthy CEO and becoming a political figure that could extend the Trump platform for the Republican Party well into the future.  With a wink and a nod, I would say to everyone, that’s why we have events like the one I’m alluding to.  Because you never know how many Vivek Ramaswamys are out there asking questions about their lives and looking for something meaningful to do next. 

I think Kari Lake is the leading vice-presidential candidate. But for many reasons, I believe Vivek Ramaswamy would be better. The more he talks, the better things get, and as a political party of Republicans, we want Vivek to speak as much as possible. I would love to have four years of Vivek as a vice president, getting on-the-job training for eight solid years as a president. The Vivek I know is a guy who made it big, and it wasn’t enough. Like Trump, he has independent wealth and wants to use his skills to help his country. His political activity has nothing to do with a desire to be near corruption and be recognized as necessary. He already is. But due to his financial independence, like Trump, he is turning to politics to give something back that few people in the world ever get. So, I think Vivek is running for president, not as a controlled asset of Wall Street. But as a person who has stepped over from the dark side of finance and can help fix a very broken problem with his unique skills. I don’t think Vivek ever meant to be on the dark side; he left college and stepped into the world to be successful for all the right reasons, the way society measures it. But these days, he’s more than that; he has grown. And that is why he’s running for office, and he should be a positive contributor to positive political efforts for many years. There are good guys out there, even in the world of politics. Trump came to this good guy desire late in life. And when it comes to Vivek Ramaswamy, it has come early, and perhaps just in time to help save the world.

Warriors and sell-outs, they are not the same.

Rich Hoffman

Yes, Lakota Schools Are Letting Boys Use the Girls’ Bathrooms: Why liberals hate Darbi Boddy

I think the only reason many anti-Darbi Boddy people hate her with so much conviction is that she does not look like the bottom of a foot, as most other education types do. Most people who do work in the field of education are not what you might call attractive. Instead, they look like potatoes that have been left in the basement too long on one side and are in a perpetual state of rot. That thought came to my mind as I saw Darbi Boddy, the second-year school board member from Lakota, at the Republican Lincoln Day Dinner, a glamorous event celebrating conservative values each April with Ron DeSantis speaking about his education reforms in Florida. Darbi was dressed well, and a long line of people wanted to take their pictures with her. There was quite a crowd, but we did get a chance to talk about how things were going and what she had in mind for the future as one of the most important political offices that any property owner could vote on. We send so much money to these public schools only to have them used against us as a backdoor for extreme liberalism distributed like a weed into our community with the intent to rot the minds of our youth. When you get a chance to meet Darbi, it would be hard to understand why so many people hate her. But it becomes apparent when you look at the line of people waiting to shake her hand and take a picture with her. Fellow school board members Kelley Casper and Julie Shaffer could never get a reception like that, and jealousy is undoubtedly a factor in the way that women get jealous of other women for obvious insecurities.

For all those reasons and more, Darbi Boddy is one of the most controversial figures in Cincinnati politics; she is a Butler County version of Marjorie Taylor Greene, only with a softer presentation. She and I did get a chance to talk about a few Lakota problems, and one was the transgender radicalism that is exploding in all public schools across America as a clear strategy by progressives that was unfolding. Darbi, unlike me, thinks that public education can be fixed or at least improved. Where I tend to think all elements of public education are ready for the junk pile, I am happy to see at least that people like Darbi want to try and make it work, especially considering how much money gets wasted on it in our community. And to that point, she told me about some of the challenges regarding boys and girls’ bathrooms that were trying to emerge again. Listening to her talk, she sounded very reasonable, leaving it clear to the mind of any decent person the precise point of view that people hated Darbi for purely cosmetic purposes and because she was a conservative more than any other reason. I was impressed with her statement that her main reason for dealing with many of the problems she has become wrapped up in is because she wants kids to have a stable environment to work in. And the liberal politics was intrusive to them, especially the trans bathroom issue where boys were using it as a means to get into the girl’s bathroom. Of course, at a recent school board meeting, the rest of the board stated clearly that they didn’t think that was happening. But then, after the meeting where Darbi brought the issue up for a vote to put the issue to rest, Lakota spokesperson Betsy Fuller stated that only under exceptional circumstances were boys being let into the girl’s bathroom and that the issue was distracting for students who would rather not think about those kinds of things.

After speaking with Darbi, I always leave with the thought about how bat-crap crazy women can be with other women, just over cosmetic looks, and how nuts Democrats are who are so full of hate, they want to protest the sun coming up. Darbi’s argument about removing political radicalism from kids so they can just be kids makes a lot of sense. But then again, Lakota schools are filled with radical, progressive liberals, from the school board down to the class-to-class teachers who are teaching CRT and are supporting trans activism, and those people, if left unchecked, are looking for a co-parenting relationship with the community’s kids, and to teach them all the wrong kinds of things. If Darbi wasn’t there to protect them, who would? The radicals would say that the best way to protect the kids would be to get rid of Darbi because she is the center of political controversy. But without Darbi, these people would have unhindered access to children, which is a terrifying thought, when you find out how radical some of these people really are. Darbi, in person, behaves very professionally and has genuine sincerity for the betterment of children in the classrooms. And the people who hate her hate that she’s a conservative who is not afraid to express it in public. And they hate her because of what they intend to do to innocent kids, which Darbi stands in the way of. 

