Tag: Cincinnati

Looters of Cincinnati: The end of the line is here

As many said during 2011–without Issue 2–which was repealed by the public unions in Ohio, Cincinnati was in deep trouble. Now in the summer of 2012, Cincinnati is facing a $34 million dollar deficit as the progressive Mayor Mallory pushes for higher taxes to pay for the enormous amounts of money that his street car project is going to take from the Cincinnati budget.

Kathy Harrell Fraternal Order of Police President also is pushing for higher taxes to pay for the high salaries of her members as she extrapolates public safety over the luxury of a street car, because the police and Mayor Mallory are after the same money provided by the tax payers, and they both expect to get it from the property owners in Cincinnati who are being pushed to fund all these projects with their tax dollars.

Issue 2 would have allowed management of the salary structure of the police officers of Cincinnati without drastically decreasing their numbers. To get an idea of what many of these police officers make, CLICK HERE to see what they make just to the north in West Chester Twp. Many police officers make close to six figure salaries by the time all their benefits and overtime are added up. 1000 employees who cost the tax payers $100,000 each per year cost the city $100 million dollars—just to put it in perspective. The actual cost is much higher since many city employees make a lot more than $100K per year. The way to manage those costs is to drive down the wage amounts so that they fit within the current budget. It’s essentially the same problem that tax payers are having with public school teachers. Teachers in government schools expect too much pay. But Kathy will not even consider such an option as asking her members to take a pay cut. Listen to her two years ago the last time City Council tried to balance their budget. You can hear the audio from Darryl Parks show on 700 WLW.

The proposed new tax is $6 per $100,000 of property value which doesn’t sound like much until one considers the impact on businesses with values of $1 million or more. For them, the tax increase is quite steep. For a business, $1 million dollars of value is very much the norm. The average Wendy’s restaurant is valued between $1 million and $1.5 million, so every place of business in the city of Cincinnati is at risk of seeing significant property tax increases since their businesses are all valued close to those numbers. Political looters like Roxanne Qualls reminded city council that if taxes do not increase, then they had better be ready to make serious cuts to programs, which she knows nobody has the political will to do. The prospect of city council members taking a stand against tax increases has led to the rumblings of law suits against those who resist the tax push. She was quick to point out that only 14 percent of a property owner’s tax bill goes to the city. Most of the money goes to the Cincinnati Public Schools and Hamilton County levies, which of course ties in to the stadium debacle for the Reds and Bengals sports franchises.

To make matters even worse, the Cincinnati Public Schools just announced that they are seeking a $51.5 million emergency operating levy—most of which goes directly to the wages of government workers. CPS has cut 200 jobs and finally placed their employees on a base salary increase freeze, yet they still need money to cover their $467.5 million dollar budget. And in just three years in 2015 CPS intends to seek another $65.2 million dollar levy renewal, so the increases against property owners will continue into the next decade easily.

If I were a business owner looking for a reason to locate my business in downtown Cincinnati, to lease a space in Carew Tower or some other downtown location, why would I when I could place my business in West Chester, Mason, or Northern Kentucky with a lot less tax burden? The answer is I wouldn’t. I will put my business where there are the most people with the most money, and the taxes are lowest. And downtown Cincinnati isn’t it. There is too much public housing that creates home owners who do not have a personal investment in the property, so property values will continue to spiral downward because investors would be out of their minds to invest in a community that will only be trashed within 10 years. The high taxes currently have pushed out many good jobs from the downtown area and into the suburbs and the general irresponsibility of the city funds have driven completely out-of-town the type of property investment that helps curtail crime, which creates the need for too many police officers to keep the peace.

One of the reasons Kathy Harrell cited as a risk to the layoff of police officers in order to pay for the street car is that if the number of employees drops below 700 officers, then the city will lose federal funding—which means that the police department already is receiving tax payer dollars from the federal government and they have that money spent. So laying off too many police officers will take away federal dollars that will force yet another tax increase on property when that money goes away. This is not only stupid from a financial standpoint, but makes the 10th Amendment of our Bill of Rights completely negligible, since every school and public employment entity has their hand out to Uncle Sam. It makes the state a servant to the federal government so when politicians in Washington decide they wish to enforce the NDAA Act for instance, our local police that we work so hard to pay for with six figure salaries become military troops who report directly to the federal government to enforce martial law—and that is a serious problem. It allows Constitution burning politicians like Obama to build his own army at the expense of local tax payers under the disguise of safety, which makes self-government much more difficult when a dictator attempts to climb into power.