You always have to watch it when the public relations people are controlling the message, and Betsy Fuller made it clear without trying, that boys were being allowed in the girl’s bathroom under unique conditions, as expressed in an email to the media after Darbi proposed a ban on the entire idea, for the safety of all kids. At a fundamental level, boys are dirtier than girls, and if they don’t sit down while using the restroom, they tend to make a mess of the seat, making it very inconvenient for the girls who have to use it after them and it’s just not fair to the girls. The other school board members were a bit outraged by Darbi, for all the reasons stated that they would be, but that didn’t change the fact that Lakota is supporting transgender radicalism, which is more of a religious issue than one of political inclusion, which is an entire problem of its own under a separation of church and state argument. Public schools have made it clear that religious references such as the Ten Commandments were not allowed to be displayed, but then they are very supportive of the rainbow flags of the Pride movement, which is a direct correlation to the Cult of Ishtar. That support was evident in Betsey’s statement to the press; they prioritize inclusion among kids that identify with gender questions, which are purely political in their progressive push culturally. And as Darbi made it clear to me, kids just want to be kids. Adults are trying to push all this sex agenda radicalism onto them, abusing that innocence between the child and adult relationship that is often detrimental to the child’s development. When you really peel back the layers of hate that have been applied to Darbi just for existing, it becomes clear that it’s not because she’s a bad school board member. Quite the opposite, I think she is the best out of the current four, and Lakota would do well to get four more just like her.   And if they did, at that point, Lakota schools might actually serve the community well and spend the vast amounts of money that are sent to them by the community wisely. And kids might be able to have one thing less to worry about than adults with radical political agendas who want to pervert children sexually for their own maniacal purposes. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Tommie’s Place in West Chester: A super secret treasure hidden in plain view

It’s not such a well-kept secret that I have been using the VIP room at Premier Shooting as my super-secret meeting place for political activity for a number of years. It was great for me; I could shoot at the magnificent range they have at Premier, which is in West Chester near Port Union. Then I could meet with various political figures without worrying about strange people snooping in on our conversation. When I meet people for lunch, this is often the problem, which I still do. But going to Premier, anybody who went into the VIP room would have to badge in, which greatly limited the variables which might come by and provide a security risk. And additionally, it was just a nice, convenient location with a beautiful view of the lake. It had a country club feel to it, but it was still a center of combat training. They taught a lot more than just shooting at Premier. But you could learn a lot regarding lethal and non-lethal combat scenarios. I’ve loved Premier since Tommie and her family built it, and I consider it one of the great treasures of West Chester. So it was my favorite place to do the kind of clandestine work that I do behind the scenes to make cake, political cake, which can sometimes be very tricky business. I tend to get a lot of attention when I get out and about, so minimizing that curiosity was very beneficial until some of the meetings started getting quite large, with ten people at a time and more. So over the last year or two, I have had to move those super-secret meeting locations to other places. I had heard about their plans for the VIP room from the family but hadn’t had a chance until recently to see the construction updates.

Tommie had told me that she was planning a bar at the shooting range, which seemed an exotic idea to me then. I know other luxury ranges around the country were discussing experimenting with the concept because guns and drinking are generally not good partners. But I was certainly interested. Even more so, the tone of the bar was going to be more like a speakeasy from the 1920s, kind of a backroom kind of thing that was secret to the world. Well, that made sense because that is precisely how I had been using the VIP room for quite a while. That was actually the appeal. Shortly after I changed my secret location meeting place, Premier began constructing their new idea, just as the new Harley Davidson dealership went in next door to the shooting facility. It was quite something to admire, that little corner of West Chester right off 747, which has heavy traffic. People could come and shoot, learn martial arts, buy motorcycles, guns, go fishing, hike around the really nice lake, that area really represented the best of government from the trustees in attracting these kinds of investments for the public to enjoy and it was all very beneficial to people who enjoy those kinds of things. But to add a night spot, a speakeasy with a full bar on the upper scale of things. That was certainly interesting. Recently that construction was completed, and they are calling the effort Tommie’s Place, with a speakeasy slant to it and to announce its opening to the public; we had a super-secret meeting there with some very high profile politicians where everyone could talk, sip on a beverage and conduct a conversation with a large group of people that we couldn’t have had if we rented a room at a local restaurant.

As I arrived for this event, Jim caught me in the parking lot and showed me where the parking for the speakeasy was; it was behind the building near the Harley dealership. From there, you could get into the place through a special back door they had just built where you could badge in from there. Or, you could go through the front, cross the lobby of Premier itself, and they had just built a special entrance to the speakeasy where the old VIP door used to be. I went into the back entrance and immediately noticed they had added a lot to the back of the building. And in going in, there was a small hallway with a desk where they checked to ensure you didn’t bring firearms into the bar area. I could see how they had rearranged the VIP area to incorporate this new feature. They still had a badge access VIP area where people could get away and relax with the same country club feel. But this time, it was all in glass so the public could see what was happening. And the speakeasy itself was built where the outside porch used to be, but now it was all enclosed into a very exotic bar that likely no speakeasy in America was so luxurious. But it had a fantastic view of the lake and felt like it was a million miles from everywhere. Yet 747 was still only a few feet away. You’d never know it. It reminded me a lot of the lounge area of Jags and certainly had a touch of class to it. 

We had a great meeting, good people all wanting to do good things. The drinks were great. The atmosphere was just fantastic. And this place is open to the public. I can’t think of a better place to catch an after-work drink or even a during-the-day stopover with friends and partners. It was very private but could accommodate a crowd. You could make it part of your shooting experience, or you could just stop by, park in the back, walk from your car to the speakeasy without many complications, and step away from the noise of life for a bit. It was very clever how they set it all up. The lake and the parking in the back are the fundamental tricks to removing you from the pressures of the outside world, then entering through a back door that takes you into the warm embrace of elegant surroundings where you could be social, or not, as you’d like to be. If you just wanted to get away and have a quiet drink, this was the place to do it. It all told a good story of remembering a period of American history where the law was too much, and people wanted to get away from the far-reach of the law with a speakeasy. Yet this was a safe place from the world’s concerns and was designed to keep the ugliness of a bad day from contaminating a good evening. It had all the elements I enjoyed from all those super-secret political meetings, but now it had the added elegance of the best West Chester had to offer, all in one place. And I was very impressed with the new addition to the Premier Shooting facility offerings. It was classy, convenient, and practical and a real treasure to those who have come to know about it. 

 Tommie’s Place – A Prohibition Era Cocktail Lounge (tommies.place)

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Police Extortion of the Cincinnati Bengals: Communist labor unions always expect “the rich” to pay for their mismanagment

For me, and this has always been the case, there is a limit to how much of the thin blue line I’m willing to pay for. We need police in our society; we can’t function without them. We should not defund the police as Democrats have suggested. But when you are dealing with public sector unions that always want to expand government, “defund” is not an open checkbook that is beyond the reach of management. Throwing infinite amounts of money at police or any government employee is a bad idea. Society should pay for the police and to pay for them well. But not infinitely.

Traditionally, when police or fire employees insist that they always receive more money, they say, but we run into fires, we run into gunfire, so you don’t have to. I will volunteer to run into a burning building to save a dog any day of the week. I will gladly engage with a dangerous group of shooters any day of the week, any hour of the day. And I’d do it without pay because I would look at something like that as fun. So I’m not a big fan of that argument. Yes, police work is dangerous. But those who get into it understand that. It’s a privilege to wear the badge. The community should support the police enthusiastically. We should all live by the laws of our society, constitutionally supported. But the arguments of pay, such as what Dan Hils did on 55 KRC with Brian Thomas, is an exploitation of the standard union point of view, which is always communist in nature, to attempt to argue more pay in all the ways that the police unions expect it. There is a limit to what police are worth. When an FOP president makes the case from an obvious liberal point of view to a radio talk show host who is typically a small government kind of guy, it makes for an interesting debate that often hides in the cracks of our society.

Everyone knows I’m not a big fan of the Cincinnati Bengals. My favorite team is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and it has been since Mike Brown fired Sam Wyche as the head coach. My support of Wyche went with him to Tampa from Cincinnati, and I have never forgiven the Brown family for that firing. They are losers as NFL owners. They run a bad organization that does not represent the city well. Sure they went to the Super Bowl last year because they have really good players. But over the years, they don’t know how to close the deal, and if they win, it’s usually because they get lucky and the other teams overlook them. But I don’t like this Billionaire Bengals talk from the FOP president, Dan Hils. I also have to remind people that every labor union in America started as a communist idea. Every entertainment union, government sector union, and union that runs some manufacturing aspect are all Karl Marx’s products. With Trump he’s a former Democrat who has opened up the tent of the Republican Party to include labor unions. In politics, there are many viewpoints, and people often don’t get everything they want. So it’s worth discussing unions’ problems with the same people who now consider themselves MAGA Republicans. With that in mind, all this talk about the Bengals paying double time and triple time for traffic staff before and after games is a perfect example of how the same people who will talk about saving money with taxes on one topic find themselves nodding in agreement with Dan Hils on the extortion racket being played out with the Cincinnati Bengals and talked about on the air as if the Bengals should pay whatever it costs for safety because they have the money and can afford to. Just because someone like Dan Hils, from the perspective of a communist police union, thinks that the Bengals are rich, does that mean they should be obligated to pay some artificial value for more traffic cops at Bengal games? 