Mayor Mallory who is a very progressive mayor directly connected to the Obama administration seems to have the same economic ignorance as his friend. Mallory as a mayor of a small city in the Midwest spent a lot of time during his first two years in office visiting communist China so he could take pointers from the mother country of his political ideology. It is from his Chinese friends that he learned that he needed to build a streetcar, and that the ballot language needed to be confusing to get it passed by an already apathetic community plagued with debt.

The sum of the problem is that a vast majority of all the government employees involved at every level of the city government from the schools to city council have tried to solve problems by stealing from one place to satisfy the needs elsewhere. And since the entire system is made up of looters—people who seek to take from others to fill the needs of themselves—they have taken away so much from the tax payers that there isn’t anything left to take.

The responsible thing to do for residents of Cincinnati would be to vote at the ballot box and if that doesn’t work then to vote with their feet. It is interesting that the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors lobbied against the property tax increase from city council because they will be forced to vote in favor of the CPS tax, since realtors use good schools as a way to sell homes and in people’s minds, passed levies equal good schools which to a realtor equals sales of homes. Tax payers in Cincinnati are much less likely to pass the CPS levy if city council forces a $6 tax hike per $100K home. In Cincinnati there is no end in sight for tax increases because the looters of Cincinnati have spent too much, and made taxes so high that new investment is staying out of the city. And for the same reason that residents do not want to move into high crime neighborhoods to avoid being robbed, investment dollars avoid communities with high taxes, because the politicians are no different from the kind of looter who would rob a person at gun point. Threats of lawsuits, threats of declining police presence violating public safety, threats of a declining community of tax payers who do not approve tax increases are still coercion made under inflicted duress—not under the logic of clear conscious—which is how Cincinnati ended up in the situation that it’s in. The problems were caused by the Looters of Cincinnati and nobody else. These politicians were warned, and Issue 2 was created by forward-looking legislators to attempt to curtail the impact of these upcoming times, but nobody listened and now there is hell to pay. The good of Cincinnati will now make plans to leave leaving only the ugly to reside within the city limits with the rest of the looters. And years from now when archeologists wonder why the city of Cincinnati fell into drastic decline it will not be because it lacked highway access, or a wonderful airport—it will be because taxes were simply too high and that destroyed everything that was good about the city and turned it into just another ghostlike victim of the present economy that is indiscriminate in it’s destruction of anything but the most efficient leaving only the Looters of Cincinnati to feed off each other once everything productive had been consumed.

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Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Mark Mallery Sues the City of Cincinnati: Looters, thieves and scum bags strike again!

Who are the modern looters of our society? Doc Thompson of 700 WLW explores that concept in this fantastic broadcast.

It is a disturbing trend that we are seeing, which has been occurring for a number of years. There are two kinds of Americans. There are those that desire socialism, where a cradle of collectivism will provide a utopia of love, understanding, fairness, and collective salvation. The other kind of American looks to the traditional values that made the United States successful in the past, and believe that the same traits that made the United States great then can do so in the future. The first type of person believes that for collectivism to work, society must rid themselves of all desire for violence and personal property. The second type understands that conflict is part of the human condition, and that by harnessing that conflict in a positive way, capitalism will bring great inventions and production capacity to society. They honor property as a way to measure themselves and their achievements and as an incentive toward competition. Property is like a scoreboard in a football game. It lets people know the score of the game.

Spirituality, which both versions of living struggle with is knowing that the game you’re playing doesn’t matter in the long run. It only matters on the field of battle. When death comes, the games of life matter very little. The scoreboard only reflects the status of the game.

Now playing all these versions of existence against each other are looters, and thieves. In an uncivilized society, looters put on a mask and rob people in side alleys of their wealth. In a civilized society, the looters put on masks too, but they are the masks of authority, and they rob you without threats of violence, not openly. They rob you with the threat of potential violence inflicted by some random act beyond your control, which they as an authority figure can protect you from. So what they do is basically extort from the unknowing, naive victim, “protection money.” These are looters. They are anybody that makes a living off the public. Anyone that takes, but does not give back. For instance, Barrack Obama is a looter. Not because he’s a black president, or even a democrat, a progressive or a socialist. But he is a looter because he could never have personal success without public work. He’d not sell one book if he wasn’t running for president or if he wasn’t the current president. And none of the money he earns is for the personal worth of what he produces. He earns money for what he won’t do to a company, such as GE. Companies throw money at Obama and his progressive friends in congress and the senate to avoid regulation, and to create regulation against enemies. Obama earns his money by this process. Not by creating a product, or even working a punch press. He simply loots off the public to facilitate a process favorable to thieves. Without public office, his ability to produce in society would be non-existent. That makes him a looter.