I go to Bengal games a few times a year, and I prefer the great seats when I go. When I arrive, it’s usually where the player entrance is, so I get to see all the security they have at these games from that point of view, and there is a lot of police there—a lot of security. I tend to think that the Bengals should hire their own security for their own events. But as Dan Hils points out on Brian Thomas’ broadcast, the Bengals can’t pay for their security on a city street leading to and from the stadium. Those are city streets, and the police union has it rigged so that only they can provide traffic services. It’s the same kind of mess that you deal with at any union where tasks are placed in silos, and restrictions to productivity are also associated with the labor assigned to that task. For instance, you might have a box of pencils sitting on a dock meant for the office area. But the unionized dock workers are on a break, or have called off work for the day. Or maybe they are on strike. So there sits the box of pencils. The office people need them. They can look through the window into the dock and see the pencils sitting there. But they are not allowed to go in and pick them up so they can get their pencils. They have to wait for the union to perform the task. That is the kind of political game the Cincinnati FOP has going on regarding city streets leading to and from the stadium. Because the unionized police want a monopoly on the work, they complain that the work just can’t get done because they don’t have the staffing or the money. But the Bengals aren’t allowed to provide a solution. Or perhaps the people attending the games might volunteer to help direct traffic. They are prevented from helping because they are not lawfully permitted to perform that task. 

Spoken like a true communist union president, Dan Hils places all the blame on the Billionaire Bengals because they are rich and can afford to pay whatever the members of the Thin Blue Line require. But the Bengals’ options are to use Dan Hils unionized employees at rates of double time or triple time to pay for the mismanagement of the police force in general at whatever cost they decide. Rather than hiring their own people at $15 per hour or less to perform a task that is only worth minimum wage for a few hours on a Sunday to keep people from running into each other. And because we are politically on a path to support the police no matter the cost, someone like Brian Thomas, who is a small government guy, gets pulled into a discussion about defending a government union’s ridiculous extortion racket. And from the perspective of Dan Hils, his argument is that the Reds pay for the security, as to other sports events in the downtown area. So why don’t the Bengals pay too? Well, because the police union is forcing a customer to pay for goods and services that they control exclusively, and they expect to pass their mismanagement off as an undisputed bill, which is ridiculous. The police are great to have, but I don’t like their labor unions. I’d volunteer to help the police if there weren’t so many dumb rules that keep people from helping them. In many ways, they create their own problems by forcing restrictions on themselves and then expect a community to pay for their mismanagement of financial resources. And at a certain point, when they ask for too much, the community should just get rid of them and form their own law enforcement that doesn’t have a union attached to it. And my argument would be that it would work far better and be a whole lot cheaper. Just because rich people can afford to pay, that’s not up to Dan Hils to decide. It’s up to market values to determine, and the FOP of Cincinnati clearly isn’t interested in that kind of discussion. They are just like everyone else; they want the most money possible for the least work produced. It’s up to management in all cases to determine the value of that ratio.

Rich Hoffman

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The Evil of Staying in Your Lane: How bad behavior stays hidden and active

For all those people who are saying, “if I ever see Rich Hoffman out somewhere, I’ll give him a piece of my mind.” Well, I’m out and about a lot, and I talk to a lot of people. And when I do, nobody talks very tough to my face. So if you want the chance, I am at the Back Porch Saloon in West Chester a lot. And on one such occasion this past week, I was having lunch with a person going for their Ph.D., and he told me about the process and all the things he had to do to get into that elite club. And, in essence, that’s what it was, a club. The other Ph.D. panel members decide what the candidate must do, and if the applicant wants to be in the club, they’ll do it. The criteria differ from school to school and peer group to peer group. So really, getting a Ph.D. is similar to the rigors that are undergone to pass the BAR exam or any number of higher education gateways to an elite order. And socially, going to the college itself in our society is seen as one of those gateways, and the goal isn’t always what was taught but that the applicant endured the experience. All this came to my mind while I was listening to this guy list all the frustrating hurdles he had to jump over to achieve his goal. I thought about the situation at Lakota schools, where it was quite evident that people were having trouble confronting evil at face value. Most people privately had an opinion on it, but socially, they felt they had to stay in their lane and that they weren’t qualified to pass judgment on anybody, lest they be judged themselves. But why was this the case?

Well, most people go through something in their life where they must be initiated into some kind of group order. Usually, it starts in high school. And if it doesn’t happen there, it happens in college or the military. Hazing rituals for all group behavior are common experiences for people, even in religious groups, to some extent. All groups of people have barriers to entry, and to become part of it; people have to surrender a part of themselves to join the power of the group.   A homeowner’s association is a form of this. They may require you to keep your garage doors closed when not using your garage to maintain street face value. You can’t have boats in your driveway. You must keep your grass cut—those kinds of things. Very few people are indeed free to think what they want, about what they want, and when they want. They must do what groups tell them to do through their memberships because we are all taught early in life that acceptance by our peers is of utmost importance, whether it’s obtaining a Ph.D. for our career path or being selected in a local Mason lodge to advance to the higher degrees. And the truth of the matter is, most people stop intellectually growing at age 15, likely much lower than that these days and they put as a priority not fighting for truth, justice, and the American way but in “staying in their lane,” as people who don’t like to be challenged like to say all the time. And there just aren’t enough adults who make it through all these gateways of group associations to stand up to evil when it presents itself. They might have personal feelings about evil when they go to vote; so long as nobody is looking, they’ll express it. But in front of other people, they have been taught to stay in their lane, and that makes them trustworthy to all the slugs who accept them into their group associations who want to trust that smarter and better people won’t come along to knock them off their perch, which is what the group associations are really about, no matter what level they are pursued. People think there is power in groups and are willing to trade away personal value to gain access to that power without having to really do anything themselves. 

I remember my college days; I had friends in all the local schools who would invite me to house parties at the various fraternities and sororities at Ohio State, Miami University, and the University of Cincinnati. One I remember well occurred in Cincinnati, where I arrived to meet my friend, and I broke all kinds of rules that the fraternity brothers were distraught with me over. First of all, I walked across the emblem on the sidewalk outside without paying homage to all the ritualistic ways they required all people to do. So we got off to a rough start that didn’t improve as the night wore on. The party’s purpose was that the fraternity had hired a stripper to have sex with one of their newer members, a kid who was very shy with girls, so the fraternity brothers hoped that a really outrageous experience with this stripper would cure him of his shyness. So he had sex with the girl in front of everyone right there in the living room. Then once he was done, the rest of the fraternity members took turns with her, and this all went on in full view of a window where I could see police walking around down the sidewalk.

Additionally, the stripper was managed by her husband, who watched as if his wife was selling lemonade or Tupperware. It was awkward, I couldn’t wait to leave, and I did so at the earliest possible moment once it was clear I had satisfied all the reasons that my friend had invited me. It took a few years, but gradually, I stopped being friends with that person because we simply lost common attributes. Once he stepped over that line, there was no going back, and we had very little to talk about. That was the case with many people from that time, friends who turned into compliant people happy to stay in their lane in exchange for an easy job that they were well paid to essentially not challenge anybody in authority. 

Understanding that, it’s not hard to understand why people turn into turtles when they are confronted with evil. And evil knows it. They know that group associations are more important to most people they deal with, so they conduct evil right in front of everyone’s faces audaciously because they expect everyone to stay in their lane and never challenge them. Because they have their own skeletons in their closet, and who are they to judge anybody? That is the danger of becoming compromised. It might be fun at the moment. It might be nice to have the herd’s protection and rely on that protection to get jobs in life and financial security without having to work too hard or display much bravery. There are plenty of people in the world who are happy to pay people to stay in their lane, and that is ultimately achieved by joining group associations, whether a Ph.D. or a fraternity, where the brotherhood becomes more important than your own family. And that is why when bad things happen, there aren’t enough people around to stand up to it and to fight evil when it presents itself. Because once people participate in evil to be accepted into a group association, they are tainted for life and never feel once again that they have a right to pass judgment on anything. And they cower in fear when evil is so audacious that they end up feeding it with their complacency instead of doing what must be done to defend the world from the mechanisms of tyranny and the schemes of the stupid. 

Rich Hoffman

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Should You Attend School Board Meetings: The Lakota school’s trouble is why “yes” is the only answer

I know the school board meetings are boring and cumbersome with regulations. The thing I have never liked about the one we have in my district of Lakota is that you only get 3 minutes to talk, and usually, my political enemies are the ones who sit as the judge and jury as to what gets said and to what degree. If you go outside of their accepted limits, they call the police on you to shut you down. Well, that doesn’t work for me; I’m accustomed to being in charge everywhere I go on every topic, and yielding that control over to a political rival on the school board is not something I consider smart. But I have attended plenty of school board meetings and spoken at them when needed. I understand why more conservatives don’t attend school board meetings, yet liberals do. I simply don’t have the time to give to three hours of just doing that one thing while a heavily rule-compliant school board meanders on with loathsome rules and regulations. I’m used to doing three or four things simultaneously from sun up to beyond sundown, so it’s difficult to slow down enough to attend a school board meeting that you know will not affect things at all. Nothing you do at a school board meeting will change a thing that is going on at the school. School board meetings are designed just like elections to make people feel like they have input into how things work in public schools. Yet, they are simply consensus-building exercises meant to bring people over into the way of thinking of a liberal board of education by grinding people down with the sheer boredom of it all. 