This does not include the one or two term politician that just wishes to contribute something to their community. This term of “looter” does apply to the career politician who just takes, and takes and takes. They spend their time making new laws with the money they’ve looted so that the new laws will make it easier to loot you.

A good example of this is Mayor Mallory of Cincinnati. He reveals his true intentions. When the city cut his car allowance, as heard in Doc Thompson’s broadcast, he sues the city to recover those costs. His actions show that he ran for mayor, so he could put on the mask of authority, and therefore openly rob anyone he chooses. It’s no different from a thief.

Other examples are school superintendents. They are retiring from service to the district, then being hired by the school board just two days later, which is legal, and taught to them by the OEA. The OEA lobbied for that legal precedent so they could dangle the greed carrot in front of school superintendents and buy them off. Click here to see the I-Team report. It’s a very common practice. With superintendents, the money flows easily and all that is required of them is to maintain an “excellent” district which requires lobbying the Ohio Board of Education, and to secure funding when it’s needed. So when the teachers unions present “looter” style contracts, the superintendent signs off on it and gets the levy passed to pay for it. That’s the game, and they are looters.

When I have to spend the day in court on occasion, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are employed in positions that are simply “looter” positions. The only contribution they give society is in the handling of a driver’s license, or the processing of a court document. Most of the activity that goes on, including the issuing of tickets, the legal maneuvers of lawyers, the process of issuing permits and every form of “red tape,” the grandparent of apathy, are positions created for the thief and carnival con artist to lift money from you and place it their pocket. The role of the teacher that proclaims that their master’s degree merits 90K per year is no different from the fast talker at the county fair that asks you to step right up and try to throw the ring around the pop bottle. After he’s scammed you from your money you realize that the rings were weighted so it was nearly impossible to get the ring on the bottle. The same with schools and balanced budgets, the levies are weighted against the community, so the money tree can keep on growing, thriving off the money looted from that same community. The looters use fear to keep you from seeing what their hands are doing, or what their hearts truly desire.

When in doubt, remember the school superintendents that say, “money doesn’t matter to me, I am committed to the children,” yet retires from their job one day, and two days later is rehired so they can collect a full retirement pension, and a full salary. Or the mayor that proclaims that they are doing what’s best for the city he runs, while at the same time suing that same city over a car allowance.

These scum bags are thieves, creeps, and losers that only gain power because you empower them to take it from you with your desire for peace, which they use as a weapon against your sovereignty.

Yes, there are two kinds of Americans. The first kind desires socialism, and it is under this system of government that the thieves also desire, because it creates a society of easy victims that will empty out their pockets in a desire for peace. The second kind of American is the enemy to the thieves, because they aren’t so easy to fool. The thieves under that second type of American have to use a literal mask to do their looting, because they are forced to hide from the mainstream.

It’s important to know who you are, the first or the second, because there is no in between. There is no gray area in this matter. To know the answer, you must know your heart, are you a looter that wants something given to you without giving back, or are you a producer that just wants to live your life free of being robbed?

You better know which you are because America will not survive both. We can’t be home of the brave and home of the coward and thief at the same time.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Trolley Car of Terror: Breaking the Budget of Cincinnati Soon

One of the problems with a representative government is if the per capita population is of a certain class, or political persuasion then the representatives will likely represent those people in political ideology. And if those values of the population are built on entitlements, and liberal ideas, it is no surprise that the city councils and mayors will seem to reflect that hand-out culture.

Cities for decades have lost some of their best and brightest residents to the suburbs while the percentage of the population that embraces welfare policies have migrated to the cities where protection of their entitlements are safe from public scrutiny.

The Streetcar in Cincinnati is just one such project that is supported by a clueless city council and liberal mayor. To them, the 50 million the project will cost comes from some giant government entity in the land of Obama where the money grows on trees and is handed out to needy citizens, so the streetcar cost is not of consequence.

Instead, the mayor and liberal council members are looking at old data of their favorite cities and wanting to bring the nostalgia of a streetcar to the streets of Cincinnati.

Listen to Doc Thompson discuss this issue with Chris Finney of COAST.