The situation has been so bad that I decided over a decade ago to create my own media format to talk about school board business and, in general, politics and current events that weren’t being covered by the media we have had. I always attended school board meetings; I also did a lot of radio and television, interviewed, and wrote for newspapers. In my early days of doing public school work, it became obvious to me that the entire argument that would solve many of the problems was not on the scale of the discussion. For instance, the part A of an argument was set at the wrong point, and part B never went far enough. So I stopped doing media and writing for other publications and instead created this blog site as its own mass media source. Since then, it has had millions and millions of visitors who know they can get more of the news than is typically talked about and that they can send me information that will actually get attention as opposed to trying to force information through the public education filter that everyone can clearly see is a scam. But even with my own thing, I still occasionally attend school board meetings and try to make the system work, even knowing in the back of my mind that it’s probably a useless enterprise. I do that so that nobody can say that I didn’t try. I do try; I just have changed over time to create my own media because I couldn’t trust the established media or the school board members ever to do the right thing. 

The Lakota school board meeting in September 2022 was OK. Some of the controversial superintendent issue elements were discussed, but as usual, a lid was put over the whole event in the standard way that occurs in all government schools. But I would say that what happened was worth the effort because community members did get to voice their opinion, even if the school board’s goal was to drown out the whispers through procedural bureaucracy, which often hides all the bad behavior that so many people are concerned with. Usually, the only people who go to the school board meetings are liberals who don’t have anything else to do anyway. They don’t mind sitting around and wasting time because they like to complain, and those meetings are designed for them to do so. And to get their complaints recorded by someone. They are like those people who carve their names into some wood at a popular tourist destination to show that they were there. The school board meetings give them a voice and a sense of purpose in life, and they are happy to stay asleep so long as they can complain about what they see and feel. Conservatives aren’t like that. They are usually busy with something, so they don’t have the time to deal with that level of nonsense. Suppose they think the school board is a waste of time, which they are designed to be by the OSBA (Ohio School Board Association). In that case, naturally, they will stay home and do something else, yielding everything to the crybaby liberals. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way.   The Lakota school board meeting on September 12th is a good example; there were enough people there to at least get the media’s attention. It was interesting to see how the board responded to evidence that I had already seen and what they considered “credible” or “relevant.” It was also interesting to hear their interpretation of the police report, which they say “cleared” the Lakota superintendent of wrongdoing. I’ve read the same report, and it hardly does that. But without the school board meeting and pressure from the conservative community in the school district, much of this would just be shoved under the rug as it always has. I have watched stories that were undoubtedly in the public interest be crushed by liberal school boards for years, which, as I have alluded to, managed alternative media sources that would dig into a story more than traditional media does, which essentially takes their complete dialogue straight from official public comments because they are too lazy to do any further investigation. This is undoubtedly the case with Lakota, and the people up to no good expect lazy reporting and phony legal protections to conceal bad behavior that taxpayers should know about. Notice how the John Gray story from Goshen where the school board president just disappeared off the news. Apparently, it wasn’t illegal to conspire to meet an 11-year-old girl for a naked massage so long as it hadn’t happened yet. School boards have evolved into cesspools of cover-ups because only liberals attend the meetings. But maybe we should change that. I am happy that enough people showed up at Lakota’s meeting to get some attention and apply pressure where it needed to be applied. Otherwise, bad things do happen a lot. And ultimately, kids do count on us to give them a good world to live in, including their public education environment. You can’t just trust that everyone will behave. You sometimes must look at them in the face and make them answer your questions, even though many rules are designed to protect them from the taxpayer. It drives me nuts too, but it’s worth doing. 

In saying all that, I continue to be very proud of the good work that Darbi Boddy is doing as a Lakota school board member. I think we now see why they hate her so much. To answer the questions of the rest of the board, who are very liberal and have been working very hard to get rid of Darbi. Wasn’t it political for the Lakota superintendent to try to push Darbi to resign over much less charges? Who started that fight? Hmmm………maybe think about that for the future. Because I am very much looking forward to the next election where we can get more school board members like Darbi elected and really make these meetings more constructive. Eventually, we’ll publish all the evidence, but right now, it’s more interesting to see how various people handle the evidence, and public judgment later likely won’t be as kind as people are now–because they haven’t seen it yet.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

It’s All About Intent: Throwing stones is important to a civil society, so is living without sin as much as possible

After years of covering these public education issues, I arrived at my saturation point long ago. I like to think about positive things, and government schools do very little that is good in the world. If you are a person who still thinks there is some benefit to them, you likely need to redefine what you consider good. And that has certainly been my thought about this latest issue in Lakota schools, the district where I live, where the superintendent has gotten himself into all kinds of trouble due to a failed marriage that has certainly leaked out of the bedroom and into his very public position as a school superintendent. I have wanted to be wrong about him and the case in general. There are lots of people who are concerned about the case, who have kids going to the school, and due to the nature of the accusations that were mentioned against Matt Miller, the person who identified himself as a public figure on his Facebook page, he has brought the taxpayers quite a list of problems that he could have easily have avoided if only he took more caution in his personal affairs. The result has been a disgusting exhibition of bad judgment and reckless disregard for basic decency. Unfortunately, the police report is in, and it didn’t say that the evidence that told this horrible story wasn’t discredited. The sexual deviancy was true. But at this time, they didn’t have enough evidence to move forward with the criminal part of the story, which is what has concerned me the most.