What these political representatives admit by endorsing this streetcar is that they have no idea of how to lure talent and corporations back to the city. They cling to silly ideas like a trolley car and think young people and companies will find it an attractive magnet to industrious behavior within the city. When the reality is it is just another example of ignorant politicians grabbing for straws while they blow their own horns of accomplishment. True reform to a city can’t happen in an election cycle, and the residents they represent may not understand good business practice. A trolley car is something that people can see, so it gives the elected officials something to take credit for.

How many projects like this trolley car project have been implemented over the years for just such a silly reason? How many bridges were built for the same reason? How many ridiculously expensive projects implemented only for the protection of a political seat.

That’s all this $50 million trolley car in Cincinnati is. It’s a waste of money. It’s an appeasement to a population with a short attention span and it is actually technically going backwards instead of forward with use of technology.

If this project was regulated to only Cincinnati and these clueless politicians end up bankrupting the city continuing to drive away companies and talented people leaving only the portion of the population desiring entitlements, then Cincinnati will become bankrupt, and will fail as a city. The problem, in the end is that the state of Ohio won’t be able to let a city fail, so the tax payers of Ohio will have to bail this city out even though the politicians have shown they don’t have fiscal understanding and can’t manage their own finances. So the Ohio tax payer will compensate for the politicians bad, foolish decisions.

That’s why I’m a huge “NO” on the trolley car in downtown Ohio. There are other forms of transportation and if the Cincinnati Reds, or the Cincinnati Bengals or the new Casino wants a way to get young people transported from Clifton to the Riverfront, well then let them pay for it. Cincinnati built to stadiums that are putting serious financial strain on the city. $50 million more for a useless form of transportation that is only attractive to the entitlement culture is not a wise use of taxpayer funds.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Why The Bengals are a Terrible Team

Lately I was having dinner with a man who was very impressed with himself, and he spent a lot of time showing off the items that he had amassed through his successful career endeavors to his dinner guests.

When I talk with such people I don’t have the heart to tell them that the reason they are well compensated in the way they are is to placate them from thinking outside the box, and to settle in their lives. The compensation is to purchase their very soul from the curiosity of personal growth and invention. So I often feel pity for such types, because down the bumpy roads of life, somewhere way down there at the end of that road will come the realization that they short-changed themselves and lived an otherwise eventless life of little fulfillment.

And while I politely placated the man’s proud achievements with my attention, my thoughts fell on the Cincinnati Bengals, because there were elements of this man’s character that I believe are extraordinarily similar to Mike Brown, the owner of the Bengals.

The similarity comes from the popular belief that just because someone may have success in the legal profession, as Brown has, or finance, as this man has, or in some other endeavor, the game of football requires the ability to think outside the box to have leverage over your opposition, and therefore requires that type of thinker to have success.

As this man showed me the features of his new car, my thoughts lingered on a Bengal game recently that told the whole story.

An arctic front had brought temperatures hovering in the teens to Paul Brown Stadium, a palace that is operating in tremendous dept, currently projected at nearly $700 million dollars by the year 2032. For the moment, the burden the palace has placed on the city of Cincinnati is forgotten because it’s the fourth quarter with just seconds to play, and the Bengals are beating the far superior team of the New Orleans Saints and the crowd is gripping their seats in ecstatic disbelief and hope.

But the Saints drive down the field and are in scoring position. Kick the field goal and the tie. Go for it on 4th down, and the Saints get a 1st and goal.

In an ultimate act of disrespect, the Saints go for it. They line up and Drew Brees does his hard count, and everyone’s fears in the world of Bengal Football were confirmed. The Bengals defense jumps offside’s. The penalty gives the Saints a first down.

The Bengals lose…………………………again.

The Bengals are a terrible franchise. They have had only a few winning years in the last 20 years, since Mike Brown took over the franchise from his deceased father. The first thing Mike did was fire Sam Wyche, a fiery, motivated coach that always had a chance to win. I loved Sam Wyche because he thought outside the box all the time. He always was competitive and it was fun to watch his teams play on the field. He went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneer organization and my loyalty followed him there.

The Bengals have been a terrible franchise since. In fact, as Marvin Lewis completes his contract at the end of the 2010 season, he is the fourth head coach since Wyche left, and none of the coaches have been able to take the Bengals consistently to a playoff game, let alone a Superbowl.

• Paul Brown (1968–1975)
• Bill “Tiger” Johnson (1976–1978)
• Homer Rice (1978–1979)
• Forrest Gregg (1980–1983)
• Sam Wyche (1984–1991)
• Dave Shula (1992–1996)
• Bruce Coslet (1996–2000)
• Dick LeBeau (2000–2002)
• Marvin Lewis (2003–present)

Rebuilding years are expected. For instance, the time between Forrest Gregg’s Superbowl appearance and Sam Wayche’s was five years, something at the time the Bengal fans thought was unacceptable. Nobody would have fathomed at the close of the 80’s that the Bengals would become a complete joke among professional sports circles and fans by the far off-year of 2010, and yet another head coach would be dismissed at the end of the season and another rudderless recruiting process would take place for another head coach.

So why are the Bengals so bad? They’ve had plenty of first round draft picks. Here’s just a couple.

David Pollack, 2005
Chris Perry, 2004
Peter Warrick, 2000
Akili Smith, 1999
Ki Jana Carter, 1995
Dan Wilkinson, 1994
David Klingler, 1992

Not to mention Carson Palmer, Terrell Owens, Chad Johnson, all in the 2010 season were they had only won three games prior to Christmas.

Well, the organization is bad from the top and all that runs down hill. Evidence of that starts with the emblem, which is just a simple “B.”

If it was my team, and I had a tiger for a mascot name, I’d capitalize on that, but not the Bengals.

I was at another person’s home just the other day, and I saw a grill in the back of his townhouse, and I saw that he had a Bengal grill cover, and that “B”was on it. I felt sorry for the poor man. What a sap. He must be a real sucker to actually go out and buy that cover to support such a constantly bad team.

That’s what I thought. What a wonderful marketing strategy the Bengals have.  That stupid “B” is the most lazy emblem I can think of for an multi-million dollar franchise. 

It’s one thing to support your favorite team, win-lose or draw. But the Bengals just make fools out of their fans, because they do not offer a product on the field that can actually win.

The Bengals under Mike Brown make emotional decisions based on arrogance and a belief that the answers are inside the box, within the rules of society. Their ego’s get in the way of understanding what it means to win. They hire “yes” man coaches, and insist on top down management. They have no recruiting and believe that money can buy them a good team.

The Bengals spent the money on Terrell Owens for the 2010 season without considering the impact Terrell might have on Palmer. The Bengals have three charismatic players that have their own TV shows, and two of those guys are their star receivers. Didn’t anybody in the Bengal organization think that there might be some chemistry problems on the field?

No. Nobody even addressed it, because they don’t have any real scouting and have very limited understanding of the value of leadership. The Bengals could have spent less money on someone like Terrell Owens and instead spent the money on scouting and brought in some really good, fundamental players that fit in the schemes of Palmer.

But no, the people who run the Bengal organization are the classic thinkers that material wealth can purchase leadership and victory. And they are noticeably confounded when all their effort only produces losses.

The way the Bengals could win would be to change their uniforms, and kick-start a change in culture. They need to hire a new coach that can run the whole show, someone like Jon Gruden. And they need a General Manager to allow the coach to worry about only coaching and promoting the team through the media.

But the Bengals won’t do any of that. They’ll cling to their old ways and think they can buy a championship because money buys everything else in life.

However, in football, money does not always buy you victory. Ask Jerry Jones and his Dallas Cowboy problems. It takes heart and a desire to overpower and destroy your opponent.

The Bengals don’t inspire that kind of mentality with that stupid “B.” An emblem like that belongs on the chest of a high school cheerleader. Not the face of a great American city like Cincinnati.

I finished listening to the man flaunt his worldly possession like a small child displaying his boy scout merit badges, and my first instinct was to pat him on the head and say, “good boy.” But I didn’t, because somewhere in Mike Browns past, somebody placated his ego in a way that put this curse on Cincinnati called the Cincinnati Bengals. So all I did was sip my wine and go back in the house letting the guy revel in his temporary victories, and I didn’t want to ruin his Christmas with my piercing conviction that he was as clueless as Mike Brown.

The rest of the men stayed outside and continued to discuss sports stats and who had what, or what the next item they’d purchase would be. The sport stats were humorous as though they mattered and had an over-all impact on the ability to achieve victory. There are better things to think about, rather than the time that Mike Brown threatened to leave the city if Cincinnati did not build a new stadium for the team. An inept city government put themselves in debt to build the palace, and now the city is stuck with a huge bill and a terrible team to play in it. The Bengals are a lost cause and not worth the speech.

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com