The trouble I have with it all is that if the evidence hasn’t been discredited from its source, in this case, an ex-wife, then that means it could be corresponded with cell phone data that the cell phone carrier could provide, and at this point, there is very little will to perform that task. Based on what I know of the case after talking to lawyers, police officials, and several politicians, the reason is that this has major political ramifications that would be too much for everyone involved. Nobody wants to subject themselves to that level of pain. I would add that all this evidence is available upon a document request, including the text messages. At this time, to get that evidence, I would refer you to inquire about it through the official channels of the Lakota school board. There is a meeting on 9.12.22 where these questions could be asked, and I’d suggest that be the place to get answers to your questions. The media knows all about this story and have been sitting on it for many of the same reasons described. The school board has been waiting for this police report, and now they have it. So using the official channels of communication is the way to perform these inquiries. 

What bothers me most about this case is the behavior of the surrounding cast of characters. I always think more information is better than not having enough. But I asked a school board member three years ago specifically about Matt Miller’s sexual relationships because I had noticed a change in him over time. He had looked a lot more disheveled in recent years, to the point where when I shook his hand in public events, he was noticeably different. So I asked about it because there was a lot about him to be suspicious about regarding his personal behavior, outside of the role he performed for the school as a superintendent. And yes, it’s the public business when taxpayers pay him $200K per year. A public role expects that he will maintain a positive public profile, and he clearly was showing signs of something going wrong in his life. I thought it might be sexual in nature or maybe substance abuse. Things happen to people, but I remember specifically asking about it because it was a noticeable change. Now that I have seen the contents of the divorce records, the Craigslist ads, and the revelations of pillow talk between him and his wife at the time, it all makes sense. And I hate to say it, but I was very right about it. 

Knowing all this about himself, it is bewildering why he went after the new school board member Darbi Boddy the way he did because the hypocrisy of it is what provoked his ex-wife to go public with the contents of their divorce. She saw a pattern of behavior that reminded her of their marriage, and she thought it was unfair treatment toward Darbi. Darbi didn’t seek out the information; the information came out as a result of Matt Miller going after Darbi Boddy over the trespass charge he leveled against her. It bothered the ex-wife, so she sought out people who would tell her story. When I saw the contents of this information, I thought it was on the serious side and that the police needed to be involved, and that is how things have arrived where they are now. Now that the police have done their work, up to the current status, my hopes of all this being just political or inflammatory have been abandoned. So for all those who wanted to believe that it’s all hearsay, out of convenience for what the school system does for the community, or to protect whatever perceived value there was in it, the facts are the facts. They are available as public documents, and you can see them for yourself. There has already been a lot talked about it on social media. Much of the worst of it has been discussed on Facebook. It bothers me so much that I am simply telling people to get that information from the school board. The superintendent is their employee, and he’s their problem. They had an opportunity to get rid of him a few years ago when they obviously knew a lot of this bad behavior but determined that he could still perform his job in a public capacity. Yet that turned out not to be the case because if these kinds of things are out there, it limits his ability to manage anything because the ghosts come out of the closet when provoked. 

The behavior of so many people has been disappointing; in many cases, people I know and have known well. This problem occurs when compromised people have to pass moral judgments. I would say that this is why it’s good to live a clean life. Because morally, you may be called upon to make decisions that either make society better or worse. And if you get caught trying to explain away bad behavior because you are also guilty of the same kind of stuff, then you will not be able to call balls and strikes when it’s required of you. Even if you want to participate in “adult” behavior, you probably shouldn’t because when the time comes like this and moral opinions are essential to protecting children and taxpayer dollars; you won’t be so equipped. And that is obviously part of the anger at new school board members like Darbi Boddy and others who the ex-wife sought out to tell her story due to the public spectacle the superintendent blew out of proportion for purely political reasons. The political opponents to the board, the Tea Party conservatives, and the Holy Rollers of evangelical sentiment are throwing stones because they are not sinning. When the assumption is that nobody should pass judgment if they are not without sin, well, not everyone is doing the kinds of things that Matt Miller and his wife were up to sexually. And when it comes to sexual addiction or lifestyles that have an unhealthy relationship to sex, it’s a bottomless pit where fantasies migrate over into the intent to do something terrible outside the bedroom. And in many legal circumstances, not those as politically charged as this case, “intent” is all that is required. 

Rich Hoffman

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Lakota Cancel Culture Tries to Fire Darbi Boddy: My 10-year anniversary and the blueprint to Ron DeSantis and President Trump

I am proud of a lot that I see these days. Fighting against years and years of entrenched establishment politics isn’t easy. I am very proud of Ron DeSantis in Florida for standing up to Disney the way he has and all the woke actions that have been leveraged against him. And I’m proud of how Darbi Boddy in Lakota has been fighting for parental rights in my school district. But you make enemies when you fight back against the established way of things, and it can be challenging. This afternoon, April 27, 2022, the Lakota school board pressed to force Darbi to resign when she made a posting on her Facebook page that accidentally referenced a pornographic site. It was an easy mistake to make. Darbi had been trying to reference concerns over pornography in the public school curriculum, but she got the spelling wrong, and it ended up linking to pornographic material. Of course, Darbi’s enemies pounced on this misfortune and are now pushing her to resign. I can say I’ve been where Darbi is now, and some of the people on the current board at Lakota played their part in it. I could name many things that the current board members have done that are far worse than what Darbi did, so watching them take the moral high ground during an emergency board meeting on a Wednesday afternoon was reprehensible. But, I will say that I am very proud of Darbi, as I am also of Ron DeSantis and President Trump. And many others who have had to deal with cancel culture, which is what is going on at Lakota. The exploitation of a well-intentioned mistake for purely political reasons is a pretty low blow. That’s OK. Hey, if they want to set the bar that high for themselves, well, then they can live with it. 

Ironically I had just been through several meetings with people that reminded me that at the end of April of this year, it had been ten years since I went through an excruciating process that I am still angry over. The Lakota school board worked with the Cincinnati Enquirer and all the established media in Cincinnati to cancel culture me before anybody knew what that was. The event happened on March 12, of 2012. I will never forget it, it was one of the most challenging days of my life, and the cause of it was essentially that Lakota wanted to pass a tax increase. We had defeated three previous attempts, and they were ready to go for a fourth, and they had in mind to get rid of me so they could do it. Many of the levy radicals had gone to an area Kroger and conducted a survey disparaging my name very publicly, and I expressed my feelings about what I thought about them. It was fair game in my way of thinking. But because these were women and because they represented levy supporters, I was an early version of the angry white man progressive attack that we would see years later. Before Trump, nobody on the conservative side ever fought back over anything. In all the graphic details I expressed, the print media and broadcast companies all over Cincinnati picked up the story and published what I wrote about some of these levy supporters. And this prompted an interview on the Scott Sloan Show on WLW, which I did. It was tough, but I punched through it. Privately in my life, the whole world came down on me, trying to cancel me out of existence in every way they could. They went for the jugular. They wanted me obliterated. And I knew that while I was talking to Sloan on that interview, which I’ve included here. 

Slone wanted more than anything to get an apology from me, which was how all conservatives were treated back then. Later, President Trump would show that by standing up to the left-winged mob and not apologizing that the curse Saul Alinsky exposed against conservatives in Rules for Radicals could be beaten. That is the same formula that Ron DeSantis is using now in Florida and that state is turning redder by the day. It used to be a toss-up. Now it’s moving firmly to MAGA red. And now, locally, we have a mom elected as a school board member in one of the largest districts in Ohio. Of course, the establishment types don’t want her around. They have been plotting and scheming way before today to get rid of her. And they were waiting for her to stub her toe just once so they could pounce. That’s the way the game is played. It takes tough people. But before there was ever a game plan, I was there. I know how much pressure these people feel. Trump was good at it. DeSantis certainly has learned. Darbi is learning. But one thing I learned that people still remind me of, and why people were coming to me with the 10th-anniversary talk, was that they wanted to thank me for standing up to the bad guys, as they call them. Before anybody knew how the game plan worked, when I refused to apologize on the air to half a million people, under tremendous pressure, people recognized what that effort meant in the world politically. People really appreciated it. 

It was the end of that April of 2012 when I had counted 100 people who went out of their way to thank me at gas pumps, at the grocery store, out to eat with my wife for standing up to the mob at Lakota. They were thrilled that someone from the conservative side of things finally stood up to what they saw was happening from the left. That was a time when being a RINO was just being talked about. Conservatives were always expected to turn the other cheek. They were never to fight back. But because I did and I didn’t apologize for it, the people of my community were thankful. After that, I stopped doing radio or television and just published my blog. And I became much more popular as a result. I gained a lot more power. And it turned out to be much better for me as a result. That terribly hard day on the Scott Sloan Show turned out to be one of the best days that ever happened to me. And that is how it is for all conservatives who find themselves on the chopping block due to cancel culture. If you aren’t afraid of them and their silly woke rules, they have no power over you. Ultimately, voters make the decisions on who they want to represent them. Not a bunch of silly rules of fake conduct in public while some of those same board members have shown terrible judgment in private. But the lesson of the day is that when they try to cancel you, stick by your guns and make them fight you directly. Which as liberals, they will never do.

Because liberals and RINOs rely on institutionalism to save them from public judgment, they don’t know how to stand up to strong people.   When people have a representative as president, governor, or school board member who they feel is fighting on their behalf, they will support them eternally. Voters will crawl over broken glass naked to support people they know are fighting for them. I learned that lesson firsthand. Not apologizing on that WLW show was one of the best things I ever did. And it showed all who came after that taking that approach was the best way to beat Saul Alinsky’s liberal playbook. And it is the way that we take our country back one school district at a time. Never apologize to a liberal, ever! Or……………..a RINO.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business